Turn Words into ACTION: Presentation from SES NY 2009 by Heather Lloyd-Martin, SuccessWorks CEO and Ulli Muenker from BusinessWeek.

1. The Business Case for SEO Content Development: Turn Words Into ACTION! Heather Lloyd-Martin, SuccessWorks Ulli Muenker, BusinessWeek

3. - SEO content through the sales cycle - Why build content – AmsterdamEscape case study - Why focus on content – BusinessWeek case study - In-house or outsource - Justifying the budget What we’ll discuss today

4. Why care about content?

5. SEO content across the sales cycle Purchase Research Awareness General overarching keyphrases Digital camera reviews, blog posts, brand/features comparison Make/model search

6. Plethora of “consideration” keyphrases

7. Everyone’s doing it! Articles on CircuitCity.com

8. Everyone’s doing it: Zappos.com blog

9. Case study – Amsterdam Escape

10. - #1 Specialty Lodging – Trip Advisor - “Bad” SEO created duplicate content, which… - Caused AmsterdamEscape to be banned from Google - Was paying $4,000 per much in PPC to fill the gap Past issues

11. Travel to Amsterdam Hotels in Amsterdam Amsterdam vacation rental dam square things to do in Amsterdam Amsterdamrestaurants what’s the currency in Amsterdam Amsterdam nightlife Amsterdam shopping Amsterdam apartments vacation rental rembrandtplein Travel packages Amsterdam Creating content across the sales cycle

12. Content page example

13. Ranking examples - “Amsterdam nightlife” - #7 in Google - “Amsterdam shopping” - #16 in Google - “Amsterdam red light district” - #13 in Google - “Amsterdam apartments” - #2 in Google - “Amsterdam Nieuwmarkt” - #11 in Google - “Vacation rentals Amsterdam” - #7 in Google Plus, scads of rankings for long-tail keyphrases!

14. Cost savings through content development $48,000

18. SEO Copywriting: In-house or Outsource Template pages In-house: Create SEO awareness on how to write keyword rich headlines Outsource: Get recommendations on template format Example: Article Page title => uses article headline Customized pages In-house: Generate basic keyword research with tools & internal search engine Outsource: Determine best keywords Example: “Game Room” overview page Page name => customized keywords

19. SEO Copywriting Outsourced: Results Examples – pages optimized in 11/07 “ Economy” Overview page “ Game Room” Overview page => 1,150% traffic increase from SE Customized keywords: Customized keywords: => 405% traffic increase from SE

21. In-house or outsourced? “ Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

22. SEO copywriting – the real scoop

23. What SEO copywriting is NOT

25. Whether in-house or outsourced If your copywriter is writing sales-related copy, look for direct response copywriting experience… If your copywriter is writing informational copy, look for journalism experience Either way, the writing – and how it flows on the page – is crucial. Don’t pay low dollar for bad writing!

26. Content and conversion Q: What’s your first conversion opportunity?

27. In-house or outsourced? Partnership approach Outsourced

29. How to decide? Partnership approach - Have existing writers on staff - The writing team has time for SEO content development Solution: SEO copywriting training OR Writers create content, and outsource keyphrase editing Cons: Explaining tone, feel and parameters to the training/content strategy

31. Thank you! Heather Lloyd-Martin SearchEngineWriting.com [email_address] Blog: SEOCopywriting.com