Taking Your Content To The Next Level By Christine Churchill

#SMX #11D @ChrisChurchill

Taking Your Content To The Next Level

Keyword Research &

Copywriting For Search Success

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Example Title Slide:

Although this is a template, these slides have been created as examples to show you what’s possible within the template. PLEASE DELETE ALL EXAMPLE SLIDES AND NOTES BEFORE CREATING OR IMPORTING YOUR OWN DECK. YOU MUST USE THE SMX FOOTER ON YOUR TITLE SLIDE! The template works best if you use it to create a presentation from scratch. However, this blank layout offers you flexibility to insert your own slides above the SMX footer. You must use this footer at on almost all of your slides. If a screenshot overlaps the footer on occasion, that’s fine – but do your best to crop appropriately! Before you do anything else, here’s how to replace “#XXa” in the footer with your session’s specific hashtag. In PowerPoint, Select VIEW>SLIDE MASTER to edit SLIDE #1 to include it on all slides of your presentation. Also add your @twitterhandle (or @companyhandle if you prefer). Ask your session coordinator for the session’s specific hashtag! This template is high-‐resolution 16:9. DO NOT change it to 4:3. Also note that if you import a 4:3 presentation into 16:9 you may encounter display issues. The template uses Century Gothic & Corbel as default fonts. Arial is a secondary font that may appear. Note that older versions of PowerPoint may not have these as an option; change to Arial or other standard sans-‐serif-‐font. When inserting text, you *MUST* use only standard fonts. We cannot guarantee event laptops will have specialty fonts installed, nor can we do so onsite. Powerpoints with animations may not translate well to pdf/slideshare format – you may also submit a 2nd version / scrubbed deck more appropriate for posting online by SMX production staff.


•  President & CEO of KeyRelevance, LLC

•  Member of Founding Board of Directors of Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO)

•  Member of the Founding Board of Directors of the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Organization (DFWSEM)

•  Author at Search Engine Land & Web Marketing Today

•  Longtime Speaker & Instructor at Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Search Engine Strategies, PubCon, and other conferences

•  Masters degree and over 17 years online marketing experience

Speaker: Christine Churchill


§  Keyword Research – What is it? Why do it? §  How to do KW Research in 2016

§  Developments That Changed Keyword Research (Knowledge Graph, Hummingbird Algorithm)

§  Keyword Tools

§  How to use Keywords to Optimize Content §  Online Copywriting Tips

What We’ll Cover


Keyword Research Fundamental step to all online marketing

Keyword Research is the process of researching to identify the keyword terms customers use to find your products and services

Keyword Research helps you get inside the mind of customers

Keyword Research gives content marketing a good start


People use search engines to find you on the web Engines use text to categorize pages

Research unveils terms people actually use

KW Research improves performance of online marketing

Why Do Keyword Research?

#SMX #11D @ChrisChurchill 6

How to Do Keyword Research


Keyword Research is an Iterative Process

Brainstorming &

Discovery

Keyword Expansion

Keyword Evaluation


Keyword Brainstorming and Discovery Phase

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Create Keyword List Using Diverse Sources

Brainstorming session – no judging words at this stage. Goal is to cast your net widely and generate broad list.

Keyword lists from within company

§  Review company web site and print collateral

§  Press Releases §  Often too much insider jargon

§  May or may not be customer’s lingo

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Learn the Lingo of the Customer

§  Customer interviews §  Customer Surveys and Focus Groups

§  Talk to support or sales personnel who talk directly to customers

§  Review discussion forums, user generated content, blogs, social media

The best keywords come straight from the customer’s mouth.


Speak the Language of Customer

Increase conversion by speaking the customer’s language

Correct bad keyword choices Missing traffic Missing sales

Discover new keyword opportunities -‐ Find overlooked or new keywords

-‐ Take advantage of longer tail phrases “Duplicate a CD” vs “Burn a CD”

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The Long Tail Finding New Opportunities

Based on frequency graph

Chris Anderson wrote book about it §  Describes it as new economic model

§  Unlimited selection – Amazon books, iTunes

§  Idea is that non-‐hits can make money based on sheer volume

Popular phrases on left – highly competitive and expensive. Less popular on right – lower volume

“20 to 25% of the queries that Google sees today have never been seen before.” – Udi Manber, Google VP of Engineering

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Create Keyword List Using Diverse Sources

•  Online Blogs and Magazines

•  Company and Product Reviews

•  Online Thesaurus

•  Search in Google with tilde ~ for synonyms

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Review Competitors

§  Look at words they are buying in PPC & targeting in SEO

§  Review their web site

and collateral for keywords & related terms

§  Get competitive insights and ideas on overlooked terms

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Use Site Search Data

Site Search Box

•  Reveals keywords and expressions that visitors are actually using / wanting

•  Acts as a direct feed from the visitors brain

•  Make sure you collect site search data – can tie it to your analytics for easy viewing

Downside is data is limited and site search is usually a fall back when users can’t find what they are looking for on your site.

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Developments That Changed Keyword Research

Google Knowledge Graph

Hummingbird Algorithm

Not Provided Keywords

Other Recent Algorithm Changes

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Knowledge Graph

“The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query. “ Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/introducing-‐knowledge-‐graph-‐things-‐not.html


How the Knowledge Graph Changed Search Critical first step towards building the next

generation of search

•  Taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do

•  A step toward artificial intelligence

Google now has a database on entities and understands relationships between different entities

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What is Hummingbird Algorithm?

According to Google the algorithm (announced Sept 2013) delivers better results that are "precise and fast" -‐ like a hummingbird. It’s Google trying to figure out user intent and improve conversational search. Google wants to match the meaning, rather than pages matching just a few words.


Do We Still Need to Worry About Keywords?

Hummingbird is an overhaul of Google’s algorithm, but many of the old parts are still used.

Google’s semantic analysis considers the language in your content

-‐ so you still need to use keywords and related phrases on the page to communicate to users and Google what the page is about

-‐ means on-‐page optimization is still beneficial


Tips on Surviving After Hummingbird & the Knowledge Graph Create high quality longer content that establishes your site as the place to go for answers Develop ways to increase the authority of the site Become a leader in your vertical

Show leadership thru social media, links, user metrics, online relationships

Google has made it harder for “fake” authority to win. Going forward you have to earn your position.


The New Approach To Keyword Research Focus on the user intent behind the search term

-‐ Try to develop content that delivers answers to what the searcher wants

Stop focusing on exact match phrases

-‐ Look more to long tail and related phrases -‐ Build a vocabulary of terms that are related to the phrase

When doing KW research now, research core phrases plus related, synonyms, and words that frequently occur with your main terms (co-‐occurrence) Google’s move toward Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) and recent Google Patents dealing with re-‐ranking of results suggest that using synonyms and co-‐occurrence terms has benefits


Keyword Research Tools

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Benefits of Keyword Tools

•  Saves money and time •  Provides insight outside of your site •  Identifies keyword opportunities you might miss •  Offers popularity numbers you can’t get from your own analytics •  Moves you beyond keyword assumptions •  Allows you to compare phrases

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Free •  Google Keyword Planner Tool •  Google Webmaster Tools

•  Google Trends

•  Google Display Planner

•  Google Instant

•  Google Related Searches

•  Bing Keyword Tool

•  Bing Intelligence Tool

•  Bing Webmaster Tools

•  AnswerThePublic

•  Amazon Suggests

•  MetaGlossary

Keyword Research Tools Fee Based

•  WordTracker

•  Searchmetrics

•  Hitwise

•  WordStream

•  SEMRush

•  ComScore

•  SpyFu

•  Long Tail Pro


Google Keyword Planner

Oriented for Paid Search Must be Logged Into AdWords to Use Provides keyword ideas & monthly search volumes


Google Trends Google Trends provides trends from

web searches, images, news, shopping and YouTube Shows seasonality of phrases Can compare popularity of phrases

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Google Search Console (aka Webmaster Tools) shows actual search queries

Shows up to 2000 top queries for the last 90 days Not affected by the Not Provided – this is limited but actual keyword data Provides Impression, Clicks, and CTR, but no conversion data


Google Display Planner

Free Adwords tool

Built for display advertising in paid search but can give insights on keywords

Suggests related keywords

Gives demographic information on keywords


Adwords Search Term Report Great for keyword discovery, but have to be running PPC

Query People Actually Typed

Shows you how customers are finding your ad. With the Search terms report, you can see the actual searches people entered on Google Search and other Search Network sites that triggered your ad and led to a click. Identifies new search terms with high potential so you can add them to your keyword list. Allows you to look for search terms that aren't as relevant to your business, so you can add them as negative keywords.


Google Related Searches


Bing Keyword Tool

-‐ Shows actual queries numbers (not rounded) -‐  Has 6 months of data -‐  Drill down by Country


WordTracker.com

Data pulled from meta search engines Eliminates most skewing issues caused by robots Differentiates between singular & plural Offer Free Tool for trial

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Wordstream http://www.wordstream.com/keywords

Useful for developing your vocabulary of related terms for Hummingbird


Google Instant Shows suggestions as you type


Google Instant – Shopping Search Different set of keywords on Shopping search from regular web search


Soovle.com Gives suggestions from different perspectives

Provides suggestions from Google Wikipedia Answers YouTube Bing Yahoo Amazon Plus option for15 other sites

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Ubersuggest http://ubersuggest.org/


YouTube Keyword Auto Suggestions Shows popular video search queries

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Amazon Suggests


MetaGlossary

Provides a definition and related terms


AnswerThePublic.com Fun keyword tool that gives you lists of questions and phrases Excellent for giving content ideas or thoughts to flesh out an article


Tag Clouds helps identify related terms


A couple of things to remember…

No one tool has all the answers Don’t just extract keywords from a tool and run with them…review them for relevancy You need several tools in your toolbox Combining the tools synergistically works well. Some tools are better for certain functions. For instance, Google Instant is used for discovering new keyword phrases and Google Trends is good for comparing or identifying cycles


Keyword Expansion Phase

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Target Variations of Your Keywords

Comparison (best, compare, reviews) Price (cheap, discount)

Product Description (green, plus size, unique)

Intended use (gift for mother, baptism gown)

Product (gift basket, mortgage, flight)

Location Action (apply, book, find, buy)

Season (holiday, Christmas, Halloween)

Abbreviations

Brand / vendor / manufacturer

Modifiers are great at helping you expand your keyword list, but remember to keep “user intent” in mind when you combine the modifier to the core term!

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Keyword Permutations

Mix and match terms to create new keyword phrases

Many tools that do this for you

Can use concatenate function in Excel or specific tool

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Using Excel to Expand KW List

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Group related keywords into lists of related terms

Remember to identify terms that frequently occur with your main terms

Do a series of keyword research projects on a site, not just one

Develop a keyword matrix

Keyword “Buckets”

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Evaluating Keywords

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KW Selection Considerations

•  Relevancy to Site •  Keyword Popularity •  User Intent •  Competition •  Performance

Always test your keywords. Keywords can sounds like a good idea, but upon testing, they can fail miserably.


Relevancy Considerations

Relevancy means choosing the keywords that best describes what the site offers Traffic alone isn’t the goal, you want targeted traffic that is searching for what you

sell

Best bet: Find words that resonate with your target audience and are descriptive of your site


Popularity Considerations Popularity gives insight on traffic

potential Popular phrases

Less relevant More competitive Being popular Is overrated

Less Popular More Focused Less Traffic

Consider seasonality and cyclical popularity of phrases

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Consider User Intent Getting inside the searcher’s head

Understand the “why” behind the motivation for the search and you can better target how to respond § Research vs Purchase

§ Stage in buying process

§ Audience Demographic

Buying vs Browsing “car reviews” “fast auto financing”

“80% of all searches on the Web are non-‐commercial” -‐ Jim Lanzone of Ask.com

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Evaluating by the Stage in Buying Process

Keywords indicate where consumer is in the Buying Process

Match your content to satisfy the user’s intent when using the keyword

Problem Recognition

Information Search

Evaluation of Alternatives

Purchase Decision

Adapted From: Marketing Management by Philip Kotler

Select Alternatives

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Searcher Behavior

Three types of searches:

•  Navigational

-‐ I just want to be at your web site.

•  Informational

-‐ Do hybrid cars require special maintenance?

• Transactional -‐Interactive, purchase, subscribe, download

-‐I want financing to buy a hybrid car.

Adapted From: A Taxonomy of Web Search by Andrei Broder

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Results Pages Give Insight into What Google Thinks the Searcher Wants

Type the proposed query into a Search Engine Look at the kinds of sites and files returned

-‐  PDFs, white papers, in-‐depth articles – likely informational query

-‐  Ecommerce sites – transactional

-‐  Brand site – navigational -‐  Are Knowledge Graph Answer boxes returned? -‐  Are local results or shopping ads returned? Looking at the results can help you interpret what Google thinks the user wants

Do this on both desktop and mobile

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Evaluating KW By Competition Who Are Your Competitors?

Who is ranking for your main keyword terms?

Who has PPC ads? How well optimized are

competitors sites? Are they active on social media

and review sites? What is their link profile?

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Competitive Intelligence Tools

Hitwise ComScore Marketer Trellian’s Competitive Intelligence Keyword Difficulty Tool SpyFu SearchMetrics KeyCompete Compete SemRush KeywordSpy AdGooRoo Keyword Analyzer


SEMRush

Provides: •  Top Keywords •  Rankings •  PPC Terms •  PPC Bids •  Traffic Trends


Searchmetrics Can Identify Co-‐Occurrence Terms, Competitors Terms, etc

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SEOMOZ Keyword Difficulty

Relative yardstick of difficulty


SPYFu


Test KW Performance Use PPC to test candidate KWs

Do keywords bring the amount of traffic you want?

Does the traffic convert?

PPC gives quick quantitative feedback on the KW performance while controlling costs. If works well in PPC, expand kw use in SEO, social and content marketing

Downside: Terms that work well in PPC are often transactional. You may have to expand your list to include informational terms


Content Optimization

Putting the Pieces Together

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Everything Is Better with Chocolate Keywords •  Web sites •  Paid search •  Articles •  White Papers •  FAQ pages •  Product Feeds •  News •  Blog Posts •  Press Releases •  Images •  Videos •  Podcasts •  Schema •  Social Media •  Content Marketing

Optimize all digital assets


Good Online Copywriting Is a Balancing Act

You have to write to engage the human reader

You have to write so search engines understand relevancy of content

It is this talent for doing both that separates high quality SEO content from spam

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On-Page SEO Guidelines

Has to be NATURAL Elegantly work keywords into visible content on web pages -‐ Don’t stuff keywords -‐ Do the “Read Aloud” test to gauge natural tone

SEO helps good content get found

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On-Page SEO Guidelines (cont)

Think keyword phrase NOT single keyword

Create a matrix chart to assign different main phrases to different pages

Use synonyms and related words on page to reinforce main topic

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Where to Use Keywords On Site

Title Tags Meta Description

H Tags

Visible text on the page

Alt Attribute

Links and anchor text File names

URL

Schema code

Bold, strong, emphasized tags Breadcrumb Navigation

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Title Tags <title>Interesting Relevant Keyword Rich Blurb</title>

Most important “on-‐page” tag

Title contents appears in first line of listing on SERP so spend extra time to create compelling titles that grab attention

Include keyword phrase early in title

Should be unique…don’t use same title on multiple pages

Title should be accurate and reflect content of page

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Meta Description Tag <meta name="Description" content=“Compelling marketing message that reads well and contains targeted keywords">

Should provide a summary of the page and should be unique to the page

Frequently used as snippet on results page

Should contain keywords relevant to the page. Include synonyms and related words – don’t just repeat core terms

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Feed the Knowledge Graph Explicit method

-‐ Schema

-‐ Tables

Implicit method

-‐ On-‐page Text

Adds confidence in data for Google

Schema is helpful as a template to build out quality content

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Golden Rules for Writing Copy Talk about benefits, not features

-‐Tell them why they should care

Appeal to emotions and senses

-‐ most buying decisions are emotionally based

Solve problems and answer questions in your content

Don’t forget to include a “Call to Action”

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Develop Shareable Content Start with relevant interesting content

Include social media sharing and keywords in editorial calendar planning

Place sharing social share icons in susceptible moments – Make it easy to share

The Title can make or break your content so take extra time to create a compelling headline

Use a subheading to further entice reader

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Good User Experience Increases Share-‐ability

Include visually stimulating graphics

-‐ Good graphic draws reader in

-‐ Faces & bright colors attract the eyes

“Chunk up” the content layout to be more scan friendly

-‐ Use headers, subheadings & bullet lists to add hierarchy

-‐ White space is your friend

-‐ Keep paragraphs short

Avoid “noise” and distracting items on page

Don’t forget Google tracks user behavior

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Getting Your Great Content Found Online Mix in synonyms, long tail terms and variations

Replace duplicate content with original writing and use canonicals

Clean up the site -‐ Remove low quality pages, write longer deeper content

Link to related useful content

Be professional -‐ run link checkers, spell checkers and avoid foul words

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Points to Take Home

1.   Keyword research Isn’t dead – helps identify user intent 2.   Exact match keyword targeting is dead

3.   Use keyword phrases, synonyms and related terms on the page, in schema code and in all digital assets

4.   Use tools to increase productivity & provide insights

5.   Test keywords for true worth. View popularity as traffic potential and consider seasonality and trends

6.   Write to enhance the user experience -‐ Compose quality content that satisfies user intent and answers questions

7.   Make content easy to read & share

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Thank You! Christine Churchill www.keyrelevance.com [email protected]

@KeyRelevance @ChrisChurchill

Questions?


SEE YOU AT THE NEXT #SMX

THANK YOU!

Taking Your Content To The Next Level By Christine Churchill

Marketing

Transcript of Taking Your Content To The Next Level By Christine Churchill