Content Strategy & SEO Process
Jake Aull, GSU Social Media Marketing Course
September 2011
• http://www.salesdnaltd.com/blog/what-was-it-you-wanted-to-sell-me/
• http://prezi.com/c8ppuxcwvolu/intro-to-seo-meets-some/
• T.O.C. – Communications & Theory – Writing Mechanics – Web Marketing & SEO Objectives – SEO Strategy & Plan – SEO Stages of Execution – SEO Details – Breakdown of Stages – Review
Intro…
Communications Models & Theory
• Audience involvement is highest when they "Join" communications: http://socmedgsucourse.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/mgmtcomm-ch3audanalysis.jpg
Content Collaboration
• Broadcast (eyeballs; passive) vs two way collaborative communication (engagement; active)
• Talk to me vs. talk with me
• People want collaboration
• American Idol mobile voting blew away predictions.
• Canceled TV shows brought back due to viewer social media communications and demand
Communications Models
• Writing for SEO - Writing for search engines vs. writing for readers - Latent Semantic Content - Facebook recommended sources and Google blocks
• IMC (integrated mktg)
Communications Models
Here's the Zen of it - social media content progression evolves in a circle. My recommended stages: • Listening (starting point: social sphere research and
observation of your industry) • Answers (your responses to industry questions across
the social media sphere) • Discussions (often on others' communities) • Shared Stories (with reader response) • Whole, Themed Communities (you built it, they came) • Customer-Driven Wikis and Communities (about your
brand) • Monitoring and Answering (back to start: the cycle
begins again)
Content & Communities
• Legacy business similarities vs. Web 2.0 models: http://socmedgsucourse.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/legacy-vs-web2biz1a.png
Communications Models
• The global village?
• I leave a community, come back; people react to
me as if I never left?
• Negativity in blogging, commenting, and how to
respond – iPhone and AT&T – AT&T today
Communications & Honesty
Bad Examples
Bad Examples
• The future of stealth marketing bloggers (does the public just accept this as part of blogosphere? Or keep fighting and whistleblowing? Class thoughts?)?
• “If you heard information about a company from each of these sources, how credible would it be?: A person like yourself 60%; An academic 54%; Financial or industry analyst 56%; Regular employee of a company 43%; CEO of a company 23%; Government official or regulator 21%; Blogger 11%.” (“The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama’s Social Media Toolkit”. Edelman. 2008, p. 6. http://blog.guykawasaki.com/OBAMA%20SNA%20Strategic_1.pdf )
Communications & Honesty
• Wikileaks; “Apple Removes WikiLeaks App From App Store” (TechCrunch article; source in Recommended Sources blog page)
• Are social media channels just as susceptible to
spam? – Twitter blocking – Future of spam & social media;
does history repeat itself?
Communications & Honesty
Writing Mechanics
• Web page titles and relevant copy (latent semantic content) – You can search for your blog phrase in search engine…
• Web writing with keywords
– Writing for audience or writing for search engines? – Tone and positiveness – Stealth marketing (reference case study)
• The traditional marketing funnel
(eyeballs>>awareness>>consideration>>preference>>action>>loyalty>>buyers; from Groundswell)
• Clickstream and customer journey
• “Blogging” in the lost center of the funnel (consideration>>preference>>action)
• Keyword funnels
Writing & Keywords
• RTs/options
• List Twitter pgs for follow – Paper.li
• Hash tags – #FF, #MM, d, RT, etc. – Hash tags as keywords
• Optimize keywords in Twitter profile descriptions
• URL shorteners and ht.ly
Twitter/HootSuite review
Web Marketing & SEO Objectives
- Page rank - Top/first page results goals - PPC and first-page real estate - PPC or SEM? - Groundswell case for blog advertising ROI
SEO (& PPC) Objectivies
SEO Strategy & Plan
• PROBLEMS TO SOLVE:
• BENEFITS:
– Why should customers visit our site or buy our product?
• WHAT IS THE BRAND PERSONALITY WE WANT TO PROJECT? – Tone of copy:
• MARKETING/DIGITAL STRATEGY: – Existing:
– Proposed:
• POSITIONING STATEMENT OR USP:
Keyword Discovery & Content Strategy
• TARGET AUDIENCE:
– CURRENT TARGET CUSTOMER BELIEF
– CURRENT TARGET CUSTOMER CLICKING/BUYING BEHAVIOR
– DESIRED FUTURE CUSTOMER BELIEF
– DESIRED FUTURE CUSTOMER CLICKING/BUYING BEHAVIOR
• WHY SHOULD CUSTOMER BEHAVE THIS WAY?
• TARGET CUSTOMER INSIGHT:
• KEYWORDS: – Previous website & competitor keywords
– Client list
– Post-analysis recommendations
Customer Targeting & Journey
SEO Web Page Plan
SEO Stages of Execution
• Strategy & Discovery – Keyword Analysis & discovery – Marketing strategic alignment – SEO plan – Keyword/copywriting plan
• Implementation & Programming – Coding keywords & tags – Robot.txt file – Search engine integrations – Analytics integrations & auto-reporting – Geo-local integrations – Google Images, video, etc.
The Stages of SEO
• Off-site Activities – Local directories set-up – Submission to social sites & social search engines – Articles & PR publishing – Obtaining links
• Ongoing Maintainance – Reviewing analytics
The Stages of SEO
SEO Details – Breakdowns of Stages
• Content/Inputs: – Client measurement assessment – SEO goals discovery – Client-provided keywords assessed – Content/keyword analysis of past client site – Keyword research, analysis and comparison
• Tools:
– Pro SEO tools utilized: Google AdWords keyword tool, SEO Book Tools, iSpionage, Open Site Explorer
– .xls report downloads, aggregated spreadsheets
• Reports/Outputs: – Competitor ranking report
• Backlinks – Keyword effectiveness index/ranking reports – Head and long-tail keyword weighting for optimal keywords/phrases – KPIs and measurement plan – SEO/keyword plans
Keyword Discovery & Optimization
• Site Integrations & Submissions: – Search engine submissions and verifications (Google,
Bing, Yahoo!) – Additional search engine tools implementations (e.g.,
Google Webmaster tools, Google Analytics)
• Analytics: – KPI plan integration – Keyword monitoring set-up (e.g., Google Alerts,
SocialMention) – Google analytics set-up – Website auto reports set-up
Website Submissions & Analytics Implementations
– Robots.txt file creation/upload – Sitemap.xml file created for search engines – Maps/geo-local website tools integrations – Website SEO implementation:
• title • meta description • meta keywords • H1s/H2s (headlines) • text editing • Anchor links • Image alt tags
Website Development/Programming Aspects
• Link Building: – Quality and relevance over quantity – Press release/white paper placement – Social bookmarking (Del.icio.us) – Submission to share sites (e.g., Digg, Technorati) – Search engine local directories/site submissions
(e.g., Yahoo! Local, InsiderPages, Yelp, etc.)
• Brand-side SEO simplified – Copywriters who know your industry best – Keyword evaluation – Monitoring – Sharing/link building
Off-Site Link Building & Brand-Owned
• Inbound web links (a.k.a. backlinks and referrals) are vital. Here's why: – They boost search engine rankings (both for the target
website and themselves).
– They increase paths to the target - more ways and places for visitors to find the site.
– They create alternative entry paths for crawlers to specific web pages (even when the target site is not optimized for search engines).
Inbound & Social Links for SEO
– Inbound links represent a solid, alternative (to in-site) web metric. They gauge the content value and referral traffic of a site in the online marketplace (especially valuable if there are issues with existing in-site SEO or analytics).
– They get shared among web users and multiplicity of network effects occurs.
Inbound & Social Links for SEO
SEO Lead-Gen Funnel Analytics
Review
• Why does social media change communications models?
• How to approach writing in social media…
• Why is it important to identify and align marketing and SEO objectives?
• How to form SEO Strategy & Plan
• What are the major stages of SEO execution?
Review of Topics
The lesson of the 21st century is that people want to be involved and contributing; they want to be “prosumers.” We see it in communications models, product sourcing/R&D, we see it in the success of the social media boom.
Summary
Recommended
