My talk from BrightonSEO on 19th September 2015 on creating content that works for both your audience & search engines. As the search engines seek to reward content that satisfies users, we can learn from what our audience says to influence our work and reach them via search and social channels. The core of agile thinking is putting user's needs as the primary goal, considering everything from the perspective of the audience. We'll take a look at how this ethos is perfect for modern SEO, and how a range of social media, audience research, keyword topic and content tools can help us build a user-first content development environment.

1. Understanding your audience;
Agile thinking & our content
BrightonSEO
18th September 2015
@pagesauce

2. Charlie Williams
Head of Marketing
charlie (at) white.net
@pagesauce

3. @pagesauce
Content = our best method to
offer a unique experience in
markets increasingly filled with
similar products

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Putting the audience first
We can harness the power of our
audience to build better content
experiences
@pagesauce

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A story…
About how I learned
to make content

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A story…
About how I first learned
to make content
with ferries

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What I’ve built…

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ferries to France
What I’ve built…

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ferries from France
ferries to France
What I’ve built…

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France ferries
ferries from France
ferries to France
What I’ve built…

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France ferries
ferries from France
ferries to France
What I’ve built…
And more… oh dear

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Optimising for search query topic
buckets, not individual keywords
Thinking in topics
https://moz.com/blog/topics-people-
over-keywords-rankings-whiteboard-
friday/
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/cont
ent/future-seo-topics-instead-keywords

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& content marketing
SEO content, keyword research,
UX, content strategy, social media,
= Content development
@pagesauce

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Agile
Richard Prowse
https://gathercontent.com/blog/adopting-agile-approach-content
helps organisations … focus on
meeting user needs, prioritising
delivery and helping people to
collaborate

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An agile project is about creating
fast iterations of products based
on the feedback of real users -
Prioritise features for users over
everyone else Gov.uk
https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/agile

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But…
Agile’s for developers, right?
@pagesauce

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content marketing & agile approach
SEO content, keyword research,
UX, content strategy, social media,
= Content development
@pagesauce

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https://moz.com/blog/user-behaviour-data-as-a-ranking-signal

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Build great content
= the new content is king…
@pagesauce

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Product pages
How do we make these great?
@pagesauce

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Challenging or new industries
What counts as great content?
@pagesauce

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Helping the audience
needs?
So, how do we create content that
actually serves our audience’s
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Questions

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When you do a search, you
generally want an answer
Gabriel Weinberg
http://www.fastcompany.com/3026698/inside-
duckduckgo-googles-tiniest-fiercest-competitor

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Types
of
searches

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Listening to
the audience
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Google Analytics
Understand what is working;
what does your audience enjoy?
@pagesauce

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Google Analytics
Understand what is working;
what does your audience enjoy?
@pagesauce

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What’s earned your
audience’s interest?

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What’s earned your
audience’s interest?

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talking about?
What is our audience
Topsy
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content
User testing
Eye-opening insight into what
your audience wants from your
https://www.usertesting.com/product/videos-and-metrics

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results
Surveys
Ask you audience what they
want & incentivise for best
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questions
Questions
Competitor FAQs & Quora
for researching common
@pagesauce

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User-centric
keyword research
Quality keyword research
unveils your audience’s needs
http://www.momentology.com/7216-user-centric-keyword-research-topics/
@pagesauce

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SEMrush
Dig into the topics your
competitors earn traffic with
http://refugeeks.com/semrush/
@pagesauce

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Google Trends
Plus, related terms
Is this a growing topic?
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Scrape Google suggest

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Kewordtool.io
KeywordKiwi
Ubersuggest
Scrape Google suggest
@pagesauce

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User stories
audience wants, & map the journey
Take your personas, & what your
https://gathercontent.com/blog/adopting-agile-approach-content
https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/agile/writing-user-stories.html
https://yougov.co.uk/profiler

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Wireframes
Be able to show how your content
will work
Balsamiq Mockups
@pagesauce

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http://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique
An example
To get your own ideas going
@pagesauce

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Tell your stories of your product
product or service
Content can be about the user
experiences to be had with your

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Agile thinking
helps our SEO in two ways:
Focus on one issue at a time,
& helping us understand the
audience, so we know what to
make

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charlie (at) white.net
THANK YOU
Questions?
@pagesauce