Search engine optimization ‘SEO’ is a digital marketing discipline that divides marketers. It is also arguably the discipline where a little knowledge really is truly dangerous, whilst a lot of knowledge is essential if you want to be able to deliver your digital strategy. This is because as soon as you have a website you are using the SEO channel whether you like it or not. If your knowledge is minimal then you might try to rank number one on a specific key term and this could cost a significant amount of money and time to achieve. However, developing a broader strategy that improves performance across a number of keywords would be far more efficient and would also reduce the risk of a penalty. Even if you have appointed a great SEO or broader digital agency you still need to ensure that you understand the fundamentals of good SEO as agencies cannot achieve success without guidance and direction from their client (despite what some may tell you).
One reason why so many digital marketers and business leaders are reluctant to embrace the detail of SEO is because they have the misconception that it is a very technical and complex discipline. Technical SEO considerations are very important, but they are just one area of SEO. If you are looking for technical detail it would be worthwhile either using online resources such as moz.com and searchengineland.com or searching for a book on technical SEO for developers. Truly strategic SEO is in fact very closely aligned to more traditional marketing techniques. If your background is in marketing then you probably already have the skills needed to implement a great SEO strategy.
It is worth noting that throughout this section only one search engine is discussed, Google. In most markets Google dominates by some margin but of course this is not the case in all. If Google is not your average customer’s search engine of choice, then please do consider further research than this section allows. That said, many of the principles of good SEO are actually about good content, design, user experience and other marketing principles, so good SEO is likely to work for most if not all search engines.
The final note is that when optimizing your site, it is important that you do not try to learn Google’s techniques and find ways to work around them to get to position one. This is a sure-fire way to cause yourself problems in either the short or medium term. SEO should always focus on optimizing for the user, not the search engine. Ultimately this is the aim of every good search engine as well – to improve the internet experience for users. If you have the same goal then you will find that your SEO strategy will be aligned to the philosophy and therefore algorithms of the search engines and you will be able to win now and in the future.
Researching your SEO strategy
One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make when creating an SEO strategy is to start with the following question: ‘What keywords should we be focusing on?’
This is not a bad question. In fact it is a very good question, but it should never be the first question asked. The starting point for good SEO, as we have discussed more generally, should be creating the goals and objectives for the SEO channel (for example, will SEO be your primary channel?). Once you have covered those basics the next crucial step is a thorough understanding of your customers.
Persona development
The best way to do this is to create audience personas. Consider the audience types you have and try to create no more than five distinct personas. This approach will help you considerably when you move to the next step of keyword research. but it is worth taking a quick look here at how personas apply to SEO. As we have already discussed, personas are a useful way of understanding the personality and potential behaviours of your customers. This becomes useful in SEO (and paid search) in predicting what the user may search for. As we move into the next phase of keyword research (below) this is extremely useful to understand.
If, for example, our persona is a woman in her early thirties with a young family who lives in central New York, we can start to understand some of her daily needs. We can be fairly certain that she is time poor and will want things now, so she may use words such as ‘now’ and ‘fast’. She is likely to want something in New York as it is often harder to travel any significant distance in cities than in rural areas, so she may do a lot of searching for ‘in New York’ and other local terms. She will probably search for children’s products and may also search for helpful tips on parenthood such as ‘how much milk should I give my baby’ or ‘best things to do with kids at the weekend in New York’. She is still young herself though, and so it is likely she will search for babysitters, restaurants and perhaps bars and clubs. She may well buy her groceries online as it is easier than dragging the children around the local store. All of this insight that we can gain from the persona can steer our initial keyword research and we can then use the below process and evolve the campaign over time.
Keyword research
Having created personas, the next job is to start to build your focus keyword list. This might seem daunting, especially as some companies have target keyword lists that run in the thousands. However, if you break down the process into the following steps the process is relatively painless:
- Step 1: create logical segments.
- Step 2: mine your data.
- Step 3: mine secondary data sources.
- Step 4: sense check.
Note that within this section we will use the term ‘keyword’ as a catch-all for search terms. While some searches are just one keyword, increasingly people use natural language and therefore longer phrases.
Step 1: create logical segments
Most businesses sell a multitude of products or services, some of which might well be quite diverse. So, a good starting point is to split your products/services into logical segments. The good news is that if your site hierarchy is logical, you have probably already done this.
Then consider each segment in detail. Which are the most valuable to you? How do customer types vary? Which should you prioritize?
Step 2: mine your data
An obvious step is to mine the data you already have. However, even in the digital world we sometimes go backwards and, sadly, in October 2011 Google implemented changes that mean it is now extremely difficult to work out the keywords or phrases that site visitors used to find a particular site. What used to be simple (check analytics) is now very difficult. This is due to Google removing the keywords returned within Google Analytics and instead simply labelling all SEO traffic as ‘keyword not provided’. This has been a frustration for many digital marketers as knowledge is a crucial part of building any strategy.
However, this SEO cloud may have a silver lining, as ripping keywords directly from analytics could be self-fulfilling prophecy, ie your strategy would be too focused on what you currently rank for rather than what you could rank for. That said, it is worth looking at the data you do have. A good starting point is considering the most visited landing pages as a proxy for user intent. In addition, you may have some data from other search engines, or even historic analytics data, which can help add to the keyword set.
But do not just rely on data that is stored in hardware – brainstorming is a great way to quickly start a keyword list. To do this, review each persona and write down the keywords you think they might use. Spend no more than five minutes for each and focus on the simple/more obvious terms. Once completed, remove any duplicates and you will likely have a fairly short list. This is a good thing – these are most likely your ‘halo’ terms, or in other words the terms that are most commonly used and therefore have the potential to drive a lot of traffic. At this stage though you don’t need to worry whether you have nailed all your halo terms, so long as you have a few the others will come out of the woodwork during the following phases.
Step 3: mine secondary data sources
By this stage you should have established some keywords. The next step is to expand that keyword set. Thankfully there are many third-party tools that can help do this. Rather than offer up a list, simply Google ‘keyword research tool’ or similar for the latest and greatest. Naturally, one of the best is provided by Google itself (as of course it has more data than most), the Google Adwords Keyword Planner. To access this, you will need an Adwords (Google’s paid-search advertising platform) account, but you don’t need to actually advertise to use the tool.
Using the tool is fairly self-explanatory, it acts somewhat like a thesaurus offering similar and related terms and, importantly, gives you an idea of the search volume. You will very quickly find that your keyword list has grown substantially. However, the quality of the data you get out is completely dependent on what you put in, so don’t be tempted to skip the previous steps. There are of course other tools, both SEMRush and KeywordTool.io are well-respected alternatives.
Step 4: sense check
So now you have a big list. The temptation at this stage is to begin, but a sense check is needed. A very common mistake is to focus too heavily on the search volume: while it is important (as you don’t want to pin your business hopes on a term that gets only 10 searches a month) it is only one factor.
It is also important to consider the following:
- What commercial value might this keyword have?
For example, ‘pound/euro exchange rate’ has large search volume, but if a bank were to rank number one for the term how many current accounts would get opened on the back of it? Not many. The bank might sell some currency but this term is probably not the most commercially critical.
- What right do I have to compete for this keyword?
There are very few examples of David beating Goliath in the more mature online industries. For example, the keyword ‘casino’ drives well over 50 per cent of natural search traffic in the online casino market and therefore trying to gain traffic in this industry is difficult without competing for this specific keyword, which is of course very competitive. If you built your site yesterday and have a small marketing budget you are best to point that resource elsewhere. Find a battle you can win and focus your attention there, at least initially.
- Ask others. Sense checks your list with others in the business. Remember:
This is the foundation of your SEO strategy so it is worth spending some quality time getting it right.