← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Illustrating SEO Impact To Executives
00:27:45
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- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search Podcast, Tyson Stockton hey, what's going on?
- [00:44]
Tyson Stockton
My name is Tyson from Freevisible IO. Joining me today is Sharon Perdue, who's the Director of SEO and Content Performance at Autodesk. Autodesk is the global leader in design and make technology, empowering architects, builders, Engineers, designers, manufacturers, 3D artists and production teams. Yesterday, Sharon and I talked about gaining SEO buy in within large enterprises, and today we're continuing the conversation and we're discussing illustrating SEO impact to executives.
- [01:16]
Podcast Announcer
This podcast is also sponsored by ahrefs. What if I told you that you could monitor your website's SEO health backlinks and organic rankings at no costs? Sounds too good to be true. Well, it's not, because my friends at Ahrefs just launched Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. Ahrefs new Webmaster Tools product quickly helps you improve your site's visibility by pointing solutions to over 100 technical issues that might be holding your search performance down. Plus, AWT monitors for backlinks so you'll know the most linked to pages and how those links are affecting your rankings. And AWT shares what keywords your website ranks for and compares how you stack up against competitors for key metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, and traffic value. Look, monitoring your website used to require multiple expensive tools, and now, thanks to Ahrefs, that's not the case anymore because AWT will help you monitor your SEO health, backlinks and keywords for free. And no, it's not one of those 14 day free trial offers. It's a powerful site audit tool that will keep working for you for free. So check out Ahrefs webmaster tools@ahrefs.comAWT that's a H R E F S.comAWT with.
- [02:34]
Tyson Stockton
That, here's my conversation with Sharon Perdue, the Director of SEO and Content Performance at Autodesk. Sharon, welcome back.
- [02:42]
Sharon Perdue
Thanks for having me. Again.
- [02:43]
Tyson Stockton
I feel like we covered a lot of ground yesterday and it's a good precursor to this conversation and we were talking about how we can get buy in for SEO across an organization. Challenges between different parts of the business. And we spend a lot of time kind of talking about speaking the broader business language of an organization. And I feel like that's going to be a common theme in this as well. So, like first, kind of like setting the stage for the listeners when we're talking about illustrating SEO impact to executives, like, how does that differ than maybe how we might talk amongst ourselves about SEO impact?
- [03:28]
Sharon Perdue
Yeah, I think the number one thing to remember and always have at the top of mind is they have very busy schedules and time is precious to them. So when we speak amongst ourselves, you know, those conversations look very different. And yesterday we spoke about, you know, staying out of the weeds. And it's so important that we keep that in mind when we're speaking to execs or illustrating to execs, because they don't have the time. They're, they're off from meeting to meeting to meeting. And even then, you know, the, just the mental commitment they can even give in those meetings. They've got so much going on. And so generally when you're illustrating the impact or even asking for that buy in or the resources, you've got to be very clear and concise. And often what I recommend is you start with the ask first or the punchline first. So if you're presenting a result, get straight to it, right? Unless you've got a really great story that you can tell to kind of do that storytelling and get the excitement up in the room. You know, if you've got five minutes to present, know that you've got five minutes. Get right to the bottom line, what was the result? And you know, if you're presenting slides, for example, keep those short and sweet. When you think about SEOs, how we optimize a page, we do the same thing with slides. And so when we think about the header of a slide, that is our H1, that should have the, you know, everything that you've done that should summarize it, you know, as exciting as you can make it. But the thing that I hate is when I see a slide and it's just like your rear data for this as the header. You know, make the header your punchline. What did you accomplish? What did you achieve? If something didn't go great, what did you learn? And then you, you tell a very simple story. Keep, keep the bullets short and sweet. Do not, you know, word vomit all over the slides. I cannot tell you the number of VPs that have given feedback like this over the years. They're like, too many words, Too many words, too many words. Keep it short and sweet. One or two visualizations at most. And always cite your data sources. I was in a meeting a couple weeks ago that there were several senior leaders in the room, and something was being presented and there was no data source. And the amount of picking apart person unfortunately had to go through because people wanted to know, what. What is the data? What does it mean? What's the context? So I think to start off again, remembering, with ZECs, they don't have a lot of time. Keep it short and sweet. Start with your punchline or how it impacted the bottom line. I think context setting is also important too. And so if you're gonna. If you're gonna show an improvement, a lift, let's say we. We did this thing and we increased traffic 5% or we had engage content engagement improved by this. They don't know if that's good or bad. Right? There's no point in saying you did this unless you can give some other kind of context or benchmark for it. So be prepared to also have that in the visual, have that in the debrief. Let them know, like, hey, what did we expect? You know, we achieved this, but was this above expectations? Was it below? Share that as well. And then always, always, always bring it back to the bottom line. What was the return on investment? What was the roas? What was the romy? You know, whatever your organization and especially your CMO is most interested in, try and bring that data if you can. And then I would say the final thing is, what's next? They want to know what you're doing about it. You know, if you learn something, okay, how are you putting it into action? If you need something from them, what do you need? And so again, they don't have a lot of time. Keep it short and sweet. Talk about what you did, what's the context for it, why is it meaningful to them? And then what's your next step?
- [07:23]
Tyson Stockton
Those are great recommendations. And like, the other day we had a internal training session for our team, and I brought in CEO that I know and just kind of respect in the industry and, you know, brought her in to talk about the same kind of subject. And one of the things that she said, which echoes kind of your recommendation here, is the farther up the food chain, so to speak, that you go, the tighter and shorter attention to this. You know, it's like when you get to someone that's at the executive level, at your point, they have a lot of other priorities, things that are being jungled. A lot of people are trying to get their time with the individual. And so making it short and sweet and direct to the point is I think a really, really helpful reminder. And it's also, I think having that kind of sliding scale of knowing the farther up you go in an organization, the more, the tighter that that message should be. And it's also a clever kind of call out of yours of using the heading tags for the presentation of something, you know, that we can relate to as SEOs in the work as well.
- [08:40]
Sharon Perdue
Yeah, optimize that header. Always, always, always.
- [08:42]
Tyson Stockton
Now, do you find yourself like within an organization like yours you mentioned last episode? Do you have a lot of silos? It's a massive organization. Have you found like that you're changing your message or you're changing your approach at all to executives in different parts of the business? Or is it more of kind of like, yeah, you find the right formula and then this is more of kind of how you apply, you know, regardless of where they're coming from in the org?
- [09:14]
Sharon Perdue
Yeah, absolutely. It's the first. You've got to adapt to the organization or the division. You've got to adapt to the leader and the audience as well and kind of what, what are their hot buttons? What are they most interested in? What excites them? And sometimes that hard, that's hard to do because you may be many levels removed. So if you're an SEO strategist and you're, you're on specific product, you don't always get the opportunity to have face time with VPs and senior directors and even folks in other divisions. And so what's very helpful is to expand your network and leverage your team as well because your network may not be somebody else's network. So it's important to share the knowledge that you're gaining from different one on ones, different meetings and sharing that amongst yourselves. So one of the things that I like to do and encourage my team to do is just have one on ones with folks from different departments, even if sometimes there's not a direct connection. But the more that you can learn about their team, their organization, their goals and their leaders and don't hesitate to ask if you've built that relationship. What is so and so like? Right? What is this leader like? What is this VP like? What are they passionate about? What do they not like to see? And the more information you can gain because that really helps when you're advocating across different organizations. You're trying to gain the buy in or even present kind of the results of a project. I am frequently asking my leader and my boss, you know, what is happening at his level, what is happening at the CMO level. Any information is so important and it's just, it's just knowing your audience, right? So if you can understand what they're working on, what they're driving towards, the problems that they're having, the more it's going to help you be in sync with either telling your story, getting that visibility or getting the buy in, because you've got to rely maybe on that team to get something done.
- [11:14]
Tyson Stockton
That's such, such a good recommendation there. And that's something that I feel like within SEO you have kind of the hard skills and in a lot of what we're talking about today is more in the soft skills area. And I think how you just describe that too is it reminds me of. Well, in SEO, you're gathering clues, you're gathering evidence as far as how a website responded to an algorithm update, how a website responded to whatever improvements made to the site. But you're going through this kind of data collection, analysis, interpretation and then bringing that to action. It's like, I think what you're describing there is almost like the data gathering on these soft skills where as you're having these conversations with other team leads, with other parts of the business, you're understanding more and more of what's important to them, how they talk, initiatives that may be coming down the pipeline, but it's all part of kind of that data gathering stage. So then you know how to adapt in the various conversations that may be planned out in advance, or they may be, you know, more spontaneous in having just to happen on the spot. And the more and more you do this, I feel like it also just becomes more and more second nature. One last question I would have kind of on this topic and you highlighted yesterday like an example of a training that you have gone through with your team on measurements and reporting towards that. Anything else that you're doing kind of with your team in this regard, as far as how to have these conversations and how to show the value of the work that we're doing, like anything else that you'd have as a recommendation for either other leaders and managers in SEO or even individuals that just want to kind of further fine tune the soft skill side of their practice.
- [13:21]
Sharon Perdue
Yeah, I think it's important to recognize, especially for leaders and managers is your team. They'll be at various levels. So you do have to meet them at the level they're at and help train them in different areas that they need. So I'll have some of my senior team that are just amazing with data and could build Adobe Dashboards in their sleep and can visualize it and can tell a great story. And then I have other folks that do struggle with that a little bit more. And so I think recognizing that you have to conduct that ongoing training, it's only going to be as good as you train. Right. And so being hands on with them, being connected, and even sometimes assisting them when they're going to share out the data, communicating in advance. For example, if I'm going to join a call with one of my team members and you know, maybe they're doing a data review, you know, I'll let them know ahead of time if I want them to lead it, if, if I'm going to lead it and who maybe should hit on what points or you know, if I'm, I want them to lead it, I'm there to support them if needed. And so that growth has to happen with you enabling it, right? How else to show the value? You know, I just making sure they have the training and the soft skills and having those annual, if not more frequently conversations around their development plans and what do they need to grow. And I think you as a manager are going to know the soft skills that they need to improve on and hopefully you're giving that feedback regularly. But if there are skills they would like to learn, finding that training for them if you can, or maybe partnering them with somebody who's a little bit stronger in a project, I think getting them the practice will go a long way.
- [15:00]
Podcast Announcer
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- [16:29]
Tyson Stockton
That'S a good one. I like to use that as well. Where it's like sometimes there is the element of giving like the direct feedback and input but sometimes also just seeing examples and being involved in these examples firsthand I think then also gives someone that may be a little more junior it gives them that template or that like model to look up to. So I think that from my experience can be a really powerful tool too where you know, you don't have to view it as like there's just one track or similar to how we do SEO. There's not just one track of initiatives on this soft skill development. You can have multiple things going at the same time to help foster and build this on like the individual level.
- [17:18]
Sharon Perdue
Yeah. And there's different trainings that you can do and come up with different ideas. One of the things we did for many years in our team and the goal was more to help folks with their presenting skills, to help them with data analysis and sharing out insights. It wasn't as much focused on the illustrating the impact but I think you can leverage those same skills was we did something called an insights challenge. We did this quarterly. Everyone on the team was required to do it every quarter and they got, they got one time a year they could opt out, you know, so if they just weren't feeling it that quarter they could get their one time a pass. And we would rotate the topics. And so what the idea was is we would pick some kind of theme around the websites or SEOs or marketing in general. So one of the ones we did was around campaign pages, so pages that were leveraged more by our paid media team and campaign marketers. And everyone had to kind of dive into some data, pick an idea and show a recommendation, show a strength, show weakness and then they had to come back present it and they got about three minutes to present a couple of slides. And each insights challenge we did, we would invite other marketers or other teams that were responsible in that business area. So for this example we invited leaders from our demand gen side and they were our guest judges. So everyone went through and they would present two or three minutes. Here's my idea, here's my recommendation, here's my find. I just found something really interesting and maybe we should take action on this. And then the judges would all vote and we'd have different categories. One was like diamond in the Rough. Like, this took a lot of effort, a lot of data mining to actually come up with this insider idea. And then they would get rewards. And for me, the purpose was really to help coach people on their presentation skills and their visualization skills. It wasn't so much about, like, what they found and what they dug up, because there were different levels of effort from different team members. But it helped me really kind of give them feedback one on one later and say, hey, like, I really like this, but hey, maybe you needed to optimize your header or maybe you needed to summarize your action steps a little bit better. And it was fun. And we always had great feedback from all the teams we did this with. They were so appreciative. And sometimes we would do it with teams where we just. It wasn't on our remit to necessarily give them a lot of time and resources. Right. Maybe it was a website that was more about community or sustainability, and we didn't have the time. So it was also kind of like a little mini hackathon, if you will, where we, everybody on the team spent a little time and we have different specialists. So someone maybe dove into technical a little bit more and somebody dove into content a little bit more. But the people that we invited, the judges that kind of got something from it. It was always amazing feedback. And then for me, as a leader, it was really kind of getting my team together to have them do something a little outside of their box and to also find coaching opportunities to help them with their presentation skills.
- [20:19]
Tyson Stockton
It's super clever. And I feel like with that too, you get the added bonus, especially from yesterday's conversation, it's like you probably get the added bonus too, of bringing in those guest judges to have just a little more awareness, familiarity, top of mind to SEO. So I feel like you kind of get an additional added bonus in that approach too, by just having the kind of external guests component of the training.
- [20:50]
Sharon Perdue
Absolutely. Yeah. That visibility with teams that we don't always get to work with, but they get to see that my team gets to show off their skills. I would also compete, so sometimes it was. They had to compete against me and I would have to bring it too. And I was very pleased to say that I had several Employees that were able to dethrone me a couple times when I was winning back to back. And that's just. That's a celebration, right? Your team has kind of risen to the level and they've just done an amazing job. That is something really extracurricular, but they've done an amazing job. They've got to kind of strut their skills. And yes, we get to have people outside of our team and other departments that maybe we never have anything to do with that get to see what an amazing team we are.
- [21:34]
Tyson Stockton
Very nice. Very nice. Last question I have, and this one's going to be a little off topic, but I feel like you're in a really good position to offer some value to the listeners on this. But your company, you've been at Autodesk for quite a period of time. And I think I've found myself in my experience, like, working where there is, like, a difference in longevity. And when you're in a role or when you're in a position or when you're at a company and it's, you know, almost like the first couple years, you're learning a ton about that organization and everything, you know, evolving super, super quickly, how ramped up you get to it. But then there's something that happens with those longer tenure in an organization where you really start to learn the nuances and things become second nature. But maybe just as like a vantage point, because I think, you know, other individuals out there, maybe they haven't been in that position or they've had the opportunity to spend as much time in an organization. So maybe for those listening, like, is there anything that you'd share that you feel like you have gained or insights maybe that you've gained by spending the extended period of time with the same organization that you feel like maybe you wouldn't have gotten if you were, you know, jumping between different organizations?
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Sharon Perdue
Yeah, that's a really great question, because I think there's reasons why people stay with companies and there's reasons why people leave outside of career development. Right. And for me, you know, I love the company that I work for. It's an amazing company, amazing culture. The people that I work with are just really nice, great people. We don't. We purposely Autodesk, we try not to hire jerks. Right. It's in our culture we have values. We're even judged upon how well we reflect those behaviors. So that has quite a bit to do with it, you know, and one of the reasons you hear why people bounce around is people generally leave because of Bad bosses. And I would say that's true too. I haven't had some of the best bosses over the years, but I think the learning I take from that is there's always something to learn from somebody. You know, your growth is dependent on what you're learning from people around you, whether they're great at what they do or they're not great at what they do. But I think your question is more around, like, why or what have I gained from being here as long as I have? I don't think it's for everyone. I think especially SEOs. As a, as a leader and a manager in SEOs, I am always very happy and I love that I've had the team that I've had for as long as I have. You don't see that generally in SEO or in paid media or these digital marketing channels. And I think a lot of times people don't want to be pegged into a niche. They want to have broader experiences. Especially, you know, I've run into so many people from the paid media side and our paid media team here at Autodesk, where they want to go off and do different things. They want to do growth marketing, they want to do more general digital marketing. And I think that's amazing. I think generally you're ceiling in these types of roles, especially in SEO. There's not a lot of quick growth in a brand. You're going to see that more in an agency. There's more, I think stability sometimes with, with certain brands. But for me, one of the reasons I would say that I've been here as long as I have outside of the company and the benefits and all that is I have an amazing team and I'm always pleasantly surprised that I don't have the turnover. And I would say they also would say the same reasons I have about why I stay. But I am very invested in them as a manager to help them develop. I have literally had conversations with them saying, like, I know you probably don't want to do SEO forever, and if there are other areas that you're interested in, I am happy to help you get there. My goal is if I can find them another role within the company that they are happy with, they see as career growth, great, let's keep these awesome people in the company. But I think the fact that they understand that as a manager, I'm invested in them, I'm invested in their growth, that actually keeps people around longer. Right. Like, people know that in marketing and in SEO, we go through our ups and downs, we get hit by algorithms and then we have successes. Right. It's not always roses and sunshine. But you know, you see that longevity because people feel really invested in, they feel like you care. You're helping them with these soft skills. If they have desires around learning other technical skills, trying to help them with that too. But I would say those are the reasons not to say that, you know, bouncing around doesn't have its benefits either. One of the best ways to increase your salary. Right. Is to go from company to company. I'm not saying go every six months. Right. That's not always seen as great. But you know, if you've been where you've been for a long time and you're just not seeing that growth, then maybe that is time for a change. So I think it really comes down to a lot of factors. Do you love what you do? Are you appreciated where you're at? Do you feel like you're being compensated the way that you need to? And for me being here as long as I have, you know, I've always felt like my work is not yet done. Like there's always something more that I've never felt like I've been ready to move on. Cause I'm like, oh, I've been trying to do that for two years and we're finally here. So I think there's many, many reasons.
- [27:06]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah. And it's, I think it's just further, further points as well for like the managers or the leaders. Listening to this is spending that extra time with the team and hearing that you have that tenure, that longevity on your team, like one, it's just, I think good evidence of the work that you've been doing. But it's also like just from a business standpoint, like when you have turnover of team members, there's always a development period, there's always, you know, an alchemation, getting familiar to the business and this and that. And so even if you're spending more time on these parts of the business or spending more of your day to day time in this regard, it's ultimately, I think going to save a lot of time or come back, you know, as like, you'll get more out of this than you would put in because of just that time saving that you're getting by onboarding or bringing new people on. Like the more engaged that you can keep your team members, the greater opportunity you have of retaining them and you know, again, like to your point, helping them progress as well.
- [28:19]
Sharon Perdue
Yeah. Like what is that saying? Like there's, there's the managers that are afraid of investing in their people because they'll leave. But what if you don't invest in them and they stay? Right. And I think I firmly believe in that. And I think it's you will always get more from people. You will get more productivity, more commitment from people when they just feel like their manager has invested in them, is supporting them. And it's just really, you know, giving them feedback, being open and honest. You know, sometimes things don't always go the way we want in business and at work. Right. And as much as I can be open and transparent with my team, I am because they appreciate that. They want to kind of know what's happening with different things. And as much as I can keep that upfront with them and let them know they do appreciate that.
- [29:09]
Tyson Stockton
Absolutely. And I think to say, like it is a scenario where you get one of your team members placed in another part of the organization and business, it also means that you're going to have an amazing SEO champion in that part of the business as well. So I think in just the greater evangelizing of SEO, it's, you know, it's a win win from the individual level to even the channel of SEO.
- [29:36]
Podcast Announcer
And a special thanks to Ahrefs for sponsoring this podcast. Monitoring your website used to require multiple expensive tools, but that's not the case anymore. Thanks to Ahrefs because they just launched their Ahrefs Webmaster Tools product which monitors your SEO health, helps you keep track of your backlinks, and gives you the insight into what keywords are performing for free. So check out Ahrefs webmaster tools@ahrefs.comAWT that's Ahrefs A H R E F S.comAWT.
- [30:09]
Tyson Stockton
But with that, that wraps up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. Thanks to Sharon Perdue, Director of SEO and Content Performance at Autodesk, for joining us. If you'd like to contact Sharon, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in her show notes or visit her company's website@autodesk.com if you didn't get a chance to take notes while listening to this podcast, just head over to voiceofsearch.com where we have summaries of all of our episodes, contact information for our guests, and you can also send your topic suggestions or apply to be a guest speaker on the Voice of Search podcast. You can always reach us on our social media handle, where our handle is at voicesofsearch, or you can find me at Tyson_Stockton, LinkedIn's a better one to reach me. And if you haven't subscribed yet and want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your product feed, we're going to publish a new episode every workday. So hit the subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed in the next flying business day. With that, thanks for listening to the podcast and we'll see you in the next episode.