Wasteless SEO™ Model
Wasteless SEO is a model of continuos improvement to the system of Value Delivery through elimination of waste, including:
- Bohdan Lytvyn
- July 29, 2025
- 01:52 pm
Main concepts of Wasteless SEO Model
Impulse to the Wasteless SEO Model comes from Toyota Production System (TPS), Lean and the Shingo Model.
Customer Value
The value is something the customer wants and is willing to pay for. It can be described by different attributes: the price, the ease of use, the innovation, cost, quality, flexibility, delivery as well as environmental and safety impact.
As we produce the value and deliver it to the customer, the customer will constantly give us direct feedback.
Value stream
If we envisage this as a flow, we can use the power of this metaphor to understand that the flow must be unrestricted in the direction of increasing the value, i.e. from the centre of production to the centre of consumption, whereas in the case of restrictions, the value is diminished.
Continuous improvement
Direct customer feedback results in the need for continuous improvement of the value proposition to the customer. This necessitates the idea of the stream or flow of value, which is descriptive of how value is produced starting with the demand recognition and going through a collection of steps by which the value is delivered.
Elimination of waste
Improvement requires cutting off the waste. SEO is about identification and cutting off the waste in value flow from production to the consumption, and it builds upon the base process of value production.
SEO is an optimization function that pertains to each organisation that produces documents and disseminates them using search engines that crawl, index, and serve their information on a search.
Three stages of value chain involving Search
This process can be described as having three main stages:
01
Consumption by search engines
The value produced will be in the first place consumed by the search engines. Once the document is published by the organization, it is accessed by bots, its content is retrieved, indexed, and this is where the consumption stage is over.
02
Transformation and shipping of value to users
Once it's done, we go to the second stage: a shipping of this transformed value to the user. This shipping works through serving the results on the search engine results page (SERP) and through ranking and the results.
03
Consumption by users
The final stage in this stream of value involving search engines is consumption of the value by users when they click on the document, access it, read or watch it, and then go to the conversion.
These three basic parts of this stream are something where optimization happens and where all the keys to improvement lie. The idea of a value stream is very important because the waste must be in the first place identified and then eliminated. Therefore, the value stream mapping is essential to the whole process of Wasteless SEO.
Types of waste in SEO-related processes
If we try to define waste, it is something that disrupts the continuous flow of the value. These are the steps in the value stream that do not bring additional value. So, no value added steps is what we call waste. Let's take several examples of how it works in the three stages of the value stream.
Waste of overproduction
What is the main type of waste that happens on the stage of consumption of the document content by search engine? This waste includes the waste of overproduction. This is when we produce more than search engines would like to crawl or index, which refers to the idea of not perfectly responding to the demand of customers. Because we must say that the search engine is the first customer, which must be satisfied in order to proceed to the subsequent one in a row. So then in order to satisfy the first row customer (search engine), we must understand the needs of this customer.
Effectively, the needs of search engine is to:
- understand the quality requirements of the "succeeding" customer - a human,
- evaluate them and
- present through some kind of ranking or signaling system
in order to be sure to ship the value accurately to the next customer in the row, adding the value increment to this initial one.
So this system of assessment of the value is called the Ranking Signals System that we’ve discussed previously . When ranking system signals don't predict these documents are much demanded by customers, then we have a waste of overproduction. Pages are produced, published, but not actually consumed by search engines, let alone customers because they don’t go downstream. Fixing this problem upstream will create more free flow of the value, and then more pages will be visible to users later on.
Waste of excessive inventory
Another type of the problem is the waste of inventory. For example there are often lots of underperforming URLs that don't attract match clicks or impressions etc, i.e. documents that are raw or not intended for customer interest. So to get rid of this inventory is also very important in terms of producing more value downstream.
Waste of excessive motion
The waste of excessive motion is the waste of lack of strategic focus, which signals the need of better hypothesis, better analysis, creating better value in order not to produce the excessive costs and motions: much ado over nothing.
The role of customer demand in Wasteless SEO
Value for customers is highest when it is created in response to real demand. All improvement programs start from identifying the current value proposition and checking the demand for it. SEO has a way to check a customer demand through
- establishing popularity of search terms,
- identifying the underlying search intent of users as well as
- evoking the motivation for search.
Customer is a complex term that includes all relevant stakeholders of value creation flow: collaborators, contractors, customers, users and consumers or final recipient of products etc. This extended view of customers also includes those directly or indirectly impacted by the production, distribution, use, or provision of a product or service. Customers may be divided into Internal and External but also - in rows depending where they stand as regards the start of supply and value flow. Likewise, the first row customer is a stakeholder that directly impacts (and is impacted by) the product. So,
- hearing the voice of the customer and
- satisfying his or her real demand
is vital for the consecutive steps in the flow.
Pull is a principle of realisation of customer demand that works in between each step of the value stream. Pull signals whether or not there will be a demand for this product on the subsequent stage. So, this pull system is very important because it opens the door for the next stage, and helps rectify the whole production process in order not to overstrain this.
Why does SEO waste happen?
The function of optimization ultimately aims at redesigning of the SEO-relevant process that underlies the production of value. So, to remodel the base underlying process is the goal of all SEO experiments and recommendations. The SEO waste or waste in the SEO-relevant flow might be explained by:
- wrong objectives,
- wrong selection of tools, or
- wrong principles in the organization.
So the process is a system or a collection of tools that works towards a particular objective. So then the wrong objective skews the picture or makes the system go in the wrong direction. Wrong selection of tools means that tools, as the primary device to solve specific tasks or specific problems, might not be fit for this problem. And in this case, these tools should be changed, removed, which will increase the effectiveness of the whole system. And the principles are the whys: why exactly these tools were chosen and why the system exists.
To support our reasoning on the principles, objectives of the system or tools, we use measurement: a set of metrics that will indicate where on the map of value stream, we can spot the odd dynamics and waste.
Wasteless SEO process steps
- Identifying the current value proposition.
- Search demand check: answering the question if it does respond to a real demand (as identified in search terms).
- Mapping the value delivery stream.
- Identifying the waste.
- Stabilising the process and identifying “quick wins”.
- Making a system map.
- Advancing & testing key hypotheses.
- Introducing blueprint changes to the system and processes.
- Participating in execution of the improvements.
- Measuring results
SEO starts by identifying the organization’s value proposition and answering the question if that is a customer demands (by listening to the Voice of the Customer).
Later on, we map this value proposition to the underlying process that produces the value. So we make connections between what the customer wants and what the company is actually doing to produce this value at each particular step.
Finally, we uncover the potential waste of the process and we try to stabilize the process in order to calibrate our lens. Then we identify something that can be fixed quickly, and then we try to map the system in detail and identify the wrong objectives, tools and principles.
The whole idea of Wasteless SEO is about removing what stands in the way of the free value flow and ensuring as much of the value that customer wants will actually be delivered.
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