The Optimization Process

Growing your digital revenue using science, data, and decades of expertise.

Orbit's optimization process overview
1. Onboarding › 2. Assessment › 3. Growth › 4. Monitoring › 5. Reporting

1. Onboarding

You’ve joined the Optimization party! You’re anxious (we understand) but excited.

Onboarding to Optimization is easy.

If we built your website (not a requirement), it’s a little easier, but expect some natural overlap with the redesign process as we discuss old topics from new angles.

Orbit optimization onboarding

What to expect:

  1. Collaboration: We interact mostly on Google Workspace and Google Cloud. If your organization runs on Slack, we can establish a Slack Connect channel with you and any other partners.
  2. Intake survey: We’ll pre-populate anything we already know, but oh do we have questions in this phase! It’s tough to tell us too much about your business, market, and goals.
  3. Access request: A secure access request is made for tools like Analytics and Search Console. We’ll also be preparing dozens of our own 3rd-party tools for better insights.
  4. Kickoff: Let’s get to know each other. Meet your strategist, PM, content specialist(s), technical specialist(s), and a director or two over video.

What you get:

An elite digital marketing team with experts in technical SEO, creative SEO, CRO, digital content, analytics, and project management

… neatly organized and ready to go to work for you!

Orbit's optimization assessment

2. Assessment

Assessment is like a whole new department joining your organization…

… powering itself up one component at a time. As each topic gets discussed, that work begins.

What to expect:

We’ll meet weekly over this initial six week period. Each week has a theme and answers critical questions.

  1. Analytics review: Let’s make sure that measurement comprehensive, accurate, and in alignment with all goals
  2. Demand & Positioning: We build your roadmap towards becoming a category leader in search, comparing the total opportunity (Demand) with the numbers behind each milestone (Positioning)
  3. Core Keywords: We align your top-level goals in search, setting priorities for content and reporting
  4. Technical SEO: We begin by choosing two modules from our 14-module audit program, evaluating ~120 opportunities
  5. Site Architecture & CRO: Page-level ranking goals are defined and early conversion experiments get prioritized based on our review
  6. Reporting & Program Plan: Custom dashboards and reporting get fine-tuned to meet your needs and high-level plans for the next 12 months get established

What you get:

We’ll get to work fast! You’re not waiting for Assessment to end before we begin to act.

  1. Analytics review: We fix what’s broken, enhance what isn’t measured, and track any new metrics
  2. Demand & Positioning: A math-based 3-10 year vision that aligns all future strategy with your competitive landscape
  3. Core Keywords: 20-50 “core” keywords to monitor for rankings and build a content plan around… think of these like “hubs” to organize  “spokes” of new content
  4. Technical SEO: Usually 10+ specific actions from these two audits that we’ll help strategize, delegate, and/or improve
  5. Site Architecture & CRO: An initial conversion experiment selected from many, a granular keyword strategy that informs our first content moves
  6. Reporting & Program Plan: A starter dashboard in Looker Studio, starting benchmark data, and a tentative 12-month Program Plan that establishes our plans for Growth

3. Growth

After the Assessment phase ends, work is more customized to your needs.

We’ll be working out of the tentative Program Plan that we’ve created for the next 12 months. Likely, these plans will shift based on the outcome of audits, exercises, result measurements, and external forces.

As this occurs, we tend to take an agile, “toolkit” approach, rather than a stubborn commitment to an immediately outdated strategy.

Orbit's optimization growth

What to expect:

  • Creative SEO: 12+ data-driven exercises to inform the enhancement or creation of content
  • Technical SEO: A rotating calendar of 14+ technical audits, most yielding 3-6 unmet opportunities
  • Conversion Experiments: Buttons, copy, layouts, etc… we’re always testing for better results
  • Content Flywheel: We will strategize, create, and/or modify landing pages and articles
  • Project Management: We’ll keep plans and the untapped opportunity firehose cleanly organized
  • Checkpoints: Flexible biweekly status meetings over video with your team

What you get:

Steady, cumulative action that yields reliable results.

We hope that you’ll embrace this for the long-term and realize the vision set during Demand & Positioning across many years.

In the first six months, you should expect to see a clear return, project that trajectory, or consider reassessing.

Orbit's optimization monitoring

4. Monitoring

We’re constantly monitoring your website and various 3rd party data providers for insights.

The web changes fast. We try not to be too reactive and stick to the vision. Inevitably, surprises occur and require us to merge new variables into our work.

What to expect:

  • Analytics anomalies: Unusual traffic patterns of bots/attacks and losses
  • Server anomalies: Network inconsistencies, SSL health, and other indirect ranking factors
  • Rank monitoring: In-depth reporting on core keywords through Advanced Web Ranking
  • 3rd party datasets: Gains/losses in total rankings, backlinks in Semrush, Ahrefs, and others
  • Automated auditing: Google Search Console, cloud-based tools frequently catch surprises
  • Industry environment: Trends on major core search terms for seasonality and disruptions
  • Search environment: Algorithm updates and measurements of the resulting ranking volatility

What you get:

Peace of mind knowing that our team is always watching and adjusting thanks to an advanced monitoring system.

This provides diverse insights and mitigates risk of lost revenue.

5. Reporting

Once monthly, we’ll take a look at the scoreboard!

This is a great time to discuss the performance of recently implemented work and review the outcomes of different experiments.

Website optimization reporting

What to expect:

Reporting is typically customized to suit your needs, but by default, it looks much like this:

  • Goal measurements: Performance of your custom KPIs… usually those metrics closest to revenue
  • Traffic measurements: High-level data across channels and devices
  • Search metrics: Core rank tracking, overall rankings, biggest winners/losers, competition
  • Content metrics: Segmented performance of recent (past 3-6 months) content changes
  • Conversion metrics: Recent experiment results, insights on what we’re testing next

What you get:

Detailed, custom reporting through Looker Studio and BigQuery archiving.

A walkthrough of current results with a team of experts once every month.

Are you really optimizing?

Get the plan. Get the team that understands. Monitor the response and report real results.

Schedule a call with a digital strategist