Internal SQ Digital

SEO – How to – SEO and Content Pool

Purpose of this How To Guide: To ensure all SEOs Executives know what the SEO / Content Pool is when planning for a new interval, and tips on how best to utilise the budget provided.

Applicable to: SEO Executives

Customers: Bronze, Silver, Gold

Timescale: N/A

Introduction

As an SEO Executive, you will spearhead the planning meetings for Bronze, Silver and Gold clients. Although these clients do not require the same level of planning as Platinum clients, you are still expected to have completed a health check (see How to: Health Check Guide) and to analyse this data in order to draw action points for the digital marketing department to take onboard and act upon.

As each client is different in terms of how much time their contract provides the digital marketing team and the work required varies according to how the site is performing, you will often find that the SEO / Content Pool varies from interval to interval (month to month). The following guide will explain what an SEO / Content Pool is and what you should bear in mind when allocating the time provided.

Before the Planning Meeting

• Open the current / previous interval in Accelo alongside the new interval that’s just been created.
  • TIP: If there is no new interval, liaise with the Project Management team who will be happy to set one up for you.
• In the current / previous interval you will find your most recent health check. This will form the foundation of your planning meeting.
  • TIP: Analyse the data you have collated to determine which areas you need to prioritise such as drops in positions or 404 errors, for example.
  • TIP: If there are any position drops, investigate the optimised pages to determine what’s wrong. Ask a Senior SEO Executive help you if necessary.
• Once you have determined which areas to prioritise for SEO, make a note of how long you believe will be required for each task but keep the limits of the SEO / Content Pool in mind.
• Get in touch with the relevant Account Manager to determine if they have anything they would like to raise during the meeting (this is because they may not always be able to attend the planning meeting itself). This is a very important step as they may hold information that’s vital towards planning for the new interval, such was what the client themselves would like to focus on.
• The new interval that has been opened will have an SEO / Content Pool task with the allocated time given to both teams.

During the Planning Meeting

• Discuss your issues with other attendees from different departments. For example, if you have found drops in positions for various keywords which are being reported on, raise this with the attendee from the content team so that they can incorporate the keywords into their blog posts and internally link to the optimised pages.
• Tell the meeting attendees how much time you require for the tasks you want to carry out and if there is any time left over, allocate this to the content team member.
  • TIP: Be sure to make notes on what’s discussed so you can create the necessary tasks and fill task descriptions appropriately after the meeting has finished.

After the Planning Meeting

• Unless otherwise stated by an Account Manager, the SEO line manager or the content team member, you will be in charge of creating your own SEO-related tasks and the content team member will create theirs.
  • TIP: However the tasks are created, make sure that the original SEO / Content Pool task in Accelo has been cancelled once all the time has been allocated.
  • TIP: Always include task descriptions and deadlines to the tasks you create. Set realistic deadlines, but bear in mind that the sooner the changes are made, the sooner we can start tracking their impact and use that data to feed the following month’s campaign.