We recently collaborated with a global nonprofit that conducts wellness education for organizations and individuals. Over a 4-week sprint, we performed holistic analysis, optimization, and strategy across organic search, paid search, user experience, and web analytics. It always amazes us how much you can accomplish when you have ambitious deadlines and a great client partner. Here’s a summary of what we did together.
SEO
- Built target SEO keyword lists with over 1,500 total keywords, broken out by the nonprofit’s 4 main personas: “lower-funnel B2B”, “upper-funnel B2B”, “lower-funnel individual”, and “upper-funnel individual”. To make these lists more useful for future content strategy and analysis, each keyword contains a category, search volume, and current organic ranking.
- Performed in-depth keywords research — including categorization, scoring and prioritization — on the 300+ keywords for their primary audience: lower-funnel B2B. Google data shows over 25,000 relevant searches a month from this audience; the nonprofit is capturing only a tiny fraction of it.
- Created a rough content strategy with 24 recommendations in priority order; 12 of these have high or medium-high impact potential. We included rough prototypes to demonstrate a number of the concepts. We built the content strategy at the end of the sprint, so that it could benefit from all of the keyword research, analysis and collaboration we’d completed to date. We’re confident that implementing our higher-priority content strategy recommendations will help the site greatly expand the site’s B2B customers driven from organic search, while also improving its overall UX and conversion rates.
- Identified 13 technical SEO issues in priority order, most of which are now resolved. To arrive at this list of issues, we conducted a technical audit using Moz and Google Search Console.
- Identified 6 content-related SEO issues in priority order. These are part of a longer list that includes UX issues, many of which indirectly impact SEO.
SEM
- Launched 4 waves of AdWords expansion totaling over 1,500 keywords, based on keyword research for the 4 target audiences described above. For each wave, we used a consistent structure with 4 theme-based campaigns, and with similar topic-based ad groups under each — to ensure the account is easy to manage and optimize.
- In total, launched 8 B2B-focused campaigns composed of 60 ad groups, and 8 individual-focused campaigns composed of 46 ad groups. In addition to serving ads on a much wider range of searches, our ad groups now align better with the user’s intent. Rather than showing a generic ad to someone searching for a “stress management course”, we now show a highly targeted one. This is driving higher CTRs and quality scores, and is allowing the nonprofit to compete well despite its Google Grant bid restrictions.
- Wrote 248 ads to support the new campaigns, 2 to 3 per ad group within our 4 audience buckets. Each A/B ad test is set to automatically optimize for clicks and conversions.
UX
- Identified 24 UX problems on the site. These include 5 from web forms, 7 from the Programs section, and 4 from the blog. We scored each problem on “bang” and “buck” and then gave it a total score to guide prioritization.
- Designed rough prototypes to demonstrate the recommendation, where appropriate.
- Designed and launched a quick ad and recruiting screener for moderated usability testing that attracted over 5 people who met our criteria: senior HR professionals interested in bringing mindfulness training to their organization.
Analytics
- Collaborated to build a KPI measurement model draft that identified 3 business goals and 2-3 KPIs for each goal. We also defined initial goal values and tracking sources for each KPI. Over the course of the Sprint, we revised the list of KPIs (see report mentioned below).
- Updated conversion goals in Google Analytics, and added conversions in AdWords (via Google Tag Manager), to align with measurement model. We also set up GA dashboards and various custom reports.
- Built a monthly KPI report framework that can produce graphs for each KPI and be presented as part of monthly KPI review. A critical part of this report is setting realistic monthly targets for each of the 6 KPIs. The report also allows for collection and analysis of other important metrics, but these are clearly distinguished to maintain focus on the critical few KPIs.
- Identified 16 analytics and tracking issues. With the client’s help, we resolved 11 of these — including a GTM solution that enabled GA e-commerce reporting for Eventbrite ticket purchases.
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We can’t share the early results yet, but we can say that they look very promising. Check back in about 6 months for an update.