Content Marketing for SearchMay 3, 2012

Introduction

• About Me– Director of Marketing and Product Development for GWI– Telecom marketer since 1997– Born in Bangor, grew up in Glenburn (BHS Class of ‘89)– @trevorjones71– linkedIn.com/in/trevordjones– Passions: Outdoors, technology, social media, music

• About GWI– Maine based since 1994, based in Biddeford– Internet access, phone service, cloud computing for home and business– Serving 60 communities statewide – www.gwi.net– @gwimaine– youtube.com/gwimaine– facebook.com/GWIInc

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Agenda

• SEO Overview– Emphasis on content

Keyword Research– How to choose keywords– Free and paid tools

• Taking advantage of “blended search”– Leveraging social media, video, and photos

Search Engine Optimization

• Activities to make your site more visible in search• On-page

– Meta tags, page construction– Keyword optimized content

• Headers, text and photos

– Internal linking– Site maps

• Off-page– Link-building– Social sharing

“Content is King, Links are Queen, Likes are the New Links”

Keywords• What your customer types into Google to find you• Short tail

– Generic, 1-2 words– Generate the most traffic– Highly competitive, hard to rank for– Tend to be research oriented and have low conversion rates

• Long tail– More specific, 3+ words– Flavors, brands, features, price points, colors– Geo-targeted– In many cases, less competitive– Generate less traffic, but higher conversion rates– Usually easier to rank for

Keyword Research

• The process of identifying the keywords you want to optimize for

• Key factors– Daily searches– Competition– Conversions

• Build a Keyword List– Analytics – where do you get traffic from today?– Espionage – where do your competitors get traffic from today?– Brainstorming – how many different ways can you describe what

you sell? – Ad words – what are you paying money for that you could get free?

Analytics

Google Analytics: Sources > Search > Organic Free tool: http://www.google.com/analytics/

“Web Espionage”

• SpyFu http://www.spyfu.com

• Enter a competitor’s URL for their– Top paid keywords– Top organic keyworks– Other competitors you

may not know

Brainstorm & Raid PPC

• Add every keyword combination you can think of to your list.– Ask friends.– Use a Thesaurus

• What are you paying for with AdWords?– Savings opportunities.– Better results.

Prioritize Your List• If you have a keyword research

tool, enter each of the phrases you identified from Analytics and SpyFu.

• Enter every other keyword combination you can come up with as well.

• Observe daily search totals and competition scores– Prioritize keyword phases with light

search volumes and low competition.

– Next, prioritize more competitive searches where you already rank and want to move up.

Paid Tools

•Hubspot’s Keyword Grader http://www.hubspot.com/products/keyword-grader/•SEO Moz (30 Day Free Trial) http://www.seomoz.org/tools

Prioritizing Without Keyword Research Tools

• Log out of Google + Clear your cookies• Search for each phrase you found• Note your position and that of your competitors• If you are in the SERP, but not in the top 3, consider generating

content around those phrases• Easier to move up than to get ranked

• If you are not in the SERP– Use a free keyword research tool to determine search volumes

• Keyword Discovery - http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html• Word Tracker - http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

– Generate content for the phrases, focusing first on the long tail phrases with light search volumes.

Time to start creating content!

• More pages = Better– Vital Tools in the SEO Toolkit

• Blogs• Press Releases

• Variety is Better– Videos are fast growing and high visibility– Photos– Social channels

• The top three organic results in Google get 58% of Clicks• Create stuff that’s worthwhile, meaningful, that people will

want to read– Remarkable content attracts links

Keyword Optimization Rules of Thumb

• Cardinal Rule – Write for humans first, search engines second!– 0.5% to 1.5% keyword density on a page is usually sufficient – don’t

exceed 2.5%– At least 250 words per page. If more than 1200 words, consider

breaking it up.• On Pages, include your primary keyword in:

– Page file name (url)– Title Tag– H1 Header– First Paragraph– Last Paragraph– Links (Anchor Text)

Blended Search

• “Everything”– Pages– Pictures– Videos– Blogs– Social Sites

• The blended search tool kit:– YouTube– Picasa Web Albums, Pinterest– Blog– Google Places– Other social channels

Why Blended Search is ImportantGoogle only allows any given site two listings in organic results, BUT . . .

Why Blended Search is Important… it is possible to DOMINATE the first page of a Google SERP.

Optimizing for Blended Search

• Photos– File names– Alt Tags– Captions

• YouTube Videos– Titles– Descriptions– Tags– Your Script! (Upload Captions/Transcript)

• Your Facebook “Info Page”• Your LinkedIn Profile• Your Twitter Bio• Tweets …• Remember…Google Likes Google

Why Optimize Photos?

• They increase keyword density on the page.• Photos do come up in search on their own.

Why Optimize Social Profiles?

Thank You!Don’t forget to follow!

@trevorjones71 @gwimaineFacebook.com/GWIInc