THE HOLISTIC SEO PROCESSLet’s grow up, stop being the Kanye West of digital marketing and legitimize SEO

MICHAEL KINGDIRECTOR OF INBOUND MARKETING

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DOWNLOAD THIS DECK: http://iacq.co/holistic-seo

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SEO = KANYE WESTSEO is the Kanye West of the Digital Marketing Mix

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THE CALCULUS OF MARKETING

Search Engine Optimization is seen as esoteric and we as SEOs often use the fact that no one truly understands what we do to be prima donnas and exclude more than we include

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THE TYPICAL SEO PROCESS

SEO is treated as an initiative that exists in a vacuum asking for change without justification across the rest of the digital touchpoints. This process is simply not enough.

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IT DOESN’T FIT INTO THE BRAND RELATIONSHIP MODEL

SEO typically ignores the other moving parts of a brand’s internal and external relationships within the market

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KANYE AIN’T DOIN’ NO MARKET RESEARCH

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STANDARD SEO KICKOFF QUESTIONS

The biggest problem with this is we often take these inputs at face value. That is to say, very often the brands that the client believes they are competing with offline are not the sites they are competing with for keyword

coverage in the SERPs. 

What analytics package do you use?Are there any other domains or sites that you own?

What SEO efforts have been done in the past?List your top 3 competitors.

Do you have social media accounts?What keywords are you looking to rank for?

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STOP PHONING IT IN!

Becoming an expert in the niche that you are optimizing for is an extremely underrated step in the SEO process. 

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KANYE DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR

AUDIENCE

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STANDARD CLASSIFICATION IS TOO IMPERSONAL

Search is about needs and the standard keyword classifier are not enough to understand a searcher’s intent.

Informational Navigational Transactional

Ways to ____ Company Name Buy _____

How to _____ Organization name

Download ____

What is _____ Domain name Get _____

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KEYWORD RESEARCH BEFORE AUDIENCE?

The problem is you go here and look for stuff to optimize for before you even think of who you are talking to or what you are talking about!

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THE QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD BE ASKING

What is the purpose of your site?What are you trying to get users to

do once they arrive?Who is your target audience?

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RANKING IS NOT A BUSINESS GOAL

Being #1 is great, but if it doesn’t drive qualified traffic that converts for the business objectives, you haven’t done anything.

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KANYE WILL DISRUPT YOUR

CAMPAIGN

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OTHER CAPABILITIES DRIVE TRAFFIC TOO

SEO

PPC

DISPLAY

SOCIALTV

RADIO

EMAIL

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KANYE DON’T CARE ABOUT

OTHER TRAFFIC

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KANYE JUST WANTS TO BE

#1

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SORRY KANYE, BUT THAT’S NOT GONNA WORK

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SEO CHASES THE ALGORITHM

Search is about fulfilling a need for a person. Search Quality is about better fulfilling the needs of people.

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…IN OTHER WORDS

Search needs to be less about WHAT and more about WHO and WHY?

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Perhaps you have heard of

the Knowledge

graph?

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COMBINE SEARCH AND SOCIAL

Social Media Search

Sweet spot where

the magic happens

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…TO GET THE HOLISTIC SEO APPROACH

Opportunity Discovery

Content Strategy & Development

Technical Development

Social Strategy &

Implementation

Measurement

Optimization

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OPPORTUNITY DISCOVERYIdentifying the who, what, when, where, why of SEO campaigns

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BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

Use the client’s business goals to drive audience understanding, keyword selection and every aspect of the

campaign

Sell More 3D TVs

More Shares in Social Media

Occupy the Conversation

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MARKET RESEARCH

Learn the vertical inside out before you choose a keyword or write a line of copy.

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AUDIENCE RESEARCH - PERSONAS

Personas are hypothetical representations of your target audience. Build them as mental models of who you are communicating with. Check out:

http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/understanding-your-audience-using-social-media

Music MomsTypically uninformed gift givers looking for information on the right guitar for their happy hobbyist or raging rockstar. These people enter the conversation when they are looking to make a purchase.

Happy HobbyistsTypically students or amateur musicians looking for the latest tips and tricks for playing their guitar. These tend to be the most active content creators in the acoustic guitar conversation.

Raging Rock starsTypically professional musicians at various stages of their careers that tend to spend more time creating content with their guitars only consuming content as new guitar technology is released. These are the influencers of the happy hobbyist group.

Involved InstructorsTypically professional musicians and thought leaders/content creators who talk about new techniques and have strong opinions about instruments and brands. These tend to be quite active in the acoustic guitar conversation.

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THE CUSTOMER DECISION JOURNEY

Where a user is in the customer decisions journey is called their “need state.” Need states can be explicitly spelled out per keyword and should be as part of the keyword portfolio. Need states can also be custom.

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AUDIENCE RESEARCH – NEED STATES

Need States are the user’s motivations behind their search which help eliminate keyword ambiguity and improves

targeted copy. http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/mapping-keyword-usage-to-the-consumer-purchase-process

Music MomsTypically uninformed gift givers looking for information on the right guitar for their happy hobbyist or raging rockstar. These people enter the conversation when they are looking to make a purchase.

Searches for [best acoustic guitar]

This person probably needs information on the best acoustic guitar in order to make a purchasing decision.Need State is “Learning to Buy” or “Consider” in the Consumer Decision Journey

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HOW DO WE DEVELOP THEM?

Personas and need states are the art of educated guessing based on data. These

are often defined by Strategy and UX teams

Social Data Business GoalsMarket Research

Educated Guessing

Personas & Need States

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YAHOO CLUES

Get demographic data at the keyword level straight from Yahoo. http://clues.yahoo.com/ (h/t @keyrelevance)

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QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

Who does ComScore, AdPlanner, etc say is the audience for this vertical? If it’s a new site check out a

competitor’s site in Ad Planner

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FACEBOOK AD CREATOR

Use the FB tool to see how many people fall into an audience by interest and

demo. This tool is the Adwords Keyword Tool of Personas http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/

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SOCIAL LISTENING

Start your social listening in Topsy, Social Mention, and/or Amplicate to see who is talking in social media. Paid

enterprise tools such as Radian6, ScoutLabs, also available.

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ANALYTICS MINING

Pull keywords that are performing from analytics

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COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Know your competitor’s plays across search, social and the general market so you can make an even better gameplan

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SEARCHMETRICS ESSENTIALS

The quickest way to understand what your competitors are doing as they track performing keywords, traffic, and social for many sites

Get it: http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/essentials

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KEYWORD RESEARCH

Once you understand your audience and what they are looking for, then finally do keyword research

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KEYWORD PORTFOLIO (DELIVERABLE)

The Keyword Portfolio is a spreadsheet that outlines keyword opportunities by search volume, current ranking, landing page, need state, and target segment.

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SITE AUDIT (DELIVERABLE)

The overall site audit does not change aside from the fact that issues need to be discussed with business objectives and audience in mind.

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CONTENT AUDIT (DELIVERABLE)

Find out what content exists to determine what can be re-purpose, what needs to be fixed up and what needs to be destroyed.

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BRAND RELATIONSHIPS

Who is your brand down with? Who can they leverage? Who are they connected to?

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OFFLINE ASSETS

What tools, venues, prizes, etc. are at the brands disposal that you can leverage for this SEO campaign?

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MEASUREMENT PLAN (DELIVERABLE)

Determine the KPIs for the SEO campaign and outline how they will be measured. @avinash explains how to do this http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/

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CONTENT STRATEGYContent is King so Watch the Throne

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CONTENT IS KING?

The irony is that so many preach “Content is King,” but they don’t fight for the content. Is Content is truly king you should not take on a client that won’t allow content strategy.

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KEYWORD MAPPING (SEO COPY BRIEF)

This Document outlines a keyword-relevant information architecture, objective, audience, key performance indicators and best practices for content development and will drive the content ideation process.

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CONTENT IDEATION

You now know who and why you’re targeting now you must sit down with the stakeholders, content strategists and creative teams to figure out what you will build that aligns with business goals and audience needs

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GOFISH

I made a tool that uses Twitter for real-time keyword research to help get content ideas that people want now.

Get it: http://ipullrank.com/tools/gofish/

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APPLICATION OF GOFISH

Combine concepts that people are talking about now to create a unique piece of compelling content with a built-in audience.

Michael Jackson

Jackson Trial

South Park

?

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MICHAEL JACKSON DOCTOR TRIAL SOUTH PARK EDITION

Seed the content you create to influential Twitter users identified by GoFish.

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FACEBOOK RECOMMENDATIONS TOOL

Find out what is the most popular content on a given domain and make a better version. Expand to 1000 pixels to see up to 20 top performers in social.

Use it: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/recommendations/

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@SEOGADGET CONTENT STRATEGY TOOL

Similar to GoFish this Google Docs tool scrapes various blogs and discussions to get hot ideas Use it: https://seogadget.co.uk/using-google-docs-to-generate-hot-content-strategies/ (@dbseo)

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DATA VIZ AS MAXIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT

Maximize the digital assets of your data visualization content in order to pull links and social engagement from all the available channels. Check out: http://www.lifeinsurancefinder.com.au/infographics/what-happens-online-when-you-die/

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ANNOTATED WIREFRAMES

The wireframes are your opportunity to make sure the site is visually adhering to SEO recommendations and the place for dev and creative teams to make sure they are doing things right

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CONTENT STRATEGY IS ITS OWN FIELD

We as SEOs do a significant amount of content strategy and I would suggest this book to find out more about its processes and the people involved in order to better speak their language.

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TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENTChecks and Balances for the Development Team

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IMPLEMENTATION AUDIT (DELIVERABLE)

You’ve already laid the technical framework so once the team promises you that the SEO issues were fixed go through the whole site again and double check then create a simple spreadsheet that outlines the issues and

make it clear what was fixed and what was not

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SITE MIGRATION

Since social and search are converging site migration is more than 301 redirects now. it’s important to maintain your social proof as well.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172926/How-to-Maintain-Social-Shares-After-a-Site-Migration

301

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SOCIAL STRATEGYOff Page Optimization Redefined

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LINK BUILDING IS A BIG PICTURE INITIATIVE

Link building affects and is affected by the outward communication from a brand. Tying it to a big idea or a bigger picture campaign is far more effective than the one to one tactics SEO is known for.

IN FACT IT’S ALL WE DO

Professional Off-Page SEO for the Enterprise

DIGITAL PR

IDENTIFY/ENGAGE TREND SETTER OUTLETS

MANAGED LINK DEVELOPMENT

NATURAL LINK INTEGRATION

TARGETED CONTENT MARKETING

DIGITAL ASSET DISTRIBUTION

LINK RECLAMATION

BACKLINK AUDIT AND OPTIMIZATION

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LINK BUILDING GUIDES

I wrote two six month plans for link building built on holistic SEO strategy – http://www.iacquire.com/resources/link-building-guides

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MAKE NEWS OR MAKE FRIENDS

The most effective ways to build links naturally is by making news or making friends. Brands are in a unique position to do so due to their brand equity, leverage that.

MAKE NEWS MAKE FRIENDS

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SHARE OF VOICE

Making the case for link building and SEO in general is best done through a metric that higher ups and traditional advertisers understand – Share of Voice. SoV is the amount of possible opportunity a given brand occupies.

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KEYWORD OPP AS FUNCTION OF SoV

Explain the opportunity cost of not going after link building efforts by explaining what share of voice the client has and link building gets them a bigger share of voice and in turn more money.

[ham sandwich] = 33,100 LSV

The most traffic you can get in #1 spot is 18.2% (6042.2 visits)

If the client gets 500 visits then their SoV is 8.3% for that keyword.

[ham sandwich] converts at 10% at $50 value $30,200 - $2500 = $27,700 left on the table

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INTEGRATED LINK STRATEGY

While link building has always been about casting the widest net, social strategy is about casting the  rightest net the widest. Couple these channels and tactics with standard outreach.

Social Media

Events Contests

PR

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PUBLIC RELATIONS

– News is better than advertising, so a key part of social strategy is doing things that make news. Align with PR team and let them do a lot of the heavy lifting and outreach to prospects that SEO isn’t able to go after. They can

land bigger sites that get scraped regularly so their return is typically one to many.

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CONTESTS

Rather than performing outreach and directly offering them a free sample or (gasp) money request that they enter a contest wherein their entry is a blog post about the brand’s topic that contains a link. 

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EVENTS

Throwing a party, conference or trade show is another one-to-many return for link building. Simply host an event and invite influencers in the brand’s audience where the stipulation for attendance is that people must blog about

it and link back to you.

KANYE KNOWS HOW TO THROW A PARTY AND GET PEOPLE LINKING!

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SOCIAL MEDIA

Use social media conversation to find the influencers in the space with regard to the target audience and business goals. Build social media profiles to be authoritative and engaging to easily get your content shared and

also convert sharers into linkers. 

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MEASUREMENT / OPTIMIZATION

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KANYE ONLY MEASURES FROM HIS

PERSPECTIVE

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MEASURE THROUGH YOUR AUDIENCE

Using personas allows you step away from abstracts and identify insights in terms of people and their needs and not care so much about things like [not provided[

Landing PageTarget

Keyword Ranking

Local Monthly

Searches PageSearch Traffic

Target Persona

Need State

Conversion Rate

/3d-glasses.html 3d glasses 10 18100 Glasses 671Curious George

Unaware Interested 17.63%

/2d-3d-conversion.html

2d to 3d conversion 2 1000 Conversion 400 Tech Geek

Aware Owner 67.47%

/3d-tv-glasses.html 3d tv glasses 3 1000 Glasses 489

Curious George

Unaware Interested 58.00%

/glasses-free-3d.html glasses free 3d 1 1000 Glasses 1289

Curious George

Aware Owner 35.15%

/real-3d-glasses.html real 3d glasses 2 1000 Glasses 852

Curious George

Aware Owner 98.37%

/3d-ready.html 3d ready 2 720 3D-Ready 607 All All 73.05%

/3d-ready-tv.html 3d ready tv 2 590 3D-Ready 276 All All 85.49%

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MEASURE TO VALIDATE PERSONAS

Validate your hypotheses via data collected in conversions and visits. You can also test effectiveness using

demographic targeting with Facebook Ads and Paid Search

Curious George

• 18-32• Male• Loves indie rock• Wishes he had a beard

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USE KEYWORD-LEVEL DEMOGRAPHICS

Validate your hypotheses via data collected in conversions and visits. You can also test effectiveness using

demographic targeting with Facebook Ads and Paid Search

FB:Admin Search Referrers

Keyword-LevelDemographics

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KEYWORD-LEVEL DEMOGRAPHICS DATA

KEYWORDBIRTHDATE

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JUST TRACK THE PERSONA

if (demos.age >= ‘18’ && demos.age <= ‘40’ && demos.gender=“male” && demos.state == “New York”){

_gaq.push([‘_setCustomVar’,’1’,’Persona’,’Curious George’,1]);}

Check for key attributes of the persona with an if

statement

Push just the name rather than all of the data points

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KEYWORD OWNERSHIP

Once a statistically significant dataset is compiled it can be determined which demographic and/or persona is more likely to convert for a given keyword and develop messaging that focuses on that group.

Curious George Gamer Film Purist Tech Geek

• 18-32• Male• Loves indie rock• Wishes he had a beard

• 18-32• Male• Loves all music• Wishes he could move

out his mom’s basement

• 22-40• Male• Loves film soundtracks• Wishes he could live in

the movie Avatar

• 22-40• Male• Loves Techno• Wishes you would stop

invading his online privacy

OWNER

• 5000 Searches Monthly• Conversion Rate 5%

• 600 Searches Monthly• Conversion Rate 2%

• 1000 Searches Monthly• Conversion Rate 0.5%

• 100 Searches Monthly• Conversion Rate 0.2%

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DYNAMIC TARGETING

Using this data you can build a site that reflects the persona when they arrive

Curious George

• 18-32• Male• Loves indie rock• Wishes he had a beard

What Normal Users See What Curious George Sees

(Dramatization)

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KEYWORD ARBITRAGE

Tracking keyword demographics also allows the attribution of future purchases to the original keyword and will give way to keyword matrices.

Initial Keyword

Conversion Rate

Persona Keyword Revenue

Subsequent Keyword

Conversion Rate

Keyword Revenue

Sneakers 5% Curious George $50 Sneakers 40% $50

Sneakers 5% Curious George $50 Windbreakers 60% $100

Sneakers 5% Curious George $50 T-Shirts 20% $20

Windbreakers 3% Curious George $100 Sneakers 32% $50

Windbreakers 3% Curious George $100 Windbreakers 5% $100

Windbreakers 3% Curious George $100 T-shirts 80% $20

T-shirts 2% Curious George $20 Sneakers 50% $50

T-shirts 2% Curious George $20 Windbreakers 40% $100

T-shirts 2% Curious George $20 T-shirts 75% $20

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SUBSEQUENT CONVERSION PREDICTION

Curious George

We develop personas based on social data

Users come from search, we collect data

Curious George buys a pair of sneakers

We aggressively target in other channels for the next buy

Curious George comes back and buys a windbreaker

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THE WINNING FORMULAS

Based on how often an initial keyword leads to future conversions of subsequent keywords businesses will be able to measure the annual value of a keyword and react accordingly.

Keyword Earnings Ratio

Price per Keyword

Annual Earnings per initial click

Keyword Earnings Yield Price per Keyword

Annual Earnings per initial click

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OTHER DATA SOURCES

Although Facebook is the most granular and adopted, these other outlets also allow you to get data on your users.

LinkedIn Profile Data: https://developer.linkedin.com/documents/profile-fields

G+ API People Data: https://developers.google.com/+/api/latest/people

LinkedIn Google+

Opt-In Opt-In

Professional data [Not Provided]

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TRACK YOUR RANKINGS

Post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables (@dohertyjf)

Code: https://github.com/ipullrank/Google-Analytics-Rankings

Ranking Keyword

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WHAT POSITION CONVERTS BEST?

People are oftentimes shopping around and therefore ranking first does not result in a conversion.

Target Keyword Ranking Conversion Rate

3d glasses 1 17.63%

3d glasses 2 67.47%

3d glasses 3 58.00%

3d glasses 4 35.15%

3d glasses 2 98.37%

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DYNAMIC MESSAGING BASED ON RANKINGS

Change messaging and offer different features like price comparisons based on rankings to help visitors convert. Read: http://www.zazzlemedia.co.uk/blog/dynamic-messaging-based-on-ranking-to-improve-conversion/

Position #1 messaging

The Time Constraint The Challenge Normal Messaging

Position #2 messaging Historically converting position

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LINK REPORTING

Report your link building efforts through your target audience to determine which segment drives the most traffic and what type of prospect to put efforts into moving forward.

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WHY DO IT THIS WAY?6 Reasons Holistic SEO is the future

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BRAND BUY-IN

SEO has always been an industry that explains itself using empirical data. Starting from the audience, a place that businesses can understand, it is far easier to get buy-in for SEO initiatives. 

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COMPARE THE TWO STATEMENTS

Speaking directly to the brand’s audience and business objectives makes it much easier to achieve brand buy-in

“We want to build links targeting websites with a PageRank of 3 or higher. We’ll reach out to a variety of prospects and target anchor text for keyword opportunities identified by our extensive keyword research in order to gain rankings for your brand.”

“We’d like to launch a contest targeting Influential Moms with over 5000 followers on Twitter. To enter they’d write blog posts that link back to our properties in order to drive traffic for our target Listener Moms that are using Search to buy more healthy cereal.”

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STOP CHASING THE ALGORITHM

Google’s goal is to give people what they want, build and optimize with people in mind and you’ll always be ahead of the algorithm. That is not to say technical tenets of SEO can be ignored.

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A BETTER WEB

 the consumer is the biggest winner here. Naturally businesses benefit immensely as well, but the more we optimize with people in mind the more likely their needs will be fulfilled and consequently, the more likely we are

to get those people to convert.

HEAL THE WEB

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SCALABILITY

Getting on the same page with the other capabilities allows SEO efforts to be scaled considerably for brands large and small. This is how we regularly achieve those otherwise rare instances of synergy between capabilities.

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CROSS-CHANNEL OPTIMIZATION

Taking a holistic approach allows each channel to inform another of why they might be experiencing difficulties and how to optimize. For example we can discover through social what people are actually looking for and

validate it through landing page tests to inform product decisions.

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(NOT PROVIDED)…SO WHAT?

Google is not going to give us our keyword data back. Measure the resonance of content via conversions and track rankings against landing page traffic to understand whether intent is matching your target audience.

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CONGRATS KANYE

KANYE IS CLASSY, GROWN UP AND READY TO PLAN WITH THE TEAM. SO IS SEO.

MICHAEL KINGDirector of Inbound Marketing

THANK YOU / Q&A

@iPullRank

mike@iacquire.com

www.iacquire.com