When content and SEO fell in love, it was a match made in marketing heaven. But as any long-term relationship can attest, it can be challenging to keep things fresh, relevant and interesting.
Merove Heifetz, Director of SEO & Strategy at Acceleration Partners and Brittni Kinney, Client Engagement Specialist at Influence & Co., will discuss some external factors impacting this relationship (and potentially leading it astray) and share ideas for how digital marketers can help ensure a union that’s successful and in sync for years to come.
In this webinar you will learn:
- Tips for reinvigorating your content so that it attracts and engages your audience
- Hot SEO techniques marketers are leveraging to share their content and make it irresistible to search engines
- Things to avoid in your SEO + content relationship so that it doesn’t turn toxic
15. @accelerationpar
@influenceandco #SEOLuvsContent
CONTENT MARKETING AND SEO =
MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN
15
• Both involve writing content that is helpful and
informative for the reader.
• Includes keywords that readers are searching
for.
• Strings their content together via links. Links are
essential for SEO.
• Without quality content, gaining quality external
links will be difficult to build, and organic search
visibility will also be limited.
41. @accelerationpar
@influenceandco #SEOLuvsContent
• “Publish and Pray” doesn’t work
• Utilize owned, earned, and paid media to
bring traffic back to your site
• Anything you can do to bring more quality
eyeballs to your site will benefit your both
your content marketing & SEO strategies
A NOTE ON DISTRIBUTION
38
46. @accelerationpar
@influenceandco #SEOLuvsContent
DO NOT PAY FOR LINKS
46
• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank or
“link juice.”
• This does not include paid ads like Google
AdWords, content syndication through tools like
OutBrain or affiliate marketing links.
51. @accelerationpar
@influenceandco #SEOLuvsContent
Boston
617.963.0839
New York
646.664.1036
San Francisco
415.523.0398
Chicago
312.973.3864
THANKYOU!
51
Visit the Influence & Co andAcceleration Partners blogs
for more tips on Content Marketing, SEO, User Experience, Site
Strategy, Paid Marketing & Affiliate Marketing:
https://blog.influenceandco.com/
http://www.accelerationpartners.com/blog/
Notas do Editor
Merove
Merove & Brittni
Brittni
A Healthy Foundation
State of the Union: Content + SEO
The Marriage: Challenges & Opportunities
Essential Elements For Your Content Strategy
What Search Engines Love
Content + SEO: Marriage Advice
How to Avoid Couples Counseling
How to Get to the Golden Anniversary: Metrics of Success
Brittni
Brittni
Content marketing is the idea of creating and producing high-quality content in the form of articles, blog posts, e-books, whitepapers, and more on topics and problems related to your target audience.
By creating that content, companies can naturally turn themselves into resources for their audience and generate brand trust, loyalty, top-of-mind awareness, and inbound leads.
Merove
Search engine optimization comprises of several methods to enhance a site’s organic search visibility in Google and other search engines. Organic search is one of several important marketing channels that organizations should leverage to be found online.
Brittni
Brittni
Brittni
88% of B2B marketers, and 76% of B2C marketers use content marketing. (CMI)
30% of B2B marketers, and 38% of B2C marketers say they’re effective at content marketing. (CMI)
Despite this, over 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day. (eMarketer)
Brittni
When looking at what metrics matter most to content marketers, they rank sales and lead quality as the highest. SEO is much lower on their priority list.
Brittni
Fix sizing of graph text & numbers
Yet, some of the warmest leads come from organic search. This graphic shows the lead source that originally lead customers to Influence + Co’s site:
Brittni
Brittni
SEO can be seen as narrow and technical, while content marketing is more creative.
Content marketers aren’t integrating SEO into their current strategy.
In order to effectively improve your rankings, you need to keep SEO in mind.
Brittni
Brittni
Good content marketing and SEO both involve writing content that is helpful and informative for the reader.
A good content marketer includes keywords that readers are searching for.
A good content marketers strings their content together via links. Links are essential for SEO.
Without quality content, gaining quality external links will be difficult to build, and organic search visibility will also be limited.
Brittni
Brittni
Google cares way more about whether or not content is RELEVANT and HELPFUL for your audience than if it’s stuffed full of keywords.
In fact, keyword stuffing can backfire and negatively impact your SEO.
Brittni
Brittni
Brittni
We focus on a strategy that involves linking articles that we guest contribute in relevant online publications back to relevant content on our site. This helps us generate traffic, and also serves as a high quality link back to our site. NOTE: This is not the only reason why we do this, but it does serve as a benefit!
You should be looking at creating high quality content on your own site, but also expanding your horizons to earned media.
Merove
Merove
Merove
Google’s RankBrain is the third-most important factor for ranking web pages (according to Google).
Everyday, 15% of queries are ones that Google has never seen before. That is 450 million new searches a day.
Among those searches can be complex long-tail queries. RankBrain is designed to help better interpret those queries and effectively translate them, behind the scenes, to find the best pages for the searches. RankBrain loves fresh content.
Google now uses RankBrain for 100% of its queries (when RankBrain launched it was used only 15%)
Merove
Moz’s most recent Search Engine Ranking Factors Study notes that high quality backlinks are some of the most influential factors in SEO.
Google recently admitted it was one of the two most important SEO factors. (FIND LINK)
Backlinks serve as a quality signal to search engines, can increase a website’s brand awareness, and can significantly impact a website’s organic traffic.
Merove
Merove
User Experience (UX): the overall experience of a person using a website, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use.
UX elements such as design and style, use of color (or lack thereof), and flow of a purchase process, all combine to create either a smooth user experience that funnels visitors through your site… OR they create frustration and confusion which causes visitors to drop off.
A positive UX can contribute positively to SEO, but a negative UX can negatively impact SEO.
Merove
Clear site structure & navigation.
Important organic landing pages should not be more than 2 clicks from the homepage.
Fast site speed, ideally with a page load time of 5 seconds or less.
Important content should be above the “fold.” Many users won’t scroll down on a page if they aren’t immediately engaged.
Calls to action (CTAs) should be present on most pages and easy to find.
Brittni
Brittni
Brittni
Topics should be:
Relevant to the category or keywords we would like to increase in rank or visibility
Popular enough to garner traffic, but not too competitive (“long-tail queries” [3+ keywords] are perfect – avoid choosing topics that are too broad)
Helpful to users once they land on the website
Potential for CTAs (Calls to Action)
Potential for link-bait (get people to link to your page because it’s great content!)
Merove
Merove
Insert screen shot of suggested results from Amazon as well
Merove
Google Keyword Planner recently began grouping search volumes for related terms together.
We believe this is yet another signal that it’s all about content, context & user intent – not specific words.
Note: search ranking vs. search visibility
Merove
How we use these diff. tools together
Merove
Select “Long Tail”
Merove
Select “Long Tail”
Merove
Insert screenshot of SERP
Understand your audience and their pain points, then address them with your on-page copy, meta titles, meta descriptions, image alt tags, H1 tags, etc.
Commit to consistently developing quality content that your users will find relevant and interesting once they get to your site.
Develop brand affinity and loyalty via a blog. Post to it regularly.
Optimize internal links - Make sure your internal links flow in a natural way.
Merove
Social Media
Share blog posts and other valuable content via social media, and encourage user engagement on your blog and social media channels.
External Links
Quality content on quality third-party sites.
Build authoritative links – combat negative impacts of negative links by gaining positive ones – those that highly relevant from site that have higher domain authority than your own site.
Merove
Positioning a brand as an authority and incr. brand awareness
Google is increasing the number of queries that receive a Google Quick Answer box. The number of results that had an answer box went from just over 20% in December 2014 to more than 30% in May 2016.*
Merove
DOUBLE CHECK THIS…
Create quality, well-structured content that benefits your visitors
Use buyer personas to ensure your content suits your customer’s needs
Keep user experience in mind
Implement SEO best practices to rank higher
Type of content that’s best: Provide a how-to list
Brittni
“Publish and Pray” doesn’t work- you need expand your content past your own website
We recommend utilizing owned, earned, and paid media to bring traffic back to your site
Anything you can do to bring more quality eyeballs to your site will benefit your both your content marketing & SEO strategies
Brittni
Brittni
Avoid writing for search engines instead of people
Use personas to understand the needs, challenges and wants of your customers
Align those personas with different stages of the lifecycle or buyer journey and create content for all stages of each persona’s journey with your brand
Merove
"Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results.
Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose).
Merove
Buying links from link farms
Showing different content to the search engines compared to what is shown to users
Injecting hidden links into a website that isn’t owned by the link builder by exploiting a security flaw
These and other types of black-hat link building tactics are problematic because they don’t count as genuine endorsements.
Merove
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank or “link juice.” This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links.
This does not include paid ads like Google AdWords, content syndication through tools like OutBrain or affiliate marketing links.
Merove
Merove
Frequent testing of different types of content and analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess where your storytelling has and has not been successful so that you can adjust your content planning & development accordingly.
Merove
Reach – sessions, geography, devices
Engagement – time spent, bounce rate
Sentiment – comments, social sharing
Conversions – how often do readers turn into leads (email subscribers, event registrants, customers, etc.)
Qualitative metrics as well - once highly ranked, offers additional opportunities for exposure