 Hello everyone, I'm Anthony from Studio Hook. We're an SEO specialist agency and I'm here to talk about SEO and brands, brands and SEO. So as an agency, we're dealing with brands all the time. We've learned to fair bit over the journey to see what makes them tick, what do they always want, what stops them and what are the big things that you wanna focus on as an SEO agency because you want to match up the business goals with SEO strategy. What tends to happen sometimes in SEO agencies is that we get too caught up on the SEO and forget that there's a client at the end paying the bills. So what we wanna do and what we're gonna talk about today is what do they usually want, what's stopping them and what can you do. So let's start. What do brands always usually want? Well, in our experience, they always wanna beat the competition. Using competitors to try and motivate them is always a good starting point in seeing what SEO strategy their competitors have got, how well they're doing and using that as a benchmark. Second, of course, they always want more organic traffic. Who doesn't? They always wanna get more users through their website. They wanna have less reliance on more expensive channels like PPC or social or just open up another stream that they didn't really tap into before such as SEO. Obviously they want better rankings. They want those shiny number one rankings to be at the top and things like better branded and non-branded search. So getting people who don't know who they are but then also improving their brand and search because other competitors might be also trying to beat on some of their brands from the PPC perspective so they can try and organically rank a bit better for their brand. So there's some of the things that they usually want in our experience. Obviously there could be more, but in our experience, here are some of the top level things that they usually want as a brand. Personally, depending on who you're dealing with, if you're dealing with a CMO or a marketing manager or an exec, sometimes they just wanna make it look good. So you as an agency have to make them look good and work with them to make their numbers better. Find out what their goals are. So that leads into what's stopping them. So what are some of the things that could impact the ability for a business and you as an SEO to get that strategy going? Now in our time, some of the biggest things are they've already got poor SEO, poor technical foundations or just a poor understanding of SEO so they don't really buy into it, they don't really understand, they don't really get it. So you're really starting at the back of the pack they're having to try and educate them on what SEO is and the impact that they can have and matching up with their business goals. Second, is just a lack of goals and prioritization. So like, they don't know where to begin. They wanna try and do everything but they do nothing. They let perfection get in the way of progress. They want everything to be perfect or it has to be a certain way rather than just actually getting things done. Whether that's you as an agency getting things done or you working together with the business say they have an internal team or they have developers to get things done because they just have no prioritization. They don't know where to begin and they don't understand SEO. So there's no real goals, they just have like, we need more money, we need more traffic. All right, cool. But there's no actual plan and no clear goals and stepping stone as to how to actually get there. And a general understanding, just trying to understand marketing and where SEO fits in their actual marketing plan. A lot of businesses, if they're startups they won't have the patience for SEO or scale. So they won't have the patience. So they'll have to work on things like social or PPC or other quick impact sort of lead generation channels that'll provide them the money and the revenue now. Now, ideally you'd have a bit of a balance there where you'd know starting the SEO while you're getting the traffic coming through from those other channels but sometimes that isn't how it happens. And with understanding marketing sometimes they also think that SEO is in a vacuum. That nothing in the world affects SEO at all. SEO runs itself, there is no external factors, there's no, nothing that can affect SEO. Well, SEO is not in a vacuum just like the rest of the world isn't in a vacuum. SEO is affected by other things as well. So sometimes you'll find brands that will absolutely be hot under the collar because they're like, well, where's our SEO? Where's this? Where's that? Well, failing to understand that there are a lot of things that make up the demand. Like I can't control the demand for your product. If search volumes have gone down in 12 months and they've gone down by half for your product or your service there's not much I could do about that. If the market just isn't there for your product you can improve your SEO for that. But if the overall demand is gone or dampening for your product or service that's not only gonna affect SEO it's gonna affect a fair few things. So that's some of the things that are stopping them. Now what can you do about it? Now again, there's no one silver bullet if you do all of these things I hope that these have helped us to be able to get things across to be able to get things implemented to be able to work with the stakeholders to be able to make the campaign actually viable and get some value out of it. But these are some things in our experience that we try and do. So proactively getting things done. Now that's not a one size fits all approach with that. Again, depending on the size of your business you will have a lot of stakeholders. You will have internal dev teams especially custom built CMSs where you might not be able to get things done on a technical front. But what I mean by this is if you have the ability or the opportunity to jump into the website and get things done, you have the ability to create content. You have the ability to get ahead on certain things and showcase you actually trying to provide value. What's the worst that can happen? They're gonna complain that you're trying to provide them value and you're trying to give them a returning investment on their SEO. Like now again, don't be stupid with that. If you're working with a big brand that's got a custom CMS and you've got a few legalities in there and you've got a few things, just don't jump into the website. You don't wanna just rip down ASOS in a day, okay? But with certain brands, if you've got the ability to just get things done and showcase your productivity within reason, again. I like that because it showcases that you're actually trying to get things done. You're showcasing to the business, hey, we're trying to make this work here, not just paying us, and we're just gonna sit around and do nothing. We're actually trying to actively make your SEO help you to achieve your business goals. Prioritizing key services are products. Now, SEOs tend to get caught up in just doing SEO, which is fine, but they again forget that there's a business on the other side paying the bills and wanting to see results. So one of the things we want to do is focus on prioritizing the most important services that they offer, all the products. And what I mean by that is, what are the ones that they make the best margin on? What are the ones that they wanna push? What are the ones that drive the most revenue or the most popular? Focus on working your SEO strategy initially on those key services and products instead of just focusing on the privacy policy page or some random product that they might sell one of because it's got great search volume. That won't mean anything to the bottom line of a business. Focus on the key services or products. Now, another thing is simple reporting and updating on the why, and this probably goes in with the clear communication of stakeholders as well. SEO is intangible. It's just numbers in the air to these people that I don't actually know. That would be vanity metrics or yes, they'll see number one on Google, right? But what happens when you're not number one yet? Well, because it's intangible, the only tangible thing that they get is a report, is your team, is that call, is that strategy, are those documents, the things that they can see and then hold and hear because SEO is intangible. There's a lot of things happening in the background, but your marketing manager, CFO, CMO just wants to see the results. They wanna see the number go up. That's what they wanna see. So simple reporting, Data Studio, maybe there's custom tools out there. You can just detail what the SEO numbers mean but match it up with their business goals. So don't use non-braided queries to you and I, we know what that means. But to the average Joe working in the business, they might not know what non-braided means. So you really have to explain as to what that means. So you'd use certain keywords that they would know. So sometimes a client will be like, we wanna be known for these keywords. So you use those keywords that they wouldn't even know for their goals to explain what branded or non-branded means. Showcasing revenue, money. You might have fixed like 10 title tags but they don't know what the hell the title tag is or care, right? What does that actually mean? Well, hey, client, we've done all this metadata optimization to improve people clicking on our results. Therefore, we can lead that to more traffic and potentially more revenue or more leads. So you wanna try and explain those really SEO-y things in a way that matches up with their business goals so that they understand. Otherwise they're just gonna be with a very confused look on their face. Clear communication with stakeholders. Again, using things like docs or sheets or word, explaining it clearly, explaining it to them like they're five. Showcasing, use Slack, use emails. Have a call. Sometimes it's easy just to call them up and explain on the phone because there's no tone over email and you can have 50 long chain emails and everyone forgets what happened. Matching the SOS strategy to the business goals. So that's the encompassing bit where we're gonna be like, hey, client comes to you and says, we wanna be number one for this, we want more revenue and we want more leads, right? Great. Those SEO-y things have to then match up to get those goals. So how are you gonna get more revenue? All right, we're gonna focus on those key services and products. We're gonna focus on EEAT. We're gonna focus on the technical health of the website. But when you're saying EEAT, that are not what that is. So you're gonna say something like, we are creating these about us pages and team pages because we want to create your own Wikipedia and your own LinkedIn on your own website so that you can showcase to Google and users, hey, we know our stuff. These are the legitimate people behind this business. And reaffirming those goals, showcase the impact of SEO, showcase those graphs, showcase those ramps, have like catch ups with them to be able to be like, are we still on track? What's going on in the business? How are the products going? Essentially, ask them some financial questions like, how's the business performing? What are the goals this week? Sometimes you might not get that information, but if you get enough context to be like, are we hitting our goals this month or are we not? You can then tweak your SEO strategy to be like, oh, actually it's a bit of a down quarter coming up. What can we do? All right, here and then you can make that adjustment because if things are happening in the business and you're not aware of them, they get that report or they get that call and go, this means nothing to me. What does this mean? There's no money coming in. Oh, but we had to do X, Y, Z on this project. For this, who cares? There's no money coming in and you're sort of a bit screwed. And last but not least, always remember what is most important to them? Now, to you as an SEO, you're gonna be like, yes, doing the work is great or fixing matters and getting internal links in there and doing backlinks and all this stuff is important to you as an agency, which is great. That's how we showcase value, yes. But at the end of the day, the client is paying the bills. What is most important to them? If it is something like just getting more organic traffic, all right, fine. You as an SEO have to explain why that's fine as a goal but then also continually educate them as to some of the other parts that make up SEO. Yes, okay, traffic is only the first bit but are you getting the right traffic? Are they converting? And it leads you on to many more questions which can then shape your strategy. But always remember the why and what is most important to them and then you get that information and then you can craft your strategy and you can craft your work and your dedicated time to achieving those goals. And what should happen, now again, doesn't always happen this way but what should happen is the business should be appreciative that you're trying to actually leverage and use the channel of SEO and the power of SEO to help them achieve those goals. So that's everything for today in terms of SEO and brands, brands and SEO, matching up the business goals with the SEO strategy. Remember, what are brands usually want? More organic traffic, less revenue, better branded or non-branded search, better rankings, beating the competition. What is stopping them? Poor SEO, poor education, lack of goals and prioritization, understanding marketing, resources, ego and what can you do? Being proactive sometimes depending on the situation it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Prioritizing key services or products, focus on the things that will make them money. Clear communication with stakeholders via simple reporting and updating on the reasons why we are doing this. Reaffirming their goals, continually understanding what their goals are and showcasing the impact of that SEO through simple reporting and clear communication. Matching that SEO strategy to the business goals and always remembering what is most important to them. What is the why? Impact over vanity metrics essentially. So that's everything. I'm Anthony from StudioHawk.