How to Create SEO Workflows with Ryan Jones of @seo_testing #vcbuzz

Search engine optimization always consists of multiple repetitive tasks that need to be performed on a regular basis to advance your strategy.

These are hard to organize and complete because they don’t necessarily drive immediate results, so they may often be put aside.

And yet your SEO success relies on those tasks to be consistently completed, and here’s where an SEO workflow comes in handy…

About Ryan Jones

Ryan Jones has worked in SEO since 2015. He is a content creator for SEOTesting.com, covering most SEO topics but with a specific interest and expertise in testing and delivering ROI through SEO.

Subscribe to Ryan’s newsletter over at Marketing on Mondays!

Questions we discussed

Q1 Please tell us about your career in SEO and digital marketing! How did you become an SEO and an entrepreneur?

I (@RyanJonesSEO) started my career at 16, so very early on, via an apprenticeship with a local digital marketing agency. Immediately fell in love with digital marketing, and specifically SEO!

Since then, I’ve spent time in various positions across industries. I’ve worked in-house, for agencies and worked on my own freelance projects. Hard to believe, but I’ve worked in digital marketing for close to a decade now!

I am now the Marketing Manager at SEOTesting, responsible for growing the company through SEO, and other marketing methods including paid advertising, social media marketing & doing cool things like this!

The tool itself has been around for a while, started with @nickswan building a tool to meet his personal needs at the time, which then rolled into beta testing with a few friends and now launched a full-scale paid tool!

The position itself, I’d worked with Nick a few times on a freelance basis, and when the position (Marketing Manager) became a viable option for the business, we both saw it as a great fit. The thrill of working for a startup is like nothing I’ve had before!

Q2 Where does SEO testing fit into an SEO workflow?

SEO testing can fit almost anywhere within an SEO workflow! If you’ve got an SEO workflow to cover your entire strategy, from concept to “completion” then you can have a complete SEO testing strategy outlined within that.

It can also fit within various “smaller” SEO workflows, including content creation and optimisation. For example, you could have a process for testing content refreshes every 6-12 months outlined in a content workflow. SEO testing can measure the results of these!

I know @serpstat uses to have those "checklists" of tasks that need to be performed regularly (like content refresh, rankings check, etc.) These could be your templates! #vcbuzz

— Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) August 15, 2023

#VCBuzz A2.

Personally, I view Testing as a distinct and separate process (nothing relies on it).

It doesn't technically "fit" into anything else,
it's an (optional) addition,
but will often itself be similar to an existing optimisation workflow.

— Darth Autocrat (Lyndon NA) (@darth_na) August 15, 2023

Q3 What exactly is an SEO workflow?

To put it as simply as possible, an SEO workflow is a set of steps that individuals and/or teams can follow to achieve a result when working on SEO campaigns.

It can be over-reaching, listing out the steps for an entire SEO strategy, or you can have an individual SEO workflow for different steps within your SEO strategy itself. Such as creating new content, refreshing outdated content or testing meta title changes!

It really depends on where your SEO workflow fits into your organisation. You could have a workflow for keyword research, content creation or even link building outreach.

For example, if you were setting out a workflow for content creation, an example of the steps could be:

Competitor research.
Keyword (cluster) research.
Planning the content.
Writing the first draft.
Editing & review.
Content amendments.
Publish.

#VCBuzz A3.

A workflow is a described process.
It can be shallow/general (a sequenced checklist),
or it can be detailed (flow chart with conditions such as time, audience, or metric targets met or not etc.).

But the idea is the same:
everyone should know what, when, how.

— Darth Autocrat (Lyndon NA) (@darth_na) August 15, 2023

Q4 Do you need an SEO workflow?

No. You don’t need an SEO workflow. That being said… They are incredibly useful for business, of all types and sizes, to have in place.

Ensuring you have a good SEO workflow, or multiple workflows, in place is crucial for many business types.

It will allow you to become more efficient, keep processes in-place no matter who is working within a team. It will also allow you to train new starters up quickly in how you, as a business, do things.

Crucial for growing companies!

My general advice? If you’re regularly partaking in tasks such as:

Content creation
Link building and acquisition
Content refreshes
SEO testing
Etc.

Then you should invest in creating some SEO workflows for you and your team to follow.

#VCBuzz A4.2

You'll also find that having documented procedures and processes makes it far (far!) easier when taking on new staff, or pushing work out to 3rd parties.
It permits them to get up to speed, faster – and meet a minimum level of "correctness" far sooner.

— Darth Autocrat (Lyndon NA) (@darth_na) August 15, 2023

Q5 Let’s talk about tools! Which tools should be used to create an SEO workflow?

You’ll need a project management tool like Monday or Asana to outline the steps within your SEO workflow/s, assign tasks and monitor the progress your team is making.

You’ll also need access to a suite of SEO tools, like Ahrefs, Semrush or SERanking! This will help massively with tasks like:

Competitor research.
Rank tracking.
Backlink monitoring.
Content research.

Collaborative tools are also crucial. At SEOTesting, we use Google’s suite including Google Drive, Google Docs and Google Slides. You can also use Microsoft Office and pair that with a file management system like Dropbox.

#VCBuzz A5.3

But, for me – the biggest one is Docs.

There's nothing like a well structured,
detailed set of files,
with good naming conventions,
that interlink (and ref. by name/section/para).

The difficulty is producing such items is costly,
and requires feedback cycles.

— Darth Autocrat (Lyndon NA) (@darth_na) August 15, 2023

Q6 Please tell us more about @seo_testing and how we can use it for various SEO tasks!

We have a suite of SEO testing tools to make SEO testing a quick and easy process, including:

Single page tests.
Group testing.
Split testing.
URL switch tests.

We’ve also created a large range of reports so you can make better use of your Google Search Console data! The data that you’d usually need to export, merge and spend precious time on, now can be viewed (in-app) at a glance!

Find queries and pages that have improved or declined in impressions and clicks, week on week. Find new keywords your site has just started to rank for. Find content that has decayed over 12 months. And much, much more!

Find more information at seotesting.com! We have a 14-day free trial with no credit card needed to sign-up. So you can start testing straight away and see how the tool can help you and your business!