keyword strategy content marketing strategy. workbook · keyword strategy workbook stop guessing....

Keyword Strategy

WorkbookStop guessing.

Use this process to develop better content.

Using data to confirm your content marketing strategy.

©2016 Marketing CoPilot Inc. All rights reserved.

The internet has changed how organizations make buying decisions

Almost everyone starts their buying process with a search engine.

97% of people searching for a product or service begin by using a search engine to diagnose their own problems and evaluate alternatives. However, because of time constraints and the sheer volume of information available online, potential customers will only look at the top search results.

From our 2016 Digital Marketing Report:

The complete report available for download at http://bit.ly/2bTNoYH

http://bit.ly/2bTNoYH


Why is having a keyword strategy important in today’s market?

Your website can be your best sales tool. » Knowing the keywords that customers use to find you (and your competitors) will

help you generate qualified leads who are just beginning their buying process.

» A good website helps customers self-serve; it’s a salesperson that never sleeps.

» Websites can track and measure everything that customers do, which helps you test content and learn more about what customers really care about.

Developing an effective keyword strategy can be difficult.

» A lot of companies will build a keyword strategy around their product and service offerings, not their customer’s needs.

» It’s easy to jump ahead to selling stuff, instead of developing a deep understanding of your customer’s buying process.

» Many companies don’t know how to build effective content in order to test their keywords and prove that their strategy works.

» Everyone searches differently and thinks differently, which means marketers must also be psychologists to some degree.

» Customers can search for information on Google, Bing, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Kijiji, and so on. Figuring out which channels to focus on is very hard.


Do you think search has an effect on your business?

The Keyword Strategy Test

True for my business

Not True for my business

1. My customers don’t search for my product / service category.

2. I only need a keyword strategy if I am doing Google AdWords campaigns and pay-per-click advertising.

3. My best keywords are too competitive and I’d never be able to compete for them on Page 1 of Google.

4. Keywords are only for the technical aspects of my website.

5. My keywords should only be a reflection of my products and services.

FALSE: 97% of buyers looking for anything start their search online. They are looking for you – you just may not be sure what they are searching for.

FALSE: Keywords are the key to everything. We search everything and use phrases and words to self-educate.

FALSE: If you have not asked your customers what they search for, have not used data to build your list or tested your keywords, you likely don’t know what your best keywords are.

FALSE: Over the last 24 months, Google has made significant updates to their algorithm. 90% of what Google assesses to decide how to rank a website is now based on what humans are doing with content, not the technical aspect of your website. (It used to be 70% technical – experts suggest its now 10%).

FALSE: Your keywords should be a reflection of your best customer and what they are doing online to understand a business problem.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Answers


A keyword strategy is always evolving and improving

» Over one billion searches are completed on Google every day. That’s a lot of potential traffic - and a lot of different potential keywords.

» Since we can track every interaction customers have with a website, we have a lot of data to help drive our decisions.

» Periodic reviews and revisions are an essential element of any keyword strategy.

The Keyword Strategy Loop


There are 7 steps to follow when developing your keyword list

1. Identify customer problems.

2. Confirm your buyers personas.

3. Analyze your current traffic.

4. Brainstorm an initial keyword list.

5. Create your keyword list.

6. Test your assumptions.

7. Implement your keywords online.

What are your best customers trying to fix in their business?

Create buyer personas to better understand your buyers.

Look at your Google data to learn how people currently find your website.

Create a foundational list of keywords to work from.

Ask current prospects about their buying process.

Build your list based on competition, volume, and ability to convert traffic.

Optimize pages on your website using your list, publish content using your keywords, then track, measure, and evolve.


1. Identify customer problems

What are your customers trying to fix in their business?

Write down some customer problems here:

If you don’t know what problems your customers want solved, we have a Customer Scorecard that will help you identify both your best customers and the biggest problems they are facing in their business.

www.marketingcopilot.com/customer-scorecard-template

www.marketingcopilot.com/customer-scorecard-template


A note about buyer personas

A well-crafted buyer persona includes:

The purpose of a buyer persona is to understand what would impress a buyer who is looking for a product or service like yours.

Gartner estimates that buyers spend only 32% of their journey interacting with sales people. These same buyers are using keywords and content to learn. So your keyword strategy is paramount in helping them self-serve and self-educate.

Priority Initiative: » Who triggered the search, and why? » What is the time, budget, or significant event?

Success Factors: » What new outcomes does the buyer expect?

Perceived Barriers: » Why do buyers choose or not choose you?

Decision Criteria: » Which capabilities do buyers evaluate? » How will they make a decision within their company?

Buyer Journey: » What are buyers doing as they weigh options? » What information are they asking for in the buying process?

Why create a buyer persona?


2. Confirm your buyer personas

1. Buyer priorities.

Describe the highest priority results this buyer persona wants to achieve by buying this type of product, service or solution.

2. Buyer obstacles.

Provide up to three reasons this buyer would give for not buying from you.

3. Decision criteria.

Write five things you believe this buyer will do to decide what to do and what to buy.

Create two to three examples of buyer personas who regularly buy from your company. Create a profile of them and indicate:


3. Analyze your current traffic

1. Which keywords drive traffic to your website today?

2. Where do people come from?

3. What do they do when they first come to your website?

4. How long do they stay?

5. Which content is more popular?

6. What changes from month to month?

Data you should review:

1.

2.

2.

3.

5.

4.


A note about types of keywords

Types of keywords:Branded:

» Keywords based on your company or product brand name usually used in long tail keywords. ex: “marketing copilot services”

Short-tail: » Generic keyword used by your target market ex: “marketing services”

Long-tail: » Any generic keyword that has product features, model number etc. ex: “marketing

services consulting toronto”

Questions: » Turn your keywords into problem solving questions ex: “Should I outsource

marketing services?”

Competitors: » What keywords do your competitors use?

Search Volume vs. Specificity

Short Tail

Long Tail

marketing

marketing consulting

online marketing consulting

marketing consulting toronto

online marketing consulting toronto


4. Brainstorm an initial keyword list

Initial keyword list:

Include the following in your list: » Buyer problems

» Buyer priorities

» Buyer obstacles

» Your brand

» Your product & service categories


5. Create your keyword list

Relevancy: » Highly relevant to your business and your customers’ goals.

Volume: » Good search volume in the country you are trying to rank in.

Competitiveness: » Not impossibly competitive.

Ability to convert traffic: » Able to convert someone to a lead and opportunity.

Develop your keyword list using the following criteria:

Make sure keywords map back to earlier steps: » Your customer’s business problems (Step 1) » Buyer Personas (Step 2) » How potential customers describe a problem and search for answers (Step 5)

Use keyword research tools to analyze your list: » See the list of available tools at the end of this workbook.

Then, analyze and optimize your list:


6. Test your assumptions

Confirm your initial direction by asking actual prospects these questions:

“How did you find us?” » Online, word-of-mouth, at a trade show, etc.

“Where were you searching online?” » Google, Bing, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.

“What words would you search for to fix your business problem?” » Are you missing out on potential traffic?

“What questions would you ask or look to have answered online?” » This will help you determine what content needs to be on your website.


7. Implement your keywords online

Are these words part of pages on my website? » Can content be rewritten to include your new keywords, or can new pages be

created to better reflect the words your customers use to find you?

What are the Top 10 questions prospects ask in the buying process? » Create this list and build content around the questions, weaving in keywords.

Once you have optimized content on your website with your new keyword list, start pushing optimized content online via blogs, emails, videos, etc, and see how it performs.

Take your list and determine:

If you are a commercial cleaning company, write a blog for your website called:

How Do Office Cleaners Calculate Production Rates? » You can talk about industry costs and what to look for when pricing services.

(Keyword here is “hiring an office cleaner”.) » Optimize this post on your website for search. » Post the title in your LinkedIn profile when the post is live. » Tweet it. » Send out an email campaign called, “5 Easy Steps to Calculating Commercial

Cleaning Production Rates Before you Hire an Office Cleaner”.

Implementation Example


Keyword List Development Tools

There are bunch of tools out there (some are free and some aren’t) that will help you do your research. Here are some we suggest and why:

» Market Samurai – Let’s you see both organic and paid keyword data as well as costs, value and competition. The ultimate keyword research tool. (free trial)

» Google AdWords Keyword Planner – Allows you to see competition, traffic and costs associated with paid Google AdWords advertising (free tool) and helps you expand your lists of keywords and ad groups. Great idea generator!

» Google Analytics – Dig through your website results for what keywords and search queries are working on your current website. (free and paid options)

» Wordstream – Helps suggest keywords and advises you on your pay-per-click campaigns (free & paid tools)

» Wordtracker – Reveals volume and competition levels for keywords, generating 1,000s of keywords in minutes (free trial & paid)

» Ubersuggest – Provides long tail keyword suggestions and word cloud options – no data, just brainstorming (free tool)

» Keyword Discovery – Provides keyword search volumes to inform your keyword strategy (free trial & paid)

» SEO Doctor – Great browser add-on tool to help you understand and diagnose SEO problems on your site. You can also use it to look at competitors’ sites. (free version)

» SEO Quake – Another great browser add-on tool which lets you see information like page rank and Google index. It also has a Keyword Density tool which demonstrates the number of times a keyword appears on a page. This tool can also be used to analyze competitors’ sites. (free version)

» Google Search Console / Webmaster Tools – Provides you with detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google. You can diagnose problems, discover your link traffic and find out which search queries are driving traffic to your site. (free)


How to implement SEO (the technical stuff)

You will need to have someone on your team who understands the technical aspects of your website so that SEO can be implemented “on stage” AND “behind the scenes.

Page-specific title tags (not generic for whole site) – many sites have a default title tag that applies to the entire site. You want to make sure that each page has it’s own metatag title. Keep them short.

Internal links, anchor links and inbound external links esp. from reputable and well ranked sites – this means the actual words that appear on other sites that link to your page. You want these to be keyword dense.

Domains – buy domains that are keyword dense – if you are focusing on the keyword “owl stickers”, then you want to buy the domain www.owlstickers.com. Avoid unrelated site directory names such as “…/corporate_info/…” use “…./marketing-strategy-information/…”

Headings (H1, H2, H3 tags) – these are text formatting styles the headings that appear on your page. H1 are the largest and most important. Any text formatting type (bold, italics, etc…)

Consider keyword density and proximity. There is no optimal keyword density percentage (although some say 1.5 – 5%). Focus on natural keyword density and location – high on page.

Image alt tags – this is what people see if they don’t support images. So provide a descriptive name. Also the image file name.

# of back links – these are the links driving traffic to your site. And, they’ve got to be good. No back link farms.

Meta-tag description and keywords – these are set up behind the scenes so search engines know what your page is about.

Frequency of new content – it is important to have fresh content on your site to alert Google that your site is worth it.

Quality directories (DMOZ, Yahoo Directory) – get listed. Create a link wheel back to your site.

Natural & relevant content – Encourage human interaction, such as leaving comments.

Location of the keywords – Closer to the beginning the better. Beginning of description, content page, title, or URLs.

Site structure – create keyword a rich structure. Avoid unrelated or to generic site directory names such as “…/corporate_info/…” use “…./marketing-strategy-information/…”

Page URLs – create keyword rich page URLs. Keep them related to the page content and site structure and homepage title.

Site structure - create a keyword rich structure. Avoid unrelated or too-generic site directory names such as “.../corporate-info/”. Use directories like “.../marketing-strategy-information/” instead.


“Can my team accomplish this?”

Developing and implementing a digital marketing strategy is not a one-person job.

Founded in 2006, Marketing CoPilot has perfected a methodology that has delivered results for over 100 companies.

We show businesses how to leverage modern marketing techniques to generate qualified leads and measurable results.

Required in-house resources:

» Strategy – Your marketing efforts need to be led by someone with extensive marketing experience.

» Execution – You need a resource to roll up their sleeves and do the grunt work. Too junior, and quality will suffer.

» Analysis – Someone to track your spending and determine how it is helping to drive sales.

» Creative – This includes art direction, graphic design, website developer, copywriting, etc.

How our team can help:

» Strategy – Our team of seasoned marketers each have over 20 years of B2B marketing experience.

» Execution – The team at Marketing CoPilot is comprised of a cohesive group of development, creative, content and project management experts.

» Analysis – Our team of analysts will dig into your data to determine how your website and digital marketing initiatives are performing and how they can be optimized.

» Creative – Our creative team will develop the look, feel, and layout of your website and other marketing campaigns to mirror your brand identity and buyer journey.


Get the book

A Common Sense Approach to Digital Marketing for Any Business

In the age of 24/7 internet, there are thousands of ways for businesses to talk to, sell to, and connect with their customers. But, just as the old adage says, less is more.

The key to a successful marketing strategy today is finding the right content, at the right time, in the right place, for the right audience - and Marie Wiese, president of Marketing CoPilot and long-time digital marketing advocate, knows the secrets behind creating an impactful, measurable, and captivating digital campaign.

In You Can’t Be Everywhere, Wiese offers her well-tested insight on how to become a savvier marketer. Through personal stories and no-nonsense advice, Wiese shows how any company can conquer the digital space and craft extraordinary strategies and customer connections.

It’s impossible to be everywhere at once. But luckily, once you master Wiese’s method of focused, powerful, content-driven marketing, you won’t have to be.

You Can’t Be Everywhere

Buy Now

https://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Be-Everywhere-Marketing-ebook/dp/B01L9ODJTE/

https://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Be-Everywhere-Marketing-ebook/dp/B01L9ODJTE/

keyword strategy content marketing strategy. workbook · keyword strategy workbook stop guessing....

Documents