SEO News

Argos is a massive business with lots of moving parts. Doing the real core SEO becomes a massive challenge when you don’t have control of the site as a whole.

As a result, some things that are considered as standard best practice get missed.

Patmore explained that the SEO team is one small cog in a very big machine, so it’s natural that his priorities are often seen as secondary to overall business priorities.

So to give himself the best chance of success Patmore spends a great deal of time educating other people about SEO and why it’s so important for the business. This requires a lot of patience, particularly when working for such a large company where there is a rigid process map that controls how things get done.

So with many potential barriers in place, here are Patmore’s tips for managing the SEO for a major company:

1. Which tactics are going to have the most impact?

It’s tricky to get SEO strategies implemented, so focus on the plans that are likely to have the most impact rather than wasting time and effort on less important issues.

2. Be brave and make predictions.

Though it’s incredibly difficult to do, Patmore says he has to make predictions and try to say what he thinks will happen when implementing his plans. It also helps to explain the potential negative impact if certain plans are ignored.

3. Talk about money.

SEOs need to talk about money and work out how much the business will get in return for each development. Only then will budget holders begin to take them seriously.

4. What is the competition doing?

Patmore said that one of his most successful tactics is to try to sell things in based on what the competitors are doing, as losing market share to other brands can seriously impact the bottom line.

5. Piggyback on other people’s plans.

Other departments in the business will be carrying out their own development programs, so look for opportunities where you can improve the site’s SEO by piggybacking on other people’s plans.

6. Publicise your outreach programs internally.

A good SEO will be able to secure links and coverage from major publications, so shout about your achievements as press coverage reflects well on the SEO team as well as gaining results.

7. Know your business inside out.

Make sure that you know the business inside out, including its current strategies, priorities and what makes your colleagues tick. This will enable you to speak in a language they understand and appeal to them more effectively.

8. Make friends.

Patmore recommended making friends around the business, as SEOs need to be able to work with all kinds of departments to get their plans implemented.

In one sentence, what is Rankinity?

Rankinity is a unique service that allows website owners to check the position of their website against certain keywords on all the popular search engines in real-time.

What problem(s) does Rankinity solve?

We solve the complex problem of website rank tracking in multiple search engines. If you want the performance information for keywords you want to rank for on not only Google, but Bing and other popular search engines, as well as competitor benchmarking, our tool is one for the simplest and efficient available.

The user interface of the system provides effortless comparison of both individual keyword positions and overall visibility of sites.

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In the next two months we want to keep improving our service and release iterations on our traffic analysis and competitor research tools.

What were the biggest challenges involved in building Rankinity?

The biggest challenge was to implement a full-featured real-time mode for our service (this is a unique feature among other web ranking services). Due to this implementation you can monitor your website rank or positions changes without page reloading. You will be able to search, filter and navigate your website keywords instantly without any delays.

How will the company make money?

We plan to use subscription based model. The price will varry depending on the number of keywords the customer want to monitor for the certain website.

Who is in your team?

• Felix Kosolapov – project management
• Victor Karpenko – SEO and marketing
• Maxim Kazarin – programming and testing
• Nikolay Belous – website and UI design

Where would you like to be in one, three and five years’ time?

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Other than Rankinity, what are your favourite websites / apps / tools?

Google services, Skype, MockingBird, Pivotal Tracker.