@iPullRank

@iPullRank

Download This Deck http://iacq.co/seoetry

Before Marketing I Was an Indie Rapper...

Before Marketing I Was an Indie Rapper…

My writing process looked a lot like this due to my intense usage of imagery and multi-syllabic structure

...I Know the Power of Words

A Bicycle Accident Introduced Me to SEO

Rappers don’t have health insurance so I went back to my development roots and the first place to hire me was an SEO agency. From there I ended up at the prestigious Razorfish and then Publicis Modem.

This Crazy Lady Introduced Me to Content Strategy

At my second multinational interactive agency I shared an office with this woman. She was the first actual content strategist I ever worked with and she had a copy of the first edition of Kristina’s book on her shelf.

Devin Impressed Me with this Concept

Our SEO Content Strategist Devin Asaro (@copydev) impressed me with this concept when he first joined the iAcquire team in January. Read his post: http://iacq.co/17bjt6n

@CopyDev

Seriously follow @CopyDev

He only has 29 followers. @CopyDev. Do it!

The Battle Between Creative and Strategy

In full service agencies Strategy doesn’t really get a seat the table and we often spent more time arguing with the Creative team than actually informing the work to ensure performance.

Me vs. the Copywriter

Writing is the job of a copywriter. In my previous job the copywriters didn’t feel that way. They felt as though metadata was something users never see and therefore I should be writing it. (Yes, that’s me laughing at David Ogilvy)

Here is some text on a slide.

I’m not writing page titles and

meta descriptions. Nobody sees

those.

BLAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Modern Day Ogilvy

David Ogilvy set the precedent with his famous quote about advertising. I feel similarly about content.

Here is some text on a slide.

If it doesn’t sell, it’s not creative.

If it’s not driven by

user demand, it’s a waste of

time.

A new way to think about SEO’s role in Content Creation

The Poetry of SEO

Let’s Talk About Haikus

The haiku is perhaps the most limiting form of poetry in that it requires the writer to stay within the constraint of syllable counts of 5, 7, 5 for its three lines. Now let’s examine from translations of Matsuo Basho’s masterpiece about a frog jumping into the water.

How Copywriters Would Translate This

This version translated by Curtis Hidden Page is much like how a copywriter would prefer to translate the ideas of the original. This imposes an experience on the reader leaving them unchallenged and bored and it doesn’t fit the syllable count specification.

How Copywriters Would Write for SEO

This version translated by Lafcadio Hearn is sterile, boring and completely lacks any creative flare, but it is within the specification and conveys the point. Most people who “write for SEO” think this has done the job.

How it Should be Done

This version translated by Eli Siegel is both elegant, mysterious and fits the specification. It is a strong piece of art that also fulfills what is required. The writer has found his voice despite the limitations.

The Constraint is no Excuse for Inelegance

Compare these two meta descriptions. Two competing products. Colgate goes an awful job of maintaining the brand voice meanwhile Old Spice team does a great job of incorporating the macho Old Spice guy voice and tone into their SEO and making a great continued

impression on their customers.

Terrible Meta Description with no brand voice.

Great Meta Description within spec that carries the brand voice and tone.

SEO is Not a Constraint, it’s a Springboard!

SEO is a way to structure content exactly around what the user wants.

Doing so prepares it for Organic performance. Without SEO your

content is at the mercy of Paid Media.

An Example – Our Own Website

Before I got to iAcquire we had a website where no one could tell what we did and didn’t perform well in Organic Search. We’ll talk about this redesign throughout this deck.

How SEO Makes Content More Powerful

Before my team redesigned and launched the new iAcquire site we averaged a few hundred impressions in Organic Search with 10-50 clickthroughs per day. Post re-launch we get thousands of impressions daily and several hundred clicks.

The Real Metrics

More importantly YoY our Organic Search traffic has gone up 743% and our bounce rate has gone down 40%. We’re also crushing our lead generation goals and therefore continuing to make strong business cases fro the content we want to create.

SEO has moved far beyond meta tags and links, here’s a peek...

What SEO Can Do

Panda Killed The SEO Page

Ever since Google unleashed the Panda algorithm update there is no such thing as writing sections of the site “just for

SEO” anymore.

Modern SEO is Much Bigger than Meta Tags

Modern SEO is at least a research channel to inform content strategy and at most a cross-discipline set of actions to ensure visibility of content in Organic channels. I wrote a post about this: http://iacq.co/19FEBko

Organic Search and Social Media as research channels is a look into collective human

consciousness.

Leverage the Twitter, Google, Facebook crystal ball and you’ll know

the who, what and why of how to create content that people actually

want.

(Users and Search Engines don’t separate the two

channels, only marketers do.)

Keyword-Level Demographics

Placing your site on Facebook’s Open Graph you can get any data that user allows you to have. Marry that data with search referrers and you have demographic and psychographic data on the keyword level. That is intent + audience. http://iacq.co/11EED4u

Personas and Keyword Ownership

Leveraging the keyword data in context of the social media data allows you to measure against the personas visiting your site and determine who your capturing and how to target moving forward.

Curious George Film Purist Tech Geek

• 18-32 • Male • Loves indie rock • Wishes he had a beard

• 18-32 • Male • Loves all music • Wishes he could move

out his mom’s basement

• 22-40 • Male • Loves film soundtracks • Wishes he could live in

the movie Avatar

• 22-40 • Male • Loves Techno • Wishes you would stop

invading his online privacy

• 5000 Searches Monthly • Conversion Rate 5%

• 600 Searches Monthly • Conversion Rate 2%

• 1000 Searches Monthly • Conversion Rate 0.5%

• 100 Searches Monthly • Conversion Rate 0.2%

Gamer

Persona Interests as Defined by Facebook

Doing research in the Facebook Ad Creator yields quantifiable criteria to match against the site visitor and granularly identify them as a specific audience segment. These are attributes which align with the personas from the previous slide.

3D TV

Audience: 27,4440

Suggested Likes and Interests

Reflects the interest of Curious George

3D TV

Audience: 30,400

Suggested Likes and Interests

Reflects the interest of Gamer

#HDMI

Audience: 1,600,000

#Video on demand

Audience: 4,400,000

#LCD television

Audience: 179,000

#Set-top box

Audience: 327,000

#TiVo

Audience: 242,000

#Satellite television

Audience: 1,200,000

#Digital television

Audience: 2,900,000

#Analog television

Audience: 296,000

#Pay-per-view

Audience: 540,000

#Depth perception

Audience: 120,000

#HDMI

Audience: 1,600,000

#Video on demand

Audience: 4,400,000

#Television set

Audience: 890,000

#Satellite television

Audience: 1,200,000

#Digital television

Audience: 2,900,000

#IPTV

Audience: 268,000

#Analog television

Audience: 296,000

#Pay-per-view

Audience: 540,000

#Depth perception

Audience: 120,000

#Large-screen television technology

Audience: 36,000

#Stereoscopy

Audience: 362,000

#35 mm film

Audience: 296,000

#Digital 3D

Audience: 89,000

#Polarized 3D system

Audience: 2,000

#Stereo display

Audience: 29,000

#Active shutter 3D system

Audience: 8,000

#Disney Digital 3-D

Audience: 10,000

#Dolby 3D

Audience: 36,000

#VistaVision

Audience: less than 1000

#Autostereoscopy

Audience: 24,000

3D TV

Audience: 130,980

Suggested Likes and Interests

Reflects the interest of Film Purist

#Random-access memory

Audience: 8,000,000

#Computer monitor

Audience: 1,700,000

#OLED

Audience: 442,000

#Ethernet

Audience: 219,000

#Electronic paper

Audience: 147,000

#Stereo display

Audience: 29,000

#IPS panel

Audience: 24,000

#Active matrix

Audience: 4,000

#Seven-segment display

Audience: 1,000

#Autostereoscopy

Audience: 24,000

3D TV

Audience: 35,240

Suggested Likes and Interests

Reflects the interest of Tech Geek

Dynamic Targeting Based on Persona

Since you have the data about the user in real-time you can make the experience dynamic based on who they are what they want. You can also cookie this user and use this data cross-channel.

(Dramatization)

What Normal Users See What Curious George Sees Curious George

• 18-32 • Male • Loves indie rock • Wishes he had a beard

Subsequent Conversion Prediction

After collecting conversion information for a long period of time it is easy to predict what a given audience segment will do next and therefore know where and how to intelligently target that user.

We develop personas based on social data

Users come from search, we collect

data

Curious George buys a pair of

sneakers

We aggressively target in other channels for

the next buy

Curious George comes back and

buys a windbreaker

Curious George

What Position Converts Best?

User need states can change in the same Search Engine Results Page depending on how well they’ve been educated as they traverse those results. You can account for this by tracking your rankings in analytics.

Dynamic Messaging by Search Position

You can dynamically change your messaging based on that to influence conversions. Post with Code: http://iacq.co/15MYtD2

Position #1 messaging

The Time Constraint The Challenge Normal Messaging

Position #2 messaging Historically converting position

SPECIAL DEAL FOR

THE NEXT 30 SECONDS

LOWER PRICE THAN [NEXT COMPETITOR

IN THE SERP]

Content Planning Becomes MultiDimensional

Modern SEO when done with a bent toward market intelligence is more about content planning based on intent vs. audience vs. their need states than it just about inserting keywords. SEO at Content Strategy are joined at the hip.

Consideration Version

Loyalty Version Awareness Version

The Marketing Power of Modern SEO

The team at Duetsch LA used Organic Search to prove to HTC that people wanted HTC phones in colors aside from black, white and gray

Action Items!

Here are the things you should actually DO.

Listening Understanding the people

behind the search

Understand the Person behind the Search with Personas

At iAcquire we are incredibly intent on understanding the user behind the search. We leverage market research data in context with social PPC inventories to build out our personas at scale.

Experian Simmons Mosaic

Experian Simmons has a free interactive guide with a lot of their data in it here: http://bit.ly/Qeh0uw

Nielsen PRIZM

Nielsen’s MyBestSegments has a free demo with PRIZM data http://bit.ly/Qeh0uw

Connect Personas to their Keywords

At iAcquire we are incredibly intent on understanding the user behind the search so after we’ve done our persona research we perform keyword research and run surveys on SurveyMonkey Audience targeting that specific demographic to get an understanding of their need

states. The output of that is the keyword portfolio.

UberSuggest

Identify long tail search queries with Uber Suggest. http://www.ubersuggest.org Protip: Use wildcards(*) for searches.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

An oldie and still goodie: https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool

BottleNose

Real-time keyword research based on Twitter http://bottlenose.com/

Topsy

Social Listening with Topsy: http://www.topsy.com

SocialMention

Social Listening with Social Mention: http://www.socialmention.com

FollowerWonk

Use FollowerWonk to quickly get a sense of ideas that the audience is interested in. Don’t have enough followers? Look at competitors: http://www.followerwonk.com

Planning

Content Strategy is a key part of modern SEO

Content Strategy & SEO Orbit the Same Thing

I would go as far as to say that Content Strategy and SEO are intertwined or at least they are to related disciplines in orbit around the user. To build content that people are searching for ideas should be informed by Search.

The deliverable that glues content to SEO strategy

The SEO Copy Brief

Objectives

Business Goals

Target Audience

Personas

Voice and Tone

Brand Voice

Content Specifications

Content Creation Strategy

Measurement Plan

Key Performance Indicators

Content Map

Develop information architecture and site taxonomies based on Organic Search keywords.

Keyword-driven

Taxonomy

Keyword Bucketing

Keyword Bucketing

Best Practices

Text here

Immersion Building empathy through Structured brainstorming

Content Creators Don’t Care About Research

If you just hand off all this research to a content creator, they aren’t going to read it. Your content strategists and creators need to be immersed in the conversation to truly understand the users they are creating content for.

Participate in the Conversation

At iAcquire we don’t just “research” and hand off a report across teams. Our team immerses themselves in the online conversation in some cases even contributing to it in order to understand the user and speak their language. This also allows you to vet the popularity of

an idea.

Quora

Quora is great for asking questions and participate in online conversations to understand what topics are popular with specific demographics. http://www.quora.com

Discussion Search

Find the right keyword-relevant conversations quickly to understand the vocabulary of the user and how they communicate to drive the content strategy.

Projecting Knowing whether your content is

worth doing

Projecting Content Value

Using Search Volume as a proxy to prove demand allows you to make a strong business case for your content efforts. Develop a collection of keywords for each piece of content in the strategy and then use the following equations…

Share Of Voice Calculation

Calculate Share of Voice using keyword volume. If the keyword has a SoV of over 100% that just means they are getting a higher CTR than the industry standard.

Keyword ROI Potential

The Consumer Decision Journey

Be mindful of where your content fits in the consumer decision journey. Some content types make more sense at different phases and all should be judged accordingly when preparing KPIs.

Metadata The art of making a great first

impression

I Wrote a Post About This

I wrote a comprehensive post about the 18 meta tags you should be preparing for in all content http://iacq.co/17O7iND MetaData isn’t about ranking, it’s about making the right first impression on your user.

Standard Metadata

If you don’t prepare proper metadata within the proper specification you’re missing the opportunities to convert searchers into users.

Page Title Still should be keyword-relevant and up to 70 characters.

Meta Description Should still be up to 155 characters, keyword-relevant and include a call to action.

Rel-author

Having a picture in the SERPs often will draw the user to click your result even if it’s not in the first position, but more importantly…

Eric Schmidt Says

Basically with Author Rank Google will eventually say “Get Down or Lay Down”

Google Wants Authoritative Authors

Google is trying to determine the person behind the content to apply an author rank to the content and help with surfacing authoritative content in Search Results. Claim your content! How to Implement: http://iacq.co/11Vh11p

Rel-publisher

You can surface your brand’s content using rel-publisher. http://iacq.co/14ssu4u

The Knowledge Graph

Google is looking to understand the connections between entities and not just words. http://iacq.co/15xXP8p

Google+ and the Knowledge Graph are fueled by Schema.org

The way to make it easier for Google to understand the entities on your site is by marking it up with metadata using Schema.org http://www.schema.org

Facebook Open Graph

Social signals are growing in significance to site rankings so it’s imperative that content has the best opportunity to be shared and therefore the metadata should speak directly to your users in that channel.

Twitter Cards

Twitter’s version is called the Twitter Card: https://dev.twitter.com/cards

What About Meta Keywords?

Google hasn’t used meta keywords for some time. Here’s a post where they officially announced it in 2009: http://iacq.co/14mU577 If your CMS requires you to specify meta keywords to make the site searchable, choose a new CMS or use Google’s free search appliance:

http://iacq.co/11g5NQa

Otherwise…

People like me use tools like Screaming Frog to quickly identify the keywords your site is targeting. ProTip: Screaming Frog makes a great tool for starting your content audits http://iacq.co/16CFRpR

Journey

Plan for content that’s engaging and keyword-relevant

Plan for Content that is both Engaging and Keyword-relevant

Be mindful of the consumer decision journey and the user’s vocabulary, but first and foremost make an engaging experience.

Lexical Co-Occurrence or Topical Pagerank

The SEO word game has gotten a little more intense. SEO’s have figured out that Google rewards pages that have the right “co-ocurring” keywords with the target keyword. http://iacq.co/12r5Qio

nTopic

nTopic is a tool to facilitate topical pagerank content creation. It tells you want co-occuring keywords you should be using in your content and scores your copy for those keywords. Note: This is not the new “keyword density.” http://www.ntopic.org

Multi-Dimensional

Behavioral targeting makes content planning more complex

Behavioral Targeting Makes Content Planning More Complex

Content needs to be developed to speak to each persona in each need state.

Why SEO matters to you

Wrapping Up

User Intent Is the Superpower of Search

It Makes Your Content Perform

The Content World Tour

You Can Use it to Make Content Happen

Go Forth and Write Poetry.

Michael King Director of Inbound Marketing @iPullRank mike@iacquire.com Download This Deck: http://iacq.co/seoetry

Thank you!

SEARCH IS OUR CRAFT