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A situation analysis requires a clear understanding of, first and foremost, the current SEO technical setup. So what you’ll be looking for here is to see if the technical elements are correctly configured for Google to crawl and index your website.
It’s also essential to ensure that there are no errors in terms of how a user makes their journey through your website. And you want to look deeply into your analytics package to find where some of those blockages are.
The second area you’ll want to look at will be your current search marketing activity, so paid search, the re-marketing activity that you want to take off the back of that and display advertising.
Looking at existing search marketing activities like paid search can reveal the top performing messaging in terms of click-through rate. This can also help to shape your keyword research and identify top performing search markets. And this is something we’ll come back to. Although we’re looking at separate disciplines there are intersections between SEO, paid search and display and they can all help to feed into each other.
So let’s start with SEO. So if you’re looking to assess the technical SEO setup you’ll want to look at the different stakeholders, the different markets, the different people who are going to want something different from your website. SEO is typically a rather subjective game actually in terms of strategies and implementation, but when it comes to the technical side, this is where things are rather black and white. Google has a set of guidelines and without adhering to them you won’t be able to maximize your impact.
So I’ll split this into four main areas:
If we wanted to categorize how we could measure technical SEO, we could look at these main five areas.
So working in digital we all know that our consumers and anyone who interacts with our content is doing so across multiple devices. Now we’re looking at that just specifically for SEO. There are three main areas that we would want to look at.
The phrase “mobile first” has been used for many years in the industry, but it’s one that Google has taken on itself, and it’s practicing what it preaches. The index up to now has been based on desktop results. So even if you were to search on mobile, Google would go into its desktop results, decide which results are most relevant and authoritative, and then serve the mobile version of that because you’re using a mobile user agent. So that is changing with mobile search set to take up over 75% of web worldwide usage by 2017. Google has decided it wants to reverse that way of looking at things. If most people are using mobile devices to search, why would it use the desktop version to judge what to serve? They’re going to do the opposite. Mobile results will be the first port of call even if someone searches on the desktop.
Now for most sites that are responsive there aren’t too many issues here. However, what we do want to bear in mind is that if you do have an adaptive site or if you still have a mobile version of your website that’s what you’ll be judged on. So this is something you really need to take into account within a situation analysis.
Back to TopClark Boyd is CEO and founder of marketing simulations company Novela. He is also a digital strategy consultant, author, and trainer. Over the last 12 years, he has devised and implemented international marketing strategies for brands including American Express, Adidas, and General Motors.
Today, Clark works with business schools at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Columbia University to design and deliver their executive-education courses on data analytics and digital marketing.
Clark is a certified Google trainer and runs Google workshops across Europe and the Middle East. This year, he has delivered keynote speeches at leadership events in Latin America, Europe, and the US. You can find him on Twitter (X), LinkedIn, and Slideshare. He writes regularly on Medium and you can subscribe to his email newsletter, hi,tech.
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ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE
This module covers the key steps for planning and implementing a search marketing strategy for your organization. It addresses the key components in an effective search marketing strategy and outlines best practices for planning and research. It also covers how to execute a strategy and evaluate the performance of a search marketing campaign.