Building an SEO Strategy — Brandon Schakola //Overstock

Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO at Overstock, discusses SEO strategy. It takes time, effort and knowledge to create a winning SEO strategy that will get executive buy-in and bring in the traffic you're looking for. As an SEO, your job is to provide specific experiences for your target audience, so before creating a strategy, you must determine what your audience needs. Today, Brandon talks about creating an SEO strategy.
About the speaker

Brandon Schakola

Overstock

is a little camera shy

Brandon is the Sr. Director of SEO at Overstock

Show Notes

  • 02:37
    Aligning resources and team members around an SEO strategy
    The first step is to understand what the companys initiatives are. Then, its about identifying how your SEO initiatives align with the companys initiatives and figuring out how to work with the relevant teams to push those initiatives out to consumers.
  • 05:25
    Generating experiences at scale across the customer journey
    This process involves working with the product, engineering, and marketing teams to generate an experience across different audiences. The users experience is the main focus in terms of their journey towards the product.
  • 07:17
    Getting buy
    SEO initiatives can be tailored to match up with major events such as holidays, etc. Additionally, create impactful customer experiences while monitoring the data to see how customers are responding and adjust accordingly.
  • 09:39
    Pitching SEO initiatives
    Get an understanding of the clients goals and their budget. From there, youll be able to develop a strategy that matches their unique needs and brings them favorable results.
  • 11:26
    Building the marketing roadmap
    Once you have all of your marketing material together, its time to leverage your team to bring the project to life. It all boils down to ensuring that everyone on your team is familiar with using the different tools to help the project along and to track progress.
  • 14:01
    Setting milestones for your marketing roadmap
    As an SEO, keep the long term in mind when building out your roadmap and setting milestones. At the same time, schedule regular check ins with executives and other stakeholders to confirm buy-in and necessary adjustments.
  • 15:07
    Creating an SEO strategy
    Create an SEO strategy that aligns with the needs of your target audience. Its all about adapting to the customers needs, so you might need to make modifications to the SEO strategy along the way to maintain this alignment.

Quotes

  • "If someone's developing a new feature for the site, it may not be an SEO strategy piece. But, you still need to have an idea of how to influence something that's going into this feature." -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

  • "If you're not learning in the beginning of your roadmap that means you may have missed something. And you should probably tap yourself in the shoulder a little bit and say, uh, buddy." -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

  • "Roadmaps can be small. You could have a quarterly roadmap or a three year roadmap. As an SEO, always try to think in the broader timeframe." -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

  • "Content as an experience has some lifeline and provides more ways of changing the experience utterly." -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

  • "Creating your SEO strategy is always going to be tied to your audience and the experience that your audience needs." -Brandon Schakola, Sr. Director of SEO, Overstock

  • "People need a specific experience and it's your job when building that roadmap to know how your experience launches, how it read, and, over time, what modifications might need to be made." -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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