A Crash Course In Developing An Online Marketing Strategy For SEO

SEARCH SNIPPETS #18
A CRASH COURSE IN DEVELOPING
AN ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGY
FOR SEO, PPC AND BEYOND

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOT
> FIGURE OUT WHERE YOU STAND
> SET UP STRATEGIC BUSINESS GOALS
> TAKE INTO ACCOUNT PAST SUCCESSES
> DEVELOP AN ACTIONABLE STRATEGY
> CREATE A ROADMAP TO KEEP YOU
ORGANIZED AND WORKING TOWARDS
ACHIEVING YOUR BUSINESS GOALS

PUTTING
STRATEGIC GOALS
AHEAD OF TACTICS
CHANGING OUR MINDSET

MnSearch Snippets #17
“Measure Twice, Cut Once.”
The January event helped me
a lot. With the help of my
developer, I updated my
Analytics and I feel like I can
track everything that happens
on my site. Unfortunately
I cannot track offline
marketing activity that results
on people taking action on the
site.
STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT
> Who are your current customers?
What are their likes? What are their
interests? Where do they “hang” out?
Take the time to honestly assess all
the different aspects of your business.
> The site itself. Both hardware (your
server) and software (your CMS)
content. Words, images, video, etc.
> Compile a list of all your available
> Look into you competition and form
an idea on how they are being
successful, online and offline.
> Take into account your marketing
budget and your personnel.
FIGURING OUT WHERE “YOU” STAND
> Assess the ROI of your SEO, PPC,
Social Media and other marketing
efforts, online and offline.
interact with your site and how they
> Assess your analytics, how people
convert into paying customers.
My site is running on an old
CMS that makes the site slow,
makes making updates nearly
impossible. No way to have an
online booking system or an
eCommerce module
My content is more marketing
based about the gym’s
services. I have great images,
but no videos.
Any information that can be
useful. Age, male vs. female,
occupations, etc.
SEO? Is that the one with the
keywords? Some guy did it for
for me a couple years ago.
We are doing PPC and we are
seeing good return specifically
on Bing.
Looking at the gyms in a 10
mile radius for their marketing
Efforts. What they show up for,
how much they’re spending,
what is their message (svcs
or perks are they pushing)
Last year went well and I have
a big budget to work with in
order to grow and possibly
open another location. I have
an independent developer to
help me with the site and I am
managing the campaigns and
writing the content.

SET UP BUSINESS GOALS
Look at past performance data and in
combination with the in-depth
assessment set up REALISTIC goals.
> 30% increase in profits
from merchandise sales
> 25% increase in
gym memberships
> 40% lift in 1-on-1
personal training
appointments and
nutrition services
(high profit margins)
> Reach 1,500 newsletter
subscribers
Example (Average Joe’s)

TAKE INTO ACCOUNT PAST SUCCESSES
Take a look at what has already worked
figure out past successful customer
behaviors on and off the site.
> My audience likes and
shares posts about
healthy eating and
motivational pics 3x more
that any other type.
> Users who looks at 3
specific pages convert at
2x the normal rate.
> Members on the email list
buy merchandise 2x as
often as the others
> Users that like my Facebook
page also like American Ninja
Warrior
How much are
these users worth
to your business?
Example (Average Joe’s)

CREATE THE ACTUAL STRATEGY
NEXT
STEPS
Go through each item in
the initial assessment (step 1)
and itemize the actions you
need to take, to brings things
up to code and achieve your
overall business goals (step 2).
PRIORITIZING
Where
importance
meets opportunity
> Switch the type of
content I am writing.
Focus on healthy
eating (copy, images
and also try video)
> Expand on my PPC
efforts. Up my budget.
> Time to engage in
SEO. I like the sound
“free” clicks
> Change my CMS and
refresh site. People
keep telling me about
WordPress

POST-STRATEGY
CREATE A ROADMAP
Now that your priorities are
set, it‘s time to get things done.
Stay organized by building a
roadmap.
Month 1 and 2
Go through this whole
exercise. Figure out where
your gaps are, set goals,
prioritize actions and create
a roadmap.
Month 2 through 6
Focus on high-priority items.
Different items can be
tackled at the same time.
They can also take longer
than others.
Month 6 through 12 and on
Focus on the rest of the
medium and low items.
During the whole process
track your main KPIs and
progress against your goals.
Evaluate and adjust accordingly.

WHERE DOES SEO FIT IN?
Even though SEO is only one part of the entire equation
it touches and can positively influence every single other
aspect of the business.
During step 1 you should have
completed a full SEO audit in
order to honestly assess all the
SEO gaps.
> Accessibility and indexation
> On-Page Optimization and proper
keyword targeting
> Site architecture
types of assets and level of
> Content Analysis – duplication,
optimization
> Inbound Link Footprint – Spam much?
> Site speed
> Mobile friendliness
> Performance tracking. What data is
available. What and how are things
being tracked?
As SEO gets prioritized as part
of a general digital marketing
strategy, the tactics that’ll be
used to fix the gaps need
to be prioritized as well.

PERFORMING AN SEO
AUDIT:A FEW ACTIONABLE TIPS
TO GET YOU STARTED

PERFORMING AND SEO AUDIT
SITE ARCHITECTURE
Look at the URL architecture.
Is it too flat, too deep or just
right?
HOME
VS
.
Ideally every page on the
site will be within 3 to 4
clicks away from the home
page.
If the site architecture is too
flat topical focus is diluted
,which puts each page at a
disadvantage.

ACCESSIBILITY AND INDEXATION
Is something confusing the search engine
crawlers or blocks parts or the entire site?
Are they encountering too many errors?
CRAWL THE SITE … and export to Excel
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide/VERY USEFUL RESOURCE:

Reviewing HTTP Status codes for errors
and the Meta Robots field for unnecessary blocks

Dealing with server logs and crawl budgets.
Are the search engines crawling the wrong content?
LOG FILE ANALYSIS
A web server log file is a server output containing
a record of all requests that a server receives.
This is what each entry in that file looks like:
Timestamp (date & time)
Method (GET / POST)
Request URI
HTTP Status Code
User-agent
Why is this useful?
1. You can find out how much crawl
budget is wasted and where?
3. Discover accessibility errors
2. Discover areas of crawl deficiency
4. Learn more about how long it takes
for pages to load
http://builtvisible.com/log-file-analysis/

Reviewing the robots.txt file for unnecessary blocks
and instances of hidden content behind code.
Stop search engines from
crawling and indexing parts
of your site. (e.g., print pages,
cart, checkout, premium
content, ppc landing pages)
Do not fully develop a site in
Javascript, Flash or any other
dynamic language.
Javascript:
> https://www.redbullsoundselect.com/
> http://www.fatface.com/
Disallow: /
This command would block the whole site
Web Developer
Chrome Plug-in

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION AND CONTENT
Is my site up to code? What am I doing wrong
and where do my biggest opportunities lie?
> Unique and click enticing meta descriptions
and up to 156 characters long
> H1 tag containing the primary keyword
or a close variation
WHERE DO I START?
> Optimized title tags
55-60 characters or up to 512 pixels long
Unique for every page, targeting a primary
term and tightly related to the page content,
> Every key page contains a considerable amount
of optimized content around the primary term
and multiple variations of it

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION AND CONTENT
Is my site up to code? What am I doing wrong
and where do my biggest opportunities lie?
HOW ABOUT MY URLs?
Short, Clean and Optimized URLs – Simple Rules:
matching title tags
> All URLs follow a proper, uniform convention
> Targeted keywords exist in page URLs and
> Words are separated with the “-” character
> Capital letters aren’t used in the URLs
> URLs do not contain long query strings,
session IDs, etc.
examplesite.com/?prodid=1223&sdestid=1145&storeid=7&categoryid=1125
examplesite.com/bbq-sports-leisure/engraved-cigar-case
VS.
This is
much betterHOW ABOUT MY INTERNAL LINKS?
Review internal links to determine if there is
overuse or misuse of anchor text that could get
the site in trouble for over-optimization.
Pro Tip: experiment with bypassing the first link rule

CONTENT DUPLICATION
Common types of content duplication:
canonical tag
robots.txt file
noindex tag
301 redirects
proactive prevention
Dealing with
Duplicate Content
> Similar product descriptions
> Dynamic-generated URLs
> Case-insensitive URLs -
> User-generated content (UGC)
(session IDs, etc.)
(Windows vs. Linux servers)
> Printer versions of pages> Duplicate meta data
> Scraped or “stolen” content
> www vs non-www vs https vs
> Quotation, re-use, content
syndication, affiliate feeds
> Same content among
subdomain vs /index vs /default
regional sites

LINKS, LINKS AND MORE LINKS
Link Velocity can get you in trouble
with that black and white bird watching
all the time these days.
Review the site’s inbound link history for
inconsistencies like sharp increases over
short periods of time.
Talking
about this guy
MOZ Open Site Explorer
Majestic SEO
Ahrefs

NEXT UP …
JASON IS GONNA MAKEIT RAIN PPC
AWESOMENESS
THANK YOU
FOR LISTENING

A Crash Course In Developing An Online Marketing Strategy For SEO

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