How to start a SEO promotion on the principle of "Lean startup"

Original author: Tim Allen
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Do you remember your very first day at the office? The moment when you, a beginner, come to work for the first time? This is exactly what, as I recall, did quite a bit here in Distilled. In addition to the welcoming smiles of my colleagues, there was my desktop equipped with a laptop, monitor and Kindle. A library of recommended reading materials was uploaded to the Kindle, including The Lean Startup .



As I read The Lean Startup, I asked myself why Distilled recommended this book to me and how does it relate to SEO?

What is The Lean Startup?


The Lean Startup is a book written by Eric Rhys that incorporates best practices in product development and business development that have been applied by companies around the world, such as Kodak, Toyota, Dropbox and Eric Rhys own company - IMVU .

The book The Lean Startup (Lean Startup) talks about entrepreneurship, productive through the use of non-standard techniques, resulting in business success.

After reading The Lean Startup, I decided to check if some of the principles here in Distilled are applicable, and how they can help in the field of SEO.

The power of small batch


Small batch work is a great way to increase productivity and avoid future problems in the production chain. They create conditions under which problems can be detected in the early stages, and under which further progress is impossible until a solution to these problems is found.

The Lean Startup (Lean Startup) demonstrates the power of small series through an experiment in which letters are distributed over a hundred envelopes. On each envelope it is necessary to indicate the address, affix the stamp, put a letter in it and seal it. There are two ways to do this:
  1. Collapse all letters, then put down addresses on all envelopes, then stick stamps, put all letters in envelopes, and finally seal all envelopes.
  2. Completely complete all the steps with one envelope before moving on to the next (single item stream).

The second method is an illogical way of completing a task. Our instincts tell us to complete the task using the first method, with the belief that we will achieve greater efficiency by improving the performance of simple repetitive actions. However, when working with large volumes, our intuition does not take into account the additional time required to sort, stack and move this huge pile of papers. In the experiment, the illogical method turned out to be faster , and this applies not only to this test, but also to the following examples.

One of the last stages of this whole process was embedding a letter in an envelope. However, what if at this stage we find that the envelopes are too small? It turns out that we lost a huge amount of time indicating the address and pasting stamps on one hundred envelopes. In the case of the flow of single products, we would have discovered this problem after the first envelope!

Use small series instead of large volumes


One of the main problems that we, as SEO'shniki, may face is getting stuck at some stage of the production line. Wait for one person to complete the previous task, while we wait for drawings from designers or data from researchers, and all that we have been waiting for so long suddenly comes to us at once. This creates periods of high and low productivity, the opposite of a uniform workflow.

For example, I have a client who owns bluewidgets.com; he wants to create a localized landingpage (special start page) for all the cities where they sell their products.

The content list consists of the top 200 cities for buying bluewidgets - widgets, and the writing of this content is given to freelancers. An instruction is written and, together with a list of cities, sent to copywriters. A couple of weeks later, my mailbox is bursting with descriptions of 200 cities, each of which consists of 400-500 words. Upon closer examination, I find out that they misunderstood my instructions. Perhaps this instruction was not clear enough, but it would take a huge amount of effort to edit the entire material.

So how do you avoid this kind of problem? This is where we can use the flow of single products. As in the previous task with envelopes, it may happen that this method will require more time and effort, however, we already know that the process as a whole will become more efficient.



Initially send freelancers less work, perhaps even just one article. As soon as this article is ready, it returns to editing. The feedback regarding this article is sent back with the wishes that should be taken into account in the next article.

Despite the fact that this system may become more time dependent in the early stages, minor errors will be fixed with each cycle, creating the premise that they are less likely to repeat in subsequent articles. In general, due to the smaller percentage of errors made, the speed of creating, editing and accepting content will increase as a result of a more efficient system.

Minimum Sustainable Product (MVP) for SEO


A minimal viable product, by checking assumptions, helps start the process of gathering information as quickly as possible. Instead of spending a huge amount of time developing a product, features or advertising companies, only to find out that there is no demand for them, we can issue a simplified version and collect feedback from real consumers in a shorter time, and thereby avoid possible losses.

Not so long ago, Distilled made a small scheme for Simply Business called Simply Business Step-by-step Guide to your Social Media Success. This is a great example of how we SEOs can use the principles of MVP.

If we strictly adhered to the principles of MVP, then perhaps our initial action was to conduct smoke tests (smoke testing). The idea behind the smoke test is to find out if the product is interesting to users or not. To start getting information as quickly as possible, we could start by interviewing a group of small business representatives, “Would you find a guide that describes the best ways to conduct advertising campaigns on social networks?” This can be a really useful technique for getting feedback on the assumptions you made about your product before investing extra time, effort, or money into it. However, the answer could be a peremptory “no.” Would this stop us from writing this guide?

It is very important that when creating MVP, he has a chance of success. During the survey, representatives of small businesses may not have an idea about the entire depth of this content, for this reason, making false assumptions about our product, they may misunderstand its essence.

Create! Rate it! Learn!


A guide to successful social media promotion was the MVP for a possible series of similar products. Distilled continued to use a lean approach to the product, and, like MVP, he created content for himself, answering questions from business representatives. As a result, we created a catalog of really excellent content, which we thought was necessary for business representatives to successfully conduct advertising campaigns on social networks. We produced a manual that was convenient to use and which freed customers from the need to conduct their own research.



The feedback received during the development of this content was subsequently used to improve future products. Firstly, from the data we collected, we learned that people really need this kind of information. Secondly, from the comments and feedback that Simply Business received, we found that people and business representatives find the product useful.

This allowed Simply Business to decide on the continuation of the creation of this kind of content, investing additional time and money in it. Today, using the original MVP concept, they are developing guides with the addition of in-house video, such as the Guide to WordPress for Small Businesses .

For SEO's, MVP can be a great way to get incredibly fast feedbacks on your assumptions. In this particular case, Distilled believed that there was a potential demand for social media leadership. Applying the basics of MVP, we can begin to get rid of unnecessary costs, and using the resulting feedback will help us in organizing subsequent advertising campaigns. A similar feedback will give us tips on where we should possibly make a turn (turn-pivot will be described later).

As a child, constantly ask “why” ...!


At LinkLove 2012, Will Crichlow spoke on Mediocre To Great (mediocre to great) (you can watch the full video on DistilledU ). He touched on the principles mentioned in The Lean Startup, which we apply when we focus on a specific work, and they are called “The Five Whys” (Five “Why”). Here's how Will explains the meaning of the Five “Why”:

The idea is that when something goes wrong to get to the source of the problem you need to ask “why” five times, just like a child. In fact, our outreachcampaign (promotion company) does not work. Why? No one is responding to our emails. Why? Because the content in question is located on a suspicious commercial domain. Why? In the end, you get to the source of the problem, solve it, and everything gets better. That is the idea.


This does not mean that “why” needs to be asked exactly five times, sometimes three or four times may be enough to determine the right direction and identify the source of the problem.

The main idea of ​​the Five “Why” is to direct efforts to eliminate the most problematic symptoms.

The Lean Startup book describes how the use of Five “Why” prompted IMVU to create a staff training program. Imagine this situation, they begin to receive complaints about their new product:
  1. The release of a new version of the product blocks a specific function from users. - Why? One of the servers crashed.
  2. Why did the server crash? Because the little-known subsystem was used incorrectly.
  3. Why was it used incorrectly? The engineer did not know how to use it correctly.
  4. Why didn't he know? Because he was not taught this.
  5. Why wasn’t he taught this? Because his manager does not consider it necessary to train newcomers, since he and his team are too busy.

What seemed at the beginning a purely technical malfunction turned into a human error, and the root cause of this error was a lack of training. IMVU could just fix the technical error and end there. However, with the next update, this engineer might again have problems. Having revealed the source of the problem, we can try to prevent the repetition of the same mistakes.

Remember that this is Five “Why,” not Five “You are to blame”


When you ask Five “Why,” it’s normal that something may go wrong and the results may be unexpected. People put their time and effort into this project and all this with good intentions. This can make them take a defensive position; they may try to shift responsibility to another department or find some other reason.

To avoid such “ambushes”, make sure that when identifying the source of the problem, everyone she touched was in the same room. This can be a daunting task, given the incredibly busy schedule of participants, but it is very important because an absent employee can easily become a scapegoat. When the accusations are voiced, it is important that the most senior (ex officio) employee reassures everyone:
If an error has occurred, then it is our common fault that we so easily allowed this to happen.

Remember that the goal of this process is to identify the source of the problem, not to find the culpable employee or department. The goal is to develop a system that will prevent the repetition of the same mistakes and that will not allow you or your client to be in a similar situation again.

The benefits of using Five Whys in SEO need not be limited to just finding the sources of problems and their solutions. They can become an assistant in project planning, whether it is an article for a blog or something larger. The application of the Five “Why” can be a great way to confirm and justify future decisions.

Turn or continue in the same direction?


The last thing I would like to talk about today is at what point when you are working on the company you say: “it didn’t work”? What if the reward for all previous efforts is just around the corner, or what if the reward never comes?

Eric Ries summarizes this decision by making the following statement: “If we do not change the direction of our business model, we do not progress. This is a sure sign that the time has come to turn. ”

We, SEO'shnikov, are lucky that we are surrounded by a lot of information and analytical data that can be collected in the shortest possible time. We can notice what works and what doesn't. This allows us to make informed decisions, noting the positive and negative impacts from the very beginning, as well as make the necessary turns to adjust our strategy to meet the requirements of users, Google and our customers.

It is very important not to jump from one point of view to a completely different one. The result is only unnecessary overhead. Do not neglect previous experience, use it instead, make turns , and, with the help of this information, improve your future products and strategies.

We have been making such turns for a long time (perhaps unconsciously). We constantly have to make turns due to changes made by Google in our search algorithms. Gone are the days of rewriting and various network directories. We had to change our strategies and focus on providing quality content, making the Internet a place full of pages that users really want to see!

I sincerely believe that we can all be more productive and help our customers become more productive by using at least one of these methods.

The translation was made as part of the Tolstoy Summer Camp startup school and the MetaBeta project .

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