The SEO Success Pyramid
By Matt McGee on Jan 8, 2008 in MY BEST POSTS, SEO
John Wooden, the greatest basketball coach ever, never talked to his teams about winning. He talked to them about preparation and about the process of becoming a great team.
Wooden’s philosophy on coaching (and life) is summed up in the “Pyramid of Success,” which beats the tail off all that Self-Help Guru junk you see peddled in books, on blogs, on daytime chat shows, and on late night TV. I was lucky to hear Coach Wooden speak about the Pyramid of Success while I was a student at Pepperdine University; to this day, it’s one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. (Seriously, if you don’t know what his Pyramid of Success is, visit CoachJohnWooden.com.)
What’s all this have to do with SEO and online marketing? Well, the best SEOs don’t talk to their clients about rankings; they talk about the process of making great web sites that earn traffic and convert visitors into customers. They talk about the process of creating great content that attracts links like bees to honey.
I would never compare myself to John Wooden, but I do like teaching others about online marketing. So, with that in mind, and inspired by the great coach, here is the….
SEO Success Pyramid
click to download high-quality, printable JPG (1.7mb)
What’s It All Mean?
Commitment: Every successful project I’ve ever worked on has involved a client whose team is enthusiastic and engaged. Whether you’re big or small, one uninterested department or person can sabotage everything.
Planning: Success in any pursuit begins with setting goals and developing a plan to achieve them — detailing the strategies and tactics you’ll use, the people and resources needed, and so forth. Search marketing is no different. Read: Planning an SEO Campaign
Product/Service: Although you can fool some people into buying crap for a while, real long-term success involves a product or service that people want or need. There’s no substitute for quality.
Education/Information: You’re a business owner; you don’t need to become an SEO expert. But you’ll succeed faster if you have access to great information. And as fast as the search marketing industry changes, ongoing access to intelligent information is critical.
Patience: True, there are exceptions every now and then, but for the vast majority of companies big or small, search marketing is a process that takes time to implement correctly. There are no short cuts, no quick fixes. Success almost always takes many months, if not a year or more.
Design & Usability: Yes, there are some ugly sites that make lots of money; but there are more that don’t. Your best bet is to have a web site that’s attractive and easy to use. Get out of your customers’ way and let them do what they came to your site to do.
Keyword Research: If you target the wrong keywords, you’re doomed to fail. You’ve heard that a million times, I hope. More than that, you also need to know what to do with your keywords.
Analytics: How will you know you’re successful if you have no way of measuring what you’ve done? Measure, analyze, adjust strategies and tactics as needed.
Tools: Having access to appropriate SEO tools can give you an advantage over the competition. Of course, more important than the tools is knowing how to interpret the data they provide.
Crawlability: A search engine cannot index pages that its spider cannot crawl. Be careful with the Flash movies, the complicated DHTML and javascript, the robots.txt file, etc. Here are 5 common crawlability mistakes you need to know about.
Content: This can take many forms: a blog, articles, videos, a FAQ page, or even user-generated content like product/service reviews. When you get this one right, you’ll have an easier time getting…
Links: Your great content isn’t going to rank well without links, preferably from relevant, quality sites. I brain-dumped (almost) everything I know about links early last year.
Social/Local Findability: Let me explain this since I might be inventing a new term. Social Media Marketing and Local Search are musts. The size and scope of your company may dictate which you emphasize more, but neither should be ignored. Local SEO is a must for most small businesses, but social media can work, too. Bigger companies that target an audience more than a location will find social media offers a lot of opportunities. In either case, the goal is findability. You want customers to be able to find you as easily as possible, and you can do this on social media sites that make local networking easier.
Reputation Management: It’s imperative to know what people are saying about your company. This isn’t just for Big Business, either: An old client of mine runs the only roller skating rink in our area, yet is probably losing business because they have a couple negative reviews on a certain Local Search site. Given the growing influence of user reviews, knowing how to manage your reputation is a must.
Trust: In my first post of 2007, I said trust is the No. 1 factor, and nothing has changed since then. Trusted domains are powerful domains. When you have trust, from users and search engines, you’re on the way to search marketing success.
As you climb the pyramid, you’ll find buzz/word-of-mouth marketing or maybe community helping you along. To a large degree, these are two sides of the same coin. It’s the people factor, the human element that often separates the winners and losers in search marketing. Get people talking positively about you, whether it be one-to-one conversation among friends or in the larger setting of an online community, and you’ll climb the pyramid that much faster.
If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to my feed and share it on your favorite social/bookmarking site. Thanks!
Translations
The SEO Success Pyramid has been translated into the following languages:
- Italian by Nico
- Spanish by Mariano Pesce
- German by Marco Teubner
- Dutch by Karel Geenen
- French by Julien Weyer
- What I’ve Learned About the SEO Success Pyramid
I’ve now prese - Community: The Human Element of SEO Success
Small businesses rel - 5 Common Crawlability Mistakes That Kill Your SEO Success
In my opinion, the n
74 Comment(s)
By davidmihm on Jan 8, 2008 | Reply
Awesome. Truly boils everything down to essentials, and I love the fact that you talk about the five “bottom” components. So many businesses expect to start on the next level up.
My only gripe is that the title narrows the focus too much. I think this model applies to so many things BEYOND SEO. If you’ve built up a lot of links in topical communities and gained trust among users and customers, you’ve built a business model that can succeed independently of Search Engines.
By pratt on Jan 8, 2008 | Reply
Matt, this is really awesome. I printed out the diagram and have it on my wall. Great stuff.
By Todd Mintz on Jan 8, 2008 | Reply
Best. Matt. McGee. Post. Ever.
By Matt McGee on Jan 8, 2008 | Reply
I thought that putting the SEO label on this might not be the best idea, but decided to do it because I’ve been saying for some time now that we need to expand our definition of what SEO is. I know when I “do SEO’ with clients, only a portion of the effort deals with traditional, on-page stuff. To me, what’s in the pyramid is what I consider SEO to be in 2008.
In any case, thank you all for the great feedback. It’s always cool to see your time and effort appreciated!
By Peter on Jan 9, 2008 | Reply
Thanks Matt – I was in the middle of drafting an email to a prospective client on how we could help her with her website when your post popped-up in my feed reader.
Now I’m going to completely change the email – and the approach I take when dealing with other potential clients.
By jssdds on Jan 9, 2008 | Reply
Matt,
Maybe it is something I’m missing… but I read your seo pyramid and wanted to make contact with you and could not find any way to do so other than to leave a comment.
I don’t mind registering… so that’s not an issue… it’s just that the pyramid talks about … usability… findability, etc. and here I am unable to make easy use of the site to find and contact you. When I tried to click and find you I was taken to WebMarketing . com… and under nowhere on the site do I see that you are affiliated with it….
Anyway, I am very interested in working with you as I have talked to a number of people/companies that have fallen short of understanding or outlining all of the things you share in your pyramid. I am amazed that the easiest way to get in contact with you from a post like this is to leave a comment…. please drop me an email at jssdds (at) msn dot com… thanks
By S.I. on Jan 12, 2008 | Reply
great article on a great blog, thanks
& what a good illustration. we wont even mind plugging another SEO Company to have that on the wall
By jdeuling on Jan 12, 2008 | Reply
2 years ago I started with SEO. For my own ’smallbusiness’. I did it all by myself. Trial and error. This pyramid contains a lot of elements I discovered myself. If you are starting with SEO just learn to be patient…and get some help…
By Matt McGee on Jan 14, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the great feedback on this, gang. I’m glad to see that it’s being received so well and filling a need for people. What else can you ask for?
By F.S. on Jan 16, 2008 | Reply
Matt, Impressive. What more is there to say.
I would like to join your mailing list if you have one. Please advise how I can.
By Neil on Jan 17, 2008 | Reply
Only just found the site – feel like I’ve just discovered the holy grail! Fantastic Resource. Thanks
By Matt McGee on Jan 18, 2008 | Reply
Thanks again for all the kind words.
@F.S. — no mailing list, but please do subscribe to the RSS feed.
@Neil — you’ve put a big smile on my face. Thank you!
By S.D. on Jan 28, 2008 | Reply
Great, well thought out article. Some “bricks” of the pyramid should be bigger than others (that would only complicate the drawing, wouldn’t it?), but all in all, we’re all gonna have to touch on one of those points at some point in time.
By Buntu on Jan 30, 2008 | Reply
1. There should be word “Traffic” along with “Social/Local Findability”
2. Analytics should be above “Crawability”, “Content”, “Links” since these three helps to generate “Traffic” and once “Traffic” is generated, “Analytics” come into picture. The word “Analytics” mentioned in the bottom second line should be replaced with “competition analysis”.
By Anup on May 19, 2008 | Reply
Hi Matt,
Very impressive! I think that trust is really the critical element and it starts with the offering. To build trust, we need to get into the mind of our visitors and create moments of magic for them, all along the pyramid.
By S.F. on May 22, 2008 | Reply
I found this post via one of your more recent posts. I truly am impressed by this post. It is very usefull for me explaining SEO importance to my clients.
By Annie on May 24, 2008 | Reply
Matt, excellent post. It is nice to see it broken down into Laymans terms. You don’t realize how much goes into SEO and SEM until you break it down. Also helps justify some of the cost that can be charged by good, reputable SEOs.
By Todd on May 25, 2008 | Reply
Excellent post, nice illustration of the many facets of an effective SEO / Branding campaign.
Other elements I found, that likely fit in the bricks for startup ventures are:
Genre Selection / Research
I am not sure Reputation Management fits for all businesses.
By Karl Steinmann on May 26, 2008 | Reply
As a young man, I was lucky enough to spend several summers in a row at John Wooden’s basketball camp. I would have preferred the Lakers Youth Camp, but alas…
That being said, John Wooden’s philosophy as a man, not just as a basketball coach, was always about serving others, over delivering and persisting. He took great interest in those around him, cared about what happened to people and looked for the good in others when it would have been far easier to find fault. As far as I know, these qualities still define him. He is as well loved today as he always was, if not more so.
I actually got a few pointers and a pat on the back from the great man himself, and as a 12 year old kid and aspiring pro-basketball player, I can assure you it meant A LOT to me.
Strangely, it took your article here to make me consciously and suddenly realize how important those same “basketball” lessons are in life and on the web. They were such formative and powerful lessons that I think I inculcated them into my very being without even being consciously aware of it.
Anyway, great article Matt! I have Spunn you, Dugg you and I’m going to mention this article in my business blog. Keep up the great work!
Finally, (shameless plug to follow), I blog on the Lakers/NBA at my site, for any SEO fanatics and basketball fan(atic)s like myself!
By Matt McGee on May 31, 2008 | Reply
Karl et al, thank you again for the generous comments. I’m glad people continue to enjoy and value this post and the SEO Success Pyramid!
By div on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Wow, now this is a realy nice article. I am new into SEO and this pyramid is just so exciting for me. All of this is realy interesting I´ll read trough it once more when i have a clear head I think.
Regards
By Jed on Jun 16, 2008 | Reply
Excellent resource, thankyou. I am wondering if you might be able to break other components of online marketing into similar pyramids to publish, and this model really serves to help build the correct pillars for a successful campaign, and I would imagine we could apply it to SEM as well?
By Zombie on Jun 17, 2008 | Reply
That’s actually a really creative pyramid, and pretty accurate.
I love the way it summarizes and builds. I might need to use this in a post because it really lays out basic SEO for someone who is new to the field.
By W.D. on Jun 26, 2008 | Reply
This is really cool. I’m going to definitely print this out and hand it out around here. This is the holy grail of SEO. Cheers!
By Jordan on Jul 1, 2008 | Reply
Matt, I printed this out for all my co-workers. A brilliant piece of work.
By Scott Gostyla on Jul 2, 2008 | Reply
Great diagram. I don’t know much about SEO, but have a friend that helps with a few projects. I get lost listening to him sometimes. I like this though. Diagrams like really help give the “big picture”
By BJ Wright on Jul 3, 2008 | Reply
Excellent resource, its just goes to show how much effort really goes into a well played out SEO strategy! It doesn’t happen over night, for this reason people are more slow to coming around to understanding all the benefits.
By Donace on Jul 7, 2008 | Reply
I have recently just started working on SEO properly and researching and this post indeed has helped me alot and actually winged me to subscribe to your blog!
Great content man, also how would i go about grabbing a copy of the pyramid?
By Matt McGee on Jul 7, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for all the nice comments in the last month or so, sorry for not acknowledging earlier.
@Donace — right under the image in the post, there’s a link for the hi-res, printable version. Click that and you’ll have a copy of it for printing or offline reference. Thx!
By Tim on Jul 14, 2008 | Reply
“He talked to them about preparation and about the process of becoming a great team.” What a great quote. I really think that a lot of SEOs get lost here, including me from time to time. It is really about building the best website in your category. If you get too caught up in rankings you can end up going about the entire process wrong, and missing some other great accomplishments that you can achieve along the way.
By George on Jul 21, 2008 | Reply
Well written post. The reputation management is huge right now, and often overlooked by too many companies.
By G.R.D. on Aug 14, 2008 | Reply
Very nice post. I think Local Search is too often overlooked. I get a ton of calls from my google local listing.
By George Cleanthous on Aug 29, 2008 | Reply
Hi Matt,
Being a fellow SEO myself I think it is great that someone took the time to do this! I’ve always had an this concept in my mind as I “do SEO” for clients, and this really defines it well for those new starters or SEOs who need a push in the right direction.
Great Work!
George
By Eva White on Sep 1, 2008 | Reply
Very nice article. I am feeling bad that the article was written on Jan 08 and I have got my hands on it in sept 08, wish I would have read it earlier. I have bookmarked it for future reference.
By Alice on Sep 4, 2008 | Reply
This hit a nerve for me. This was very up-front. Too many people, do not realize what’s involved in starting an online business.
By Goran Web on Sep 22, 2008 | Reply
Hi Matt.
The diagram is brilliant, hope you dont mind I have saved it to show the guys in the office, just makes sense, thanks Goran
By SSC on Oct 15, 2008 | Reply
The pyramid is brilliant. It completly puts the ‘SEO process’ into a step by step process. I have not seen something like this before.
Excellent.
By I.G. on Oct 30, 2008 | Reply
My only gripe is that the title narrows the focus too much. I think this model applies to so many things BEYOND SEO. If you’ve built up a lot of links in topical communities and gained trust among users and customers, you’ve built a business model that can succeed independently of Search Engines.
By Robert Ferguson on Dec 12, 2008 | Reply
A very good breakdown that will help people to visually understand a good SEO/SEM/PPC approach. Well done.
By Tamar on Dec 14, 2008 | Reply
This pyramid is one of a kind, it is simply awesome. The info it provides very informative and will help me a whole lot. Thanks.
By K. on Dec 27, 2008 | Reply
Great post for me to end the year with….
The only thing it doesn’t address for me is the iterative process of change over time – things like keyword improvements / optimizations or improvement of quality of product and the follow-on steps that need to be re-visited after that.
But from a general SEO pyramid, it’s spot-on, and easy to use.
Thanks!
By Morkel on Jan 5, 2009 | Reply
Just gone through your another article, and found another marvel on your site:D, i think i have to read all your articles, whenever i get time. It will really help me to understand SEO better.
By Gennice on Jan 6, 2009 | Reply
Wow… What a wonderful and true pyramid for building internet success… Thanks for the insight…
By Matt McGee on Jan 6, 2009 | Reply
Thank you, Gennice, Morkel, and all others who’ve commented recently. I’m glad you’re finding value in the SEO Success Pyramid.
By Mike on Jan 9, 2009 | Reply
Pretty awesome Matt, Never thought I would be saying that about a article on marketing with the word Pyramid in it. Excellent way to illustrate the process of A good Business / Client relationship.
By Matt McGee on Jan 9, 2009 | Reply
Hehehe. I know. I almost regret having used the pyramid because of the negative connotations, but it just fits so perfectly…. thx for the kind words.
By Alan Williams on Jan 9, 2009 | Reply
This was a very informative article. I will read your blog often.
By Casey on Jan 12, 2009 | Reply
Great post and I love the chart!
By gilbert carmona on Jan 12, 2009 | Reply
Matt, I am new to internet marketing, I have always been a “physical location” businessman, people come into my resaurant, people come into my office at tax season, people meet me at properties they want me to decorate or remodel or help them buy or lease. I have just started to work on the internet and am shcoked at what I do not know, or understand. What would you suggest I do to this Web site to really make it popular. Please note the chef and her people did this, I think it is not very good but what has been done has been done. http://www.10northtrade.com/index.html We have hard products other then food that we want to sell over the internet. I have a seasonal tax business, any ideas there? I am reading as much of your material as i have time for. there really is a lot take in, any help is greatly appreciated. Gilbert
By Sujan Patel on Jan 13, 2009 | Reply
Great Post. This really proves your point in your latest article “Why Trust Matters & How to earn it?”
By David Allred on Jan 21, 2009 | Reply
WOW! Thanks for the image. Gives me something to pin up on my board!
By Stevie Black on Feb 18, 2009 | Reply
Great effort on this SEO Pyramid. Being it’s what I do all day, design and useability really are two very different standards and/or knowledge bases. But making them two pods makes for an ugly pyramid!!!
Thanks again.
SB
By Rafael Apolinario on Feb 20, 2009 | Reply
As a newbie in SEO marketing this is really helpful. This is one of the best SEO article I’ve read so far, very informative. Much success..
By Eric on Mar 3, 2009 | Reply
It’s really nice and thoughtful! Awesome! Thanks for this.
By Eric on Mar 3, 2009 | Reply
Oh, forgot to say that your SEO approaches also cover some SEM aspects…so it is a wide-sense SEO?
I understand that those two are sometimes hard to classify but they are TWO things, right?
By Matt McGee on Mar 5, 2009 | Reply
My definition is SEO is “wide-sense”, Eric. It’s not just about tweaking page titles and copywriting. All of these things work together for real success….
By Jeanette on Mar 10, 2009 | Reply
In an everchanging world its great to see common sense laid out so clearly.
By gs on Mar 13, 2009 | Reply
I like this, but I think there’s a clear difference between a brand site and a media site that needs to be mentioned.
Brand sites would include anything that is not dependent on ad sales or other impression-generated revenue. A vacation company, plumber’s site, online storefront etc…. these are always going to be sites that do not command a healthy percentage of repeat visitors. Therefore, SEO is absolutely critical.
I get a lot of questions from media companies now about SEO-this and SEF-that. But these sites, with their constant content cycle, cannot possibly benefit from a focus on optimization as much as they can benefit from capitalizing on every possible way to get each visitor to return for some reason. Any reason: To comment, to profile, to argue, it doesn’t matter – a bookmark is worth everything while a few search engine spots up or down are less critical.
So, again, like the first days of the web, with our newsgroups and boards and webrings, content is king. Now, how to marry a client’s brand site with the truly effective social networking/publishing/user generated content tools. Micronetworks are the next frontier.
-GS
“Those who yap and spout about web 2.0 didn’t understand the internet in the 1.0st place.”
By Matt McGee on Mar 13, 2009 | Reply
It’s a good distinction to make, GS, but I’m not sure I fully agree with you. Are you suggesting the NY Times doesn’t need SEO? They do SEO, they do it incredibly well, and even own an SEO company that also serves many other media sites, too. I get what you’re saying about repeat visitors, but you have to get the visitor in the first place … and SEO can do that.
By gs on Mar 13, 2009 | Reply
Not discounting good SE efforts….I’m looking at the counter punch for a smart brand site.
Truly massive traffic comes from content, so how do these static brand sites – which are the core of most SEM company client lists – tap into the pageview wealth of repeat visits?
An average visitor on a content rich site will read, comment, view vids, images, get lost, wander back, check his comments…. and on and on, and before you know it, the pv’s-per visitor are 20 or 30 or more. Then they do it again the next day.
It can be easier to get great traffic numbers, and the exponential growth that brings, by working just as hard on new stories, fresh blogs, interactive features, true online customer service, than it can be to cast a wider and wider net for SE window shoppers.
Many people are getting the idea that Google is the first stop for every visitor, and it’s just not the case. G owns 80-whatever percent of the search market, but not 80% of all traffic. You don’t Google Facebook, or ESPN, or the NY times every day, you go through your favorites.
So how do you get your clients to compel each and every user to Add That Bookmark? Give them a reason to come back the next day, or hour, or 10 minutes….It’s just good strategery.
By Paul R on Mar 15, 2009 | Reply
Very nice article on the theory/philosophy of SEO strategy/mindset needed to succeed. I lovethe fact that you mentioned “Patience” as an important factor which can take almost a year to index well.
By Ab on Mar 18, 2009 | Reply
Very nice article, I know how should I do for SEO now. Thanks
By rita on Mar 18, 2009 | Reply
Awesome Post. The chart you used to explain things is really great..
By JT DeBolt on Mar 25, 2009 | Reply
Awesome article! Found it while I was looking for SEO tips. The best part is the downloadable image that solidifies the message and inspires us all to apply each building block to our home businesses to dominate the search engines. Thanks for breaking it down in such digestible parts!
By O. on Mar 27, 2009 | Reply
The idea of pyramid in SEO was perfect!
I think that was one of the most complete tutorial of SEO, getting all efforts need to make a good search engine optimization.
Great post!
I´ve already subscribed the feeds!
Thanks.
By Charles on Apr 7, 2009 | Reply
Very nice illustration of basic SEO structure and processes and great “link heavy” list of factors. I ending up following a link over to your “Traits of a Great SEO Client: Commitment” article, which is another great read… Thanks for the good content and sharing your knowledge.
By G.F. on Apr 14, 2009 | Reply
I think the module works even better as a funnel flipped up side down to get to the goal Trust.
By Param on Apr 20, 2009 | Reply
Wow awesome info. you have hit the nail right on the head. I work as a team leader with Wisitech and I exhort my team members to follow most of what you have discussed here. Now I have this to show them that I ask them to do right…hope they will listen to me now
By steven henley on Apr 23, 2009 | Reply
Is this Matt McGee from Grady HS?
By Matt McGee on Apr 26, 2009 | Reply
Nope, not from Grady HS. Sorry, Steven.
By Bruce Clay SEO on Apr 30, 2009 | Reply
Great SEO success pyramid Matt. This is one of the best diagrams I’ve seen and truly covers all search engine marketing. Thanks.
By Chris Chong on Apr 30, 2009 | Reply
This is a unique chart, I like the concept and agree with it. Very thorough.
By Bram Bolt on May 1, 2009 | Reply
Matt, Impressive Blog post. thanks !
By Nancy on May 26, 2009 | Reply
Matt,
Thanks for all that you share out here on the web. Great stuff!!
Nancy