A presentation at Ad:Tech SF 2012 in in San Francisco, CA, USA by Jonathon Colman
From an Army of 1 to True Organic Agility Jonathon Colman In-House SEO for REI Twitter @jcolman
NE W :D SC R’ TO EC IR From an Army of 1 to True Organic Agility ! UT Jonathon Colman In-House SEO for REI Twitter @jcolman
A. K. A. WHAT STORMTROOPERS CAN TEACH US ABOUT AGILE MARKETING
THE PROBLEM: AN ARMY OF ONE ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH
Why? An inability to scale. Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4125225588/
Why? Capacity issues. Source: flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/7014655351/
Why? Micromanagement. Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3591682866/
Why? Can’t accomplish key goals. Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3734702838/
Why? Lack of fast response. Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/4702387746/
Why? No real colleagues or partners. Source: flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/6521996943/
Why? Burnout. Source: flickr.com/photos/30966132@N04/
Why? You can’t retain staff. Source: flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/6413081493/
THE SOLUTION: BUILD AGILITY INTO SEARCH MARKETING
Assemble cross-functional teams Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3578775702/
Assemble cross-functional teams • Build teams around customer UX. Include designers, IAs, front & back-end devs, SEO • Teams are selfmanaged, commit to highest priority work, iterate over releases, hold themselves accountable • Your new job? Removing all impediments. Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3578775702/
Maximize work – not “work” Source: flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/5334825075/
Maximize work – not “work” • Only three meetings are allowed: planning, the daily stand-up, and retrospective • Team co-located together with an emphasis on face-toface interactions • Progress measured in experiences launched • SEO consults, does analysis & reporting, creates work items for backlog Source: flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/5334825075/
Maintain a bias toward action Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4467912952/
Maintain a bias toward action • Progress does not stop for politics, disagreements, pet projects, turf wars, special events, or other impediments • Team does not produce extensive documentation or other peripheral artifacts • Always be shipping. Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4467912952/
“Don’t hate, iterate!” Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4193370268/
“Don’t hate, iterate!” • The goal of each sprint is not to deliver perfection, but instead to deliver iterative value to customers • Get something wrong? Get negative customer feedback? Iterate. • Large or complex projects may last several sprints; projects like site performance are always in play Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4193370268/
THE RESULTS: AGILE SEO IMPACTS AT
Organic productivity increase 45 Peak number of organic search technical infrastructure iterations that REI shipped via Agile in a single year
Page load time improvement -1.5 s Page load time that REI saved our customers in 2011 through iterative Agile performance optimizations
Aggregate web performance boost 22 Total number of years that REI saved our customers in 2011
Duplicate content reduction -98 % Overall decrease in duplicate content due to Agile iterations on pagination and canonicalization of site content
Non-branded organic traffic growth +50 % REI’s single-year growth rate in nonbranded organic search traffic as we iteratively released optimizations
Aggregate organic traffic growth +96 % Overall growth rate of organic search traffic during the two-year switch from waterfall development to Agile
NEXT STEPS: BUILD KNOWLEDGE, LEAD THE WAY
10 resources to get started in Agile 1. Principles behind the Agile Manifesto 2. Agile software development – Wikipedia 3. Agile Marketing For Conversion Optimization 4. Sex and the Agile Marketer 5. Agile Marketing 6. Marketing Experts on Agile Marketing 7. Agile Marketing, the New Black 8. What the F**k is Agile Marketing? 9. Agile for Marketing 10. Rise of the Marketing Technologist FWIW, this is one of the best articles I’ve ever read on Search Engine Land.
Many thanks! Jonathon Colman In-House SEO for REI Home: about.me/jcolman Twitter: @jcolman E-mail: jcolman@rei.com
BONUS! STORMTROOPER BLOOPER REEL
Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4286044406/
Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4056636578/
Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/3884924584/
Source: flickr.com/photos/jojoneil/6359536591/
Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3777558632/
Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3587597615/
Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4429614489/
Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4370816189/
Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4322352483/
Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/3951143570/
Many thanks (again!) Jonathon Colman SEO Stormtrooper for REI Home: about.me/jcolman Twitter: @jcolman E-mail: jcolman@rei.com Source: flickr.com/photos/benleto/2212853097/
The modern SEO is like “An Army of One”, always taking on new roles and responsibilities. But there are many problems and limitations with this model for SEO in large organizations.
We must do better to achieve greater results — enter Agile development methodology!
In this presentation for the ad:Tech 2012 Marketing Masters panel chaired by Rhonda Hanson from Getty Images, I show how REI used Agile development practices to complete numerous SEO efforts that results in greatly increased organic visibility and traffic.
If you like SEO, the stormtroopers from Star Wars, and shipping iteration after iteration of valuable experiences to your customers, then this is the presentation for you!
You can learn more about Jonathon Colman at http://www.jonathoncolman.org/
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
In this video, we’ll explore the nifty, nefarious world on Agile Marketing, which I talked about at MozCon 2012. We’ll take a look at four key principles of Agile Marketing and talk about how you can use them to hack your organization to deliver more value to your customers more often by breaking down barriers and removing impediments to your progress.
Here’s what was said about this presentation on social media.
