# What Does an SEO Actually Do Every Day? New vs. Ranking vs. Established Sites

Channel: Edward Sturm
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYvw7AssP1k
Duration: 15 min
Language: English
Words: 2736
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/lYvw7AssP1k

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[0:00] What does an SEO actually do day to day? Most beginners I've talked to, myself included, end up doing content SEO almost exclusively. A video listing everything an SEO should be doing daily, weekly, and monthly would help people like me understand what we're missing and how to structure our time better. This was a question I got over email from Geet Gera. Shout out Geet Gera. So, this episode is what an SEO does day to day. The thing is, it's going to be different depending on if you have a new site, if you have a ranking site, and if you have an established site. So, I'm breaking this all down into those three

[0:40] categories and we're going to start with if you have a new site. And if you have a new site, this is what you're doing. You're doing everything. You are wearing all hats. So, what does this actually mean? You are planning the site, thinking of the information architecture, the internal linking, the sub folder structure. You're informing this all on keyword research. The keywords that you want to target are going to inform the sub folders that you're going to use. You're deciding how these sub folders will be linked to. If I'm starting a new site and it's not an EMD or something where it's just targeting one keyword, I want to grow it

[1:14] into a major brand. If I'm starting a new site, I am thinking for the future. How will this site turn into a huge brand and what types of sub folders do I want to start with? Where will they be linked to? How can I structure my site in a way that I can scale it in the future. Also thinking about not having orphan pages. You want all of your pages to be linked to from somewhere, especially the pages that are targeting keywords. You are looking at competitors, seeing what they are doing well and what they're doing poorly, learning from them, seeing key pages to have. Different niches have different

[1:51] pages. If you're doing an affiliate site, for example, you might have a page like FTC disclosure in your footer. You're doing a ton of research into the language people use to write about your brand, what people want, what people care about, what people don't care about. So much research. And I'll get into keyword research in a second, but you're also doing you're probably handling branding or working with the branding people because you need searchers and users of your site to trust you, to want to return to your site, and want to transact with you. The goal of doing SEO for a lot of people depends on your business model. Maybe

[2:30] you're a publisher, so it's different. But overall, you want to make money. And if you have a site that people trust, that people want to return to, you're a lot more likely to make money. And you're more likely to address positive ranking factors like reducing pogo sticking, so you don't have searchers going back to the search results to look for something better because they can't use your site or because they don't trust your site. This also includes UI/UX. You want to make sure you don't have pop-ups that are triggering too early that's going to make people click away. Or any other barriers that would prevent people from getting the

[3:04] information that they're searching for. And yes, you are doing tons of keyword research. So you're looking at what competitors are ranking for, targeting under targeted bottom of funnel keywords. If you're selling something, you're going to be doing a lot of targeting for under targeted keywords because you're a new site. You don't have a lot of authority. You can't go after the highest volume keywords yet, which will probably be the most targeted keywords. So you are doing a tons of keyword research to find the under targeted keywords to rank for. You're also going after easy top of funnel keywords, and then once these pages are ranking, you're internal linking these

[3:42] pages to more competitive keywords, especially keywords that will make you money. Because when you have a page that ranks, it builds its own authority, and you You internal link that page to other pages that are targeting more competitive keywords, so those pages have more authority and then they can rank. Most of your time though, when you have a new site, is going to be doing link building. Two days ago I did an 18-minute episode on link building, episode 1,120 of this podcast, you don't need 1,000 backlinks to rank on Google, here's what actually works. But yeah, if you have a new site, you are doing daily scheming,

[4:18] thinking of ways to get great backlinks that also pass referral traffic. So like maybe you start a podcast and you're inviting small bloggers and people in your niche on your podcast so you can create relationships with them and then get backlinks and connections from them. You're doing all sorts of creative things to get backlinks and then basic things like submitting to directories, help a reporter outsource a sources, pitching journalists. I would really recommend that podcast episode just for a ton of different backlink ideas. But when you have a new site, link building

[4:50] again will take up most of your time. You'll also be doing some other forms of marketing that drive branded searches and direct traffic. If you're getting a lot of backlinks without these things, without branded searches and direct traffic, then your business will look less legitimate. You're doing technical tests to make sure your site is crawlable and that it's fast. So you'll probably want to look at your SEO metadata in a list. You can use Screaming Frog, Screaming Frog is excellent, testing pages in Google Search Console, or just looking at your plugins to make sure they're not creating any empty pages like archive pages that do nothing for users or for

[5:27] SEO. You'll be tracking your keywords, so setting up campaigns to track your keywords, keeping detailed notes of what you have done, what you are working on, what you are considering, what you are testing and the results of what you are testing. You could be doing parasite SEO too, so ranking with video is really the best for parasite SEO right now, but you may also develop other parasite properties like a medium account or an X account. And so after you've been posting for a while on medium or X, now your posts from these platforms can also rank for your target keywords. And if you're doing this well and you're

[6:03] building brands on these platforms, you can also use these to drive branded searches and direct traffic. So that's a ton right there. If you have a brand new site, you are wearing all hats. Now, if you have a ranking site, you have a site that is now ranking and you are making money. This is what you are doing. You are looking through Google Search Console and targeting relevant keywords that you are already ranking for and you're targeting these keywords with existing pages and new pages. Episode 1104 of this podcast, the one-hour SEO update that makes your best pages rank for more keywords, that will show you

[6:36] how to do this. You are internal linking from ranking pages to pages targeting more competitive keywords. Cuz now you have a ton of pages that are ranking and so you are making sure that your authority is flowing to other important pages on your site. You are starting to do keyword arbitration, making sure that if you have multiple pages relevant to a keyword, the page that best matches search intent is the one that is ranking well for that keyword. If you want to learn how to do this, episode 1030 of this podcast, Keyword Cannibalization, Why Your SEO Pages Compete and How to

[7:12] Fix It, that will show you what to do. But yeah, you are removing keyword cannibalization. You're starting to do that. Now, you're at a stage where you're making money and so you are starting to diversify in your marketing, so you are not just an SEO site. You need to have signals that real businesses have to avoid penalties and to make sure that your backlinks continue to be meaningful. Google hates sites that literally just look like SEO sites. Every great SEO says diversify your marketing. And the thing is, as the SEO for a ranking site that is making money, you will be informing other marketing efforts on the language to use

[7:52] to make sure that you are maximizing topical authority with your offsite marketing. If you have all these different marketing efforts and they're saying the same thing about your business, that is enforcing what your business is about. And again, like I said with if you have a brand new site, this could be similar to parasite SEO, where you are working with other marketing teams because the marketing that they are doing can rank for your target keywords. Your video person who's putting up Instagram reels, those reels can and should be targeting keywords because Instagram reels rank phenomenally with SEO and the descriptions that you have on an Instagram reel inform AI. You will

[8:30] especially be working with public relations people, that could be in-house or that could be with agencies. You'll probably be working with a bunch of different agencies. You are still doing link building, but now you are paying for marketing efforts that get you higher quality links like sponsorships. Now you have a budget, so you can sponsor events in your niche. And then when you're negotiating those sponsorships, ask to appear in the newsletter for whatever it is that you're sponsoring. Ask to appear on the social media for whatever it is that you're sponsoring. Don't just try to get the dofollow backlink from the event that you are sponsoring. Try to have

[9:06] that sponsorship lead to referral traffic and branded searches and top of mind awareness so people think of what you do and then they think of you. You are still doing technical tests. Basically, the bigger you get, the more likely it is that things will go wrong. You might have a staging site that is not no index and that is ranking. You may be blocking key pages in your robots.txt or a sub full subfolders may be blocked in your robots.txt. You may simply have checked on no index on pages in your SEO plugin. Screaming Frog will be your best friend to look through all of this stuff and you will constantly be

[9:44] doing tests and looking at SEO metadata, your robots.txt, Screaming Frog, all of these things. Everything can go wrong and most things will go wrong. You are also, if you have a ranking site, you are improving pages that were ranking well and have been falling off because you are getting the keyword data week over week and you've been seeing, "Oh my gosh, this page targeting this keyword is not doing as well anymore." And then you go into the page to see why. "Oh, it's because things have changed and this page doesn't have up-to-date information anymore and so people are leaving the page." Or, "Yeah, this page ranked because it targeted the keyword

[10:20] well, but it didn't address search intent properly and now because it's been several months after I made this page, I can look at it with fresh eyes and discern that and then fix it." And now with a ranking site, you are going after higher volume, more lucrative keywords that require more authority, which you now have. And then, finally, if you have an established site, you are doing everything from the previous section from ranking a site, but it's on a way bigger scale. And you are doing a lot of managing. You're managing SEOs under you who are doing keyword research, who are doing keyword arbitration. You're doing a lot of

[10:57] keyword arbitration. You're removing a ton of keyword cannibalization. You're doing content pruning, removing pages that aren't relevant to your core business or pages that are just completely thin and don't answer search intent. Keyword research is a lot more intense now and you are looking at thousands and thousands of keywords and prioritizing which ones to optimize for. Prioritization will be major now. You are covering the whole funnel in your niche. When you started with your site, you were mostly going after bottom of funnel keywords. Now you're going after top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. And you're trying to stick to your niche, or maybe you're

[11:34] expanding into new adjacent niches and you are bridging your topical authority from your existing niche into those new niches. And then you also want to make sure that your offsite efforts, your marketing, your link building, are informing the topical authority for this new niche that you are going into. With an established site, again, everything will go wrong. You will have a lot of content marketers, agencies, SEOs, and other people who put up meaningless pages, cannibalizing pages, they made technical mistakes, they did some programmatic SEO play, they put out tons of AI generated pages. Things are going to block search engine bots, things are going to stop other important pages from

[12:14] getting indexed. You need to make sure this stuff isn't happening. And if it does happen, then you remove it right away and fix the offending pages or the offending subfolders. You're also going to be making sure that you're not paying for super expensive SEO and marketing tools that you don't need. This will happen. I promise you that will happen that with an established site, you will be spending so much money on big marketing SaaS tools that you do not need. SEO and marketing SaaS tools. And with an established site, this is the exciting part. You are going after the highest volume, most lucrative head keywords that require the most

[12:52] authority. Similar to how IBM is ranking for AI or AI agent or what is AI. These are literally things that IBM is ranking for. an episode about this, episode 1012 of this podcast, how IBM took over AI keywords on Google and what you can steal. With an established site, you are doing the biggest viral stunts and getting backlinks from the biggest publications. You have connections to top journalists in your niche, or you're working with the PR people in-house or agencies who have those connections, and you are really making sure, again, that all of your marketing is relevant to your existing topical authority or the topical authority in new niches that you

[13:32] want to build towards. And overall, with an established site, it is just a balancing act between fixing things that inevitably go wrong and then creating pages targeting the best keywords possible. So, that is what you do day-to-day as an SEO if you have a brand new site, a ranking site, and an established site. If you want to learn how to find the best keywords, the keywords that bring you money, keywords at the very bottom of the

[13:58] funnel. I have a course, thing on my shirt, compactkeywords, compactkeywords.com. It shows you how to find these bottom-of-funnel keywords, how to target them with conversion-based SEO landing pages, how to structure your site for these pages, how to do information architecture, a lot of what we talked about in this episode, how to do a technical SEO audit to make sure you don't have any obvious mistakes that are blocking your SEO, how to do link building. I put everything into this course. It is the whole thing. And I've had people across new sites, ranking sites, and established sites use this course and love this course. So, that is

[14:33] at compactkeywords.com. This is episode 1,122 of this podcast, 1,122 days in a row doing this show. If you watched this on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening. And I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye now.

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