There can be a number of reasons why you'd want to understand your organisation's maturity level when it comes to SEO. Some of the examples when you might want to understand maturity better could be;
To set goals and scope a future growth plan for SEO growth.
To understand current challenges within the business and to better prioritise the SEO strategy and roadmap.
To create a success metric for maturity and build it into the strategy as a core KPI.
Organisational Maturity Graph (OMG) for SEO is a qualitative analysis tool that helps to evaluate the maturity of your own or your client's business.
A huge shoutout to the brilliant Tory Gray - CEO, Principal SEO Consultant of Gray Dot Company - who kindly agreed to collaborate on this project with me, and dedicated her time and knowledge, to make sure this tool helps provide guidance to all sorts of businesses at any industry or scale.
The tool contains two sheets;
Scoring sheet
OMG for SEO Results
You'll notice that the results sheet is currently an empty graph. This is because the scores come directly from the scoring sheet, which means you won't need to change anything on the results sheet, this is simply used to populate your own maturity graph.
You can leave the Results sheet as it is for now and head back to the scoring sheet to start. In order to use OMG for SEO, I'll recommend the following steps;
1. Make a copy
In order to use this tool, you'll first of all need a google account to create a copy of the spreadsheet so you can customise your own graph.
2. Name and explore the Scoring Sheet
When you click on 'Make a copy' you'll be prompted to name your own sheet. You can use something like your business name, current year, or quarter to easily remember when the scoring was done for your business. You can enter your business name in the cell where it says 'Example Business', which will create a title for your Results sheet. After you've done this, you can start exploring the scoring sheet.
Open the first section 'Technology' and notice how it is divided into two subsections. 'Data Quality' and 'Reporting, Testing and QA'. Each section (Technology, Efficiency, Culture, Strategy) has a maximum of 100 points you can achieve. This is the total of the points you can get for each subsection (Data Quality, Reporting, Testing and QA', Current Platforms, QA and A/B Testing, etc.).
You can open each section to review the subsections to start with. If you open any subsections you will see the criteria to use to score your current status and the goal you want to get to.
Notice how there is a Help section in the last column. If you hover over the question marks for each row, you'll be able to see some helpful information on how to use the chart best. Hopefully, this will help you better navigate the chart and make the scoring process easier.
Once you're familiar enough with the spreadsheet, you can start scoring!
3. Score your current performance and where you want to get to.
From here, scoring should be fairly straightforward. Under 'Max score' you will see the worth of each item which is there for general guidance to help with the scores. You'll either see sections Scores are usually on a scale of 0-10 or 0-15 and it is completely up to your research and knowledge of the business to decide what score fits best. Some of the more complex sections have examples of what scores 0, 5, 10, etc. would look like to help guide the process.
There's also a comment section that isn't a must to fill in, but it might help to do so to explain why you've given a certain score if you decide to redo this exercise in three, six, or twelve months down the line. You'll notice that as you start scoring, your chart automatically adds up your points, and starts generating your results.
4. Review your Results
Once you filled in the full chart, it is time to head over to the results section where you'll see your own personal OMG for SEO. You can now use this visual graph to better understand your goals and help drive prioritisation for you SEO strategy. To make the most use of this, I highly recommend to redo this exercise as often as you need to reset or define new goals and priorities.
I hope you'll find this tool helpful, please don't hesitate to reach out on Twitter or LinkedIn with any questions or feedback.