Follow along as I review a recent client case study where we tackled complex business problems and translated them into a scalable SEO strategy that drove a 290% increase in organic traffic.

1. 290% INCREASE
ORGANIC
TRAFFIC &
CONVERSIONS

2. 2

3. 3

4. 4

5. Don’t overcomplicate SEO.
Find a process that works and scale it.

6. Or...Let me give you mine.
aka, “The Blueprint” framework.

7. The “5 Phases” of my SEO Campaign
PHASE 1
LEARNING
Breaking down the evergreen approach
PHASE 2
IMPROVING
PHASE 3
BUILDING
PHASE 4
PROMOTING
PHASE 5
EVALUATING

8. 10+ years of digital
marketing experience.
Ryan Stewart, MBA
@ryanwashere
@ryan.was.here
@ryan stewart
Built and sold SEO agency
(WEBRIS) in 18 months, now
partner at From The Future
and The Blueprint Training.
Built and sold a number of
online businesses and blogs
that ran 100% on organic
traffic.

10. Quick background...
on the project.

12. One of the industries I’ve been trying to break into...

13. PHASE 1
LEARNING

14. Back to the “5 Phases”...
PHASE 1
LEARNING
Breaking down the evergreen approach
PHASE 2
IMPROVING
PHASE 3
BUILDING
PHASE 4
PROMOTING
PHASE 5
EVALUATING

16. 80% of
expended time
20% of
expended time
80% of
results
20% of
resultsTRIVIALTASKS
VITAL
TASKS

17. LEARNING
Client work or your own sites, this
period can’t be overlooked.
Too many time we (marketers) rush into
campaigns without understanding scope
We don’t want to invest 6 months of
resources to realize we were optimizing the
wrong aspects of the website
BLUEPRINT NOTES.
Sometimes, clients can push back on “too much research” and “not
enough action”. Explain that SEO is won through good strategy, not
haphazard execution
By asking the right questions, analyzing
your data, looking at competitors and
building a solid project plan we can
minimize that risk.

18. Campaign LEARNING Process
QUESTIONS
you need to ask prior to
starting a campaign.
ANALYSIS
important website data
and analytics.
COMPETITORS
research in your
industry.
This is what we’re going to cover in this phase:
PLANNING
and project management.

19. ONBOARDING
QUESTIONS
to ask before starting
your campaign.
● Understand expectations from a
campaign
This information can help you shift around
your project plan to ensure you’re meeting
goals (and expectations).
● Formulate your initial plan of attack
We need to use this information to form
the building blocks of the campaign.
● Get a sense of the resources you
have available
SEO has so many overlaps with other
marketing channels, you need to
understand everything that the site is
doing (social, lead generation campaigns,
PPC ads, etc).

20. 20
We break the questions down into
6 buckets.
ACCESS BUSINESS CONTENT EMAIL
LINK
BUILDING
SEO SOCIAL

21. 21

22. LEARNING
QUESTIONS
SUMMARY
Projected to finish the year around
similar to last, growth slowing
Single product, hard to understand
with a high price point
CEO had a good hold on medicinal
market, well respected advocate
Small team who was already
overloaded with work, NO marketing
expertise in house
Big challenges with regulations
(shipping, inventory, advertising)
Tight hold on spending budget due to
inventory buying challenges

23. LEARNING
QUESTIONS
SUMMARY
Platform was not suitable for
scaling to multiple products, needed
to change ASAP
Client only cares about revenue, no
“vanity metrics”
Client had unrealistic expectations
about growth
Client not sophisticated in regards
to tech and marketing, wanted
weekly meetings
Website and brand needed
overhaul, ASAP

24. Results are relative, they
shouldn’t be your end goal.
The goal is to meet expectations.

25. DATA ANALYSIS
Deep understanding,
quickly
● Data tells a story we need to listen to
Looking at Analytics data tells us a lot about
past performance that the client CAN NOT (or
did not) tell us
● Using Data Studio to report
Data Studio is a (FREE) powerful
visualization platform that pulls in data from
various sources and allows us to build
interactive reports. We use it for everything
and it will be a cornerstone of all reporting in
this course
● We mainly look at GA, GSC and Ahrefs
Looking at a variety of data sources
crosswalked against each other gives us an
accurate picture of performance

26. 26

27. LEARNING
DATA
ANALYSIS
Customers and website visitors
predominantly men (+75%). Brand,
messaging and company all women
HUGE search volume in the
cannabis space
Good branded search and
sentiment from organic reviews
Poor data analytics and tracking (no
ecom, no GSC, no UTMs). Partial cause
of mismanaged expectations
Good link profile from authority
media sites, mainly to home page

28. LEARNING
DATA
ANALYSIS
Small site with a lot of cannibalization
issues
Poor technical build and structure
Affiliates drove a lot of revenue and
traffic
Poor retention and engagement
metrics, hypothesis is due to poor
messaging and visualizations

29. COMPETITIVE
ANALYSIS
A quick overview of
what’s needed
● It’s important to understand the
competitive landscape
Understanding those having success
helps us to refine our strategy on what the
algorithm is ranking at the keyword level
● It’s MORE important not to obsess
over competitors
While this is an important exercise, this
isn’t an apples to apples comparison. You
don’t know what that website’s resources
and budget look like. This is an exercise for
strategy, not for comparison. Understand
how to manage clients who obsess over
competitors.

30. 30

31. LEARNING
COMPETITIVE
ANALYSIS
PR sites (media) and small bloggers
dominated SERPs (Leafly). HUGE
opportunities with content
No direct competitors at the product
level, but big competition at usage
level (Magic Butter)
Lots of influencers in the space (IG,
bloggers), initial contact showed
low price point
Need additional keyword research
to understand TAM

32. PROPERLY
MANAGING
Your campaign.
● There’s too much to do, you’ll need help.
Even if you have $0 budget, hire help.
Contractors, agencies, freelancers or
employees...you need them. A project plan
is ground 0 to make sure $hit gets done.
● Build a project plan.
Always overlooked because of how many
things are going on, but it’s critical to make
sure you stay on top of things getting
done.
● With so many moving pieces that go into
an advanced SEO campaign, you will fail
without a system to manage everything.
Make sure you’re load balancing resources
and prioritizing tasks based on importance.

33. 33

34. LEARNING
PROJECT
PLANNING
ANALYSIS
Direct sales opportunities needed to
plug dropping sales + buy me time
(buys, email, influencers)
Cleanup site structure & build out
proper hub + spoke layout
Get paid traffic running, scaled and
profitable
Scale to a larger audience,
everyday “stoner” with better
targeted content + promotion
Replatform + rebrand top priority,
but also a long process

35. LEARNING
PROJECT
PLANNING
ANALYSIS
Fix analytics tracking issues
Need organic search to reach
growth expectations, was the only
channel with no ceiling
Improve tech stack
Play on previous PR success around
CEO for links to targeted pages

36. Initiative Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov
Website Design
Website Development
Data / reporting overhaul
Content creation (video)
Content creation (website)
Facebook ad campaign
Instagram influencer campaign
YouTube influencer campaign
Sponsored / native ad campaign
Affiliate campaign
Sponsored email blast
Press outreach
Organic social restructure
Organic search optimizations
Email marketing campaign

38. PHASE 2
IMPROVING

39. Back to the “5 Phases”...
PHASE 1
LEARNING
Breaking down the evergreen approach
PHASE 2
IMPROVING
PHASE 3
BUILDING
PHASE 4
PROMOTING
PHASE 5
EVALUATING

40. The fastest turn around in traffic
comes from making improvements
to the existing website
IMPROVING
We can focus our attention on
improving site layout, technical
structure, on page elements, etc...
PHASE 2

41. Campaign IMPROVING Process
WEBSITE
QUALITY
AUDIT
TECHNICAL
SEO AUDIT
KEYWORD
RESEARCH
This is what we’re going to cover in this phase:
TARGET
PAGES
“ON PAGE” / UX
CORRECTIONS

42. WEBSITE QUALITY
AUDIT
What is it? Why does it
matter?
Search engines send traffic to websites they
deem as “high quality”.
Websites with a strong link profile, good content,
proper technical setup, fast, a good UX, etc.
We can measure quality by looking at a
number of data inputs.
Links, traffic, conversions, on page engagement,
crawl depth and more.
This feeds decisions about how to handle
every page on a website.
Improving, updating, building links, additional
keyword research, on page updates, 301 or delete
entirely.

43. 43

44. What came out of it…?
URL cleanups
Capital letters
https/http
/ vs non /
1

45. What came out of it…?
2 Page consolidation / segmentation
3 pages for reviews, testimonials, sentiment
FAQ, warranty, about pages, wholesaling, affiliates
A definitive structure to tackle “decarboxylation”
Redirecting link equity to the right place on the site

46. What came out of it…?
A new sitemap / IA
We decided to migrate to WordPress /
WooCommerce (for a lot of reasons), I
had to rebuild the site architecture to
match WP’s structuring.
Also, to build out a sitemap for future
releases of new products / SKUs.
3

47. What came out of it…?
A list page pages to improve
Outputs of the WQA are directly
actionable (i.e. 301), but also push into
the next steps of the campaign fluidly.
It gives us sa complete list of URLs on
the site and what we need to do with
them.
4

48. TECHNICAL SEO
AUDIT
Use when necessary,
not more
Full technical audits are better served for
enterprise websites.
We developed the WQA to serve in place of a
technical audit. When run properly, it should catch
technical issues that are important for smaller
websites.
I’m NOT saying technical SEO isn’t
important...
In fact, the opposite - for certain websites (i.e.
target.com) technical SEO is everything! You just
need to be smart about when to execute.
For this case study, it was not necessary.
I like to draw the line around 500 pages. Anything
less does not need a deep technical audit, it would be
redundant after the WQA.

49. 49

50. KEYWORD
RESEARCH
For existing pages
only...
“Best” keywords means both high traffic
and high intent.
We not only want to identify the RIGHT keywords,
but we want to understand the status of the
SERPS as well
We do KW research in 2 parts...
1. For existing pages - Using the URL Actions
from the WQA, we can identify “low hanging
fruit” where improved KW targeting may
increase organic traffic, quickly. Since these
pages are already on the site, they have
equity and conversion value. A quick turn
around in traffic goes a long way with client
relations.
2. For new pages - We do a KW gap analysis to
find which KWs are NOT on a website and a
content strategy to determine how to best get
them added.

51. 51

52. Review existing pages on your website to identify the “Main
KW” of every page.
1

53. Review existing pages on your website to identify the
“Secondary KWs” of every page.
2

54. https://keywordseverywhere.com/

55. Review the SERPs to understand the intent behind your
main keywords.
3

56. Review top 3 SERP results to understand link count and
velocity.
4

58. 58

59. 59

60. TARGET PAGES
To hyperfocus efforts of
site segments
Most websites are too big to track
every page, most are irrelevant to SEO.
We build a list of “target pages” that allows us
to segment websites and hyper focus on
improving key sections of websites. If we’ve
followed all the steps laid out before this,
target pages should be “low hanging fruit”
pages that we can get a quick turn around on.
This file is simple, but it’s a means to
track key pages.
This is a simple process that rolls up the data
collected to this point from our Website Quality
Audit and keyword analysis (of existing
pages). We use it to prioritize the most
important pages on a website based on
opportunity.

61. What’s the point?
Priority - we calculate this based on the opportunity of a page.
Generally speaking, we like to focus on “low hanging” fruit pages,
ones that are already ranking for the “main KW” between positions
6 and 20. We also look at the number of links the top 3 pages have
to understand the level of effort required.
Section - depending on the scope / budget of a client, we can’t
optimize all pages at once. We segment pages into sections
depending on the length and scope of a campaign.
Baselining - benchmarking where target keywords are at the
beginning of the campaign and giving us a definitive list of
keywords to track.
Link planning - using the data we can determine how many links
we’ll need to acquire for each target page in the campaign..

62. 62

63. Current status of target page + keyword

64. Competitive landscape for that keyword + prioritization

65. Link allocation plan over the campaign

66. ON PAGE
IMPROVEMENTS
Fixing old school SEO
elements
So important, often overlooked.
I find a lot of SEOS glaze over the “on page” process
because it’s not overly sexy and honestly, it’s a lot
of work.
These factors still matter, more now than
ever.
The scope of what falls under “on page” has grown
rapidly as SEO has progressed. It’s not enough to
just change page titles and metas, we have to
analyze the overall context and targeting of a page.
It’s our job to make sure every page
delivers the proper experience for a given
keyword search.
This pushes outside the scope of SEO (slightly) into
technical and UX to make sure a page is optimized
perfectly. We have a system to do this which we
will be covering in detail in this module.

67. 67

68. The standard SEO keyword mapping + intent funnel I use...
5. Attention High level, topically related, but not purchase
intent related.
5. Attention
Consideration
4. Awareness
3. Discover
2. Consider
1. Customer
4. Awareness In the market for a solution, but have no idea
who you are or what you sell.
3. Discover Coming across your product or service offerings
for the first time.
2. Consider Already aware of the options and looking to
convert.
1. Customer Keywords that your current customer based is
looking for - this is generally support based or usage queries
(i.e. how to use “product” or service).

69. This was different - a long, slow and challenging conversion process...
5. Attention Everyday cannabis users, both recreational and
medicinal. Looking for things like recipes, dosage
information, etc.
5. Attention
Influencers, PR, blog posts
Consideration
4. Awareness
search
3. Discover
Search, affiliates, email
2. Consider
Search, rmktg
1. Customer
Social, email
4. Awareness Coming across “decarb” concept for the 1st
time.
3. Discover Coming across “Nova decarboxylator” for the 1st
time
2. Consider Aware of product, hesitant to buy based on
pricing
1. Customer Nova customers looking to maximize usage
through recipes, dosage info - cross sells to new products

70. How do we take action? Take this information and rebuild accordingly at
the page level.

71. Can then review traffic source at the page level...

72. For organic heavy pages, we can consult GSC to understand search intent
(product page) - heavy branded, knows decarb and nova, ready to buy

73. Rebuilt to show benefits...

74. Rebuilt to show social proof...

75. Rebuilt to answer common questions...

76. (blog post) - know what “decarb” is, but likely not that we sell a product

77. (blog post) - use single CTA widget to push to product page

78. Legacy version of home page was unclear and unfocused

79. Wanted to push overall product understanding, benefits and trust

83. Understand a page’s purpose.
Where traffic will come from and WHY!

84. PHASE 3
BUILDING

85. The “5 Phases” of an SEO Campaign
PHASE 1
LEARNING
Breaking down our evergreen approach
PHASE 2
IMPROVING
PHASE 3
BUILDING
PHASE 4
PROMOTING
PHASE 5
EVALUATING

86. BUILDING
We can now begin to build new
pages on the website to
capture more keyword
rankings and traffic.
PHASE 3
The process of creating new
assets on a website, both
content (i.e. blog posts,
resource guides, etc), landing
pages (i.e. sales based content)
or even multi media / social
content.

87. Campaign BUILDING Process
CONTENT
AUDIT
KW GAP
ANALYSIS
CONTENT
STRATEGY
This is what we’re going to cover in this phase:
NEW TOPIC
IDEATION
CONTENT
MANAGEMENT

88. CONTENT AUDIT
Improve performance of
value pieces.
Taking inventory of all the content on a
website.
Using the pages tagged as “Content Audit” from the
Website Quality Audit, we want to review the existing
content on the site (blog posts, resources guides, etc).
We’re looking to “prune” low quality content,
to pick up performance of others.
Sites with a lot of low quality pages don’t get the
same level of visibility from search. Cleaning up crap
picks up site performance and clears path for new
asset creation.
Development of “pillar” and “cluster” model
for client approval.
A system to organize content and provide a
framework for scalable content creation campaigns
that stay within the lane.

89. Found major issues with “cannibalization”
This was causing issues with being able to
rank for any of the keywords.
We decided to redirect a ton of the low quality, non
performers into the big pages with the most rankings.
A number of posts targeting the same
keyword
Decarboxylation is a big, deep topic that they were
trying to cover in almost every post on their site.
Then the plan was to rethink and rewrite
these pages to be more focused.
What is decarb, benefits of decarb, how to decarb at
home
1
2
3

90. 90

91. KEYWORD GAP
ANALYSIS
Discover keywords to
build around.
Previous phase of KW research focused on
existing pages. Now we want to focus on
NEW pages.
We start this process by finding “keyword gaps” on
your site (in relation to your competitors and the
market).
We do so with a “keyword gap analysis” that
scrapes your competition to find new
opportunities for growth.
We built a template that pulls keyword data from
SEMrush or Ahrefs and finds “gaps” for you that
present new keyword opportunities

92. 92

93. CONTENT STRATEGY
& general content
strategy.
Using the audit and gap analysis, it’s time to
generate new topic ideas.
These don’t have to be ONLY blog posts, depending on
the search intent it could be video, social content or
even new landing pages
We also want to formalize our strategy with
a deck.
That goes into research, personas, topics, expected
results and more.

94. 94

95. The content marketing process...
Migrate low hanging fruit from content audit.
We’ll start by migrating content tagged as “rewrite”,
“refresh” and “merge” into our content tracking file.
Develop audience personas.
It’s critically important to know who we’re speaking to,
how to speak to them and the medium / content type to
reach them.
Create “topics” for content creation, using a
number of tactics.
1. Rewrite, refresh and merge pages
2. “Niche up” from bottom of funnel keywords
3. Using keyword gap analysis
1
2
3

96. The content marketing process...
Build out context for article.
Using similar tactics as before, we want to flush out the
topics with supporting keywords. We also want to
identify pilar / cluster, cite references and content tactic
/ type.
Determine competition to rank + traffic
potential, prioritize.
Some topics we have to create, no matter how
competitive the space, but the others we want to
prioritize for creation based ease-to-visibility.
4
5
Build content strategy deck, send topics to
stakeholder for approval.
The deck summarizes the end to end content strategy,
from audience to topics. We need the stakeholders
approval to move to content creation.
6

97. 97

98. Differentiation...how can you stand out?
Massive inaccuracies plague the industry
Not only with what brands are claiming, but what the
information published on the web.
No clear business leader around accurate info
Industry sites like Leafly crushed it (and provided solid
info), but there was no business publishing sound
information
1
2
Wanted to push data driven research case
studies
Dosing, health related info, etc.
3

99. Hub Topic
Spoke
Topic
Spoke
Topic
Spoke
Topic
Spoke
Topic
Spoke
Topic
Spoke
Topic
Spoke
Topic
Spoke
Topic
● Pillar (Hub) - the topics that
are core to the business
operations. These topics must
easily map back to your
product’s functionality.
● Cluster (Spoke) - the topics
that support the hub and
explore all possible options
for traffic and engagement.

100. 100
Usage
6 Reasons to
Decarb Your Herb
Before Using
8 Ways to Use
Weed Oil
24 Ways to Consume
Marijuana - Smoking,
Edibles, Lotions, & More
12 Ways to Use
Cannabis Topicals and
Lotions

101. Pillar Cluster
Usage ● 5 Cannabutter Alternatives
● How to use decarbed bud
● Cannabis extraction methods
Research ● Cannabis dosing / ratios
● What are cannabinoids
● Cannabis oil vs CBD
Recipes ● How to make weed brownies
● How to make weed cookies
● How to make Cannabis Milk

103. CONTENT
MANAGEMENT
& scaling creation.
With topics created, we need to get them
written, uploaded and published.
Don’t kid yourself, managing content production is a
full time job (it’s a business in itself).
Personally, I like to outsource writing.
There’s plenty of companies and freelancers
who can do it for a reasonable cost, with
solid quality.
There’s some AMAZING writers out there, you just
have to look for them.

104. The content management process...
Build outlines for articles, promotional
recommendations.
An outline ensures freelance writers (or in house,
partners, etc) know how to write the content perfectly.
We have a ton of templates to get you started on this.
Move to content calendar for creation.
Assuming you’re using our project management system,
it’s really just a matter of copy and pasting.
1
2
Ongoing content management.
We’ll run through our system to manage large scale
content campaigns across dozens of clients.
3

107. PHASE 4
PROMOTING

108. The “5 Phases” of an SEO Campaign
PHASE 1
LEARNING
Breaking down our evergreen approach
PHASE 2
IMPROVING
PHASE 3
BUILDING
PHASE 4
PROMOTING
PHASE 5
EVALUATING

109. It’s not enough to just do “on
page” corrections and create
quality content. To get
explosive traffic gains, you
need to promote your website
by acquiring links and
mentions on relevant industry
websites.
PROMOTING
PHASE 4
Keep it simple! Do the legwork
to find scalable tactics within
your niche.

110. Campaign PROMOTING Process
STRATEGY &
ANALYSIS
PROSPECTING
OUTREACH
This is what we’re going to cover in this phase:
LINK
MANAGEMENT

111. Strategy and analysis
Spend 30 minutes browsing the web.
Look through Google and social media to find
influencers, bloggers, media sites and content
submission (guest post / ads) opportunities.
Attack the places with the most attention.
When we can control it, links should aim to provide PR
value as well as link equity. High traffic sites should
always be the priority.
1
2
I found 3 scalable tactics...
Unlinked mentions, media buys and influencers.3

112. Unlinked mentions...
If you get good media coverage
naturally, you’ll get plenty of
mentions.
Most media sites don’t link out (unless poked).
Mention is a great tool to monitor
unlinked mentions.
Simply enter the brand name and get notified
when there’s an opportunity.
1
2
Send a simple pitch to recapture link.
Or wire up Pitchbox...3

113. 113

114. Media buys / advertisements...
Kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
We can get a ton of link value, but also PR value
and traffic to our site by advertising on the right
sites.
Prospect for media / blogger sites ranking
for your target keywords.
I was looking for websites ranking for the HUGE
keyword “decarboxylation”.
1
2
Send a pitch asking if they accept “native
ads”.
The goal is to get a text link (and ideally call to
action / banner) that will drive traffic over time.
3

115. 115

116. Influencer outreach...
Influencers have gotten overpriced...not in the
cannabis space.
There were thousands of untapped influencers with
HUGE engagement and no apparent commercial ties.
Prioritize the ones with blogs who can provide
links.
Most influencers only have a YouTube / Instagram page,
few have blogs. We need a blog to directly impact SEO.
However, it’s a good business decision to execute others
as well.
1
2
Send a simple pitch to recapture link.
Or wire up Pitchbox...3

117. 117

118. 118

119. Throughout a campaign campaign,
we go through an evaluation process
to benchmark progress of the
campaign. Even if you aren’t working
with clients, it’s an important step to
take to track the progress of your
website over a certain period of time.
EVALUATING
PHASE 5
After a run through this process we
need to make sure we’re driving
growth - understanding data,
analytics and visualizations are key
to scaling your campaign.

120. PHASE 5
EVALUATING

121. The “5 Phases” of an SEO Campaign
PHASE 1
LEARNING
Breaking down our evergreen approach
PHASE 2
IMPROVING
PHASE 3
BUILDING
PHASE 4
PROMOTING
PHASE 5
EVALUATING

122. Campaign EVALUATION Process
DATA
AGGREGATION
REPORTING
TESTING
This is what we’re going to cover in this phase:
SCALING

123. SEO testing and CRO
SEO is an iterative, ongoing process
We want to be continuously looking for new
opportunities to improve, outside of ongoing content
creation and link building.
There’s a number of tests you can setup to do
so...
If you are in a brutally competitive space, it’s worth your
time to setup test (i.e. titles, metas, on page elements) to
gauge their impact in the SERPs.
1
2
Now it also the time to setup CRO testing of
key landing pages
Using Google Optimize to test on page elements to see
which drives conversions and rankings.
3
https://ftf.agency/seo-split-testing/

124. Building an SEO report
GA and GSC give you what you need
We can get more surgical and advanced with CRM and
paid data, but for standard SEO reporting (assuming
everything is setup properly) GA and GSC get it done.
You can pay for a tool, but Data Studio is the
$h!t
I’m going to walk you through the report we built, then
give you special access to it if you stick around to the end
of this webinar.
1
2

126. WEBINAR

127. FTF.agency