SEO News

Don’t underestimate the task

A good SEO strategy is like building or redeveloping a business to last. More often than not it will involve considerable time and resources. 

Understand your own site performance, but also the competition and the market

Of course, any plan involves measurement of improvement and hence an audit of performance as it stands, before work begins.

Although this audit of current performance is paramount, one also needs to consider the performance of competitors and the state of the market.

There’s no point target a phrase that a competitor has a stranglehold on if there’s an equally important phrase you believe is up for grabs.

Similarly, market analysis allows one to see how a sector or product maps to search. An example given in the guide is that of plumbing. Even with contextual search on the rise, most plumbers are better targeting the prase ‘plumber London’ than simply ‘plumber’ (providing the plumber works in London).

Understanding the market means understanding the customer – what locations are they in and what devices are they using? 

Plan for your proposition not a list of ranking factors

Remember that SEO ranking factors are a broad church. Every company is affected in different ways by different factors and, of course, you as a marketer might not be able to affect every variable. 

Some marketers might be working with restrictions on their ability to change web architecture, such as building landing pages. Others might be working for a brand that doesn’t have a well-developed social media presence. These factors will affect strategy. 

Learn from PPC

SEO and PPC are complementary, see Google’s fairly new paid and organic search report in AdWords.

Although concentrating efforts in both areas tends not to be deleterious, of course it makes sense to use paid search to fill gaps, buying phrases for which you might not be ranking organically for yet. You must be careful though to ensure each click is useful for the customer. Use PPC experimentation to understand how easy or otherwise improving organic ranking might be.

PPC also allows for copy testing on a small scale, potentially informing wider content efforts.

It is important to remember that without attribution analysis, ROI may be understated for SEO if PPC takes last clicks. 

Plan for ROI

Is an increase in ROI the aim, or is this a longer term customer acquisition campaign?

Break down ROI by location, device, and keyphrases. This is important for setting priorities.

Setting expectations for ROI also dictates a knowledge of the timeframes involved. When will the company start to see acquisition? 

Prioritise the basics

If your title tags needs sorting out, best to start with those before going on to bigger strategic fish. That much is probably a given.

It’s also clear that working upwards from the long tail keyphrases is going to bear more fruit that planning from day dot for that one highly competitive phrase. 

As an example, target ‘brown Oxford shoes for men’, then ‘brown shoes for men’, then ‘brown shoes’ and finally ‘shoes’. 

Get other teams involved

SEO is a beast that involves marketing, tech and your company’s content creators. In understanding and mapping the resource available to you, make sure you countenance who might be able to help with keyword research, content creation and campaign measurement.

Be agile and opportunistic with keyphrase research

Remember that opportunities come and go in search. The results page can change with:  

• real world events
• social activity 
• changes in the way we use the web, such as new devices
• changes in reach as new territories come online
• changes in the way search engines present information 

You must keep abreast of these changes.

What is the audience trying to do?

This is probably the most important strategic point. You shouldn’t lose track of the customer journey and what it is they are trying to achieve.

The journey from search phrase to appropriate landing page and product must be one that makes sense. Customers may well be searching around a problem they have encountered, rather than for your product or service specifically. What devices and in what location ware customers likely to be?

Inhabiting the mind of the customer will help with keyphrase research and optimising the customer journey.

Understand the state of your site

This is part of prioritisation and understanding the customer journey.

Is your website in good shape? Do you have a content strategy in place? Is your SEO planning part of a multichannel approach? 

Think laterally about link building

Don’t just target high authority sites in your sector. Where else might your information me valued?

Benchmark content

Once you’ve started producing content to target keyphrases, make sure you track what does well. This can take the form of social mentions, comments on site, impressions or uniques, new visits, conversion rate, bounce rate etc.

Knowing what’s performing well is vital for maintining momentum.

Creating awareness

Traditional press releases are still a great way to deliver planned communications to those all important press influencers.

This can be the step to raising awareness of a product or service, and whilst it might not make an exciting read, the more factual or technical the PR, the bigger the opportunity to syndicate information that gives your company a competitive advantage.

A few tips for optimising press releases for maximum exposure include:

• Use data and statistics that can be used in related articles to give the ‘boring’ content a relevant context. For example, an article about council tax might not be an avid read, but adding national debt statistics can give it an angle for a more interesting hook and make it relevant, say for your credit card product. 
• Add a fact sheet and use the rest of the PR to add context to the boring facts and numbers.
• Add a human hook to bait the media. A change in senior personnel could focus on personal achievements and interests within a community to add human-interest. 

Consideration

Adding background to the company or product not only communicates your brand values but also adds credibility and builds authority.

Make sure you are making full use of your ‘about us’, ‘contact us’ and ‘store locations’ pages, as well as adding product comparisons to both illustrate product benefits and for generic search queries. 

Ensure any copy in these pages include rich keywords and phrases that relate to questions you possible customers might ask, for example, ‘what are the benefits of solar panels’ or ‘where can I buy a car battery’ etc.

This example from Microsoft for the Xbox One is a good way to use content to display all of the features of the console in a format that can be syndicated to partner sites to drive interest and traffic.

This information could otherwise be ignored as ‘techno babble’.

Purchase

This is the content that will actually convert your visitors to a sale. 

Your awareness and consideration content will get people to the site, but at this stage you need content that will lead them to making a sale. 

Focus on optimisation of the page as a matter of best practice, and what is physically on the product pages. Don’t assume your customer knows all of the detail.

• Use bullet points to include technical specifications e.g. components or measurements.
• Make pricing as clear as possible.
• Add customer ratings or reviews if you have them. 
• Incorporate any shipping benefits if appropriate e.g. get free delivery on this item.
• Use photography to show alternative views, including aspirational images of people actually using the item if relevant.

Boots Kitchen Appliances displays product information really well, giving the customer all of the information they may need to make a purchase decision including measurements, kits included and model codes.  

Service

Once you’ve sold your product, there’s a pretty good chance that your customers will have questions, issues or just need help getting the most out of it. So your content should not only address the sale of the item, but also the after-sales care. 

And don’t forget that this could be an opportunity to monetise that ‘boring’ inventory with up-sell or cross-sell promotions. 

This Purple Parking guide to packing gold clubs offers advice to passengers planning to travel for golfing trips. it could easily have been added to the site as a text document with measurements and dimensions of baggage allowance, but instead they have tried to make it more interesting and valuable for readers using an infographic representation. 

Loyalty

This content needs to protect reputation and retain brand loyalty to drive future purchase and help to maintain positive customer perception. 

• Focus on negatives and turn them around to the benefit of your brand.
• Highlight how your product or services addresses an issue.
• Highlight how your brand is not associated with an issue.
• Produce great content quickly.

Toyota’s infographic on air pollution legislation shows how their vehicles filter air to reassure customers that their cars comply.  

So next time you are offered the prospect of working with a ‘boring’ client, think about the possible ‘quick wins’ that are up for grabs by not overlooking basic content needs.