SEARCH SNIPPETS #18A CRASH COURSE IN DEVELOPINGAN ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGY

FOR SEO, PPC AND BEYOND

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOT

> FIGURE OUT WHERE YOU STAND> SET UP STRATEGIC BUSINESS GOALS> TAKE INTO ACCOUNT PAST SUCCESSES> DEVELOP AN ACTIONABLE STRATEGY> CREATE A ROADMAP TO KEEP YOU

ORGANIZED AND WORKING TOWARDSACHIEVING YOUR BUSINESS GOALS

PUTTINGSTRATEGIC GOALSAHEAD OF TACTICS

CHANGING OUR MINDSET

MnSearch Snippets #17

“Measure Twice, Cut Once.”

The January event helped mea lot. With the help of mydeveloper, I updated myAnalytics and I feel like I cantrack everything that happenson my site. UnfortunatelyI cannot track offlinemarketing activity that resultson people taking action on thesite.

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

> Who are your current customers?What are their likes? What are theirinterests? Where do they “hang” out?

Take the time to honestly assess allthe different aspects of your business.

> The site itself. Both hardware (yourserver) and software (your CMS)

content. Words, images, video, etc.> Compile a list of all your available

> Look into you competition and forman idea on how they are beingsuccessful, online and offline.

> Take into account your marketingbudget and your personnel.

FIGURING OUT WHERE “YOU” STAND

> Assess the ROI of your SEO, PPC,Social Media and other marketingefforts, online and offline.

interact with your site and how they> Assess your analytics, how people

convert into paying customers.

My site is running on an oldCMS that makes the site slow,makes making updates nearlyimpossible. No way to have anonline booking system or aneCommerce module

My content is more marketingbased about the gym’sservices. I have great images,but no videos.

Any information that can beuseful. Age, male vs. female,occupations, etc.

SEO? Is that the one with thekeywords? Some guy did it forfor me a couple years ago.

We are doing PPC and we are seeing good return specificallyon Bing.Looking at the gyms in a 10mile radius for their marketingEfforts. What they show up for, how much they’re spending, what is their message (svcsor perks are they pushing)

Last year went well and I havea big budget to work with inorder to grow and possiblyopen another location. I havean independent developer tohelp me with the site and I ammanaging the campaigns andwriting the content.

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENTSET UP BUSINESS GOALS

Look at past performance data and incombination with the in-depthassessment set up REALISTIC goals.

> 30% increase in profitsfrom merchandise sales

> 25% increase ingym memberships

> 40% lift in 1-on-1personal trainingappointments andnutrition services(high profit margins)

> Reach 1,500 newslettersubscribers

Example (Average Joe’s)

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENTTAKE INTO ACCOUNT PAST SUCCESSES

Take a look at what has already workedfigure out past successful customerbehaviors on and off the site.

> My audience likes andshares posts about healthy eating andmotivational pics 3x morethat any other type.

> Users who looks at 3specific pages convert at2x the normal rate.

> Members on the email listbuy merchandise 2x asoften as the others

> Users that like my Facebookpage also like American NinjaWarrior

How much arethese users worthto your business?

Example (Average Joe’s)

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENTCREATE THE ACTUAL STRATEGY

NEXT

STEPSGo through each item inthe initial assessment (step 1) and itemize the actions youneed to take, to brings thingsup to code and achieve youroverall business goals (step 2).

PRIORITIZING

Where importancemeets opportunity

> Switch the type ofcontent I am writing.Focus on healthyeating (copy, images and also try video)

> Expand on my PPCefforts. Up my budget.

> Time to engage inSEO. I like the sound“free” clicks

> Change my CMS andrefresh site. Peoplekeep telling me aboutWordPress

POST-STRATEGYCREATE A ROADMAP

Now that your priorities areset, it‘s time to get things done. Stay organized by building aroadmap.

Month 1 and 2

Go through this wholeexercise. Figure out whereyour gaps are, set goals,prioritize actions and createa roadmap.

Month 2 through 6

Focus on high-priority items.Different items can be tackled at the same time.They can also take longerthan others.

Month 6 through 12 and on

Focus on the rest of themedium and low items.

During the whole processtrack your main KPIs and

progress against your goals.Evaluate and adjust accordingly.

WHERE DOES SEO FIT IN?

Even though SEO is only one part of the entire equationit touches and can positively influence every single otheraspect of the business.

During step 1 you should havecompleted a full SEO audit inorder to honestly assess all theSEO gaps.

> Accessibility and indexation> On-Page Optimization and proper

keyword targeting

> Site architecture

types of assets and level of> Content Analysis – duplication,

optimization> Inbound Link Footprint – Spam much?> Site speed> Mobile friendliness> Performance tracking. What data is

available. What and how are thingsbeing tracked?

As SEO gets prioritized as partof a general digital marketingstrategy, the tactics that’ll be

used to fix the gaps needto be prioritized as well.

PERFORMING AN SEO

AUDIT:A FEW ACTIONABLE TIPSTO GET YOU STARTED

PERFORMING AND SEO AUDITSITE ARCHITECTURE

Look at the URL architecture.Is it too flat, too deep or justright?

HOMEVS

.

Ideally every page on the site will be within 3 to 4clicks away from the home page.

If the site architecture is tooflat topical focus is diluted

,which puts each page at adisadvantage.

PERFORMING AND SEO AUDITACCESSIBILITY AND INDEXATION

Is something confusing the search enginecrawlers or blocks parts or the entire site?Are they encountering too many errors?

CRAWL THE SITE … and export to Excel

http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide/VERY USEFUL RESOURCE:

PERFORMING AND SEO AUDITACCESSIBILITY AND INDEXATION

Reviewing HTTP Status codes for errorsand the Meta Robots field for unnecessary blocks

PERFORMING AND SEO AUDITACCESSIBILITY AND INDEXATION

Dealing with server logs and crawl budgets.Are the search engines crawling the wrong content?

LOG FILE ANALYSIS

A web server log file is a server output containinga record of all requests that a server receives.

This is what each entry in that file looks like:

Timestamp (date & time)Method (GET / POST)

Request URIHTTP Status Code

User-agent

Why is this useful?

1. You can find out how much crawlbudget is wasted and where?

3. Discover accessibility errors2. Discover areas of crawl deficiency

4. Learn more about how long it takesfor pages to load

http://builtvisible.com/log-file-analysis/

PERFORMING AND SEO AUDITACCESSIBILITY AND INDEXATION

Reviewing the robots.txt file for unnecessary blocksand instances of hidden content behind code.

Stop search engines fromcrawling and indexing parts

of your site. (e.g., print pages, cart, checkout, premium

content, ppc landing pages)

Do not fully develop a site in Javascript, Flash or any otherdynamic language.

Javascript:> https://www.redbullsoundselect.com/> http://www.fatface.com/

Disallow: /This command would block the whole site

Web DeveloperChrome Plug-in

PERFORMING AND SEO AUDITON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION AND CONTENT

Is my site up to code? What am I doing wrongand where do my biggest opportunities lie?

> Unique and click enticing meta descriptionsand up to 156 characters long

> H1 tag containing the primary keywordor a close variation

WHERE DO I START?

> Optimized title tags

55-60 characters or up to 512 pixels long

Unique for every page, targeting a primaryterm and tightly related to the page content,

> Every key page contains a considerable amountof optimized content around the primary term and multiple variations of it

PERFORMING AND SEO AUDITON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION AND CONTENT

Is my site up to code? What am I doing wrongand where do my biggest opportunities lie?

HOW ABOUT MY URLs?

Short, Clean and Optimized URLs – Simple Rules:

matching title tags

> All URLs follow a proper, uniform convention> Targeted keywords exist in page URLs and

> Words are separated with the “-” character> Capital letters aren’t used in the URLs> URLs do not contain long query strings,

session IDs, etc.

examplesite.com/?prodid=1223&sdestid=1145&storeid=7&categoryid=1125examplesite.com/bbq-sports-leisure/engraved-cigar-caseVS.

This ismuch betterHOW ABOUT MY INTERNAL LINKS?

Review internal links to determine if there isoveruse or misuse of anchor text that could getthe site in trouble for over-optimization.Pro Tip: experiment with bypassing the first link rule

PERFORMING AND SEO AUDITCONTENT DUPLICATION

Common types of content duplication:

canonical tagrobots.txt file

noindex tag 301 redirects

proactive prevention

Dealing withDuplicate Content

> Similar product descriptions> Dynamic-generated URLs

> Case-insensitive URLs -

> User-generated content (UGC)

(session IDs, etc.)

(Windows vs. Linux servers)

> Printer versions of pages> Duplicate meta data> Scraped or “stolen” content> www vs non-www vs https vs

> Quotation, re-use, contentsyndication, affiliate feeds

> Same content among

subdomain vs /index vs /default

regional sites

PERFORMING AND SEO AUDITLINKS, LINKS AND MORE LINKS

Link Velocity can get you in troublewith that black and white bird watchingall the time these days.

Review the site’s inbound link history forinconsistencies like sharp increases overshort periods of time.

Talkingabout this guy

MOZ Open Site ExplorerMajestic SEOAhrefs

NEXT UP …JASON IS GONNA MAKEIT RAIN PPC

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