Where to start for an SEO manager
What should you do as soon as you take on SEO manager responsibilities? Ask yourself regardless of whether you are a freelancer, hired for a single project, or an in‑house employee managing and developing new projects. In the latter case you may not need to follow every step described here because the colleague handing you the project will likely brief you.
In any case, as a SEO manager you should create a list and break it down into items to clearly see the scope of work. The list below is ordered arbitrarily, not by priority, as projects of different topics require different priorities. Some tasks will take more time – we'll try to note that. First you need to understand how links to your site are created, where they come from, and the sources of links for your new project. Immediately discard low‑quality, ineffective, and black‑hat optimization methods (cloaking, doorway pages, etc.) until you fully master the situation.
First steps: keywords, context and analytics
Keyword identification. Identify all keywords that drive organic traffic to the website. Compile a list of all keywords the site is ranking for. Record the current positions of each keyword in search results – you need to know where you start.
Site analytics system. Gain access to the site's analytics. This is a vital early step. Review all traffic sources for the site (not only search traffic, but also context, referral sites, etc.). Note which keywords have the best conversion, look at the most visited pages, and study trends over the past 18 months to understand seasonality and traffic cycles.
Keyword research. Analyse the site from scratch – this helps uncover additional keywords. Understand which keywords are relevant for your business segment. This step should be repeated regularly to discover new keywords, expand the keyword core, and attract additional traffic.
Context (PPC). Review all past pay‑per‑click campaigns run for the site. Identify which campaigns were most effective and which keywords have the highest conversion.
Webmaster Tools. Get access to Google Search Console and Yandex Webmaster Tools. Yandex Metrica is also useful. Check that a fresh XML sitemap is uploaded and does not lead to error pages: broken links, 404 pages, etc. If a Webmaster Tools account has not been created yet, create it and link the site.
robots.txt file. Verify that the robots.txt file exists and whether any pages or sections of the site are blocked. If so, investigate why.
Indexed pages. Check the number of pages indexed by search engines.
Backlink count. Assess the number of backlinks to the site via Google Search Console and Yandex Webmaster Tools.
Orphan pages. Identify pages on the site that have no internal links pointing to them – tools like Xenu's Link Sleuth can help.
Communications – introduction, domains, CMS and team
Discussion. Talk with colleagues about any link building activities and evaluate the quality of the methods used. Exclude low quality or dubious links, or at least limit them.
SMM overview. Find out whether the website is present on social networks and who is responsible for them. Discuss collaboration and joint strategy.
Marketing, PR and sales. Identify who handles marketing, PR and sales in the company. These people are inevitably connected to promotion and brand reputation and can help you understand the company's specifics and create appropriate content.
Main goals. Once the site's goals are defined, clarify what counts as conversions and what influences them.
Domains. Obtain a list of all domains owned by the company. Review the current status and purpose of each – some may be useful for promoting the main site.
CMS. Understand the CMS the site runs on, what can be edited via the admin panel and what cannot. If there are many limitations, consider a brief for the development team to make needed features available.
Partners. If the company works with advertising agencies for SEO, PPC or SMM, contact their representatives or account managers to understand the overall strategy and collaborate on improving traffic metrics.
Subordinates. If you have a team, let them know you are focused on the team's success, discuss the current optimization strategy, its strengths and weaknesses. Learn more about creating a web marketing department.