This year Algorithm turns three, and over the course of the last few years has grown from a team of two to a small agency of 15. During this time our approach to SEO has been refined and improved. x

In previous agencies more technical and specialist driven service lines (like SEO) have been hard to scale. In your typical agency, the quality of the SEO offering is usually largely dependant on the skill level and aptitude of the specialist working on the campaign. This has its limitations, as firstly they can only work on so many clients at a time, and if they decide to leave the business you lose all insights and skills driving the client’s campaign. Our approach has been to reduce this dependency and this was the foundation of how we built the business.

Algorithm has built a detailed and scalable workflow that automates a big part of the SEO process. SEO despite what a lot of people would have you believe is not a dark art of smoke and mirrors. These days to be effective at Search Engine Optimisation you need to do a lot of fairly straightforward things, very well. The key here is that there are a lot of different aspects to look at and focus on monthly and without a clear process and workflow this can quickly become overwhelming.

Real results are the result of doing the right things every month and building up momentum, our process ensures the team is able to do this at scale.

In the SEO space, there are many different tools and software suppliers that have created various tools to assist in the different aspects that make up an SEO campaign, think keyword research, technical SEO, outreach. Each of these tools is strong in maybe one aspect of the many, so the challenge here is how to get a complete picture?

We decided early on that we need to tap into as many of these tools as possible and automate as much of the data gathering and repetitive work as we could. We have then built our own layer of data analysis and tools on top of the data from each of these great tools.

This automation of the data layer has given us a much more detailed picture of the technical and competitive landscape on our client’s campaigns.  Gathering the data on which to base decisions is only half the battle though. Once you have the information required, execution becomes key.

This was our next focus as a business. We have built out in-depth internal processes and workflow that uses the data from our tools to prioritise and execute based on the importance and impact any given fix will have for our clients business.

This process (actually a number of small processes) guides the team in their monthly SEO execution. By doing this we know we are focusing on the issues that will drive the best results in the shortest possible time. We also know we are working based on the data rather than assumptions.

The combination of automation and a data-led foundation topped with human specialisation has served us well and allows the team to scale at a level that just wouldn’t be possible with the old agency model. It also gives us the confidence that monthly all the aspects that make up a successful SEO campaign are being addressed – the idea here is that nothing slips through the cracks.

We have been asked a few times if we feel the coming automation of marketing is a threat to us and based on our business model the opposite is, in fact, the case. The more we can automate the day to day grind, the more time we can spend being the subject matter experts that interpret the data and act accordingly.