Cultivating Momentum for Large SEO Projects Featuring Ruth Burr Reedy

Garrett: All right, welcome back to The Next Chapter of Search Produced by SEO Week and iPullRank. If you have not bought your tickets yet, we’re talking New York City, April 28th to May 1st, 36+ of the most amazing SEOs, data scientists, content creators, you name it. They’re all going to be there speaking, telling us about SEO, AI, data, content, everything. And I am so excited because one of the best people in our industry is joining me today. I’m joined by Ruth Burr Reedy. She is the Senior SEO Manager at Houzz. How are you doing today, Ruth?

Ruth: I’m good, how are you?

Garrett: I’m doing good. I’m bringing a lot of energy, but that’s only because it’s always so fun to chat with you, talk SEO, talk the world. But let’s dive in. The last 12, 24 months of the search industry has been wild. What’s your take on the current state of SEO?

Ruth: So, I think as we’ve had some really exciting advancements, we’ve had a lot of really great new information that I think is helping us recontextualize some of the things that we do, which is really cool. You know, AI has obviously been, you know, I can’t not talk about AI when you ask me this question. It’s been a huge sort of boulder dropped in the pond of SEO with lots of ripples out in various directions. I think that we all are starting to calm down about AI, which I’m excited about. I’m excited about calming down because I always get a little skeptical when people get really excited about what is basically a tool. And, you know, AI and large language models, generative text tools are all really interesting and can be very valuable. And I think have introduced new and interesting scale and efficiency into a lot of the work that we do. And it is a tool. And, you know, you can buy the nicest hammer in the world and it will not build a house for you. So, I am excited to see people starting to talk more practically about the applications of AI and especially starting to lean more into what AI is and is not good at.

Garrett, I think you’ve heard me make this analogy before that AI is the microwave. So, you know, when the microwave came out, everybody was like so excited about the microwave and there are all these cookbooks. Like I think most of us who have boomer parents have seen at least one like microwave cooking cookbook. I don’t know anybody who’s getting those out these days. By this time, like, everybody understands what the microwave is, what it does, what it can do well. And there are things like, yeah, you can roast a turkey in the microwave. Is it going to be as good as roasting it in the oven? Maybe not. Is it going to be as easy as roasting in the oven? Probably not. So I think that it’s the same with AI where like there’s a lot of stuff that AI tools can do that other existing technology can do as well or better that maybe we don’t need to use AI for. There’s other things where AI seems like it does it well but you have to be really careful that you’re getting the results that you think that you have. And so I’m enjoying seeing people kind of settle in and really gain a better practical understanding of where and where this technology should and should not be used so that we can get back to talking about the results that we’re achieving and how we’re actually using technology to connect users with things that we’re trying to market to them, which is what we’re doing.

I’m excited to talk more about marketing and less about tools.

Garrett: I agree. And it’s fascinating to watch the progression of the last two years and how much, as you get more education, when people don’t understand it, it just looks like magic to them. And then the more you understand, you understand its limitations, the appropriate use cases, and yeah, it’ll get better over time. But to your point, it’s not an easy button or a magic button. It’s just garbage in, garbage out, and so much more nuance to it. And yet it’s very polarizing. Everyone has a very strong opinion one way or the other.

Ruth: Well, and I think right now we are, you know, SEOs. I love SEO so much. I was talking to somebody the other day about how I don’t think I could ever leave this industry because the people are so great. And we do ruin everything we touch as a larger group. And I think we are seeing right now, one of the things that I’m very frustrated about is just the degree of absolute garbage that is on the internet right now because of people who are not being judicious about how they’re using this tool. But I agree, it is very polarizing.

You know, I have a lot of qualms about like the environmental impact of AI tools. And I talked to a lot of SEOs about that, and they’re like, “Have you tried Macaron?” And I have, and I can’t. So, you know, yeah, you’re right. Everybody does have really strong opinions and that makes for great conversations, and I love conversations. But I think I’ll be interested in the next 12 to 24 months to see how all of that evolves.

Garrett: And speaking of conversations, your presentation is really about like the human aspect of SEO, which is project management, especially when you’re getting these large projects going. I’m really curious for you, like what is the main reason that someone should come and hear you speak about this topic at SEO Week?

Ruth: Yeah, so SEO is so inherently consultative, so much of how we are able to be impactful and effective, and this is true whether you work at an agency or in-house, I think especially true when you work in an agency. So much of your ability to be effective is dependent on your ability to convince people to do stuff. So how to convince people to do stuff is something that’s been really top of mind for me in the last couple of years. You are going to assign a keyword to this, which you know I have done. A lot of that falls under the umbrella of organizational change management. So how to affect lasting change within not just your client or your workplace, but within internal teams and other vendors and people to whom you’re being consultative.

So this talk is really about something that I have always been really frustrated as an analytics girlie, as a long time data-driven SEO. It’s so hard with SEO because often it takes a long time to see results that when you are reporting on KPIs, it almost feels it’s not exciting because you are already working on something else. By the time the numbers that you report on come in, that is the impact of work that you may have done weeks or months ago. And so there is kind of an ongoing lagging metric. And so what I really encourage people to think about is how to start talking about the impact of what they’re doing earlier and how to start reporting on the impact or the forecast or perspective impact of what they’re doing now.

So thinking about leading metrics, if you know that it takes somebody on average of 12 months, this is a made up number, 12 months between the first time they encounter your brand and when they convert, and it’s an average of five touches, okay, then you know that what you’re doing right now, if what you’re doing right now is building top of funnel experiences, is not going to have an impact for 12 months. That doesn’t mean that you don’t get to talk about how great you are for another 12 months. You can talk about the forecasted impact. You can talk about when you are going to start seeing those numbers and you can back that into numbers that you’re reporting on now. So you might not feel like you can say, I added related entities and related keywords and refreshed and reoptimized 50 pieces of content because I don’t want to say no one cares. I care, great job, super excited for you. The CEO doesn’t care. Your point of contact within your client organization may or may not care. They do have numbers that they do care about.

And so not just during the sales process, I think you’ve probably experienced this a lot, like you’ve been at a iPullRank for a long time. During the sales process, you do a lot to connect SEO actions to company goals. It’s really important to continue connecting those actions to their ultimate goals throughout the lifetime of a campaign. And you can do that by understanding what the leading metrics that you’re affecting are and what the inputs that you’re optimizing are. So that’s the other thing, is that we tend to report on outputs, even though as SEOs, we are always subject to a third party, which is the search engine or now at this point, it’s the search engine. It might be social media, it might be email, it might be various generative AI tools, but all of that is stuff that we can’t fully control. And this is why I think SEOs love on-page SEO and technical SEO so much, is because it’s entirely within our control and we just have to do it. And when we are only looking at outputs, we are always having to filter our actions through those actions of a third party. When we can start reporting on the inputs, like what we’re doing now, how those are forecast to impact metrics down the road, not only does it make what we’re doing now more meaningful to the rest of the business, who often have no idea what we’re up to. SEO, like we’re basically Chandler to most of the people we know. People don’t really understand what we do at our job. So, we can help them understand what we do and why it’s important.

I think a couple of other things that starting to report on your own activities through that lens can do, one is to really highlight the opportunity cost of not doing things. So, in any organization, there’s a finite number of resources, whether you’re an eight person team with one really overworked developer or like a large multinational corporation, there are resources and you’re in competition with other business units and other business needs for those resources. And you don’t always win and that’s normal and appropriate. And being able to say, we were supposed to have done X and in 12 months, that would result in Y. We only did half of X, which means now we’re looking at 14 months until Y. And really continuing to highlight the impact that those inputs are having on future outputs can help you continue to make a case and get ongoing buy-in, not just from the top, which we talk about a lot, but from the people who actually have to do the work, your actual internal customers as a consultant, whether that’s developers, whether that’s paid media, whether that’s financing and accounting, whoever that is that you need to work with in order to get things done. Helping them articulate internally and helping articulate to them internally why you’re doing what you’re doing and what happens if you don’t do it can help you maintain momentum on longer term SEO projects because SEO is a long game. And I would really love to see more people talking about the value of what they’re doing now, not just the value of things that they already did.

Garrett: Oh my goodness, there’s so much value to this talk that you’re giving and the way that you articulate it, it resonates because it really is about communication. It’s the mindset, it’s translation, it’s storytelling to the right audience to ultimately, it’s not like a zero sum, like win-lose. It’s like I find ways that everyone can win and also get your projects the momentum, which is the big picture to go across the line. It’s even more relevant. I mean, it’s always relevant, but it’s even more relevant now when we think about different contexts, like what was happening during COVID, what do you do? What happens during a recession, what do you do? What happens with AI, what do you do? Thinking long-term to your point, as the markets and the economy is constantly shifting, as an SEO, you really kind of need to speak that language so that you can, to your point about resource allocation, it ultimately, you get the buy-in. And knowing how to do that, you’re going to give these folks the language to do that effectively.

Ruth: Yeah, yeah, and I think that’s, I think, a great point about what do you do in changing circumstances because things can change on a dime, especially within SEO, and that’s always been true. And sometimes you’ll be partway through a project and something will happen that makes that project less important, less important than something else that you could be doing or less important than something else that the rest of the team could be doing. If your client’s website breaks and is not functioning, that’s more important than updating the blog. No one’s going to see the blog if it’s not live. So being able to articulate the long-term impacts of doing or not doing something now means that you can also spot when you are starting to work on something that is less important than something else and articulate the reasons for that pivot so that your client might be like, “You sold me this package of A, B, and C thing. I thought that’s what you were going to do.” Being able to say, “Yes, I did tell you that, and now I’m looking at these numbers, and here we can still do that,” and “here would be the results. And if you want to pivot to this other project, I think it would be more impactful, and here’s why.”

When I was at an agency, that was something that I always built into our agreements is I want the ability to pivot. I want that to be something that is easy for you to say to me as a client. I want that to be something easy for me to say to you as a vendor, “I don’t want to get in there,” this happened once we onboarded a client, and we got in there, and all of their analytics was wrong. And so they were just looking at bad data that did not accurately reflect anything. And I was like, “Okay, I can’t in good conscience do keyword research for you right now. Your website is on fire, and we need to put that out, and then I will do keyword research.”

So yeah, I think having an idea of the long-term impacts of various projects and being able to articulate that also helps you spot when you could be being more impactful and articulate the reasons for that change internally.

Garrett: Yeah, it makes sense to really showcase your expertise and the consultative nature for a messy world. What is something that someone can do right now? What is your major tactic that someone who’s watching this right now can do that ties into your talk?

Ruth: I think regardless of who you’re working for, if you don’t already have a really strong idea of, we’re in March, it’s a great time to be talking about this. You don’t already have a really strong idea of your company’s goals for, or your client’s goals for Q2 and Q3. You need to understand that. And I don’t just mean like make money, because like, yeah. But what are we growing? By how much? What are the organization-wide tactics that your clients are going to plan to use to get where they need to go? And how is what you’re doing going to roll up to those?

I would then take it a step further and look at the leading metrics. So, if your ultimate metric is revenue, a leading metric could be leads. A leading metric could be email signups. It depends on the model of your business. Okay, great, but that’s still an output, not an input. So, from there, look at the projects that you know already you want to do and figure out what the inputs are that are going to affect those outputs and map them. Map your inputs to your outputs and then build that into your report. So, now’s a great time to change your reporting. I know, because you don’t have anything else going on. But once you start building into your reporting, not just that look back, not just, okay, it’s March, we’re going to look at what happened in February, but also here’s what we’re doing in March and here’s what we expect the impact to be in April, May, June. Start building that into your reports. Call people’s attention to the thing that you want them to be paying attention to, which is almost always what you’re doing now, not just what you did before. And once you have that set up for yourself, then you can start iterating on it and improving it the same way you would any other report.

Garrett: There you go. Right now, you can start thinking about those appropriate leading metrics. I love it. So, Ruth, bigger picture, what’s next? Like, what do you see happening in our search industry going forward?

Ruth: So, I think that right now on the internet is a fascinating time for facts. And I think that right now it is a fascinating time for expertise. I think if you look at user behaviors online, user trust in the information that they’re finding is at a low. And you see that reflected in search behaviors. You see that in people increasingly going to forums, in people increasingly going to websites and communities and email newsletters and not searching because there is a damaged trust. And I think that has to do with the level of garbage output that SEOs, among other people, are flooding the internet with right now.

So, I think in order to succeed in the next couple of years, I think Google has been trying to do this with varying levels of success for a while. That idea of experience and expertise, to me, the value of experience is that it provides a point of view. You’ve done this enough that you have opinions about it. So, I think we are going to have to start, and I’ve been saying this for the record since 2019, we have to start paying more for content. We have to start actually getting people who know what they’re talking about to talk to people about the things that we do. And so, I think one of the fabulous things about generative text tools is that it, for the first time, really provides us a scalable way to get information out of the heads of people who are very smart and very experienced, but who are not writers and who don’t have time to write. And the idea of creating a piece of content for you makes them want to die. Like, okay, you don’t have to create a piece of content for me. Get on a half hour phone call with me that I’m going to record, and then I’m going to use that phone call to make a blog post that you just wrote. Boom.

And I am hoping that SEO as an industry will see that opportunity for what it is and not think, okay, now I don’t have to talk to another person at all. I can just get the computer to spit out 500 words about blue teapots, and now I rank number one for blue teapots. If everyone else is doing that, what’s the differentiator? The differentiator comes from somebody who actually knows what TF they’re talking about. So, I think we’re going to have to start paying more for content, seeking out more expertise.

And I think the other thing is that the funnel has completely changed. So, Andy Crestodina had a great LinkedIn post a while back talking about optimizing for, it’s no longer just informational, transactional. It is now optimizing for visit website intent. Are you optimizing around the things, creating the things that people might need to go to a website to find, as opposed to getting it from ChatGPT, getting it from an AI overview? You want to be there too, of course, and there are ways to do that, which I’m sure someone else will talk about it at NYC SEO Week. And thinking about where those tools can’t give people what they need, what do you have that’s unique that people might come to you for? And hey, that might actually not be, this is the other thing, and this has been coming for a while, is that SEO is no longer just about your website. SEO is about all of the other places that you can show up online. It’s about social media. It’s about presence in forums. It’s about figuring out where your audience goes if they can’t trust Google to give them what they need. Where do they go? And are you there? And are you showing them that you have what they need? I think it is a really interesting evolution of the kind of tactics that we use and an opportunity for us all to get a lot better at multi-channel strategies, which are my jam. So, I’m excited about it.

Garrett: There you go. And it really does come together because that’s the way I think about it too. It’s like SEO is not easy. It’s more holistic. It’s more of a support channel in a lot of ways, but we really as marketers need to step outside of the way that we’re used to doing things and start to open our perspectives on creative new ways to integrate everything because just getting easy traffic that converts is not a thing anymore.

Ruth: I wish it was. That was fun, but it’s over now.

Garrett: There you go.

Ruth: It was a good time while it lasted.

Garrett: So, make sure if you haven’t already, get your tickets for SEO Week. Come chill with Ruth and I. We will be having all sorts of fun conversations. She is going to have this really important dynamic presentation. We will see you in New York City at the end of April. We will catch you later. Thanks again for joining us. See you there.

Ruth: Bye-bye.

Garrett: Bye.