In Search of SEO Metrics That Matter

The Guest

Brian Dordevic is the Founder of Alpha Efficiency. He’s a marketing strategist and coder with years of experience working with brands and businesses of every size, helping them optimize their digital marketing strategies. He joined us on “What Gets Measured” to talk smack about SEO metrics that matter.

The Interview

Search engine optimization has been around for a while now, but with every update to the Google algorithm, the space has evolved. However, Brian believes the two major building blocks of SEO, backlinks and content, have not changed.

“Most marketers are basing their strategy on what Google is doing at the moment,” says Brian, “but at any moment, the Google algorithms can change and affect results. But outside of technical fixes to the site, the two main building blocks, links and content, are still majorly important.”

Brian goes on to describe the abilities of Google’s Knowledge Graph in analyzing, indexing, and presenting content on SERPs, and details a few tools he uses to assess and strategize SEO efforts.

“Google uses natural language processing, which means they can quickly understand the semantic structures of content and learn what it's about and if it’s useful. You can pull queries from Google’s cloud platform and use ranking to get a clear picture of how to engineer your SEO campaigns.”

When asked about some of the mistakes marketers are making with SEO, Brian hits on the importance of strategy and how rare it is to find a skilled SEO strategist.

“SEO strategists are rare because the technical skills required to perform useful audits of performance analytics, derive insights, and then outline a strategy, are so elaborate and esoteric that most marketers are only able to functionally perform one of these tasks. The biggest hindrance to SEO efforts is a lack of strategy. Clients are pouring money into content that is unconnected to an actual strategy. They’re just blogging haphazardly, disconnected from topics and keywords. If more marketers asked themselves, ‘why are we publishing?’ rather than just filling up an editorial calendar, they’d see better results.”

When it comes to setting up and measuring a successful SEO program, Brian thinks marketers should focus on consistency and strategy.

“Two things need to be considered when setting up an SEO program, which are content frequency, and keyword strategy,” states Brian.

“Frequency is essential, you have to be consistent with a publishing calendar and commit to it; give Google a reason to come back to your site. Paying attention to anchor texts, which are the defining and underlying elements that create traction in SEO, is also extremely important. If you want to optimize for five distinct keywords, you need to think about clusters, pillar pages, and how linking content within all your published pieces strengthens SEO signals for those keywords.”

For more insights on the history of Google’s algorithm updates, how to approach paid search advertising, and how NerdWallet dominated search with their SEO strategy, listen to the full show on the links below. 

The Links

Alpha Efficiency
Writer Zen
Surfer SEO
Neuron Writer

LISTEN TO THE FULL SHOW -> Stay tuned, stay curious and subscribe to What Gets Measured on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or add it as a Favorite on your podcast player of choice.