Critical Rules for SEO Success in 2014

www.act-on.com | @ActOnSoftware | #ActOnSW
Critical Rules for
SEOSuccess

Presenter
Martin Laetsch
Director of Online Marketing
Act-On Software
martin.laetsch@act-on.com
@MartinLaetsch

Agenda
• SEO Overview
• Content is (still) King
• Write For Your Audience
• Speak the Searchers Language
• Optimize Site Content
• Get Quality Links
3

Did you know?
267 Billion searches each month
Over 82% of all product research
begins with a web search 1
Inbound leads have an
8x greater likelihood of closing
compared to other leads 2
Sources: McKinsey & Company, Pew Research

What is Search Engine Marketing?
Putting content in front of people who
OVERTLY AND EXPLICITLY
express a desire, via keywords,
for a particular PRODUCT, SERVICE
OR PIECE OF INFORMATION.

Google’s Goal
SHOW PAGES
THAT DELIGHT HUMANS

Your Goal
To be the best
possible page on the
internet for your
target keyword

Write for Your Audience

Write for Your Audience
• You are creating content for your
customers and prospects
• If you base your marketing decisions on
what is best for your customers, you will
likely rank well in the search engines
• If you try and game the system to rank, you
will eventually fail

www.act-on.com | @ActOnSoftware | #ActOnSW 10
Panda – Detect low quality and duplicate
content
Penguin – Devalue link spam
Hummingbird – Understand natural language
and the context of queries

Speak the Searchers Language

Develop the Searcher Profile/Persona
Who is the searcher? Who would be
looking for this information? Someone
who…
• Is looking for a general category of
information?
• Is looking for a specific solution?
• Has one of your products and needs
help?
• Is a college student writing a
research paper?
12

Define the Searcher’s Mindset
Why are they searching?
They want to …
• Purchase a product or
solution
• Learn about a product or
solution
• Solve a specific problem
• Understand a product
category
13

Develop Initial Keyword List
Compile a definitive list of keywords or phrases
that customers should find your content with:
• Analyze existing search engine referrals
• Research external keyword databases
• Review internal site search logs
• Ask customers how they would find a
specific product or category
14

Keyword Mapping
Map your important keywords to pages on your
site:
• Look at each page in your site – what
words do you think each is relevant for?
• Now look again at the pages – are you
actually using these words?
• Try searching your own site for these
words. If you can't find them, search
engines won't.
15
TIP: Use Google to search your site

Don’t Ignore the Long Tail
• Higher conversion rates and better quality
traffic
• Long tail keywords are less competitive
• Long tail search helps you rank for difficult
terms.
• 70% of search traffic is from long tail search
terms

B2B Long Tail SEO
1 WORD PHRASES
2 - 3 WORD PHRASES
MORE DESCRIPTIVE “LONG TAIL” PHRASES
“marketing”
“marketing automation”
“marketing automation software”
“what is marketing automation”
“best marketing automation software for agencies”
high
high low
low
SEARCH FREQUENCY
COST&COMPETITION

Optimize Site Content

Writing for SEO
• Choose 1 keyword phrase that is targeted for each page
• Include each keyword phrase 3-4 times each within your copy — more if it
makes sense
• Slice your keyword phrase usage or use synonyms if your text sounds
awkward to you
• Use the exact term – “symptoms of diabetes" is not the same as “diabetes
symptoms"
• Don’t over optimize. Use natural language to communicate your message
(synonyms, varying word order, etc.)
• Longer copy provides a better opportunity for keyword placement that
sounds good and allows you to provide more information to your visitors
• 1000+ words is better. Page length should be dictated by the message you
want to communicate, but 300 words is a good minimum target

Put Keywords in…
• Title Tag
• URL
• Headlines and sub-headlines (H1
& H2 tags)
• Call to action links (hyperlinks)
• Main body text copy, top to
bottom
20
SEO copywriting helps your writing be more specific.
It’s just changing how we “see” and write copy!
1
1
2
2
3
3
4
45
5

Make Your Search Listing Compelling
• Optimize the search results listing
• Crafted from the Title and Description
• It doesn’t matter how high you rank if
nobody clicks on your listing

SERP Preview

Link Building

Links
Links are usually
editorial votes given by choice,
and the more useful content you have,
the greater the chances someone else
will find that content valuable to their
readers and link to it.

Why people link
• Compelling content they want to share
• Had a great experience with the brand
• Had a terrible experience with the brand
• They are a friend of the brand and want
to promote it

How to get links
• Great content
• Curated directories
• Competitor backlinks
• Mentions in press & articles
• Broken links
• Social media
• Network – people are more likely to link to people
they know

Link strategies that no longer work
• Buying links
• Article marketing
• Blog/forum spam
• Speakerships, sponsorships, events.
• Exact match anchor text
• High volume, low quality content
• Sidebar & footer links
• Links in widgets
• Anchor text links in press releases

Link strategy that always works
Target links that you would want
even if Google doesn’t give you
any credit for them.

Learn More About Act-On Software
Ready to Learn More?
Call +1 (877) 530-1555
Email sales@act-on.com
Web www.act-on.com
THE FORRESTER
WAVE™ LEADERS
QUADRANT

Q&A
Martin Laetsch
Director of Online Marketing
Act-On Software
martin.laetsch@act-on.com
@MartinLaetsch

Critical Rules for SEO Success in 2014

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