Welcome back. In this lesson,
we'll be talking about working with stakeholders.
Unless you own your own website and
are the main implementor of these skills,
implementing technical SEO requires
working with stakeholders or other teams.
They typically have many other priorities besides yours,
and so it's important to get clear about how to
relay your request in a way that they can act on it.
One of the key ways to do this
is by using competitive data,
and so I'll share some of
the competitive analysis tools that might help you get
influence with stakeholders in
a way that you wouldn't otherwise be able to.
What's also important is to
understand how to identify the level of
effort and impact in implementing
these broad technical changes
you want to make to the website.
In this lesson, you'll learn how best to work with
key stakeholders to implement
the technical fixes to the site,
what competitive analysis tools
are available that can help you become
influential in getting buy-in
for some of the changes you want to make,
and you'll gain an understanding
of the effort and impact,
and how to scale your fixes in a way
that your teams can implement
in the right priority order.
Working efficiently with client teams are stakeholders
requires a unique focus and skill set to get things done.
It's one thing to list everything that
could be done to make improvements,
but it's entirely different to execute
changes while working with teams and stakeholders.
Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind;
clarify and focus on the most important objectives,
determine which elements can be implemented
with the highest level of business impact,
prioritize things that require
the lowest relative effort for the highest impact,
present all suggestions in
a way that you highlight the benefit to
stakeholders or clients and
have their best interests in mind.
This focus will help you quickly get
traction and build credibility with stakeholders.
Competitive analysis is one of
the most effective ways to get
your client's attention and influence decisions.
Use search results to show
stakeholders what the competition
is doing online that works.
Doesn't mean you will do exactly what competitors do,
I'm definitely not suggesting you
follow rather than lead,
but this is a powerful yet easy way to move the needle.
Number of platforms on
the market do competitive analysis,
they're worth researching in more detail.
Here's some I recommend, SEMrush,
gives competitive analysis from a keyword
and campaign standpoint, KeywordSpy,
looks at competitive keywords and how to
gain an advantage, SimilarWeb,
provides insights about any website or app showing
your traffic statistics versus your competitors, SpyFu,
is another keyword and ad space analysis tool,
finally, AddGooroo gives actionable insights
on paid and organic searches.
It helps you benchmark
campaigns uncover competitors search
strategies and find additional performance stats.
Any of these competitive
analysis tools is worth considering.
There's a cost for most of them but use a free trial to
determine if you can profitably make use of their data.
This data can influence stakeholders to take action.
According to Peter Drucker,
business has only two basic functions,
marketing and innovation.
You may not agree entirely,
but I think the premise rings true,
anytime you can innovate,
whether around a product or a process,
you're helping further the bottom line goals
of the business that you're working on.
Over time, all systems naturally move toward chaos.
This is the essence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
This presents challenges when working
with teams and executing projects.
Whether it would be a project plan or
technical analysis or recommendations
you put forward for SEO,
things don't always work as planned,
your great intentions sometimes run off the rails,
projects get delayed or may go sideways,
this is often referred to as scope creep.
This is classic, everyone runs into it,
but there are ways to counteract these chaos.
One method I suggest is a process called Scrum,
the leading framework for Agile software development.
Scrum Alliance is the organization that focuses on
the Scrum knowledge-base and the Agile Manifesto.
Scrum is designed to
foster greater collaboration, productivity,
and success among team members,
and is becoming more common in the marketing discipline,
even though it's very traditional
in the software development space.
This is worth exploring to become
more effective in any form whether SEO,
business or any complex project.
I recommend the Agile Process that I'll describe here.
This methodology requires first
that you are customer-centric.
Once you are, this focus on the customer,
gathering information about them will inspire
a product vision and a project plan.
This plan requires teams to work in a lean format.
This could be a team of two or
three people that execute on
a weekly or bi-weekly basis
focusing on specific deliverables.
The team executes on the simple,
short, and basic deliverables which are called sprints.
These sprints are evaluated after one or two weeks.
The feedback learned from sprints is taken
into account and informs the next deliverables.
This is an ongoing cycle.
The intent is to see quick fixes and
immediate gratification to limit
big problems and fail first,
and to have work constantly
progressing without too much delay.
Agile is not for everyone,
especially not in marketing where projects don't have
the same linear approach that the software world does,
not every client or team will adopt it.
Those who come from an IT
or software development background
may be more inclined to use Agile,
some use Kanban, which is
a different project methodology.
However, your goal is to create a culture with clients or
stakeholders where you have a commitment
to be more fully aligned,
take feedback into account,
consider how to prioritize any backlog of initiatives,
and put initiatives into the marketplace by
considering effective website changes.
If your internal team clients and stakeholders want
to execute work in a cooperative and innovative culture,
consider using something like Agile.
How does Agile work in practice?
Here's an example; recently we needed to make
quick changes to improve
website performance across multiple teams.
It was a classic complex problem.
We held an initial meeting where we
define the scope of the problem,
we identified key players,
and we considered what could be
done to improve performance.
Fortunately, all team members had an understanding
already of the Agile and Scrum methodology.
Therefore, we were able to implement weekly sprints
with product owners and Scrum Masters.
The benefits were clear communication,
regular updates, efficient execution of our work,
limited delays because we each
had a clear objective each week,
and agreed upon manner in which we
would communicate and accountability.
When working with complex projects and
big teams where you need to be
effective in accomplishing your work,
this Agile methodology can bring
your team to a higher level of efficiency.
Therefore, I recommend you consider it.
