One of the shared beliefs that my co-founder (John) and I had when starting our consultancy Canonicals was that we deliver the work that’s needed, not simply the work we enjoy doing, is cost effective or can be scaled inexpensively..
We both have worked with several SEO agencies over our time in-house, and broadly speaking we have nothing but good things to say about the ones we did. That being said, when working in-house, it can often feel like you’re having to translate between the business and what the agency is built to fulfil.
This is not a criticism of agencies, it’s just an acknowledgement of the fact that they need to maintain their margins, which means it’s good business practice to standardise and template their offering.
It’s for this reason we are set up as a SEO & GEO consultancy; the difference being that we handle the work ourselves and function more as an extension of your team rather than a bigger ecosystem you are working with.
The Passage Framework
An example benefit of working with a consultancy is we are happy moulding around your business, which means we can and will tailor what we do to fit your company, as-is.
As part of establishing how we can support your business, we use a framework we call the “Passage Framework” to imbibe and focus our work based on where our impact would be most usefully focused.
The Passage Framework has as its aim to do the following:
- Survey - Review the website and research the industry so that you can understand the context of the business
- Pathfinder - Use the survey data to present options, outlining what needs to be done across the business and website to be successful.
- Passage Plan - Establish and agree a route forward, including waypoints and contingencies
- Under Way - Work begins, we set about doing the work required to create growth and also look to maintain the website through regular audits and check-ins.
The nautical amongst you may have realised that all of the above come from sailing, which we deliberately did as the idea of planning a voyage we felt worked as imagery.
Below I will explore each section a little further, explaining what is the point and what is typically included.
The Survey
Maritime meaning: A marine survey is a professional inspection of a boat’s condition, structure and systems; which results in a report that details any defects and safety concerns that are present and should be considered.
When we first engage with a client we begin with our discovery audits, reviewing the technical, on-page, offsite and behavioural and trading data of the website. These audits aim to help us understand what is broken, what can be improved, and what is the real life context of the website - so that as part of our planning - we are realistic about how feasible different options are.
The Pathfinder
Meaning: A person or system that figures out based on the terrain ahead, where and how to get to where you want to go.
Armed with data from the Survey, we then create our Pathfinder reports which turn data and notes into accessible insights. Saying to a leadership team that your HREFLang contains non-indexable pages is not as clear as saying if you want to target international markets, there will be a small amount of technical work needed in how you annotate pages.
This is where the benefit of the Pathfinder report lives - we translate the insights from our audits into accessible language such as competitiveness being “High”, “Medium” or “Low”, or an opportunity being “Low hanging” based on the client’s link profile, technical performance and the relative competitiveness of the SERPs.
Our aim with our Pathfinder reports is not necessarily to present an answer, instead we want to build a model for how the AI and SEO world works for a client - so that we can both work together on where is the most eligible to achieve their goals.
Passage Plan
Meaning: The agreed route, waypoints and contingencies the crew are going to work towards to make the trip successful.
Our Passage Plan is a roadmap of deliverables that show how we plan to overcome each of the issues highlighted in our Pathfinder report. These plans include both how we will improve the website, and how we will keep it in good working order. It’s our belief that Algorithmic Momentum is a significant part of being successful over time - so we prioritise preventative maintenance alongside new efforts.
Under way
Meaning: When a ship lifts its anchor, unties its moorings and drifts into the water - it is said to be under way.
With all our planning done, we now begin to support the delivery of the work. As mentioned above, we split our work into Growth and Maintenance, so to ensure that performance doesn’t degrade as we deliver the improvement work we have planned.
That breaks down the steps in our framework, and hopefully colours in the “what” and the “why” behind each of the steps.
If you or your team would like to find out more about our Passage Framework, and the steps throughout, please do not hesitate to get in touch.