Yesterday I ran the Philadelphia Distance Run, a half-marathon race, along with 11,628 of my closest friends. I was doing fine the entire race, measuring my pace with the mile markers, ensuring that I was on track for where I wanted to be. Then I hit the 9 mile mark and my left leg began to hurt. Despite this, I carried on and at the 11 mile marker was still on pace for my ‘best case’ goal, however the leg continued to become more painful, to the point where I couldn’t even jog. I kept walking, and testing the leg, running in spurts, until I got over the finish line, not meeting my ‘best case’ goal, but still recording a personal best. Had I determined that I was doing more damage to the leg by continuing, I would have stepped off the course and quit the race, regardless of whether I was only 1/2 mile from the end. On some levels I was disappointed that I didn’t get to that ‘best case’ goal, but on another level, I was proud of myself for keeping going, and finishing in the time that I did, despite the unexpected challenges that came my way.

So why isn’t this on my personal blog? Why am I talking about it here? Well I think that it’s a good analogy for talking about Search Marketing, or really for that matter about any time you try to do something to improve your business. I believe that these 6 steps are fairly comprehensive:

1. Identify the problems / Issues that you want to address
2. Identify potential solutions
3. Determine your goals for those solutions, identifying your bounds for each - your upper and lower tolerances
4. Implement the solution(s)
5. Monitor the solution(s), correct for the unexpected, determine whether these changes push potential results outside of the predetermined tolerances.
6. Reap the rewards / identify reasons for any failures, and return to #1

So, taking SEO as the example, part 1 could address the issues that your company faces. Does your site need more traffic? Are you attempting to increase brand awareness? Are you looking to collect email addresses? Increase sales? A combination of these? Part 2 would involve identifying what could be done in-house, and what needs a partner / vendor with experience / bandwidth in those areas. Part 3 would then be done in conjunction with the in-house team, or external partner / vendor. Part 4 is fairly intuitive, although you have to also ensure that there is support for the implementation, and that it is done at the appropriate time. Part 5 would involve reviewing your analytics solution, to determine the changes. Has a particular change had a knock-on effect on another piece of your site, or is it on track? If there is an issue, what corrective action should take place? i.e. a change to your orders page has increased sales, but has decreased your newsletter signups, is that something that you can live with, or should an alternative version of that page be tested? Part 6 is what it says. When something works, identify why it did, and the same for when something doesn’t go to plan. Then, identify what now needs to change, and start the whole process again.

As for me? Well, for my next race, I’m going to wearing a knee brace on my left leg, to give it added support, and given that my next race is twice the distance, we’ll see how much that helps, and I’ll make adjustments as I need to during the race.

Filed under: Agency, Analytics, In-House, SEO on Monday, September 17th, 2007 by Simon Heseltine |
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