UpWord 10 TIPS TO ALIGN YOUR SEO AND CONTENT MARKETING EFFORTS. White Paper

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1 10 TIPS TO ALIGN YOUR SEO AND CONTENT MARKETING EFFORTS

2 SEO and Content Marketing. Where does one begin and the other end? Does one have to end for the other to begin? Once your SEO technical issues are resolved and you ve optimized your existing site, you don t then fix the same issues and pages twice. Ongoing SEO is content marketing. A content marketing program leads to additional SEO efforts and opportunities. Conversely, if you are engaged in content marketing but are not considering SEO, you are missing out on the opportunity to drive free traffic from your efforts. Therefore, the two should exist symbiotically. Yet we still see companies that have an SEO team that works alone (literally and figuratively) and a content team that works alone. Too many times, the two speak only after their individual efforts are completed, and not before. Worse yet: they don t speak at all. Don t make these mistakes. Ask yourself the following questions to make sure your SEO and Content Marketing efforts are aligned and working together. 1

3 1. Have you used SEO keyword research to help discover new content marketing ideas? Keyword research can be helpful for more than just SEO. Keyword data provides an insight into the overall marketplace. Not only can you determine what keywords are searched for more often than others, you can discover themes around what real people are interested in. This is where the true power of keyword research lies: not just picking one keyword to use in your Title tag, but gaining deeper insight into your customers and creating content that aligns with these themes. 1. Use Google Keyword Planner or other KW research tool 3. Evaluate content opportunity Top 3 rankings are dominated by strong brands 2. Identify both head and long-tail keywords smaller competitors able to attain top 3 positions for long-tail content. Regardless of SEO these are good topics for content marketing efforts. 2

4 2. Have you mapped keywords to your personas? Behind every keyword is a real person. Do you know who that person is? Different personas have different habits, may be in different stages of the buying cycle, and therefore consume different types of content. Mapping keywords to your existing personas will help you create the right content and reach them when they search. But don t stop there. Use keyword research to identify new personas for your content marketing efforts you may not have previously considered during initial research. Existing Persona New Persona Business Traveler Discount Shopper General Hotel Seeker Last Minute Traveler Spa Requirement New Content Ideas Last minute deals This week s events This week s menu 5 day weather Quick packing checklist Local car service 3

5 3. Do you consider seasonal search trends when scheduling your editorial calendar? Is the timing of your content based purely on internal business needs and operations? Your customers have their own schedule. They search, and discuss on social media channels, based on a number of factors: seasonality, weather, holidays, life events, etc. You don t have to guess or assume when people are interested in your content, Google Trends will show you. On top of that, from an SEO perspective you can now time the publishing of your content closer to these spikes as Google indexes pages almost immediately now, as opposed to years ago when it could take months for a page to get indexed. Searches for wedding venues spike in December and January after people get engaged over the holidays. Have your content planned and published in the fall, promote it via social and other channels just prior and during the search spike periods. 4

6 4. Do you have a pre-planned SEO calendar? SEO can t just be Reactive, it must be Proactive. The best way to do this is to create an SEO content calendar for the year. You probably have a PR calendar, a social media calendar, and a content marketing calendar. But do you have an SEO calendar? It s too easy to just wait for rankings to change and then react. How many SEO teams, and vendors, wait for a monthly ranking report to think about SEO? If this is the case, you are always working from behind. Your SEO team should have a 6-12 month calendar in place, and always be working on SEO content somewhere in the range of 3 months in advance. Even more importantly, the SEO calendar should be aligned with your other calendars. If the PR team is pushing a new product or setting up an interview, the SEO team should be supporting it with content and linking efforts. Conversely, social is talking about small business Saturday then it should connect back to a page on your site that could rank for small business topics. Aligning your calendars will boost the performance of all your channels. 5

7 5. Does your SEO team provide research and consultation before your content team begins writing? Many companies still consider SEO a post-production type of service. The content team writes a great new web page then asks the SEO team to optimize it. Gone are the days of getting top rankings just by adding Title and Meta Tags. Besides, do your writers really want the SEO team inserting keywords and changing the header and body copy after it s been written? Great content will outrank great optimization. Therefore authors should go to the SEO team before they write. Get an analysis of the keywords related to the topic and get examples of pages that are currently ranking well. Is there an SEO design recommendation to avoid? Include your SEO team in the pre-production phase of content marketing. Content Pre-Production Content Post Production 6

8 6. Does your SEO team have your content style guide? If you have a style guide, then it should be shared with everyone who has a hand in your web site, not just the copywriters. Your SEO team can use the same style guidelines when they write Title and Description tags. These often will be the Title and Description that appear on the search engine results page (SERP). As a writer you spend a lot of time maintaining style and messaging. Make sure that hard work makes it to the Google results page. Title is generic due to automated title tag No Description tag exists therefore Google is using a piece of content on the page that mentions menu. Description that appears talks about how some items may not be available providing a poor marketing message. Sample SERPs for keyword search menu Title tag is simple yet informative, specific to dinner. Item list implies you ll be able to see every menu item Description tag accomplishes a lot within a small space Reinforces this is the dinner menu page Promotes take out orders Tastes of Italy & Classic Italian Dishes brand messaging used Menu categories listed 7

9 7. Does your content plan include providing answers for questions people ask online? Maybe Ask (Jeeves) was on to something even if they didn t turn out to be a leading search engine. When people type in a keyword, they are in essence asking for content. Sometimes the intent is as explicit as people literally typing their questions right into search engines. These people are asking for help, give it to them! If you just focus your SEO and your content on big topics and keywords you are missing out on a great opportunity. Individually, question phrases may be searched for less often, but in aggregate they add up and represent highly pre-qualified targets. Question based keywords also tend to be less competitive. Good answer-based content can also appear as an Answer Box on the SERP. These top rankings get high click through rates encouraging Google to leave them at the top position. 1. Organic Answer Box listing 2. Additional standard organic listing 8

10 8. Do you consider usability and engagement as part of each content marketing effort? Hopefully every content marketing effort is a creative endeavor. But too often content efforts become purely needs-based, and turn in to chores rather than creative endeavors. For example: let s assume you are launching a new product. You need a spec sheet to go on your web site. Do you just create a bulleted list, or do you create an interactive experience? Nobody wants to read pure text, even if technically it contains all the important information someone needs. People want a visually enjoyable experience, they want options when it comes to format, and they want to be able to click through for additional content options. Google realizes this, and user engagement is an important part of the ranking algorithm. Turkey fire safety may not seem like an exciting topic, but State Farm has taken a topic and created an engaging content campaign Article has an enticing title, rather than just turkey fryer safety it is 15 Tips. Content is broken up with images and numbered lists Social media buttons provide social proof. User generated comments make this a discussion Related links are provided for more info. An accompanying video is also provided (it also never hurts to have Shatner in your content marketing). 9

11 9. Do you use analytics to determine what types of content format and themes work best? Tracking your content performance is essential for more than just showing your boss how well you are doing; it should also be used to guide new content strategies. Is there a certain format that works well? For example: we worked with a CPG client to create lifestyle content that was targeted back to keywords such as hair styles to help promote their shampoo product. What we found was that articles that included both the word trends and a season such as fall not only got higher rankings, but got significantly more traffic from all sources than other hair related articles. The SEO team was targeting hair styles but the copywriter s angle of providing the upcoming season s trends is what led to the success. In this case an integrated effort turned into a quarterly ongoing content plan. Another useful exercise is to find out what keywords your content is ranking for regardless of if you targeted them (tools such as Spyfu and Conductor can help with this analysis). If your hair styles article is also ranking for a term such as hairstyles for round faces then create new content specifically for that term and link to it from a related link on the original page. If your original, only loosely-related page, ranked at all, then a new more focused page should perform even better. Take a stable keyword like hairstyles and find an engaging, timely, and click worthy angle. 10

12 10. Even if you have copywriters, could your SEO team write a web page or blog post that could be approved purely from a marketing, not SEO, perspective? Although the technical aspect of SEO is still important, SEO has become much more of a marketing discipline. The best SEO programs incorporate truly creative efforts, be it video, infographics, interactive tools, catchy stories, etc. SEO and Content are dependent upon one another. Therefore your Content team should at least know the basics of SEO, and your SEO team should be creative enough to recommend good content. Your SEO team will never take over your copywriter s job, that is not the point. But your SEO team should be creative enough to pitch new ideas and provide rough drafts and mockups. If SEO is going to be proactive and creative. it will need to be sold internally, and the old school coding-first SEO type will not be able to do that. Future of SEO Skill Set Importance 11

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