It's all well and good creating great content, but you need to let people know about it too. This guide will help B2B companies rise to the top of search engine rankings for your keyphrases and amplify your messages through social channels.

1. Secrets
Secrets
How to create inbound marketing momentum
with great, optimised content
October 2013
Helen McInnes

2. Agenda

Why is SEO important?

How do you choose the right keywords?


Inspiration
What quick wins will improve your
search engine rankings?
How can an high impact content strategy
help?
Credibility
Timing
2

3. Findability is critical
21% of all traffic to B2B sites comes from
search engines
Around 90% of that comes from
organic search
Source: eConsultancy.com
3

4. Focus on long-tail keywords
Just
browsing
‘
‘
Ready to
buy now
40% of online searches are
comprised of 4+ words
4

5. Select the best keywords
1.

List your potential keywords/keyphrases
Focus on highly specific words & phrases
that will be frequently used by your
target audience
Think about:
i) The problems your products/services solve
ii) The benefits of your products/services
iii) Newsworthy trends and how they relate to your
products/services
v) What site visitor actions you want when people arrive (e.g. “advice on
buying an X”)
Don’t use generic words - be specific about what’s special
about your products/services
Use the Google Contextual Targeting Tool in Adwords to find synonyms
5

6. Select the best keywords
2.
Assess competitors’ keywords
View the source code of your competitor's
page and check to see if they have meta
keywords tags. This tag will look like
<meta name="Keywords" content="...">
Use a keyword checker tool
3.
Assess what’s achievable
Find out the monthly activity and popularity of each potential
keyword using Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and
the Google Adwords Keyword Planner
Assess your keywords and phrases regularly in response to changes in
your product/service portfolio, competitor activity and industry trends
6

7. Get noticed
2.
1.
Of
course, your
content
needs to be
compelling
as a starting
point
5.
3.
6.
4.
Source: MOZ
Survey of SEO experts 2013
7

8. SEO priorities
1. Backlinks

Build good quality backlinks
from relevant, authoritative
websites through
PR, blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn, discussion
forum links etc.

Link Google Webmaster Tools to your Google
Analytics account and check your inbound
link list regularly

Avoid links from low quality article/news
syndication sites and bought links
Backlinks drive traffic directly to your site as well as being
great for SEPRs (Search Engine Page Rankings)
8

9. The 5 types of backlink

Exact match anchor text
If you’re trying to rank for *web
design company], the link
displayed is:
web design company

Partial match anchor text
If you’re trying to rank for
[internet marketing basics], only
some of the words are
used: internet marketing

Unrelated phrase
anchor text

Example: Click here

URL link
http://ncr.com
Image link
Use keywords in the alt text field
9

10. Not all backlinks are created equal
Domain authority

Backlinks from relevant websites with
high PageRank are better

Backlinks from many high quality,
unique domains are better than
multiple links from the same domain
Type of backlink

Anchor text backlinks using a keyphrase
have the biggest impact on SEPRs

A diversity of backlinks using your website
URL, related keywords and random text
can be used and they look natural to
search engines
10

11. Not all backlinks are created equal
Backlink location

Backlinks located within the
main content of an article or
webpage (vs a sidebar,
or footer) carry more weight

Backlinks located at the
beginning or top of an
article are best
Don’t build backlinks too fast or it will appear
“unnatural” to Google and you’ll be
penalised in the SERPs
11

12. SEO priorities
2. Optimise your website structure
i)
Good navigation makes it easy for
customers to find your contact
details, register for more information or
complete a sale and for the Googlebots
to index your site
ii) Include a homepage title + description
outlining what you offer
Add unique title descriptions for every page
Snippets need to be <70 characters and
contain the target keyword (preferably near the beginning)
12

13. SEO priorities
2. Optimise your website structure
iii) Create an XML sitemap
(a ‘list of all of the URLs on your
website’)
Submit this via Google
Webmaster Tools to give its spiders
a head start when trying to discover &
index your content
iv) URL structure
Use descriptive “permalinks:
Opt for:
http://www.mydomain.com/SEOsuccess
(example keyphrase) rather than this:
http://www.mydomain.com/?p=144
13

14. SEO priorities
3. Optimise your on-page content

Ensure you’re using your keywords/phrases in the:
- URL domain extension
- Page title
- First paragraph
- Link anchor text
- (Sub-)headings
- Alt tags for
images/videos &
Javascript content
Content
freshness is
critical

Make it easy for
people to amplify
your content
with social sharing buttons

Use schemas (i.e. HTML tags) to mark up your pages in ways recognised by
major search providers: http://schema.org
14

15. Visuals
Images should have meaningful filenames
images.site.com/hotelname-street-london-uk.jpg
(include location if relevant) NOT 112354_main.jpg
Tips:

Include keyword in your file name, but don’t overdo it

Use hyphens to split words; avoid underscores/other signs

Go for a short name (4-5 words max)
Alt tags
Provide a description to help search engines
establish the content or subject of your image:
<img src=”where your image is saved”
alt=”Target keyword (product name) and
a short description”/>
XML Sitemaps
Provide a caption, title, geo location and
license for each image
15

16. Refresh old content…
1.
Assess your old content

Set the date range in
Google Analytics at 90 days

Click on acquisition/search engine
optimization/queries (Analytics
needs to be connected with
Webmaster Tools)

Sort by “average position”
(Set an advanced filter for greater than 10 to
see what people are searching for that you’ve
already written content for. Identify terms
that you want to rank for at position 10 or
lower (i.e. page 1))

Type in site:yoururl.com keyword in a search
engine and double check where you rank
16

17. Refresh old content…
2. Optimise poorly performing pages

Add your keyword/phrase in the headline

Check keyword density
Google seems to like sites that have a 1-2% on-page
keyword density. Yahoo is slightly higher at 3%

Add keyword in a sub-heading

Add keyword in your anchor text to links

Add an image and tag it
3. Share your “old” page on your
social networks again

Give a reason why people should visit it. Make it
“NEWsworthy again”…refer to something
you’ve just read/heard about in the news in your
Tweet/LinkedIn update

Assess traffic via your analytics account
17

18. SEO priorities
4. Make social media a daily habit
Social media is now essential

Social proof is now being factored
into search engine rankings

The more social shares a website or
blog post has, the better it is likely
to rank

The network size may be less
important than who is in the
network and interacts with your
content
The value of social media goes well beyond the direct impact to
rankings. It provides exceptional value as an audience listening
post for feedback on content & products/service ideas
18

19. SEO priorities
4. Make social media a daily habit
Blogging
Do you want to:
 Build thought-leadership for your
company/brand with your blog?

Create a channel to drive deep linking to
specific pages of your website?

Answer "human queries" in an otherwise
"corporate" website?

Be seen as a unique "unbiased" voice in
your industry with a non-branded blog?
19

20. SEO priorities
4. Make social media a daily habit
Decide how to set up your blog

A blog on a subdirectory:
Pros
- Adds regular fresh content to the root domain
and is good for SEO
- Promoting content that resides "on" the website
can earn you (deep) links
Cons
- Won't provide an additional "brand" listing in the SERPs and direct ability to get links
"from another website/sub-domain“

A blog on a subdomain:
Pros
- Gives you an additional brand presence in the SERPs that you control. You can piggyback
on the already "built" authority of the root domain
- You gain links from another website (subdomains are treated pretty much as such) and
can deep-link to specific pages within the root
Cons
- Not as much freshness on the domain
- Content that "hits" (good promotion/links) doesn't add as much link value to the root
20

21. SEO priorities
4. Make social media a daily habit
Decide how to set up your blog

Blog on a separate domain
Pros:
- May be seen as an "unbiased" resource (that links to your
corporate website)
- If the content is good, the blog can gain authority that
can be passed through to your corporate website through "unbiased" linking
Cons:
- It will take time to establish authority and for posts to rank
- It may not show thought-leadership for your company or be seen as biased

Blog on WordPress.com or Blogger
Pros:
- You would gain a link that is coming from an authority domain
Cons:
- Limitations as to how you can design/template to fit your brand
- Any content promoted (linked to) won't provide direct value to your main company
website/domain
21

22. SEO priorities
4. Make social media a daily habit
Decide how to set up your blog
 Another option is to set up the blog on your domain
and seek advanced guest postings on authoritative blogs
Fix your permalink structure



Permalinks are how people locate your blog
and its internal posts and pages. They are
made up of a root and an extension.
For example:
ROOT: SEOsecrets.com
EXTENSION: SEOsecrets.com/beginner-blogging-seo
Change this in WordPress at Settings/Permalinks
Select CUSTOM STRUCTURE and then add /%postname%/
Install a sitemap

http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
Comment on other blogs

Not only does it get you more traffic, exposure and new relationships, it also
counts as a backlink
Use SEO plugins

One of the best ones to start with is the All in One SEO Pack
22

23. SEO priorities
4. Make social media a daily habit
Twitter

Websites displaying Twitter share buttons are linked to 7X more than
websites without sharing plugins via Twitter

Specific calls to “comment,” “share,” and “retweet”
posts produce exactly the desired effect, increasing
the requested engagement by as much as 100%

Repeat your Tweets four times, eight hours
apart. Use different headlines to test which one gets the best clicks for a
particular post

Create your own branded URL shortener to use in Twitter updates

Use bitly to create content bundles (infographics + Twitter
post)

Use TweetDeck (or Hootsuite) to monitor and analyse Twitter
activity and engagement levels

Use Twitter Analytics to check click throughs to your content
or bitly for specific content bundles
23

24. SEO priorities
4. Make social media a daily habit

Create a full company profile
in LinkedIn

Add a LinkedIn share button to
your other digital properties

Recommendations in the services
section of your company page helps
establish trust and build brand
reputation

Create an editorial calendar of
updates — company owned and
highlight relevant third party
material

Post links to your Slideshare,
Scribd and YouTube content via your company page, professional page and to
relevant industry forums if appropriate

Monitor LinkedIn Page Insights and Analytics to learn more about your audience
and the content visitors tend to consume most
24

25. SEO priorities
4. Make social media a daily habit
Video









Publish a series of brief videos over time about aspects
of your industry, its products/services (“how to” guides)
Keep videos short – 2 mins max
Include a link to your business website at the beginning
of the video description
Brand the video from the start (people may not watch right
to the end) and include contact details. Text within videos can be “read” out of
the data by Google’s algorithms
Provide a short biography about your company in the description field of
YouTube
Tags the video using multi-word keyword phrases as well as single keywords
Embed the video in your website page and/or on your blog but “house” it in
YouTube for maximum SEO benefit. The number of embeds is another factor
that indicates the popularity of videos
Include a transcript of the video on your website
Add the video to your Google+ Local page and
Google Places profile
25

26. SEO priorities
4. Make social media a daily habit
Google+
 Google+ is now the world’s second largest social
network with 340 million active users worldwide

Google+’s Circles and Communities
make finding like-minded individuals
to have meaningful conversations

Google Authorship which verifies other content (articles, blog posts) by linking
it to the author’s Google+ profile. A photo of the author will then display in
Google search results

Set up a profile page and
sharing updates (with
hashtags relevant to key
trends), videos,
infographics and
announcements
26

27. SEO priorities
5. Internal links…



Help users to navigate a website and
encourages them to stick around longer
Ensure every page is “discoverable” by
the search engine spiders
Spread link juice (ranking power) around
your website
Tips:




Use descriptive keywords in anchor
text that give a sense of the topic or
keywords the source page is trying to
target
Link your important pages from the
homepage using descriptive anchor
text
Have no more than 100 links per page
Keep the architecture no more than
3 levels deep
Pyramid structure:
minimum number of links
between the homepage
and any given page
27

28. SEO priorities
6. Localise your site by country

Country localisation isn’t
simply about translation

Ask in-country staff
and assess search volumes
and keyword competitiveness
for your keywords using
relevant local search engines
(e.g. Baidu in China)

Country-specific top-level domains (TLDs) are important as are
country-specific assets optimized as a sub-directory
(www​.exam​ple​.com/​de/) or as a sub-domain
(www​.fr​.exam​ple​.com)

Ensure that a country site is seen as canonical and the primary
page to be indexed by Google by adding a <link> element to the
<head> section

Ensure there is a steady stream of relevant local content being
created, local high quality backlinks and local social media
activity
28

29. Key take-away
Google moves the
goalposts regularly with
tweaks and updates to its
algorithms
What matters most for
effective SEO is creating
and sharing great content
Be
insightful, entertaining, relevant
and useful to your audience
29

30. Stay in touch
Find more useful tips at:
www.slideshare.net/HelenMcI2
www.scribd.com/HelenMcI
Connect with me at:
uk.linkedin.com/in/helenmcinnes
@HelenMcI
Thanks for your time…
30

31. Secrets
Secrets
How to create inbound marketing momentum
with great, optimised content
October 2013
Helen McInnes