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Dynamic SEO: From Planning to Execution

2 min read

Abandon the lengthy SEO documents. They’re not being read. Instead, learn to prioritize impact over proposals with agile SEO. Effective SEO rarely happens in isolation.

You need resources and buy-in from higher-ups – a CMO, head of product, or even CEO.

But here’s the thing: those lengthy SEO documents filled with objectives, audiences, competitors, keywords, and a six-month Gantt chart outlining optimization projects – they’re not being read.

They become a roadblock to getting the green light for resources. An executive can quickly scan a short email with an explicit request and approve it. However, reading an in-depth strategy document requires dedicated time—something executives have little of.

Even if approved today, business priorities shift, competitive landscapes evolve, and algorithms update.

SEO operates in a constant state of flux, demanding flexibility on a monthly, even weekly, basis.

So, let’s abandon the long documents and prioritize action over proposals with agile SEO.

 

Why Agile SEO Strategies Work

 

Agile SEO gets incremental iteration.

Break complex, overarching projects down into frequent changes.

Enable continual progress. Forget the pursuit of SEO perfection. Launching a minimum viable product (MVP) and monitoring the impact on metrics is key.

Once you have performance data, you can move on. The impact of the key performance indicator (KPI) will convince you to accept the resources you need.

 

The Old Way: One Giant Leap

The traditional approach involves pitching the entire SEO project at once, which you argue is good for SEO.

The site will rank higher and will impact the organic sessions. Which is true. However, the document communicating all the reasons and requirements is complicated to review.

The project will seem too large. It will likely not make it onto your team’s roadmap, as they will likely feel your request will overload their development cycle.

 

Agile SEO Approach: Small Iterations

What if you broke it down into micro-wins?

Instead of pitching the entire project, request approval for a small but impactful change, such as optimizing the homepage’s title tag and meta description.

The documentation for this will be one page at maximum. The change request is equivalent to snackable content. Because it’s easy to implement, it’s much easier to incorporate it into a development sprint.

 

 

How To Document An Agile SEO Strategy

 

So now you know to stop writing long SEO strategy documents and instead start creating agile, “snackable” tactics.

But we still need to understand what:

  • Has been completed in the past.
  • Is being worked on now.
  • Is coming up next.
  • All the ideas are.

This information must be very easy to digest, centrally accessible, and flexible.

One solution for this is maintaining an “SEO calendar” document.

Elements of an SEO Calendar:

  1. Date Column
  2. Backlog
  3. Change Column
  4. Tactic Brief
  5. Sign Off
  6. Outcome

The benefit of a calendar layout is that it is entirely flexible but time-relevant. Changing priorities is as simple as moving the de-prioritized item to the backlog.

 

Snackable Tactic Briefs

 

The benefits of tactic briefs are twofold:

Pre-launch: They answer the Five Ws of your SEO change to get buy-in from stakeholders. Once, it will act as the specification if you need someone else to execute it. Post-launch: They serve as the record of what was changed. What impact it have on the KPI funnel? And what are the next steps, if any?

Tactic briefs have five sections:

  1. Overview
  2. SMART Goal
  3. Specifications
  4. Results
  5. Learnings & Action Items

 

Final Thoughts

 

An agile SEO system provides flexibility and visibility.

You can understand what actions are underway and what has shifted KPIs at any time. If you need help, check out our monthly SEO packages and let the experts help you.

Shilpi Mathur
navyya.shilpi@gmail.com