Anil Kumar Singh
NATIONAL SEO DIRECTOR
NEO MEDIA WORLD
NEW DELHI, INDIA ~ OCTOBER 16 - 17, 2019 | DIGIMARCONINDIA.IN
#DigiMarConIndia
SEO & Content
Marketing Master Class
MASTERCLASS

Anil Kumar Singh
National SEO Director
NEO Media World
• Anil Kumar Singh comes to Neo Media World with more than 18 years of experience
in digital advertising. currently working with neo@Ogilvy as a National Director of SEO.
There he is Accountable for the agency’s SEO and content vision, and managing the
growth of the product by overseeing the SEO Leads, supporting the Client Services
team, and playing an active role in New Business opportunities.
• He was previously India Head of SEO in Interactive avenues, Digital arm of IPG
Mediabrands . He had built SEO team & business from scratch and stabilised IA into a
leader in SEO for the Indian market working with major brands like ICICI BANK,
Micromax, Cleartrip, SBI, Mahindra & Mahindra, GENPACT,Dishtv, Airtel and
BookMyshow. Anil helped Interactive Avenues SEO Business reach scale in less than 3
years.
Qualification : Master of Computer Science (M.Sc)
Honours and Awards :
Best SEO -India Digital Media Awards 2015 Exchange4Media & Jagran June 2015
Best SEO Category Award by Afaqs! At DIGITAL AGENCY AWARDS 2015 Afaqs! &
Jagran.com August 2015

“Many people begin their purchasing experience by
doing online research to compare prices, quality, and
the reviews of other shoppers.
Even if they end up making their
purchase in a store, they start their
fact-finding and decision-making !
on the internet.”

Google Search
• Did you know, that on average, Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second (you can visualize
them here), which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per
year worldwide?

More Consumers Start and Finish
Searches on Multiple Devices

Google Evolved
Via Avinash
Kaushik

How Search Engines Work?
• User searches (query)
• User location/login id’d
• Query matched with index
• Returns matching docs
• Docs are sorted (ranked)
• Docs displayed as search results
• Customized by location/history
Image Source: Google Corporate Technology

Where Do People Search?

Don’t Ignore Search Channels Just Because They’re
Not Google

Indian Languages Internet Users

Internet users English vs Regional

Indian Language enabled internet ecosystem

How people consuming content ?
1.Mobile, 2. Desktop, 3. Voice, newspaper
• Everyday millions of users are using video to learn something new
though one-third of all online video searches are still entertainment-
related
• Their attention is just eight seconds, with many articles, social media
posts instead of reading them properly.
• Technology is evolving at a faster pace than ever. New technologies
such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality especially when it
comes to playing games.

Who is consuming content ?
• Over 70% of all smartphones-related searches come from small towns
- by Google
• Online video audience in India is expected to grow to 500 million by
2020.
It is time to now focus on the remaining 500 million users from rural
and smaller towns - the Bharat.

Other Than Search engines
• Today, the 450 million Hindi speakers in India are twice as big a
market as our country’s 220 million English speakers. Apps like
DailyHunt, ShareChat, TikTok, Linkedin and several others are also
targeting this very market.

Google Is Built to Understand Good Content
Here are the most important factors to consider when selecting an overall Page
Quality rating:
• The purpose of the page: The first step in understanding a page is figuring out its
purpose.
• Expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness: This is an important quality
characteristic. Learning the reputation and credentials of a certain piece of
content should not be hard to achieve.
• Main content quality and amount: The rating should be based on the landing
page of the task URL.
• Website information/information about who is responsible for the main
content: Find information about the website as well as the creator of the main
content.
• Website reputation/reputation about who is responsible for the main
content: Links to help with reputation research are provided to reviewers.

Search Relevance
The relevance of page’s theme
related to a targeted keyphrase
Technical
Best Practices
Factors for improving the
efficiency of crawler
discovery
Search Visibility
The ability for a site/page
to be properly indexed by
search engines
Core Pillars of Organic Search Optimization
Social Media Optimization
HTML Sitemap
XML Sitemap
Internal Cross Linking
Footer Navigation
Main Navigation
Titles and Meta Tags
Page Headings
Domain Authority
Content Optimization
• Content Development
• Content Placement
Image Optimization
• File Nomenclature
Code Externalization
Page Speed & Compression
404 Error Handling
Site Redirections
URL Structure
File Nomenclature
Semantic Markup
Robots.txt Implementation

SEO & UX
UX is about achieving a business objective by meeting the needs of the customer, with simplicity.
• Google also looks at the structure of
your content and the overall user
experience. In effect, UX is actually a
factor in your ranking
• if your user is having a bad experience
and they’re bouncing, then there is a
real-world impact on your SERP
positions.
• Google looks for include engagement
metrics, machine learning and linking
patterns to and from your site.
• Want A Happy Audience? - Start
bringing SEO and UX together.

SEO & UX
a. Use free tools like Google’s Page Speed Insights
b. Image compression and optimization
c. Quality code
d. Great Servers
e. Learn the basics of UX measurement in Google Analytics
f. Test the site like a real user

Relevance
• When it comes to search results, relevance is the most important
factor. When someone searches for “yellow tables”, they will be
disappointed unless they find a page about yellow tables.
• Google is now great at picking up synonyms, along with user intent.

Reading Searcher Mind
Identifying a Searcher’s Intent

Search Engine Job ? Placed Query intent into
Categories
Informational, Navigational, Transactional.

User Searching behaviour
• There’s a difference between the exact words that a searcher types
into the search bar and their intended result of performing that
search? , Phrase, general info, Typo errors, local
• Search engines are becoming better able to close the gap between
intention and execution.
• search results should be determined by the objectives of the user
performing the search, and the satisfaction the user experiences
when they receive those results.
• Google is getting ever closer to being able to read searchers’ minds

How Search Engines Use This Information ?
Because search engines can’t read the minds of every searcher who
inputs a query, they look to the information that a searcher actively
provides:
• What was the expression of need?
• What search result was selected?
• Was there a discovery of additional needs?
The coupling of action and existing knowledge is how search engines
can a) autofill your search query and b) give suggested search engine
results

What drives searchers to search ?
In order to provide content that will perform well, we need to understand
what drives searchers to search, as well as what makes some searchers come
away unsatisfied. This understanding comes both from the human side and
the technical side.
• Human: Perform interviews, create surveys, have conversations, and see
what your competitors are doing.
• Technical: Peruse autosuggest and related search results, review analytics
performance, and track SERPs for rises and falls in results.
High-quality, informative content performs better in search because it is
better at helping the searcher accomplish his or her task. The more we
understand who our audience is and what information they’re looking for,
the better our content will perform and, as such, the more audience
members we’ll reach.

Searcher’s Intent ?
• When a searcher begins typing into a searcher bar, their query
becomes an “expression of need.”
• Need Could be - transactional or informative

What is search intent?
Search intent reflects an action a user intends to take when performing
a web search. The three main types of search intent are:
• Do (“buy”): This is called commercial intent
• Know: This is informational intent
• Go: This is navigational intent (When a user wants to navigate to a
particular brand)
• In most cases, intent can be mixed. For example, a user wants to go to
a particular site to buy something.
•

Getting started with moments of intent
• Knowing your consumer's intent means you can meet them in the
moments that matter and deliver helpful content. Here's how you can
start to put intent at the center of your strategy:
• When your potential customers turn to Google and YouTube in their
moments of need, make sure you are there.
• Use Google Trends to explore search trends and queries in your
category to understand what consumers are looking for. Make sure
you are there and useful in these moments of intent.

Understanding the intent behind Keywords
Search Intent has become a major factor to provide most relevant SEO
results. Search intent means:
• what a person OR end user is typing in the Google search box
• what exactly is he/she trying to find or what problem is he trying to
solve
• what action he is going to take once the Search Engine shows him/her
the most relevant result

Keywords
• Broad
• Brand
• Generic Research
Consider
Buy
Search Sales Funnel
Finding the most
effective
keywords for your
business will be
the foundation of
all SEO.

SEO brings high-value
results as user intent is
high: WANT > SEARCH > GET
INFO > BUY.

If you are able to answer a question better than
anyone else, it could qualify for a featured snippet,
and potentially become the one and only answer
in voice search.

Focus: Keywords vs. Topics
• where to buy used Books
• buy cheap books
• best prices on second-hand books
• where to buy books
• how to choose used books
• biggest book stores
• order used books online
• books on sale
• how to examine books
• buy books online
• second hand books online
• buy second hand books online

focus on topics that you want to cover

If your content doesn’t naturally need to include
the exact phrase that you are targeting then don’t
try to fit it in just for SEO sake.

Google Hot Searches
Google Hot Keyword Searches – a tool that shows you the latest
popular keywords to inspire you to write your next piece of content

Take data from your internal Site Search.

Quora

Goals and definitions
Your entire content strategy is crafted around what you are trying to
achieve. Naturally, you need to identify what that is—and make sure
everyone on the team understands what that means. Questions to ask:
• What are we trying to accomplish?
• Why are we creating this content?
• How will we know our content is on track to achieve our goals?
• Which goals take priority?
• How will we define vital elements, such as a lead?

New Content approach
Topic-based approach implies creating a single page that covers all
these topics, aka "The ultimate guide to buying books". The basic idea
behind the new approach is that you shouldn't be worrying about
keywords at all — instead, you should build a comprehensive, original,
high-quality resource, and Google will figure out the rest.

New Content approach
You see, your "ultimate guide" may rank for the more generic terms like
"how to buy used books". This is the kind of a broad term where the
searcher isn't researching a specific aspect of the process, but rather
researching the entire process and looking for the steps. Even if you
include paragraphs on "where to buy rare books", Google won't always
be able to figure out that that's something you should also rank for —
simply because you're focusing on too many things with one page, and
eventually each concept's prominence (or each keyword's term
frequency, if you will) is diminished due to the length of your content
and the number of micro-topics you're trying to cover.

Focusing it around the searcher intent.
Keywords Intent
where to buy rare books
buy story books
research specialist books stores
buy books cheap
best prices on second-hand books
books on sale
find places to buy books cheap
order used books online
where to buy used books
biggest books stores
get a list of best books stores
how to choose used books
how to examine books
get tips on choosing books
When you look at your keyword list, you should first and foremost think about the intent of the searcher, and
group the keywords that have the same intent into one cluster. Let's see how this may look with our books-
related keywords.

Sharing
Quality content leads to popularity, which leads to sharing (also known as
linking or backlinking). Who and how many people link/share your content,
are SEO variables:
• Experts: credible and knowledgeable people in their fields
• Celebrities: Hollywood/Music/Sports celebrities (paid or unpaid)
• Influencers: people that have a large following
• Social Media: the masses of people online
• Peers: the friends, family, and people you know

How Google treats links and how it processes
them and factors them into rankings ?

If Google sees that a lot people are
sharing your content, it considers it as
potential QUALITY.

First of all, Google knows what a page is about
and, if a page that is not relevant to links pointing
to it, the power of that link may be discounted.
e.g. If a site about toys links to your site about cars
then the impact could be reduced

Develop content using keywords
The more keyword-rich content a brand generates, the
more search engines will throw content pertaining to
the brand

Describe your content using popular
keywords
With an understanding of the popular keywords in your issue area, you can
make sure to include them in your content where appropriate.
Targets for optimization:
• Titles
• Page content and section headings
• URL anchor text
• Video tags and descriptions
• Page meta descriptions
• Image ALT tags and filenames
• URL pathways and “vanity” URLs
Avoid pitfalls
• Don’t overdo it on keywords
• Be careful about inaccessible content
• Avoid duplicate content

Content

How do I build my content?

Stop selling. Start helping!!

Write for Humans, Optimize for Machines

“If you’re trying to persuade people to do
something, or buy something, it seems to me you
should use their language, the language they use
every day, the language in which they think.”
David Ogilvy, Founder | Ogilvy & Mather

Great content is only great if it gets found
(but if it gets found and isn’t great – that’s a problem too)

I-Want-To-Know
Moments
I-Want-To-Buy
Moments
MICRO-MOMENTS: PAY ATTENTION TO THE TOPICS
AND FORMATS CUSTOMERS ARE SEARCHING FOR
of online consumers look up
more information online now
versus a few years ago.
of smartphone users consult
their phones while in a store
deciding what to buy.
65%
I-Want-To-Go
Moments
increase in “near me”
search interest in the
past year.
2X
I-Want-To-Do
Moments
of smartphone users turn to
their phones for ideas while
doing a task.
91% 82%

How do you help your clients decide what
content they need?
• We then do a content gap analysis by combing through the client's
website to look at every landing page, to see if the customer is getting
the appropriate experience for a particular keyword or phrase.
• In some cases, we've found an I-want-to-know moment sent right
into checkout.

One of the goals of SEO is to better help search
engines understand what your content is about.

Optimize Your Content for You Customers and Not
for the Search Engines

Choose a topic to write about
At a high level, write educational content. put yourself in the shoes of your
audience
• What will they be searching for?
• What do they want to know about?
• What will resonate with them?
Consider what you know about your buyer personas and their interests while
you're coming up with a topic for your blog post.

Ask your co-workers from other teams like
sales and services for some ideas
• What are the most frequently asked questions you hear?
• What do our prospects and customers need help with?
• What do you wish people knew about our industry?
• What are industry bloggers, social media, and even our competitors
talking about?

Producing content that’s irrelevant and insignificant to
your audience’s wants and needs leads to only one
thing – people stop taking you seriously. People click on
your links in the SERPs but they do not interact with
your website and leave quickly – wasted opportunity to
turn visitors into customers.

Quality content is worth more than quantity.

Quality Content
Quality content answers questions and provides solutions for problems
audiences have identified in their search queries, on social media or
other channels. The hallmark of quality content continues to be original,
actionable, and relevant information.
Base your decisions about what content to create on search results and
keyword data. Knowing what your audience is talking about and what
keywords they’re already using when they find you organically is the
first step to creating optimized content.
When you have a winning piece of content, make it evergreen by
creating other assets from the same topic.

Here are the basics for writing quality
content:
• Define a purpose: All content should have a purpose. In turn, it should have a
topic of focus, an audience, and even an intent stage for that audience.
• Research thoroughly: Get the whole story before you start tearing stuff apart.
What’s the beginning, middle, and end? Personally, I like to outline my content
first so that I always know where it’s heading and what I need.
• Write well and make sure to edit (and edit again!): It doesn’t need to be
Hemingway. But use punctuation, check grammar, and try to keep it to the point
and on-topic. Give background when necessary.
• Have a byline: Google cares about where content comes from. Who is the brand
or person behind the content? It wants to know. Make sure it can find out. The
more authority a person’s reputation has, the better.
• Make it informative, thorough, educational: Make sure there is substance in the
content. We have a purpose. Does it satisfy the purpose? And does it explain it
thoroughly? Educate your readers and they will appreciate and depend on you.

Quality content needs to have value to your
audience.
Does your content do any of the following:
• Inform/teach the audience (knowledge)
• Make the audience laugh/cry (emotion)
• Show something new/different (discovery)

If you forget that quality content is a top priority, then you can
forget about having an SEO strategy.
Start by creating something that provides value, lasting value. Not some “mission
statement” page, not some “about us” page. Actual. Quality. Content

Content is Born
In 1996, Bill Gates declared, “Content is King”. He saw opportunities for all size companies to
participate in a content revolution that included providing both information and entertainment.
We have seen that revolution take place and the
internet become crowded with
content in its many different forms:
● Blogs
● Landing pages
● Video
● Infographics
● Ebooks
● Slide Shares
● Podcasts

Content marketing & SEO
• How to get your content marketing found on Google?
You have two basic options here:
1. Publish on a highly authoritative site where the content will naturally rank well.
2. Build the authority of your own site and your published content.
This is certainly the case with SEO and content.
1. SEO helps get your content and business in front of more people.
2. Content marketing helps you build authority and improves your SEO.
SEO & content marketing strategy
1. Create great content
2. Promote that content with:
• outreach
• digital PR
• guest blogging

Content that doesn't earn links, shares,
email forwards, word-of-mouth, press, etc.
probably won't stand out, won't rank, and
won't be worth your energy to build.

Sharing
Quality content leads to popularity, which leads to sharing (also known as
linking or backlinking). Who and how many people link/share your content,
are SEO variables:
• Experts: credible and knowledgeable people in their fields
• Celebrities: Hollywood/Music/Sports celebrities (paid or unpaid)
• Influencers: people that have a large following
• Social Media: the masses of people online
• Peers: the friends, family, and people you know

Helping Tools
• It’s true that finding relevant
topics and search queries can be
done through keyword research.
However, Google Trends and
Answer The Public are tools that
can take your efforts one step
further. Checking Google Search
Console regularly to see what
your audience is searching for
can prove to be quite useful as
well.

Optimizing for Machines
• Given the amount of data Google has access to, combined with its
machine learning capabilities.
• Time is to adapt our SEO strategies on the technical side to help
search engines understand our content.
• Adding Structured Data to your HTML markup assigns values to
specific content types, allowing search engines to categorize and
index your content, and serve up better results in search, providing a
better overall UX.

Use Structured data for content

What is Schema Markup?
• Schema markup is a form of microdata or structured data (SD) that is
added to a webpage to help search engines better understand its
content. It uses a set of standard data structures that categorize on-
page content.
• When schema markup is used on a page, that page may receive a rich
snippet search result on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Example
• Rich snippets include additional
information such as photos,
reviews, and other extra content
depending on the type of search
result. Schema markup identifies
this extra information and
explains it to search engines so
that they can display it as a rich
result.

Why is Schema Markup Important?
Schema markup makes it easier for search engines to understand
content, which makes them more likely to rank it.
• Schema helps search engines recognize the meaning of the content.
When search engines easily understand content, they are more likely
to rank it for relevant terms and phrases.
• Schema helps a page stand out on SERPs. Rich data make a search
result larger and easier to notice.
• Schema increases click-through rates (CTRs). Tests have found that
websites can achieve up to a 30% increase in organic search traffic
when they have rich snippets

How does structured data support SEO?
Google, Bing, and other search engines encourage webmasters to use
structured data, and incentivize that usage by providing benefits to websites
with structured data correctly implemented.
• Rich search results: Includes styling, images, and other visual
enhancements
• Rich cards: A variation on rich search results, similar to rich snippets and
designed for mobile users
• Knowledge Graph: Information about an entity such as a brand
• Breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs in your search result
• Rich results for AMP: To have your AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) appear
in carousels and with rich results, you’ll need to include structured data

Social cards
If you use any social networks for marketing, or simply want your
content to look good when it’s shared on social media, make sure you
correctly implement social markup and validate using the various
platforms’ respective testing tools:
• Facebook: Open Graph + Validation Tool
• LinkedIn: Open Graph
• Twitter: Cards + Validation Tool
• Pinterest: Rich Pins + Validation Tool
• Instagram: Open Graph

RankBrain is a machine learning artificial narrow
intelligence system that was introduced to the
public in 2015.
RankBrain is designed to better understand the meaning behind the words a person uses and types into his
or her search engine because 15 percent of queries per day had never been seen by Google before.
RankBrain also allows for a better understanding of the association between multiple queries, such as:
“Where is the Eiffel Tower?”
Followed by:
“How tall is it?”

Featured
snippets
Featured snippets -- so
called “zero positions” --
are the boxes shown right
below the number of
results found for your
query. The goal of featured
snippets is to provide you
with content that fulfills
your request without your
having to click on any
search result.

Featured snippets - How to optimize your
content to earn a featured snippet
• Identify your pages that already rank in the top 10 - If you start by figuring out
which of your website’s pages are already ranking well and concentrating on
those, it will save you dozens of hours.
• Target question-based keywords and provide structured answers - It’s easier for
Google to understand the searcher’s intent from the query “how to draw a dog”
than from the query “dog drawing” (are you looking for beautiful drawings of
dogs or do you want to draw a dog yourself?). When it comes to answers, write
the way you speak. The easier it is to understand, the better. “How to cook
spaghetti? - Start with boiling water...”. If a query starts with “how to” breaking
your article down into steps is a must: use numbers or subtitles to divide your
content logically.
• Make sure to use header tags properly - A correct use of H1-H6 tags is crucial if
you want your content to be included in the featured snippet.

Content for Voice Search
Road Ahead for SEO

According to Hitwise, nearly 60 percent of
searches are now performed on a mobile device.
With more and more people using mobile devices
to search, people often find it’s easier to use their
voice to search instead of typing on tiny screens.

20% of mobile searches are voice
ComScore predicts that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches.

How we search ?
Certain types of queries and searches are likely to require more than just one instant answer, as they
require a visual element; for example, planning a trip, or deciding which winter coat to buy.

Different ways
in which teens
and adults
using voice
search

The way people search for information online is
changing. Increasingly, people are using voice
search on their smartphones, tablets or voice
assistants

Platform – OK Google, Google Home, Amazon
echo, Microsoft Cortana

Approach
• Optimize Your Local Listings
• Target Long-Tail Keywords
• Think How People Speak
• Look for Opportunities in Your Analytics
• Create Q&A-style Content
• Beef up Your Microdata
• Concentrate on Mobile
• Improving Your Site Speed

Target Long-Tail Keywords
• People don’t use voice search the same way they do regular search.
• If I’m typing something into Google on my phone, I’m not going to
type “how to earn money online.” That takes too much time. Instead,
type the exact keyword “earn money online” and choose from results.
• With voice search, though, it’s basically a conversation with your
phone. Long-tail keywords are a given.

Think How People
Speak
• Start brainstorming what kind of
natural language spoken questions
might bring people to your site.
• This is a different kind of long-tail —
it’s less about keyword variations and
more about real speech. Move
beyond regular long-tail keyword
research tools that pull up every
variation under the sun.
• Another great way to do this is by
using voice search yourself. Ask the
questions you brainstormed and see
what kind of content comes up.

India Case Study on voice search
• Future of Voice is Vernacular
Amazing use of AI by
@IndiaMART tech team to
enable voice searches Even
though only 4% of Mobile
searches are by voice yet, 50%
were in Hindi! 1 crore searches
happen on the platform every
month, voice searches will grow
exponentially in 2019-20

SEO success is achieved when consumers
find a brand’s content to be relevant, top
quality and valuable.

The best possible litmus test in my opinion is to
ask yourself, if SEO didn’t exist, would this
content/link still have value from a marketing
point of view? You know, if all you had to go on
was referral traffic, branding, trust signals etc…

2019
• The future of great marketing isn’t just SEO or content. It’s putting
your customer’s needs first. And you have direct access to your
customers’ intent through search engines, like Google, where your
customers express their problems and desires every day.
• The rise of Accelerated Mobile Pages
• Mobile First Indexing
• Voice Search
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes its presence known

Top Trends
• 1. Your Customer is the Algorithm - Instead of trying to play to win
at search marketing, we should play to win our customers. By
making content your customer needs – content that solves their
problems – you will win the algorithm of the future.
• 2. Content & SEO Teams Become One - Companies will create a
unified team focused on a customer-first strategy.
• Customers over Content. Content Over Keywords. - Don’t optimize
for keywords. Optimize your content for your customers. Keywords
helps to understand your customer’s intent, however, focus on giving
them what they want

Q&A
THANK YOU
Twitter : @anilkumarsingh , Linkedin :
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anilkumarsingh