Kateryna Zolotaryova, the founder and head of Site24 Digital agency, explained the role of SEO in business promotion, the criteria and reasons for successful and unsuccessful projects, and how Worksection helps manage the work of SEO specialists.
Tell us about the company and what you do
We are Site24, engaged in SEO promotion and PPC advertising of client projects. Throughout our history, we have increased Google traffic for more than 800 businesses in Ukraine and abroad.
Our clients are Ukrainian and foreign businesses that offer what people google and are ready to develop their sites. We don’t tie ourselves to a specific niche: among our clients are online electronics stores, medical clinics, IT companies and many projects in other areas.
What is the current role of SEO in business promotion and who is SEO best for?
SEO works great with sites of typical mass-market goods and services with a medium and large product range. But, unfortunately, there are businesses where SEO won’t do any good, if, for example, the site has a very small product range, or you sell some unique product that people are not yet looking for.
We adjust the websites to user search demand and Google’s requirements, so let’s say, if people are googling “buy a refrigerator”, and you sell refrigerators with a big enough range, we have every chance to get top positions in Google and regular sales from this channel.
A big advantage of SEO is that if you compare all sales channels on most websites, then most often it is search promotion that gives the lowest cost of attracting a new customer. And if it is done well enough, then even if you stop working with SEO specialists, the site will retain its position in Google and you’ll keep getting customers. But in the beginning you really need to work hard.
What are the specifics and success criteria of your projects?
The main criterion of success for us is growth in Google traffic and in our clients’ sales, as well as their satisfaction with these successes and our work.
When it comes to the length of the projects, things aren’t so simple here. The first 2 months are critical for our work: during them, we figure out whether our changes can be implemented on the website (if we’re talking about SEO promotion) and whether the first 2 months of contextual advertising will show an acceptable cost per lead. If this critical period goes well, we usually work together for quite a long time. Sometimes it takes six months to a year to reach the maximum possible result, and sometimes it’s ongoing cooperation month after month.
Unsuccessful projects also happen, as in any team that is not ashamed to admit it. The main reason is miscommunication at the start, when we don’t get the message across or the client doesn’t want to hear realistic forecasts, risks, or time needed to achieve results. It might be difficult if the client is unwilling to implement the necessary changes on the website.
“Worksection was a match at first sight…”
We brought Worksection into our work literally from the very first month of our work as an agency. I knew that project tasks and finances could not be managed “in a slapdash way”, because this was the basis of healthy teamwork. And while at the freelance stage you can do with self-task management through Google Docs, professional teamwork should be effective. Therefore, we immediately started looking for a convenient task manager for ourselves, and Worksection was a match at first sight.
List of tasks in Worksection
How does Worksection help you at work?
The system lets us manage all project and internal tasks effectively and without anything slipping through the cracks, as well as understand how long specific tasks take and calculate the internal profitability of projects.
We brought Worksection into use so quickly that the team had no problems with the transition. We simply stopped writing tasks on scraps of paper and started recording them in the system. And every new employee joined an already-established internal culture of working with projects.
What, in your opinion, is the key to a successful project?
The secret of a successful project is quality management, planning, delegation, and control — of the project as a whole and of individual tasks. Mistakes will inevitably happen, and the only way to avoid them is to not work at all. The main thing is to analyze why the actual situation deviates from the plan, so you can draw conclusions and make adjustments.
Would you recommend Worksection to other business owners?
I have indeed recommended Worksection to colleagues several times and will continue to do so. In my opinion, it’s a high-quality, simple, and clear system that helps manage projects and achieve success.