Boost Your SEO: How to Create & Organize Content

On Tuesday September 24th, Dan Shure spoke to the Newport Interactive Marketing audience at Salvation Cafe about how to create content and engage in effective search engine optimization (SEO). Here are the highlights of his talk:

Seven Challenges to Content

• I don’t know what to write about
• I keep talking about the same thing
• There’s no time/resources
• The content is overly SEO’d
• The content doesn’t connect with people
• No obvious purposes/goals
• Using wrong metrics of “success”

Inbound Marketing– It’s the new and improved way to approach content that’s not sales-based. The foundation of inbound marketing relies on creating great content that draws potential customers to your brand.

Brainstorming Content

• Conduct a basic mental exercise: think of other interests that parallel what your target audience wants. Push yourself to think of what parallel interests your target audience has!
• Site to Help Brainstorm Content Keywords: ubersuggest
• Three Things to Keep in Mind: Passion/Purpose; Target and Audience; Exceptional Execution
• Expand Repertoire of Content Types (watch the classic video by @jasonfried for an example)

Creating Content

• Tell a story-Not only tell a story, but tell stories that relate to your brand and make it memorable
• Show transparency- If you’re in a business that works in technology, use internal data (There are free tools available to compile data: MailChimp, Upworthy)
• Why not curate content? Gather all links/resources from an event, share w/ social network
• Start an Industry Study or Report
• Find Topic Ideas on Social Media-What are trending topics on social media? Are there any tweets/posts/links relevant to your brand?
• Turn a Blog Comment Into a Post

Keyword Search and Data

• Analytics- Use internal search data tracking and find internal search words users are exiting from & create that content
• Use Webmaster Tools Query Data to Connect to Analytics
• Impressions are another element to check on analytics and then you can project data easily
• Important Metrics for 2013-2014: Propriety Words and Brand Mentions
• Branded Search Volume: don’t forget to search that of competitors as well
• FYI: Keyword data from Google is no longer available. You can still check rankings, but you can’t see what keywords drove rankings. In other words, Google is keeping the data from the public…

Tools for Keywords: HARO-use for links as well as topic inspiration; Quora- fill in keyword you want to use, and look for questions you would like to answer

Networking Group to Watch: Search Engine Marketing New England

Planning and Organizing Content

• Improving the creation process requires planning and organization
• Use a content calendar to organize posts and content
• Excessive tags aren’t good–they are for internal navigation process of your site
• READ/SEARCH “Setting Up WordPress” article by @dan_shure on @SEOmoz

Blogging and Marketing Content

• Master the Art of Blog Commenting- Blogging is About Conversation—get in front of new audiences by actively engaging in the blogosphere by reading other blogs and making genuine, thoughtful comments. Comments are the best way to measure engagement with social community!
• Make a Guest Appearance- Try to do a guest post on other blogs for links and traffic a new audience to your blog. Another alternative is get interviewed (search youtube.com [keyword] interview; inurl [keyword] podcast)
• Speak! Check out meetups or other gatherings to discuss your industry or interest.
• Increase Share-ability- Use short URLs like bitly
• Optimize Your Content’s Appearance Across the Web- Use Schema, Rich Snippets, Authorship & Publisher
• Use Social Buttons- Include social buttons on posts, as well as on your email signature, and track shares on LikeExplorer. Choose a select number of platforms you want to highlight: don’t overwhelm your audience!

Tools to Improve Efficiency: Speechpad transcribes; Citation Labs – link prospector