What do you like? What are they doing well? What can you do 10x better?
Placement and use of keywords
Outline site plan
Landing page based on keywords
Content Gathering
Focus on content, not design
Wireframe – Copy site plan into real pages on dev website SEO
Identify keywords people use when looking for a product
Review existing content – What to keep, discard or made new
“If you create a page on a keyword that is 10x better than the pages being shown in search results (for that keyword), Google will reward you for it, and better yet, you’ll naturally get people linking to it!”
Impressions are times snippet show in search results
Clicks are when people clicked through to website
Queries are the search terms people use
Identify traffic issues
Filter on blogs
View traffic to pages. Why lots of impressions but not many clicks
Click URL to filter on specific URL and view queries
View average position, are things headed in right direction
View page snippet and page content, do they make sense
SERPS
What search engine ranking position you are for certain keywords (Add new query)
Add new query for ‘marketing club’
Just started optimising. Starting to get impressions but lacking clicks
View page snippet and page content, do they make sense
URL inspection
Make sure a page is indexed and if not expedite indexing
Adding or refreshing a sitemap can also force Google to index your site again sooner that it would otherwise
Check snippets work
Coverage
Start with errors first
Next any pages that are blocked from index
Email domain believed to be from client’s posting email link on website
If issues fixed you can re-verify
Excluded pages
* Why are they indexed? Are they linked on your site? * How to find links that appear on your website site:ratherinventive.com “email.ratherinventive.com” * This year we changed over the site. Found lots of old URLs still in Google index and have setup redirects to new pages * Yoast also had an issue where it made all image into pages
Sitemaps
Add sitemaps to make sure google indexes all your pages
Also helps highlight if there are pages in the sitemap aren’t indexed
On WordPress Yoast SEO plugin makes sitemap Yoast > General > Features > XML Sitemaps (click question mark), then see the sitemap
Removals
Useful if you must have a page removed from the index
Temporary measure. Make sure the actual content has been removed, marked as 404 or no-indexed
Enhancements
Mobile had an issues, fixed it and asked to ‘Validate Fix’
Make sure no issues with bad or missing structured data
I share how to improve landing page SEO by optimising a specific page of your website to rank higher on Google
Notes
Improve landing page SEO
Optimising a specific page of your website to rank higher on Google
What is On page SEO?
Work on your site to improve SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position) All in your control (website platform dependant) Watch session #6 for general SEO Strategy.
Selmach Case Study Sell high value metal working machinery a Competitor was starting to win business and their Laser landing page was not ranking in Google results.
The Method
Competitor Analysis | Make Changes to Page | Measure Result
Step 1: Competitor analysis
Compare the Competition’s SEO to our page Keyword Correlation Report and interpret the findings into action.
Process
Group call – Client, SEO, Web dev
Review the report – Needed interpreting
Decide on easy wins
Basecamp to assign actions
Observations
Category Landing Page (LP) not in 100 SERPs
Title tag not using optimised keyword
Poor/few internal links
No external links to landing page
Increase word count to over 1400 per page
Add keyword or variations into content more
Use variety of content: Lists, images, tables
Use schema markup
Page not in index. Yoast issue
Step 2: Make Changes
Made observation changes to the landing page.
Add links from other pages.
Create the ultimate guide
What we did
Add keyword to heading: CNC Fibre Laser
Optimise meta description. Not too long and include keywords
We edit for audio consistency Audio only – Fission, Quicktime, Audacity Video – iMovie, Final Cut, Adobe Premier, Shotcut Music – Intro, background music, Envato Elements (£13/mo, Free account 12 free files/month)
Share on Twitter and LinkedIn. I prefer LinkedIn Better to share direct link to video/media or teaser clip Tag in any guests. Share link by email
Sponsorship
How to ask. Pitch an idea Insert or live read Industry standard CPM £10-20 Charge what you think it is worth Script for Asking for sponsorship (template) Starting something newTakes a lot of effort and planning Want to focus on RI, not just guests Build up IMC Marketing currently too diverse Re-use current material
Description – Does not impact on rank, could help conversions. Show what you can do and how you help
Add Products / Services
Recent updates to this as now split into categories, worth reviewing
May have products instead (dependant on category)
Add Photos and videos
Photos
Anything that showcases your business
Identity – Business logo, cover image, etc
Team – your team in action, around the office, etc
If you category allows: 360, Inside and out of office or store
Videos
A welcome video or tour of the store
Why your company stands out versus the competition
The company mission, and goals.
An inside look at daily operations and customer interactions
Customer testimonials
Owner, employees, or customers interviews
Answer FAQs
Posts
What’s New – Limited to seven days, can be up to 1000 words. General updates, blog posts, customer showcase
Events – Promote an event you are hosting, involved in, or supporting. All events require a title, start & end dates, and time. Add a description and details too.
Offers: If you are having any promotions, sales, or coupons, you can use this post type to showcase them. Like events, offers also require titles, start & end dates, and time-frame. The “View offer” CTA is automatically added.
Questions & answers
Make sure to monitor, I don’t always get emails
Create your own FAQs
Perhaps ask clients to seed the questions for you?
Learn how to better understand your customer and fulfil your customers needs with more targeted products
Notes
Two ways to address a customer need
Solve a problem
Support the life goal
Solve a problem
Hungry – Need food
Back pain – Take medication
10mm hole – Need a drill / laser cutter / punch
More social engagement – Need interesting posts / followers / video
Support a life goal
Move someone from where they are to where they want to be
Jobs To Be Done ‘…your efforts should focus on helping them make that change. Ideally the consumers wouldn’t have to do any work.’
Not to be hungry – Food
Be fit and health – Medication / Diet / Exercise / Physio
Sell more widgets with holes Tools / Contractor / Automation
More leads – Focused sales strategy / Sales team / Outsource
‘When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, the next time we’re confronted with the same job, we tend to hire that product again. And if it does a crummy job, we “fire” it and look for an alternative.’
Question: Why do customers hire you? Why do people hire the IMC?
Build a customer profile
Start simply, add detail as you learn more
Describe your customer in five words Good place to start Here’s Ben’s: Passionate Professional, Mac user, 40
What are your customers goals? How your product helps achieve these goals?
Customer Goal / Product Aim
Lose weight / Simple diet
Feel healthier / Exercise plan
Meet new friends / Group meet-ups
Other considerations
Awareness
How do customers describe the product?
Where do they look for recommendation?
How can we reach them?
What’s your backstory?
Why should they care?
Consideration
What do they know already?
How will they compare us?
How long will this process take?
What questions can you help answer?
Decision
What do they need to know to make a decision? Price, delivery, returns…
Who will make the decision?
How do they buy from us?
And how can we make this easy?
Paradox of choice
We’re addicted to choice Broadly seen as a good thing Taken to extremes
Search waitrose.com for “cheese” 564 results found 136 Cheddar products (was 108!) Choose from Mild, Medium, Farmhouse, Mature, Extra Mature & Vintage (10 products) Most expensive, No.1 Rollright £29.50/kg
What if I made the wrong choice Missed a better option Able to research options endlessly, the internet makes things harder
How do we cope with choice? Dozens of sizes, prices and features Opinions from friends, magazines, podcasts Mental energy to make informed decision Decision overload
End up differentiating on price Why we think choice is a good but actually it paralyses us
Restaurants are the worst Large menu plus specials board First 10 minutes not deciding After meal – unlimited coffee choices! Decisions left un-made by the designer (chef) We need to make decisions for our customers Reduce choice and anxiety Increase the throughput
Thali Restaurant Vegetarian curry house – Bristol 2 set meal times, 2 set menus, one fixed price Make it easy for me, keep it simple
Use choice to your advantage Experiment with 2 beers, 80% chose most expensive, 20% least expensive Add 3rd option, 80% chose middle, 20% choose expensive No one bought the cheapest – Have 3 options
“seeking the perfect choice is not only a recipe for misery but more than likely does not actually exist.” – Barry Schwartz from book “Paradox of choice”
There is no perfect choice. Don’t beat yourself up about it
No decision is the worst decision Why we think choice is a good thing but actually it paralyses us
Getting feedback
Helps to understand the customer better and deepens customer relationship
Learn to talk you customers language
Use testimonial text in your copy Reflect language back in conversation Use to improve customer persona
Bring your customers closer
A positive review reinforces your opinion of a company More likely to refer to others
In this episode Ben walks your through how to use WordPress, from logging in to posting your first blog article.
Notes
Why WordPress?
Can get started for free on WordPress.com Completely flexible when self managed Lots of plugins such as woocommerce.com for commerce stores Best control over SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Powers over 30% of the worlds websites Used by the biggest companies in the world: TechCrunch, Bloomberg, BBC America, Sony, Disney, Playstation, Facebook Has active community and developers
Screen-share and demo of self hosted WordPress Log in
1. Go to /wp-admin 2. Use forgotten password
Dashboard
1. Quick tour of key features 2. Check time location
Add pages
1. Create Home page 2. Add dummy content 3. Make sub title H2 4. Add an image. Name image ‘John Doe accountant profile’ 5. Link up CTA (Call To Action) 6. Publish 3. Add other pages About, Blog and Contact 4. Show page permalink
Customise
1. Change Title ‘Yellow Jumper Accountants’ and Strapline ‘Xero and Quickbooks specialists’ 2. Select logo 3. Add Main menu and add Home, About, Blog and Contact 4. Remove widgets Comments, Archives, Meta, Categories
Create a regular event in your diary Find a place that removes distractions Make a routine, start small
Keep it focused
Write for your audience Write the snippet first Read around the subject
Ask for action
Email signup Find out more Buy related product Get in contact for help
Images and video
Increases page views Helps people scan content More visible in a social feeds People more likely to read (Make sure you check the image license, can you use it for business?)
Best practices, how to prepare an image for the web or social media, handy tools and live demos.
Notes
File formats
Formats (JPEG, PNG, EPS SVG) Compression Best pixel size
Vector/icons
(respective sizes of example artwork) JPEG PNG SVG EPS 147KB 12KB 2KB 324KB
Raster/photos
5760 x 3840 (resolution of example photo)
(respective sizes of example artwork) JPEG 20% JPEG 40%. JPEG 80% JPEG 100% 471KB 628KB 1.4MB 9.7MB
Image dimensions
At least 1500px on the smallest edge Recommend 3000px Start with the biggest image possible Always keep the original
Naming images
Describing an image to someone over the phone Describe the content of the image in text Add keywords if you can, may show up in Google image search Name before you upload
A tabby cat in a wicker basket.jpg (example file name)
Live demos
Cutting out an image – Colour correction Social profile icon Social post YouTube thumbnail – Podcast cover art
Finding legal images online
Free and paid image libraries Free – www.pexels.com Free – pixabay.com Free – https://www.flickr.com Free – giphy.com (make sure you check license is for commercial use)
How to improve your website content and structure with an aim of getting to page one in Google.
Notes
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Making changes to your website that you know (or believe) will gain a higher position in search engine results for a given keyword search There are many search engines We’ll focus on Google:
Why people search
Do something e.g. ’camping france’
Know something e.g. ’how to fix washing machine’
Go somewhere e.g. ’facebook’
First five results get 68% of clicks Desktop & mobile ranking position CTR 2014 data from Moz.com
Terms you should know
SERP – Search Engine Ranking Position
Snippet – Information on a Google search result
Impression – How often your snippet shown
CTR – Click Through Rate. Number of clicks compared to impressions
Keyword – A phrase used to find something online
Long tail – A long and specific keyword phrase
Keywords and how to find them
What keywords do people use to find services like yours online?
Keyword examples: “accountant” “cirencester accountants” “accountants in cirencester” “how to prepare end of year accounts”
Google Trends for simple comparison
Broad, simple keywords
Keyword Research
Google Keyword planner for advanced searches
Related searches on Google
Create content that search engines will love and people will share
Find the best keywords to rank for
Find out who else is ranking for them
Create content that’s better than those pages
Meta Descriptions: Writing a snippet is a great way to start writing content
Blog Content
Help Content
Content Checklist
Must have keyword on the page
Keyword order and spelling often matter
Content of page must be relevant to keyword
Avoid ‘thin’ content. Write enough to answer the question
Write for people not search engines
Page structure development
Link to main pages Adding keywords to images Simple URLs
Link to page on your site <a href=“/bookkeeping/”>Bookkeeping</a>
Add no follow if you don’t want to pass any Google SEO credit
“If you create a page on a keyword that is 10x better than the pages being shown in search results (for that keyword), Google will reward you for it, and better yet, you’ll naturally get people linking to it!” https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/on-page-seo
Images
Describe the content of the image in text <img src=“tabby-cat-in-wicker-basket.jpg” alt=“A tabby cat in a wicker basket”/>
Add keywords in if you can. Can then show up on image search
Short and human readable i.e. /blog/how-to-fix-washing-machine’
Use hyphens ‘-‘ not spaces
Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin
Getting linked
Links from other websites (often called backlinks) can be most beneficial
Self created
Links by you to other sites e.g. directories
Natural: Referenced by another website because your content is awesome
Manual outreach: Asked for the link or guest blog post
Do Measure Repeat
Use Google Search Console to track performance Tweak site slowly to look for improvements
Get you up to speed with LinkedIn and learn about some of the key ways people use it to get new business.
Notes
LinkedIn overview
Great place for sharing business content Authoritative personal search result in Google Good for engagement
LinkedIn stats
610 million users / Over 260M monthly active LinkedIn provides 50% of social traffic to blogs
Profile checklist
Professional and friendly No photos from holiday
Personalise the URL – linkedin.com/in/benkinnaird- marketing-expert/ Professional headline – Write how you help people Profile photo – Recent picture that resembles you. Smiling, approachable Banner images – Add contact number/email Summary – Expand headline. Share your experience you have. Keep it simple. Include testimonials that share why people should buy from you.
Screen-share
Review Ben’s profile Any anyone else who’s brave enough…
Q?
What do you look for in an LI profile?
Endorsements and Recommendations
Who uses these? Do they help you to decide work with someone?
Engagement
Be the first to comment or help others Original poster will appreciate your support Helps stimulate more commenters First follower video
Posting
Share links to your blog or other content Alternative / addition to blogging
Screen-share
Review of posts and how to
Advanced Search
Find local contacts Multiple keywords
Screen-share
Demo of advanced search
Get noticed
Visit other peoples profiles Use Google search to find people
Personal pages
These rule over business pages (Alex Galviz) Get your employees to post your content on their personal pages
Stay connected
Connect with people you meet with or connect in advance (podcast interviews) Ask a question when connecting
Become a tribe
Idea of WEN (Worcestershire Education Network) All members reviewing group account Looking for ideas to share
Which networks gave you most engagement? Check profiles are up to date
What are your most popular blog posts?
Review ad campaigns
Are you getting the return you expect? How do you measure this?
Review your marketing plan
Vision / Objectives Mission
Strategy
Audience Competitors
Vision / Objectives
How do we want to be thought of? Long term objectives, blue sky visions New products or more family time
Mission
Quantify the vision. What are the numbers? e.g. sell 10 tractors a week
Audience
What are their problems and how can we help them?
Competitors
Who are they? What do they do well? Where do they fall short?
Look ahead
What events can you get involved in? Partner with businesses who have same audience?
Review your website
Easy for a visitor to find out what you do? Is it clear how to buy from or contact you? Do you have reviews on your site? Has relevant structured data been added?
Design review
Design Branding User Journey Visual Content Mobile
Usability review
Content Site Layout Menu Forms Speed
Example review Homepage layout Images
Website usability report
Increase conversions – make it easier for customers to act (buy, call, or sign up)
Improve brand perception – your website is your shop window for customers and prospective customers
