UpWord
10 TIPS
TO ALIGN YOUR
SEO AND CONTENT
MARKETING EFFORTS
White Paper
UpWord
SEO and Content Marketing. Where does
one begin and the other end? Does one have
to end for the other to begin? Once your SEO
technical issues are resolved and you’ve optimized
your existing site, you don’t then fix the same
issues and pages twice. Ongoing SEO is content
marketing. A content marketing program leads
to additional SEO efforts and opportunities.
Conversely, if you are engaged in content
marketing but are not considering SEO, you are
missing out on the opportunity to drive free traffic
from your efforts. Therefore, the two should exist
symbiotically. Yet we still see companies that
have an SEO team that works alone (literally and
figuratively) and a content team that works alone.
Too many times, the two speak only after their
individual efforts are completed, and not before.
Worse yet: they don’t speak at all.
Don’t make these mistakes. Ask yourself the
following questions to make sure your SEO and
Content Marketing efforts are aligned and working
together.
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
1
UpWord
1. Have you used SEO keyword research to help discover new
content marketing ideas?
Keyword research can be helpful for more than just SEO. Keyword data provides
an insight into the overall marketplace. Not only can you determine what keywords
are searched for more often than others, you can discover themes around what real
people are interested in.
This is where the true power of keyword research lies: not just picking one keyword
to use in your Title tag, but gaining deeper insight into your customers and creating
content that aligns with these themes.
1. Use Google Keyword Planner or other KW research tool
2. Identify both ‘head’ and ‘long-tail’ keywords
3. Evaluate content opportunity
• Top 3 rankings are dominated by strong brands…
… smaller competitors able to attain
top 3 positions for long-tail content.
Regardless of SEO these are good
topics for content marketing efforts.
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
2
UpWord
2. Have you mapped keywords to your personas?
Behind every keyword is a real person. Do you know who that person is? Different
personas have different habits, may be in different stages of the buying cycle, and
therefore consume different types of content. Mapping keywords to your existing
personas will help you create the right content and reach them when they search.
But don’t stop there. Use keyword research to identify new personas for your content
marketing efforts you may not have previously considered during initial research.
Existing Persona
New Persona
Business Traveler
Discount Shopper
General Hotel Seeker
Last Minute Traveler
Spa Requirement
New Content Ideas
• Last minute deals
• This week’s events
• This week’s menu
• 5 day weather
• Quick packing checklist
• Local car service
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
3
UpWord
3. Do you consider seasonal search trends when scheduling your
editorial calendar?
Is the timing of your content based purely on internal business needs and operations?
Your customers have their own schedule. They search, and discuss on social media
channels, based on a number of factors: seasonality, weather, holidays, life events,
etc. You don’t have to guess or assume when people are interested in your content,
Google Trends will show you.
On top of that, from an SEO perspective you can now time the publishing of your
content closer to these spikes as Google indexes pages almost immediately now, as
opposed to years ago when it could take months for a page to get indexed.
Searches for ‘wedding venues’ spike in December and January after people get
engaged over the holidays. Have your content planned and published in the fall,
promote it via social and other channels just prior and during the search spike
periods.
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
4
UpWord
4. Do you have a pre-planned SEO calendar?
SEO can’t just be Reactive, it must be Proactive. The best way to do this is to create
an SEO content calendar for the year. You probably have a PR calendar, a social media
calendar, and a content marketing calendar. But do you have an SEO calendar? It’s too
easy to just wait for rankings to change and then react. How many SEO teams, and
vendors, wait for a monthly ranking report to think about SEO? If this is the case, you
are always working from behind.
Your SEO team should have a 6-12 month calendar in place, and always be working on
SEO content somewhere in the range of 3 months in advance. Even more importantly,
the SEO calendar should be aligned with your other calendars.
If the PR team is pushing a new product or setting up an interview, the SEO team
should be supporting it with content and linking efforts. Conversely, social is talking
about small business Saturday then it should connect back to a page on your site
that could rank for small business topics. Aligning your calendars will boost the
performance of all your channels.
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
5
UpWord
5. Does your SEO team provide research and consultation before
your content team begins writing?
Many companies still consider SEO a post-production type of service. The content
team writes a great new web page then asks the SEO team to “optimize” it. Gone are
the days of getting top rankings just by adding Title and Meta Tags. Besides, do your
writers really want the SEO team inserting keywords and changing the header and
body copy after it’s been written?
Great content will outrank great optimization. Therefore authors should go to the
SEO team before they write. Get an analysis of the keywords related to the topic
and get examples of pages that are currently ranking well. Is there an SEO design
recommendation to avoid? Include your SEO team in the pre-production phase of
content marketing.
Content Pre-Production
Content Post Production
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
6
UpWord
6. Does your SEO team have your content style guide?
If you have a style guide, then it should be shared with everyone who has a hand
in your web site, not just the copywriters. Your SEO team can use the same style
guidelines when they write Title and Description tags. These often will be the Title
and Description that appear on the search engine results page (SERP). As a writer you
spend a lot of time maintaining style and messaging. Make sure that hard work makes
it to the Google results page.
Sample SERPs for keyword search “menu”
• Title is generic due to automated
title tag
• No Description tag exists
therefore Google is using a piece
of content on the page that
mentions “menu”. Description
that appears talks about how
some items may not be available
providing a poor marketing
message.
• Title tag is simple yet informative,
specific to dinner. “Item list”
implies you’ll be able to see every
menu item
• Description tag accomplishes a
lot within a small space
• Reinforces this is the dinner menu page
• Promotes take out orders
• “Tastes of Italy” & “Classic Italian Dishes” brand messaging used
Menu categories listed
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
7
UpWord
7. Does your content plan include providing answers for questions
people ask online?
Maybe Ask (Jeeves) was on to something even if they didn’t turn out to be a leading
search engine. When people type in a keyword, they are in essence asking for content.
Sometimes the intent is as explicit as people literally typing their questions right into
search engines. These people are asking for help, give it to them!
If you just focus your SEO and your content on big topics and keywords you are
missing out on a great opportunity. Individually, question phrases may be searched for
less often, but in aggregate they add up and represent highly pre-qualified targets.
Question based keywords also tend to be less competitive. Good answer-based
content can also appear as an Answer Box on the SERP. These top rankings get high
click through rates encouraging Google to leave them at the top position.
1. Organic “Answer Box” listing
2. Additional standard organic listing
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
8
UpWord
8. Do you consider usability and engagement as part of each
content marketing effort?
Hopefully every content marketing effort is a creative endeavor. But too often content
efforts become purely needs-based, and turn in to chores rather than creative
endeavors. For example: let’s assume you are launching a new product. You need a
spec sheet to go on your web site. Do you just create a bulleted list, or do you create
an interactive experience?
Nobody wants to read pure text, even if technically it contains all the important
information someone needs. People want a visually enjoyable experience, they
want options when it comes to format, and they want to be able to click through for
additional content options. Google realizes this, and user engagement is an important
part of the ranking algorithm.
Turkey fire safety may not seem like
an exciting topic, but State Farm
has taken a topic and created an
engaging content campaign
• Article has an enticing title, rather
than just “turkey fryer safety” it is
15 Tips.
• Content is broken up with images
and numbered lists
Social media buttons provide
social proof.
• User generated comments make
this a ‘discussion’
Related links are provided for more
info.
• An accompanying video is also
provided (it also never hurts to
have Shatner in your content
marketing).
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
9
UpWord
9. Do you use analytics to determine what types of content
format and themes work best?
Tracking your content performance is essential for more than just showing your boss
how well you are doing; it should also be used to guide new content strategies. Is
there a certain format that works well?
For example: we worked with a CPG client to create lifestyle content that was targeted
back to keywords such as “hair styles” to help promote their shampoo product.
What we found was that articles that included both the word ‘trends’ and a season
such as ‘fall’ not only got higher rankings, but got significantly more traffic from all
sources than other ‘hair’ related articles. The SEO team was targeting ‘hair styles’ but
the copywriter’s angle of providing the upcoming season’s trends is what led to the
success. In this case an integrated effort turned into a quarterly ongoing content plan.
Another useful exercise is to find out what keywords your content is ranking for
regardless of if you targeted them (tools such as Spyfu and Conductor can help with
this analysis). If your ‘hair styles’ article is also ranking for a term such as ‘hairstyles for
round faces’ then create new content specifically for that term and link to it from a
‘related’ link on the original page. If your original, only loosely-related page, ranked at
all, then a new more focused page should perform even better.
Take a stable keyword like
“hairstyles” and find an engaging,
timely, and click worthy angle.
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
10
UpWord
10. Even if you have copywriters, could your SEO team write a
web page or blog post that could be approved purely from a
marketing, not SEO, perspective?
Although the technical aspect of SEO is still important, SEO has become much more
of a ‘marketing’ discipline. The best SEO programs incorporate truly creative efforts,
be it video, infographics, interactive tools, catchy stories, etc.
SEO and Content are dependent upon one another. Therefore your Content team
should at least know the basics of SEO, and your SEO team should be creative enough
to recommend good content. Your SEO team will never take over your copywriter’s
job, that is not the point. But your SEO team should be creative enough to pitch new
ideas and provide rough drafts and mockups.
If SEO is going to be proactive and creative. it will need to be sold internally, and the
old school coding-first SEO type will not be able to do that.
Future of SEO Skill Set Importance
10 Tips to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Efforts
White Paper
11
98 North Washington Street, Suite 303
Boston, Massachusetts 02114
+1 (617) 956-4025
www.upwordsem.com
@upwordsearch | facebook.com/upwordsem
Version 1 – 5/20/2015
© 2015 UpWord Search Marketing, Inc., all rights reserved.