delivering award winning seo objectives and implementation: case study of passport to trade 2.0
TRANSCRIPT
Delivering award
winning SEO
objectives and
implementation: case
study of Passport to
Trade 2.0
SEMRush webinar 26th February 2015
Dr Aleksej Heinze
@AleksejHeinze
Centre for Digital Business
Providing research
and advice to
business leaders in
the constantly
changing digital
society
www.salford.ac.uk/business-school/business-services/centre-for-digital-business
How did we get here?
http://blogs.salford.ac.uk/business-school/european-search-awards-2014-shortlist-businessculture-org/
How did we get here?
Source: http://www.semrush.com Organic search positions data for US Market
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The overall aim of the Passport to Trade 2.0
project was to research and raise awareness to
a global audience of differences in business
culture, including use of social media for
business, across 31 European countries, thus
helping to improve international trade with these
countries.
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Key lessons from Passport to Trade 2.0
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• Developing organic SEO objectives
• Understanding “buyer persona” – online and
offline methods
• Integrating SEO and Social Media
• Using WordPress plugins
• Creativity in content development
• Crowdsourcing content
Developing organic SEO objectives
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• a) Increase the number of organic search
visitors to the main website from about 50 per
month in 2012 to 3,000 per month post project
launch.
• Result:
• an average of 8,549 visitors in the months post
project completion until mid-January 2014
• Feb 2015 - 67,322 visitors per month
Developing organic SEO objectives
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• b) Improve organic ranking on Google for strategically important keyword terms such as ‘international business culture’ ‘business culture +[Country Name**]’, and ‘business etiquette in +[Country Name**]’. In the three months from the end of the official project (September 2013) to achieve at least 1,000 visitors per month for first page organic search traffic.
**Where [Country Name] is one of the 31 countries being researched by this project.
Organic ranking objective 2:
Visits 19th Dec 2013 to 18th Jan 2014 Visits 24th Jan 2015 to 23rd Feb 2015
Developing organic SEO objectives
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• Make clear that all team members – even those
not so technical - understand what these mean
• Clear measure of success relevant for your
needs
• Set up measurement mechanisms –
– Google Analytics
– SEMRush
– Social Media profiles engagement
What do you typically include in your
SEO objectives?
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• Visitors
• SERP position
• Conversions
• Time on site
• Pages visited
• Repeat visits
• Other
Questions about SEO objectives
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Understanding “buyer persona” – online
and offline methods
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• Focus groups with students
• Focus groups with companies
• Online survey
• Extensive content peer review
Understanding “buyer persona” – online
and offline methods
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• Understanding the terminology and areas of
interest
• Simple search preferences – Video vs text
• Extensive keyword research
• Key social media and search behaviour
understanding
Questions on buyer personas
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Integrating SEO and Social Media
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• Businesses: using SlideShare, LinkedIn and Twitter – #P2T2 as amplification platforms for the content.
• Students: YouTube short informative animations based on the ‘Did you know?’ theme. A Facebook page was also used to share updates.
• Educational institutions: A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) was produced which summarisedthe search and social media aspects of the website through a series of 12 x 15-minute long tutorial videos.
Integrating SEO and Social Media
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• Targeting related keywords across channels
• Integrating links from all profiles to main site
• Low need for maintenance of resources
What Social Media platforms do you usually
integrate with your SEO campaigns?
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• Google+
• Blog
• SlideShare
• YouTube
• Other
Questions about integration of SEO and
Social Media
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Using WordPress plugins
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• WordPress SEO – great for non technical
editors
• Google Analytics – keeps GA on all pages
• Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share – consistent
call to action on all pages
• Language Bar Flags – international audiences
with multi lingual needs
• Facebook Members – keeps the Facebook
community on the site
WordPress Plugins
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Creativity in content development
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• Video animation
• SlideShare
• Educational training material
• Text
• Original content – ca 2000k words per country
specific landing page
Creativity in content development
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Comments on Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByNcj6b3Fzo
Questions about creativity and content
development
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Crowdsourcing content
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• International team to start the project
• Online survey
• Participation in focus groups
• International peer reviewers and advisory board
members
Questions on crowdsourcing
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Key lessons
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• Have clear organic SEO objectives
• Develop “buyer persona”
• Integrate SEO and Social Media
• Use SEO / SMO focused WordPress plugins
• Content is king – be creative in your content
development
• Don’t have to produce it all - crowdsourcing
content can work for you
“Mediocrity will
never do. YOU are
capable of
something better”Gordon B. Hinckley
There are no
shortcuts to
a winning
campaign
Further questions?
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