Discover the benefits of having a problem-solving mindset for SEOs and how to incorporate it into your strategy.
SEO is essential. Yes, it comprises numerous minor details; some were linked, and others weren’t.
We all want things to go according to plan, stay on course, and remain stress-free.
However, it’s a fact that occasionally something won’t work as planned, or a resource won’t be available.
Because of this, SEO is partly reliant on general problem-solving techniques.
Because SEO obstacles and difficulties are inescapable, we must be prepared for them and know what to do.
Some SEOs excel at strategy, others excel at implementation, and few people are exceptional at both. Everyone varies in their levels and areas of strength in idea generation, strategy building, and tactical performance.
What does it take to be an effective SEO problem-solver with so many players and variables involved? Here are nine strategies to learn how to solve SEO issues.
1. Understand Your Stakeholders
SEO success (fair or not) is frequently evaluated by non-SEOs and can be hindered or negatively impacted by others.
Knowing what to expect, anticipating potential obstacles, and having a complete picture of the situation make problem-solving easier. You need to know all the actors and gauge any potential problems. This could be due to office politics, varying SEO awareness, or drastically varied expectations for performance and timing.
It will be simpler to troubleshoot problems or choose the correct course of action when they arise if you can control the stakeholder mix and expectations to a greater extent. That is a “when,” not an “if,” by the way. I’m not being sarcastic, but nothing ever goes as expected.
2. Create Roles & Communication strategies
Other than the entire group of stakeholders, there are specific persons you work with. That may include team members, employees at your agency, members of your department, and individuals doing other duties on either the client- or agency-side.
Unless you have the abilities and roles beyond SEO of writer, designer, developer, and approver, you will need others to be successful.
Establish roles and responsibilities that are clear. Be aware of your go-to folks for the many tasks you require. Recognize their procedures and align them with your own.
Recognize lead and turnaround times. Please make sure they are aware of the possibility of unforeseen requests and events.
Ensure everything is obvious, including what you know you need, potential needs, and how timing and responsiveness will affect SEO success. Build allies, involve them in your troubleshooting and problem-solving techniques, and strive to maximise resource flexibility.
3. Maintain Benchmarks & Objectives
You should be as objective and cause-and-effect-focused in any SEO attempt as possible.
With baselines and targets for where the endeavour is headed, there are so many areas that it’s easy to lose track of resources, the reasons things aren’t going as planned, and other issues.
Often, there are numerous approaches to achieving your objectives. If we can connect a technical issue to a baseline or its effect on a goal, we can avoid going down a rabbit hole.
We can also step back and refocus our efforts when we encounter opposition or a barrier. For example, if we learn that a dev update to fix a technical problem might take six months.
4. Make Use of Your Plan & Strategy
I hope your approach and plan are straightforward. Take a step back and work on this if you still need to get it or your baselines and goals (noted above). Otherwise, leading the SEO effort and being proactive are tricky since you will constantly be looking for problems.
You can strengthen the objective facets of the campaign or cause that your baselines and goals aid with your strategy and plan.
As I mentioned in the introduction, SEOs can excel at broad strategy, while others excel at specific implementation. Many also have a variety of experiences and favourite portions (technical vs content, etc.).
You can decide how hard to press for a particular fix versus moving on to higher-impact items if everyone is united on a strategy and plan. You can, however, modify your expectations. You can raise a red signal about how it will impact the project and expected timeline and what that might do to push results further out if the content writer or review procedure is scheduled months in advance.
You will be able to obtain resources or enlist the assistance of others if you use your plan and any modifications that arise to manage expectations.
5. Break The Rules & Show Flexibility
Even with the best strategy in place and all the tools at your disposal, things frequently turn out differently than we expect or forecast. Yes, we review every title and meta description tag and ensure that they are “exactly” optimised. However, there are still problems with duplicate tags or with how they are indexed.
- Should we cross this off the list and carry on?
- Should we carry out one more optimization cycle?
- Should we begin carrying out the other parts of the strategy concurrently?
- Do we require the assistance of a developer or copywriter?
Again, only some things work out as expected. We occasionally need to put more effort into specific areas.
The most crucial problem-solving or troubleshooting skill an SEO may have is knowing when to alter the strategy, being flexible along the way, and then sticking to the plan.
6. Develop Technical Resources or Talents
Understanding the “what” and “why” of an SEO issue is practical. This is a step from using tools or performance problems as evidence that something needs to be operating as expected.
You can go further into problem-solving directly if you can explore the XML sitemap, robots.txt, HTML code, or other related aspects on your own to find the source of the issue.
You should be able to coordinate your resources to at least quarterback a scenario. However, you’ll have a better chance of obtaining a resolution to your satisfaction and hopefully sooner if you have the skills to resolve issues independently, speak the same language, and be highly prescriptive and direct with your resources.
7. Have Content Backup Strategies.
Lack of the required quantity and material quality is one of the leading causes of plans and performance going off course.
I know only so many SEOs who still write or edit content. Most of the time, SEOs depend on a customer, another resource, or a partner in creating and publishing content. This is also influenced in some industries by legal and regulatory standards.
Content resources can fill up even if you have a content calendar and precise needs.
- What happens if your content resource becomes inaccessible or off-course from the original schedule?
- Do you have a backup plan in place?
- Do you increase your technical and off-page SEO efforts to make up for it?
Being a problem-solver when the material isn’t performing is one thing; when you need help finding the content you require, it is another.
8. Have Patience, yet Move Quickly
Be a good team player and respect the people and resources you work with.
Being impolite or pushing too hard won’t advance your purpose. Be gracious and patient, but don’t wait, either.
Find ways to rearrange the plan’s elements if you need help with content (per the part above), a dev edit, a technological update, or any other unique resources outside your control.
You may always give link building, tag updates, or some other form of audit or update priority to keep things moving.
Please don’t wait around aimlessly while others perform the work; it could require some ingenuity. Keep making progress with something.
9. View Obstacles as Chances
There will be difficulties, obstacles, and problems to resolve. Thus, my tone has been very stern. That’s just how the web, in general, and SEO work.
The ability to address problems is crucial.
It is crucial to accept this fact, remain optimistic in the face of hardship, be realistic, and convince others of this reality.
Everyone finds SEO challenging. With our website and approach, we strive to be the best.
Everyone would be skilled at it if it were simple, and we would face a new set of issues.
Small businesses like yours may improve every aspect of their search engine optimization with D’Marketing Agency assistance in order to rank better on search engines.
Wondering what we do? To find out more about our approach to search engine optimization, Contact D’Marketing Agency. When you’re ready, contact us so we can help with your SEO.
