SEO Outcomes: How to Identify and Make an Impact — Craig Harkins // CoStar

Craig Harkins, Director of SEO and Content at CoStar, talks about SEO outcomes: how to identify and make an impact. At the start of each new year, we often set ambitious SEO goals and create extensive lists of tasks to accomplish. However, if the developers, marketing, and sales teams cannot see how the suggested SEO work will drive business and user impact, you’re likely to receive support in implementing those tasks. Today, Craig discusses SEO outcomes.
About the speaker

Craig Harkins

CoStar

 - CoStar

Craig is Director of SEO and Content at CoStar

Show Notes

  • 02:23
    Communicating SEO outcomes
    There is often a disconnect between desired SEO outcomes and the actual results for the business and users. It is crucial to effectively communicate and explain the business impact behind SEO outcomes to dev teams, UX partners, and QA testers to ensure alignment.
  • 04:09
    Connecting SEO outcomes with business impacts
    By exploring the impact of SEO outcomes on the brand, users, and their interactions, a more comprehensive understanding of the user journey can be developed. This enables effective communication and alignment with stakeholders around achieving those outcomes.
  • 06:42
    Connecting user benefits to SEO outcomes
    Incorporating the user journey into the process of title tag optimization enables you to connect the SEO outcome to the user impact. This approach highlights the updates benefits beyond SEO and helps to get all team members involved on the same page.
  • 10:55
    Framing SEO optimizations for Google around user satisfaction
    While some optimizations like preloading your LCP image initially seem focused on meeting Google's requirements, they aim to improve user satisfaction metrics. By framing these in terms of user needs, the connection between SEO efforts and user satisfaction becomes clear.
  • 13:19
    Understanding Google's guidance and prioritizing user satisfaction in SEO
    Its crucial to listen carefully to the specific questions and situations addressed by search liaisons rather than generalizing their responses as broad mandates. Instead, focus on aligning SEO with user satisfaction metrics and Googles ranking of your website will follow.
  • 16:35
    Prioritizing and tracking SEO outcomes for business impact
    SEO efforts should be prioritized based on their potential impact on the business and tracked to report their impact to the dev team involved. By establishing a feedback loop and sharing the impacts achieved, the team becomes motivated and excited to tackle future SEO projects.
  • 19:51
    Integrating SEO work into the product cycle
    Demonstrating the impact of SEO work on user experience and product goals is crucial during sprint demos with sales and marketing. Ultimately, SEO becomes an integral part of the product team's efforts to enhance user journey and refine search experiences.
  • 21:09
    Prioritizing SEO goals for the second half of the year
    Conduct an inventory of your SEO commitments, assess the progress, and adjust the roadmap accordingly for Q3 and Q4. Communicate this progress and any adjustments to the organization to ensure everyone is aligned to achieve the end-of-year objectives.

Quotes

  • "We want faster web pages, or the perceived improvement in speed so that users are happier when they land on the page. They bounce less, consume more content, and convert more down the road." -Craig Harkins, Director of SEO & Content, CoStar

  • "When you're listening to the questions that get asked of the different search liaisons, it's very important to listen to what the specifics of the question are and the situation." -Craig Harkins, Director of SEO & Content, CoStar

  • "Right now, we're over 50% through the year. So, if I go back to my beginning of the year goals, I should be more than halfway through all of them." -Craig Harkins, Director of SEO & Content, CoStar

  • "It's a good time to go back through, inventory everything, and say, am I really on track with what I committed to at the beginning of the year?" -Craig Harkins, Director of SEO & Content, CoStar

  • "For enterprise SEO, communication is critical. If you committed to stuff at the beginning of the year, it's going to come back up because you made a commitment at some point." -Craig Harkins, Director of SEO & Content, CoStar

About the speaker

Craig Harkins

CoStar

 - CoStar

Craig is Director of SEO and Content at CoStar

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