In this week's episode, Miracle Inameti-Archibong, Head of SEO at Erudite Agency, discusses forecasting SEO & showing ROI. We also find out what inspires Miracle and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.

Where to find Miracle:

Website: https://miracleinametiarchibong.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mira_inam

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miracle-inameti-archibong-39168713/

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Episode Sponsor

Massive shout out to Wincher for supporting the WTSPodcast and sponsoring this episode.

Wincher is an extremely powerful and flexible rank tracker that helps you to follow your progress and SEO efforts. Whether you work in an agency or provide solo SEO services, SERP tracking is essential to measure results. The uniqueness of Wincher is in the most accurate data - they update positions every 24 hours and you can update the data manually as well. Wincher offers 14 days of a free trial and an exclusive €30 off for our community. Use the voucher WTS21 to grab the deal.

Where to find Wincher:

Website - https://www.wincher.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/wincher/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/WincherSEO

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/wincher.rank.tracker

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Episode Transcript:

Sarah: Hello and welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, where your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell,  SEO content executive at Holland and Barrett, and the absolutely wonderful Areej AbuAli, who is the Founder of Women in Tech SEO and SEO consultant. We have a wonderful guest joining us today, and that is Miracle Inameti-Archibong, who is Head of SEO at Erudite Agency.

This episode is sponsored by Wincher. Wincher is an extremely powerful and flexible rank tracker that helps you to follow your progress and SEO efforts. Whether you work in an agency or provide solo SEO services, SERP tracking is essential to measure the results.

The uniqueness of Wincher  is in the most accurate data. They update positions every 24 hours and you can update the data manually as well. And today they released a totally new product that will be a competitor to the most famous brands. Check it out. Wincher offers 14 days of  free trial and an exclusive 30 EUR off for our community.

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Areej: How's everything going? How are you doing Sarah today?

Sarah: Oh, I'm buzzing. I don't know if you could tell by how I'm speaking, but I'm really enjoying my morning. It's a whole morning of podcasts recordings, so I'm very much having a wonderful time. How about you?

Areej: Super excited as well. I mean, any chance for me to get to hang out with both you and Miracle is awesome. That sounds like a great Saturday morning, considering that we were not really doing much anymore with lockdown and stuff.

Sarah: Oh gosh, I feel like there should be a rule that COVID isn't mentioned because yeah, I don't know, but hopefully by we're coming to an end, I don't know. I don't know what to say on the matter.

Miracle: Yeah. It's really annoying that just when you're allowed to meet these people in the park, the weather changes drastically. We had snow  and before that it was sunny.

Areej: Miracle. How are things going? We know so much about you because you're such a valuable member of our community and I've met you over two years ago now. But just tell our audience everything there is to know about you and what you do and how you got into SEO.

Miracle: I think I got into SEO. Like most people will. Yeah, just purely by accident. I didn't know what SEO was. I was doing a master's degree in digital media and I did a course in advertising. And then when I finished my course, I did an internship. I started out on PPC.

Funny enough and I didn't really enjoy it. I saw the SEO team and how they were like investigating this, trying to do this. And I had previously read the science of why we shop. And I was really interested in the psychological aspect of why people buy stuff and how to convince them to buy stuff.

And so SEO just seemed more investigative to me and more and more varied. And so I just. Gradually I gradually moved to the SEO team and yeah, the rest is history. I think I've been doing this now for over 10 years. Always, you know, I've always worked the agency side. And so I've worked with countless, but I forget which clients have worked with until we're doing like a pitch for a new client.

Areej: Do you have a favorite sector or industry or a type of website that you enjoy working on?

Miracle: I would say, I mean, I would always say I love all my clients, but definitely like things that interest me. For instance, if I have a home brand that has like homeware products, that will be interesting. If you have someone that does food, you know, things that you use every day are so much more interesting to do, like keyword research and content ideation than I had done it. Pine that feels like fridge components, those, and he was like a very interesting setting for screws and fixes and stuff like that.

So, yeah, I kind of enjoy, I think, the best case scenario, things that I use in my everyday life. Yeah.

Areej: Yup. That makes sense. Definitely. And I think, you know, for anyone who tends to go in-house rather than agency sides, that's always something that makes a huge difference. Right? Cause that's the one website you're going to be working with like day and night.

So to be working on, on a product and something that you actually care about is huge. I think Sarah has got some fun, quick fire questions to go with them.

Sarah: I definitely do. Yeah. How are you feeling about some quickfire questions? Miracle. Are you game? Are you ready?

Miracle: Let's go.

Sarah: Okay. First one, are knock knock jokes funny?

Miracle: Sometimes my son's always doing them too.

Sarah: It depends on the person saying them. How many plants do you have?

Miracle: Oh my God. I have been busy this season despite ordering from my house. I'm not allowed to buy anymore.

Sarah: I feel like plants are coming into adulthood. Cause I was never like before my thirties, I wouldn't care much about a plan. However, now flipping love them. Like I got so much appreciation for a good cheese plan, a cactus pineapple plant who knew that those were a thing. But yeah. Top three dream dinner party guests.

Miracle: I guess I'm so, but I have to say all the usual, like Obama. 

Areej: It has to be, if anyone doesn't see Obama and Oprah on their dream dinner, guests, I don't know what's wrong with those people.

Miracle: Oh, I go, yeah. I'm loving. Because I listened to Christian Rosie Ramsey podcast. Hilarious. I listened to that. Oh, you shank Marie to know, Oh my God. It would be interesting. Cause I like this. Like they're not one of these lovey-dovey couples and I absolutely I'm in for that. Yes.

Sarah: Right. Next question. Favorite takeaway.

Miracle: Chinese or Thai I'm torn.

Sarah: I do. I think it's hard to get a good tie or maybe that's just where I live.

Miracle: That was exactly what I was going to say because in bays and stuff it is impossible to get good Thai. So we just tend to. Okay. For China, like one Chinese place. I miss London so much for that

Sarah: Spoiled for choice. And then, and that's the question for you then the last documentary that you watched.

Miracle: What Oh my God, I forgot to add. Yeah, it was the fi scandal, the habit, school scandal. That was the last documentary I watched to remember this kind of West Liberty.

Areej: That was my last documentary too. Yep. Yep. That was quite interesting. I don't remember what it was called. 

Miracle: Oh, yeah, the college admissions. 

Sarah: One about the like side entrance. I have heard about this, but I don't want to watch it because I don't want to get angry. I feel that there's lots to be angry about.

Sarah: Would you say you were a clumsy person?

Miracle: You know yeah, definitely. I'm always falling over stuff. I'm always trying to keep track of like the 10 things and dealing with different post-it notes or forgetting my passwords and stuff like that. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not natural. Yeah, I was going to use it depends.

Sarah: Well, the SEO podcast, isn't an SEO podcast without one mention of it. It depends. Right?

Miracle: Yeah.

Sarah: Awesome. Well you survived my quick fire round questions.

Areej: Love it. Love it. I would, if I would have thought that you're unserved too, if you are clumsy is a big no, I don't know why. I just made an assumption that you're not crazy at all.

Miracle: Yeah. That's what I said. It depends. It just depends because like, There's some things like I'm so pedantic about tidying up and everything. Like, I like a list of things that are organized and then on some level I'm just like, post-it note crazy. That's why I said it just depends on what's going on in my head.

Areej: So before we kind of kick off into the main topic, which is all things forecasting you know, where Women in Tech SEO podcast, and we just love to learn a little bit more about what empowers you to be the brilliant woman you are today?

Miracle: That's such a loaded question. I know, I do know how to answer this lightly because it's such a driving force in your life being who you are. I think that's a migrant as well. You know, the Seine, a village. There's so many people who've given up and made so many sacrifices for me to be where I am today. And so, you know, I don't want to let them down. And they're assuming people who believe in me who have recommended me to stuff or Ricci and laid it out.

I dunno. It's just, I guess, all of those people and all of those things and people who are always like, Oh, you're brilliant are going to let down my daughter who thinks I'm a superstar, just wait until she's a teenager. And she realizes that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The village, I guess my village inspires me and of course, you know, like anyone else I want to be. Really good. Be the best at what I do. So, you know, I can earn good money for myself and have nice things and, you know, help other people who are less fortunate than me. 

Areej: And for women who are just starting off in the industry, what advice would you give them?

Miracle: Oh, as I say, you know, First of all, be on Twitter. I wish I'd joined Twitter earlier. Not because you have to take part just because, you know, there's a whole community going in there. That's supportive as pointing people in the right direction and stuff like that.

So, and if you, yeah, if you're a networking kind of person network network, Really does help. I was really shy at the beginning and I just didn't want to, I felt like, you know, Twitter then was such a, it was a different vibe. Isn't it? Any tasted now? So I didn't even, you know, Speeding indulging that I would say, you know, get on to tow.

If you can just see, you know, what's happening, get information, know that there is a supportive community out there, again, gender women in tech as you forum, if you're a woman or identify as a woman, because there's just so many people there willing to help. There's like a job first, it's stuff that you learned.

It's a lot. Lenin resources there that are good for us in question. And the thing with SEO is that depending on which website you're walking on, you get different problems that you've never experienced before, and you might need to sound important. You might be to you, you might be free to ask someone at work cause you feel like they might.

Thank you for not quitting your job. I mean, we should jump in the forum. You ask the question, people are always there willing to, to answer you. And then again, I say, you know, picking your companies was like, I guess it's hard if you're starting out to pick and choose a company. Well, I, you know, I would say, pick a company that values the people as much as the work cause that makes such a massive difference to your self esteem.

How you feel about yourself, how you, what you feel, you know, when you feel valued, when you feel you're part of something, your confidence grows and you're able to put in more.

Sarah: I mean, you've touched on some really awesome key points there, but the last one about valuing yourself is so important.Isn't it? And then like once he lands to value and yeah, like you can sort of really shine through what you do in your work and if you feel supported then that's a great place to be. Lovely. So we've got you on today to talk about forecasting. Cause I believe this is a, would you say your favorite topic of yours or just the topic you like that you find interesting.

I mean, there's lots of topics in SEO that aren't there. So let's start with the basics then. What, what, what is forecasting when it comes to SEO?

Miracle: I think simply put is just predicting the outcome of. The work you're doing before you've done it. So, yeah, it's just trying to see if it will be profitable if it's worth doing in terms of, I think I didn't have the monetary value.

Areej: And being engaged in agency side. Cause that's something I really, I used to be an agency site and then I moved to the client side and I used to struggle at the pitch stage when a lot of clients would be expecting some insane kind of forecasts to be submitted without even having a lot of access to the data.

So how do you kind of get around that?

Miracle: We need access to data. I mean, data is everything. You know, it's pie in the sky, we talk data. And so we, we even say, you can download this data and send it to us. But without that data, it's all pie in the sky. And that's why we say it's there in a way from, you know, keyword forecasting, because back in the day it was easier, you know, you know what.

Keywords with driving ranking society knew the top 500 a year and changed. It was so much easier to do keyword led forecasting, but now it's really difficult. And especially the agency I work for is predominantly tech. So how do you give a holistic forecast if you're not, you know, doing loads and loads of content optimization and stuff like that in terms of, you're not just being hired to write content and track how the content is doing.

So because of that, and that's why we moved towards statistical modeling. Way of being forecasting and we always insist if you want the forecast on, right, you have to give us data, even with the data people send us, you knowed that to manage that most of the time. The data isn't, you know, isn't clean GA data is not always clean.

The way people set it up is so different. And so we need at least a baseline to start, you know, we need a baseline to start. And so we always, we always insist and most of the clients we do. Pitches for VP big because at the end of the day, if we win, you're going to give us access to that data anyway.

So they always give us that Google analytics data, even if it's just download and send, they give it to us and we can do full cost.

Areej: Yep. And what do you think makes forecasting important? Why is it something that clients and agencies should have in mind?

Miracle: Because that's how the budget is approved. You did the C-suites they think, okay, how much is this going to bring that?

Then that will determine how much we can invest in it. And so if you're going to have a tough forecast, it's just like, Oh, this is nice to have. This is a thing that people say we have to do for Google and they don't really understand it. But when you. Create a forecast. That's the revenue forecast and you can show them the ROI.

It goes, Oh, if we invest 20,000, we can get a hundred thousand den while we put in 50 K doors, the marketing towards, I don't know, something else. There's only given us 20% revenue where we can get 80% if we invest in this. And then he takes it from a nice to have to, this is something we have to do. And it gets them interested in you because a lot of times he's like, well, I've put my recommendations for what I've done this, and he's gone somewhere to die.

And because no one really believes in it, they just prioritize all the things. But once there's a monetary value to something, then everyone's eyes, isn't it. The financial officer's eyes as I need to see. So with what's happening, this channel is supposed to give us 80% revenue. Why is it? Why is it?

Well, I think it's not happening means you can go back and be like this person, that person, and then you get someone hired to push it because they know the revenue implication. 

Sarah: It's really key to get, because I think a big thing like SEO, if you don't narrow it and you don't understand it, then you're not going to get excited about it.

But once you can sort of prove, okay, it is worthwhile investing because this is the result and this is the monetary value. And this is what it means for our business. You can get some really like people who become excited, then they.

Miracle: Yes, they become real, it's just speaking in the language that the C-suite understands because they proved the budget.

You know, it's not, it's not there. Your manager approves the budget, unfortunately it's not to develop a proven budget. So you need to make sure that whoever, but it's approving the budget on the stand and you know, the easiest way to make someone understand SEO is. Money money.

Sarah: So obviously there's, you've already sort of picked out some light dues there.

So when it comes to forecast and say, like speaking the language of the business and making them excited and stuff, is there some other like dues or maybe some definite don'ts that you can share with us?

Miracle: I think, I think it's really hard before custom because you know, you have to rely on it. You're not the one who said affect Google analytics count or whatever analytics tracking account they have that they're giving you.

So it's really hard to be like, you know, to, to, to check it, especially when the client is not working with you. But as much as you can check that the data that they're giving you to...