Keyword Strategy Workbook

Transcription

1 Using data to confirm your content marketing strategy. Keyword Strategy Workbook Stop guessing. Use this process to develop better content.

2 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 Page 2

3 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. Page 3

4 Do you think search has an effect on your business? The Keyword Strategy Test 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. True for my business Not True for my business Answers FALSE: Your keywords should be a reflection of your best customer and what they are doing online to understand a business problem. 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: 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: Keywords are the key to everything. We search everything and use phrases and words to selfeducate. 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 Page 4

5 A keyword strategy is always evolving and improving The Keyword Strategy Loop 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. Page 5

6 There are 7 steps to follow when developing your keyword list 1. Identify customer problems. What are your best customers trying to fix in their business? 2. Confirm your buyers personas. Create buyer personas to better understand your buyers. 3. Analyze your current traffic. Look at your Google data to learn how people currently find your website. 4. Brainstorm an initial keyword list. Create a foundational list of keywords to work from. 5. Create your keyword list. Build your list based on competition, volume, and ability to convert traffic. 6. Test your assumptions. Ask current prospects about their buying process. 7. Implement your keywords online. Optimize pages on your website using your list, publish content using your keywords, then track, measure, and evolve. Page 6

7 1. Identify customer problems What are your customers trying to fix in their business? 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. Write down some customer problems here: Page 7

8 A note about buyer personas Why create a buyer persona? 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. A well-crafted buyer persona includes: 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? Page 8

9 2. Confirm your buyer personas Create two to three examples of buyer personas who regularly buy from your company. Create a profile of them and indicate: 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. Page 9

10 3. Analyze your current traffic Data you should review: 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? Page 10

11 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 online marketing consulting toronto marketing marketing consulting marketing consulting toronto online marketing consulting Long Tail Page 11

12 4. Brainstorm an initial keyword list Include the following in your list: Buyer problems Buyer priorities Buyer obstacles Your brand Your product & service categories Initial keyword list: Page 12

13 5. Create your keyword list Develop your keyword list using the following criteria: 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. Then, analyze and optimize your list: 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. Page 13

14 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. Page 14

15 7. Implement your keywords online Take your list and determine: 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, s, videos, etc, and see how it performs. Implementation Example 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 campaign called, 5 Easy Steps to Calculating Commercial Cleaning Production Rates Before you Hire an Office Cleaner. Page 15

16 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) Page 16

17 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 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. # of back links these are the links driving traffic to your site. And, they ve got to be good. No back link farms. Frequency of new content it is important to have fresh content on your site to alert Google that your site is worth it. Natural & relevant content Encourage human interaction, such as leaving comments. Site structure - create a keyword a rich structure. Avoid unrelated or too-generic site directory names such as.../corporate-info/. /corporate_info/ use Use./marketing-strategy-information/ directories like.../marketing-strategyinformation/ instead. Image alt tags this is what people see if they don t support images. So provide a descriptive name. Also the image file name. Meta-tag description and keywords these are set up behind the scenes so search engines know what your page is about. Quality directories (DMOZ, Yahoo Directory) get listed. Create a link wheel back to your site. Location of the keywords Closer to the beginning the better. Beginning of description, content page, title, or URLs. Page URLs create keyword rich page URLs. Keep them related to the page content and site structure and homepage title. Page 17

18 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: How our team can help: 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. 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. Page 18

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