SEO Strategy Groundwork — Brandon Schakola //Overstock

Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO at Overstock, discusses SEO strategy. If you want to get the most out of your SEO strategy, you need to build a strong foundation. And, rather than looking externally at your competitors first, you must understand how your organization prioritizes SEO to ensure that you’ll have the resources required to drive the SEO changes outlined in your strategy. Today, Brandon talks about building the groundwork for your SEO strategy.
About the speaker

Brandon Schakola

Overstock

 is a little camera shy

Brandon is the Sr. Director of SEO at Overstock

Show Notes

  • 03:00
    Steps to creating an effective SEO strategy
    The process starts with understanding where SEO sits within the organization and assessing the buyers journey to set up your funnel efficiently. Then, you can do your SEO audit to determine opportunities, strengths, risks, and weaknesses.
  • 14:09
    Figuring out what your competitors arent doing
    Dont focus solely on direct competitors when doing competitor audits. Look at gaps in terms of the experiences that are being provided so that your content can speak to the different stages of queries prospects may have.
  • 16:26
    Understanding your capability to drive SEO changes on a website
    If you dont get the buy-in of stakeholders like product, engineering, etc, its going to be difficult to drive SEO changes. And, thats going to make it harder to build the needed expertise, authority, and trust to rank on Google.
  • 19:05
    Satisfying queries beyond just a category or product page
    When thinking about search and the experiences you want to provide, you must account for the different ways in which people shop. Rather than just adding content to a page, you have to provide optimized experiences for consumers.
  • 21:46
    Determining what numbers to use to address the market
    These numbers will depend on which part of the buyers journey you're targeting for growth. Ultimately, that will define how you build the data to address the market.

Quotes

  • "The pandemic just accelerated the change in search behavior. People don't just search for running shoes anymore. They search for which running shoes are vegan friendly." -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

  • "After you've gone through your audits, your break-fix, and your competitive landscaping, what aren't your competitors doing?" -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

  • "You have to be able to build new ways for people to shop if you're in eCommerce." -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

  • "If you've got the buy-in of other stakeholders in the organization, you can do a lot. If you have no capabilities of changing how titles and URLs are generated, you're going to struggle." -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

  • "At the end of the day, SEO isn't just search engine optimization, it's an experience optimization." -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

  • "Lots of CMOs drool over a total addressable market. But, in reality, what's the remaining market?" -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

About the speaker

Brandon Schakola

Overstock

 is a little camera shy

Brandon is the Sr. Director of SEO at Overstock

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