1. THE HOLISTIC SEO PROCESS
Let’s grow up, stop being the Kanye West
of digital marketing and legitimize SEO
MICHAEL KING
DIRECTOR OF INBOUND MARKETING
@ipullrank
3. SEO = KANYE WEST
SEO is the Kanye West of the Digital Marketing Mix
@ipullrank
4. 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
@ipullrank
5. 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.
@ipullrank
6. 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
@ipullrank
8. STANDARD SEO KICKOFF QUESTIONS
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?
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.
@ipullrank
9. STOP PHONING IT IN!
Becoming an expert in the niche that you are optimizing for is an extremely underrated step in the SEO process.
@ipullrank
11. STANDARD CLASSIFICATION IS TOO IMPERSONAL
Informational Navigational Transactional
Ways to ____ Company Name Buy _____
How to _____ Organization Download ____
name
What is _____ Domain name Get _____
Search is about needs and the standard keyword classifier are not enough to understand a searcher’s intent.
@ipullrank
12. 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!
@ipullrank
13. 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?
@ipullrank
14. 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.
@ipullrank
24. …TO GET THE HOLISTIC SEO APPROACH
Optimization Opportunity
Discovery
Content Strategy
Measurement
& Development
Social Strategy
Technical
&
Development
Implementation
@ipullrank
25. OPPORTUNITY DISCOVERY
Identifying the who, what, when, where, why of SEO campaigns
@ipullrank
26. BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
Sell More 3D TVs
More Shares in Social Media
Occupy the Conversation
Use the client’s business goals to drive audience understanding, keyword selection and every aspect of the
campaign
@ipullrank
27. MARKET RESEARCH
Learn the vertical inside out before you choose a keyword or write a line of copy.
@ipullrank
28. AUDIENCE RESEARCH - PERSONAS
Music Moms Happy Raging Rock stars Involved Instructors
Typically uninformed gift givers Typically professional musicians at Typically professional musicians and
looking for information on the Hobbyists various stages of their careers that thought leaders/content creators who talk
right guitar for their happy Typically students or tend to spend more time creating about new techniques and have strong
hobbyist or raging rockstar. amateur musicians content with their guitars only opinions about instruments and brands.
These people enter the looking for the latest tips consuming content as new guitar These tend to be quite active in the
conversation when they are and tricks for playing their technology is released. These are acoustic guitar conversation.
looking to make a purchase. guitar. These tend to be the influencers of the happy
the most active content hobbyist group.
creators in the acoustic
guitar conversation.
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
@ipullrank
29. 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.
@ipullrank
30. AUDIENCE RESEARCH – NEED STATES
This person probably
needs information on
Searches for the best acoustic guitar
[best acoustic guitar] in order to make a
purchasing decision.
Need State is
“Learning to Buy” or
Music Moms “Consider” in the
Typically uninformed gift givers
looking for information on the Consumer Decision
right guitar for their happy
hobbyist or raging rockstar. Journey
These people enter the
conversation when they are
looking to make a purchase.
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
@ipullrank
31. HOW DO WE DEVELOP THEM?
Social Data Educated Personas &
Business Goals Guessing Need States
Market Research
Personas and need states are the art of educated guessing based on data. These
are often defined by Strategy and UX teams
@ipullrank
32. YAHOO CLUES
Get demographic data at the keyword level straight from Yahoo. http://clues.yahoo.com/ (h/t @keyrelevance)
@ipullrank
33. 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
@ipullrank
34. 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/
@ipullrank
35. 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.
@ipullrank
36. ANALYTICS MINING
Pull keywords that are performing from analytics
@ipullrank
37. COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Know your competitor’s plays across search, social and the general market so you can make an even better
gameplan
@ipullrank
38. 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
@ipullrank
39. KEYWORD RESEARCH
Once you understand your audience and what they are looking for, then finally do keyword research
@ipullrank
40. 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.
@ipullrank
41. 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.
@ipullrank
42. 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.
@ipullrank
43. BRAND RELATIONSHIPS
Who is your brand down with? Who can they leverage? Who are they connected to?
@ipullrank
44. OFFLINE ASSETS
What tools, venues, prizes, etc. are at the brands disposal that you can leverage for this SEO campaign?
@ipullrank
45. 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/
@ipullrank
47. 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.
@ipullrank
48. 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.
@ipullrank
49. 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
@ipullrank
50. 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/
@ipullrank
51. 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
@ipullrank
?
52. MICHAEL JACKSON DOCTOR TRIAL SOUTH PARK EDITION
Seed the content you create to influential Twitter users identified by GoFish.
@ipullrank
53. 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/
@ipullrank
54. @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)
@ipullrank
55. 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/
@ipullrank
56. 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
@ipullrank
57. 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.
@ipullrank
59. 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
@ipullrank
60. 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
@ipullrank
62. 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.
@ipullrank
63. IN FACT IT’S ALL WE DO
Professional Off-Page SEO for the Enterprise
DIGITAL PR MANAGED LINK DEVELOPMENT
IDENTIFY/ENGAGE TREND SETTER OUTLETS NATURAL LINK INTEGRATION
TARGETED CONTENT MARKETING LINK RECLAMATION
DIGITAL ASSET DISTRIBUTION BACKLINK AUDIT AND OPTIMIZATION
64. 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
@ipullrank
65. MAKE NEWS OR MAKE FRIENDS
MAKE NEWS 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.
@ipullrank
66. 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.
@ipullrank
67. KEYWORD OPP AS FUNCTION OF SoV
[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
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.
@ipullrank
68. INTEGRATED LINK STRATEGY
Social Media PR
Events Contests
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.
@ipullrank
69. 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.
@ipullrank
70. 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.
@ipullrank
71. EVENTS
KANYE KNOWS
HOW TO THROW A
PARTY AND GET
PEOPLE LINKING!
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.
@ipullrank
72. 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.
@ipullrank
75. MEASURE THROUGH YOUR AUDIENCE
Local
Target Monthly Search Target Need Conversion
Landing Page Keyword Ranking Searches Page Traffic Persona State Rate
Curious Unaware
/3d-glasses.html 3d glasses 10 18100 Glasses 671 George Interested 17.63%
/2d-3d- 2d to 3d Aware
conversion.html conversion 2 1000 Conversion 400 Tech Geek Owner 67.47%
/3d-tv- Curious Unaware
glasses.html 3d tv glasses 3 1000 Glasses 489 George Interested 58.00%
/glasses-free- Curious Aware
3d.html glasses free 3d 1 1000 Glasses 1289 George Owner 35.15%
/real-3d- Curious Aware
glasses.html real 3d glasses 2 1000 Glasses 852 George 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%
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[
@ipullrank
76. MEASURE TO VALIDATE PERSONAS
Curious George
• 18-32
• Male
• Loves indie rock
• Wishes he had a beard
Validate your hypotheses via data collected in conversions and visits. You can also test effectiveness using
demographic targeting with Facebook Ads and Paid Search
@ipullrank
77. USE KEYWORD-LEVEL DEMOGRAPHICS
Search Keyword-Level
FB:Admin Demographics
Referrers
Validate your hypotheses via data collected in conversions and visits. You can also test effectiveness using
demographic targeting with Facebook Ads and Paid Search
@ipullrank
79. JUST TRACK THE PERSONA
Check for key attributes of
the persona with an if
statement
if (demos.age >= „18‟ && demos.age <= „40‟ &&
demos.gender=“male” && demos.state == “New York”)
{
_gaq.push([„_setCustomVar‟,‟1‟,‟Persona‟,‟Curi
ous George‟,1]);
}
Push just the name rather
than all of the data points
@ipullrank
80. KEYWORD OWNERSHIP
OWNER
Curious George Gamer Film Purist Tech Geek
• 18-32 • 18-32 • 22-40 • 22-40
• Male • Male • Male • Male
• Loves indie rock • Loves all music • Loves film soundtracks • Loves Techno
• Wishes he had a beard • Wishes he could move • Wishes he could live in • Wishes you would stop
out his mom’s the movie Avatar invading his online
basement privacy
• 5000 Searches Monthly • 600 Searches Monthly • 1000 Searches Monthly • 100 Searches Monthly
• Conversion Rate 5% • Conversion Rate 2% • Conversion Rate 0.5% • Conversion Rate 0.2%
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.
@ipullrank
81. DYNAMIC TARGETING
What Normal Users See What Curious George Sees
Curious George
• 18-32
• Male
• Loves indie rock
• Wishes he had a beard
(Dramatization)
Using this data you can build a site that reflects the persona when they arrive
@ipullrank
82. KEYWORD ARBITRAGE
Initial Conversion Persona Keyword Subsequent Conversion Keyword
Keyword Rate Revenue Keyword Rate 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
Tracking keyword demographics also allows the attribution of future purchases to the original keyword and will
give way to keyword matrices.
@ipullrank
83. SUBSEQUENT CONVERSION PREDICTION
We develop personas Users come from Curious George We aggressively target Curious George
based on social data search, we collect buys a pair of in other channels for comes back and
data sneakers the next buy buys a windbreaker
Curious George
@ipullrank
84. THE WINNING FORMULAS
Keyword Price per Keyword
Earnings
Annual Earnings
Ratio
per initial click
Annual Earnings
Keyword per initial click
Earnings
Yield Price per Keyword
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.
@ipullrank
85. OTHER DATA SOURCES
LinkedIn Google+
Opt-In Opt-In
Professional data [Not Provided]
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
@ipullrank
G+ API People Data: https://developers.google.com/+/api/latest/people
87. WHAT POSITION CONVERTS BEST?
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%
People are oftentimes shopping around and therefore ranking first does not result in a conversion.
@ipullrank
88. DYNAMIC MESSAGING BASED ON RANKINGS
Position #1 messaging Position #2 messaging Historically converting position
The Time Constraint The Challenge Normal Messaging
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/
@ipullrank
89. 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.
@ipullrank
90. WHY DO IT THIS WAY?
6 Reasons Holistic SEO is the future
@ipullrank
91. 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.
@ipullrank
92. COMPARE THE TWO STATEMENTS
“We want to build links targeting “We’d like to launch a contest targeting
websites with a PageRank of 3 or Influential Moms with over 5000
higher. We’ll reach out to a variety followers on Twitter. To enter they’d
of prospects and target anchor write blog posts that link back to our
text for keyword opportunities properties in order to drive traffic for
identified by our extensive our target Listener Moms that are
keyword research in order to gain using Search to buy more healthy
rankings for your brand.” cereal.”
Speaking directly to the brand’s audience and business objectives makes it much easier to achieve brand buy-in
@ipullrank
93. 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.
@ipullrank
94. A BETTER WEB
HEAL THE 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.
@ipullrank
95. 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.
@ipullrank
96. 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.
@ipullrank
97. (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.
@ipullrank
98. CONGRATS KANYE
KANYE IS CLASSY, GROWN
UP AND READY TO PLAN
WITH THE TEAM. SO IS SEO.
@ipullrank
99. MICHAEL KING
Director of Inbound Marketing
www.iacquire.com
mike@iacquire.com
@iPullRank
THANK YOU / Q&A