How Do You Prioritize SEO Tasks by Impact?

March 25, 2020
Blogs, Google
Brittany Bushlow

“What do we need to do in order to optimize our site?”

This is a question many SEO specialists face but one that doesn’t have a simple answer. If you think about it, has there ever been a site that needs only one thing? SEO is comprised of so many things that when faced with the question of what we should do, we find ourselves providing too many recommendations. Unfortunately, some teams aren’t equipped with the resources or knowledge to tackle them, and instead of getting everything done, we end up having very little complete. How can we guarantee that our teams are making the changes we need to help drive success?

Prioritize by Impact

There’s only so much time in a day, which means not everything can get done when you want it to. So, if you can only get one or two things onto your list, you have to ensure you are choosing the recommendations that are going to have the most significant impact on the site as a whole. To make sure we get something done, we have to look at what is holding back the site. Title tags may not seem like the biggest priority, but if the site doesn’t have them, adding them in could result in some improvements. When making recommendations, it helps teams understand where they should start and what can wait. Not everything is going to be a top priority.

Align Recommendations with Business Goals

Make sure to align SEO with business goals. Try to have results that impact the overall organization. Are you doing that? Or are your recommendations geared toward improving organic traffic and revenue? Make sure you understand the objectives of the team responsible for SEO but also the goals of the supporting organizations and the business as a whole.

Don’t Jump at the Latest Thing

One of the common SEO mistakes people make is overreacting to Google and its many updates and changes. When Google tells people to make sites secure, or it’ll start warning users, we should be listening. But when Google informs us to make our website safe and then can’t figure out how to tell the difference between secured and non-secured versions, it’s frustrating. Remember authorship? Google Plus? How about 300-character meta descriptions? Those did not last too long. We have to make sure that what we recommend makes sense for our specific business. We can’t provide recommendations just because Google said to do so.