10 tips, plus dozens of new tactics to create SEO-friendly content. Gain expert insights and real-life examples of how adjusting creative content process can boost your effectiveness. by Alok Jain #IRCE2014
SEO Expert in USA - 5 Ways to Improve Your Local Ranking - Macaw Digital.pdf
IRCE 2014 Presentation : 10 Tips to Create SEO-Friendly Content
1. !
• Get your site design, content and
overall experience right!
• Get your content visible on page 1 of
Google SERPS
• Earn links, shares, reviews and
comments from your customers.
• Build brand authority and trust—
yielding more conversions.
10 Proven Tips to
Create SEO-Friendly Content
So you can …
Alok Jain
Co-CEO & CMO
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SEO Landscape
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Tip #1: Use Many Tactics
Google uses 200+ signals to serve relevant results.
B2C Marketing Usage by Tactic
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Tip #2: Prioritize !
Define goals & map your priorities to chart course
@alokkjain | @ezdia
Defining your business goal and
mapping your priorities will help
achieve success.
!
• For a resource constrained team,
you may prioritize tactics that are
low effort, high effectiveness.
• For an advanced team, tackling
tactics with low to medium effort,
high effectiveness might be a good
way to start.
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Objective, audience
Content types, marketing channel
Blogs, ad banners, social
media posts, infographics,
short how-to’s
Buyer’s guides, gift guides,
white paper, forums
Top 10/best of editorial
lists, product reviews,
finders
Product use guides,
product reviews, free trials,
testimonials
Product/accessories
updates, how-to’s, blogs,
community forums
When
Daily, short form
Weekly, long form
On customer
interaction
On purchase and
just after
Customer type/
purchased items
Tip #3: Know the Content to Create
@alokkjain | @ezdia
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Collect Keyword Data: ideas for sources
Tip #3: Know the Content to Create!
Identify keywords, topics & themes to create content around
Plug variations of these terms
into Google Adwords keyword
planner to get more keyword
ideas
@alokkjain | @ezdia
• Inbound search terms!
• Borrowed from your competitor!
• Keywords in your taxonomy!
• Social trends!
• Events & holidays!
• Customer reviews!
• Get creative! (Black Friday in July)!
• site FAQ’s
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!
1. Eliminate any keywords that don’t fit brand
voice or campaign goals
!
2. Identify share of voice (SOV) by !
• Filter it for targeted keyword groups by category and
competition.
• Apply Organic CTR to keyword position & monthly search
volume and identify traffic.
!
3. Choose category based upon SOV and
business priorities.
Tip #3: Know the Content to Create
Take keyword inventory, define SOV & identify key category
Position #1 equates to an
average CTR of 36.4%
Position #2 earns a
CTR of 17%
@alokkjain | @ezdia
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!
✓ Is the content unique, readable & valuable? !
✓ Did you research keywords using right tools?!
✓ Are the primary keywords in the title & URL? !
✓ Are there keywords in the image file & alt tag? !
✓ Are social sharing options available?!
✓ Does the page load fast—less than 4 seconds for all content?!
✓ Do redirects from older versions deliver directly to the page?!
✓ Is the page available to a robot crawler?!
✓ Is the URL included in the sitemap file?!
✓ Is the page using semantic (Schema) markups? !
✓ Do Not Duplicate Content
Tip #4: Optimize your content
Checklist for optimized page
Leverage URL Structure for SEO Benefit
ideal:
not ideal:
http://ww30.1800flowers.com/product.do?
baseCode=101496&dataset=1012&cm_c
id=d1012
http://proflowers.com/plants/
Potted-Pink-Calla-Lilly-494
populated by
product title
populated by
data base
@alokkjain | @ezdia
Tools
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Tip #4: Optimize your content
Wrangle your metadata
Title Tag Meta Description URL
65 !
characters
158 !
characters
92!
characters
@alokkjain | @ezdia
Title tags appear in more than 5 prominent places like
browser tabs, SERPS & social media headlines!
Meta descriptions fuels the page “description” on a search
result of social media post.
Metadata also includes protocols like Schema.org, Twitter
Card, Open Graph & Google authorship
Site metadata is visible … & powerful!!
!
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Tip #5: Scale your effort
In-house vs Outsourcing
Ideas of tasks to outsource:
!
• keyword research
• analytics
• specific writing tasks
• data validation
• image research
• fact checking
61% of large companies
(1,000+ employees)
outsource some component
of their content creation
process.
@alokkjain | @ezdia
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Tip #5: Scale your effort
Foster collaboration (Internal teams, community & vendors)
• Our experience shows that using a workflow tool for
content creation boost writer/editor efficiency by 25%.
Technology ServicesHybrid
Compendium
DivvyHQ
Percolate
Crowdsource
Crowdflower
Contently
TextBroker
Brafton
AEM !
eZdia
Kapost
Skyword
Zerys
@alokkjain | @ezdia
In house content !
Influencer (i.e. !
catalog!
managers)
External content
partners (i.e.
suppliers)
Content !
Strategy
External content
creators (i.e. !
Community, !
content vendors)
In house
content creators
(i.e. writes/
editors)
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Tip #6: Plan for Content Distribution!
Plan for content topics, publishing, distribution & refreshment.
@alokkjain | @ezdia
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Tip #6: Plan for Content Distribution!
Plan for content topics, publishing, distribution & refreshment.
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Alok Jain
Tip #7: Measure
If you can measure it, you can improve it.
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Measuring SEO performance is critical to the
success of your business
Metrics to Track:
• % of total traffic that comes from organic search.
• Branded vs. non branded organic traffic.
• Keyword rankings & share of voice (SOV).
• Total number of pages that are receiving at least
5 visits from organic search every month.
• Traffic quality (time on site, pages/visit)
• Conversion & ROI
@alokkjain | @ezdia
Tools
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Tip #8: Curate Content
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Curating content is the combination of collecting,
adding to/annotating and sharing 3rd party
content: !
!
- Aggregation : collecting relevant content!
- Distillation : getting to a simplistic format!
- Elevation : identifying larger trend/insight!
- Mashup : merging existing content to create a
new point of view!
- Chronology : organizing information to show
how things has evolved
@alokkjain | @ezdia
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!
SEO results always take longer than
you want or expect. Some of the most
time-consuming components of
optimization are:
!
• establishing authority: everyone
wants to link to a celebrity ☺
!
• analyzing the competition:
successful SEO initiatives are multi-
faceted.
!
• building partnerships and links:
these rely on real relationships, trust
and respect.

Tip #9: Be Patient & Persistent!
How long will it take to see results?
@alokkjain | @ezdia
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Google+ rich snippets has
been shown to significantly
increase the click-through-
rate from SERPs by as much
as 150%.
!
source: QuickSprout.com
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@alokkjain | @ezdia
Tip #10: Get on Google+!
It’s true! Google loves Google+… and so do searchers!
A recent study by
SearchMetrics found Google
+1s to be the highest-
correlated factor they studied
3 Benefits to Creating
Content on Google+!
!
1. Posts are crawled and
indexed by google
immediately.
2. Each post is published with
it’s own unique URL & title
tags.!
!
3. Each post earns page rank
and can pass link equity
through links.
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@alokkjain | @ezdia
Create an Ecosystem!
within your content creation process
Strategy &
Planning
Decide on
Theme &
Topics
Create
Content
Distribution!
Re-
purpose/
curate
Measure &
Analyze