AstroLabs Digital AcademySEO & Content Marketing Workshop

3. Content Marketing: Arabic-first

What is optimized content for SEO?

• Content is the 1st point of contact between the users and your website

• To be optimized for both users & robots, your content must be – Unique - Not duplicated (Google

Panda)– Relevant – Useful information for

users & targeting specific queries– Readable – Easily readable for

users & technically accessible by robots

Unique Relevant

Readable

How to identify relevant keywords for your content?

Step 01 Step 02 Step 03 Step 04 Step 05 Step 06

Identify Your Keyword Universe

Expand The Keyword List

Categorize Your Keywords

Prioritize Your List With

Competition Level

Identify Preferred

Landing Pages

Refine Your Keyword List

Over Time

1. Identify your keyword universe • Identify a comprehensive list of words which are relevant to your business

and which indicate that the searcher may be interested in your content.

2. Expand the keyword list• Use Google Keyword Ad Planner to expand your keyword list and

understand relative search volumes of all your keywords.

3. Categorize your priority keywords• Categorize the keywords into segments specific to business goals. This

allows more granular reporting and understanding of performance.

How to identify relevant keywords for your content?

4. Prioritize your list with competition level• Choose the most important keywords that you will be targeting with your

content strategy. Identify the competition level for each keyword with Moz Keyword difficulty.

5. Identify preferred landing pages• Mapping the priority keywords to specific pages that they are most

relevant to. These pages will be the primary target of your optimization activities for your priority keywords.

6. Refine your keyword list over time• Review these data sets monthly to identify any new opportunities that

should be integrated into your SEO campaign

How to identify relevant keywords for your content?

• Provide tailored content: Write in target language and directly offer the information that is sought

• Provide useful content: Create interesting content and suited to target needs

• Provide usable content: Improve internet users’ experiences by making your content shareable (on social media, ...)

How to SEO optimize your content?

Offer Quality Content

• Organize the content of your page : Title, subtitle, categories…

• Shorten your content : Text on the web should be 50% shorter than on paper

• Choose one topic per page

• Choose one language per page

How to SEO optimize your content?

Structure Your Content

• Optimize title page : Unique title per page (max. 55 characters)

• Optimize meta description : Give additional information (max. 155 characters)

• Optimize heading & Images : Optimize H1 tags & use alt-tags for images

• Publish more content : Write at least 300 words per page

• Use font styles, synonyms and plurals : Highlight important keywords (strong, etc….)

How to SEO optimize your content?

Optimize Hot Areas

Case Study

SEO Project Since 2013

Content Case Study: Airline Industry – UK Visibility

Page Publishing

Content Case Study: Airline Industry – AU Visibility

Page Publishing

Arabic is the 4th Used Language Online

Importance of Targeting the Right Language

88% of online shoppers

prefer to buy products using their native

language

Importance of Targeting the Right Language

Less Than

1.0% Arabic Content

Online

Online Arabic Audience Demographic

Internet Users

60,000 34,800,00

What You Can Do

Build Your Arabic Presence

Validate Your Arabic Content

Be Careful When You Translate from English to Arabic

What You Can Do

Optimize Your Arabic Content

Hamza

2,400Average

Monthly Search Volume

أبوظبي9,900

Average Monthly Search

Volume

ابوظبي

Synonyms

موبایل جوال محمولAverage

Monthly Search volume

22,200 22,200 880Moz

Competition Low Medium High

This Will Impact The Size of The Audience You Reach

Choose variation with high search volume and lower competition.

Don’t Rely On Auto Translation

… and the result was ZERO search volume

We used Google Translator…

Coordination & Words

أطفال و أمھات أطفال وأمھات

Coordination & Words

أطفال و أمھات أطفال وأمھات8,100Average Monthly Search Volume

0Average Monthly Search Volume

Coordination & Words

أطفال و أمھات أطفال وأمھات8,100Average Monthly Search Volume

0Average Monthly Search Volume

We don’t usually put a space between the coordination and the word, so search engines consider this as a new word.

SPACE

Arabic Optimisation

375%Expansion

of potential audience

• Organize the content of your page: Title, subtitle, categories…

• Shorten your content: Text on the web should be 50% shorter than on paper

• Choose one topic per page

• Choose one language per page

How to SEO optimise your content?

Structure Your Content

• Optimize title page: Unique title per page (max. 55 characters)

• Optimize meta description: Give additional information (max. 155 characters)

• Optimize heading & Images: Optimize H1 tags & use alt-tags for images

• Publish more content: Write at least 300 words per page

• Use font styles, synonyms and plurals: Highlight important keywords (strong, etc….)

How to SEO optimise your content?

Optimise Hot Areas

Arabic URLs

http://www.al-futtaimauto.com/سیارات-مستعملة/تویوتا-یارسBuild Arabic URLs

Arabic URLs

http://www.al-futtaimauto.com/سیارات-مستعملة/تویوتا-یارسBuild Arabic URLs

50%Increase in Arabic Visibility

How to Start

Start Building Your Arabic

Content

Follow Best Practices and Optimise Your Arabic Content

Don’t Rely on Your English Content Only

1 2 3 4

There is Always Room to be More

Creative

I Don’t Have an Arabic Website

I Have Arabic an Website

I Have an Optimised Arabic

Website

I Follow an Arabic First Approach

Exercise: Content SEO

Time to practice Content SEO

• Identify Top 3 Keywords with Google Adplanner

• Evaluate the competition for those keywords

• Create Title Tags & Meta description

• Create SEO friendly URL

Link to the tool : https://www.portent.com/serp-preview-tool

4. Link Building

Link Building

What is link building ?

Link profile Anchor texts Authority

Accessibility SitemapsURL

StructureSite

Architecture

Unique Content

On Page Elements

Keyword Research

Social*

Link Building

Content

Technical

Which are the outdated link building techniques since Penguin update?

• Article Submissions & Directory submissions

• Submission of Press Releases to PR directories or news sites

• Reciprocal linking, link exchanges or link wheels

• Submission of content to blog networks

• Creation of paid site-wide link

• Submission to social bookmarking or sharing sites

• Creation of reviews or submission of topics/comments on blogs or forums

So, what is a good backlink?

A good link is one that adds value to a user !

Step 01 Step 02 Step 03 Step 04 Step 05 Step 06

Audit Your Link Profile

Verify That There Is No Link Toxicity

Compare With Main

Competitors’ Profiles

Identify Natural Link

Opportunities For Your Market

& Industry

Create Useful Content For

Your Link Reclamation

Outreach To Relevant

Contact For Link

Integration

How to identify relevant backlink for your website?

How to identify relevant backlink for your website?1. Audit your link profile• Audit your existing backlinks pointing to your domain and see how relevant they are for your

market & industry. • This step will allow you to see if there is any room of improvement for those existing links (e.g.

Point the link to the content instead of the footer; fill the anchor text if it is empty) - DON’T MANIPULATE THESE LINKS

2. Verify that there is no link toxicity • Use Link Research Tool – Link detox tool to check if your domain isn’t suffering from bad

backlinks pointing to the website. • If toxicity is on the domain, a clean-up is required by demoting those BL (through Google Search

Console)3. Compare with main competitors’ profiles• This step will help you to identify your potential for improving your backlink profile.

How to identify relevant backlink for your website?4. Identify natural link opportunities for your market & industry• Comparing your domain with your main competitors will help you identify good “easy”

opportunity for your website tailored for your market & industry.

5. Create useful content for your link reclamation• Requesting a backlink from a third part website isn’t easy, that’s why your content shouldn't be

promotional. You have to create relevant content that will be useful for USERS first.

6. Outreach to relevant contacts for link integration• Outreach is the most important step to get your link correctly integrated. Instead of only

requesting a link, create a relationship with the person in charge of the website. • Social media, especially Twitter, is a good way to create this relationship. • Lastly, your email outreach must be personalized.

Examples of Content Marketing Opportunities

Source : BRAND3D, Brighton SEO Sept-15

Opportunities

Surveys

Newsjacking

Infographics / Interactive Graphics

Data

Expert Commentary /

Insights

Client PR / Marketing

ActivityGift Guides

RS Opps

Competitions

Events

FOI

Case Study

SEO Project Since 2014

Link building Case Study: Tourism Industry

The Challenges• Lack of visibility for Arabic

terms

• No content assets for Arabic website

The Solutions• Content optimisation of

Arabic pages

• Localisation of English content assets

• Creation of relevant Arabic pages

Link building Case Study: Tourism Industry

Link building Case Study: Tourism Industry

The ResultsYoY for Dec-14 to Dec-15

+18% Increase in

Organic Traffic year-on-year

+96%Increase in

Impression Visibility Google Result Page

year-on-year

4. Performance Measurement

How to Measure Your SEO Performance?

Reach

Engage

Convert

How to Measure Your Reach?

• SERP Impressions: Number of times an organic listing for the site appeared within a SERP

• Pages Indexed: Number of pages that receive at least one organic visit each month

• Organic Visits: Volume of visits referred to the site organically via all search engines

• Keywords Rankings: Number of keywords ranking within top 10 results in Google

Reach

Engage

Convert

How to Measure Your Engagement?

• Pages per Visit: Average number of pages viewed on the site during a single organic visit

• SERP CTR: Percent of SERP impressions resulting from a click on an organic result

• Average Time on Site: Average visit duration per each organic visit

Reach

Engage

Convert

How to Measure Your Conversion?

• Form Filling: Number of Internet users filling out a form online (e.g. newsletter signup form, etc…)

• Revenue: Average sales value per each organic visit

• Cost Per Acquisition: Average sales value from organic vs. SEO retainer

Reach

Engage

Convert

Reporting Tool Review: Google Analytics

• Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor and maintain your site's traffic.

• Top reports from this tool :– Organic traffic & contribution – On site engagement (time & pages)– Bounce rate on organic– Conversion on organic

Link to the tool : https://www.google.com/analytics/web

Technical Tool Review: Google Search Console

• Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor and maintain your site's presence in Google Search results.

• Top reports from this tool : – Search Analytics (Country, Device,

Queries)– Crawl issues & Indexing report– International Targeting– Mobile usability– Monitor Structure data & Sitelinks

Link to the tool : https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home

Ranking Factors (200 factors plus)

URL (keywords in url) Domain age Page speed Mobile friendliness KeywordsMeta descriptionsHeadings (H1, H2, H3)

Content RecencyImage optimization - alt textInternal linksSocial media linksExternal links (Link building)Google my businessError 404 page

Reporting Tool Review: Advanced Web Ranking

• AWR is an online platform for keywords rank tracking.

• Top reports from this tool: – Keywords ranking– Websites visibility (competitors)– Search engine comparision– Visibility score (similar to Search

Metrics)– New features : Crawling, Social Media

& PPC comparision (beta)

Link to the tool : https://www.awrcloud.com

Thank You