An SEO Strategy is essential to help generate organic, qualified leads to your website. By better understanding your target market and creating a strategic, data-driven SEO plan, you are able to more effectively market your website. Put the following 8 steps into use to not only set you up for future success, but enable quick wins for you today.
Until recently I headed up technical marketing for Yahoo Media, where our competition was in verticals like news, sports, movies, games, and finance to name a few. In terms of online competitiveness, this is nothing to sneeze at. This is how I learned to base everything I do on strategy.
A LESSON LEARNED
Let me tell you a story. Early in my tenure at Yahoo we tried to get into the site dev process in the early stages in order to work SEO into the Product Recommendations Documents (PRD) before wireframing began. But as a fairly new horizontal group not reporting into any of the products, this was often difficult. Nay, damn near impossible. So usually we made friends with the product teams and got in where we could.
On one specific project, one of the SEOs on my team was brought in during the wireframe stage. The entire product team held SEO-specific meetings every week to go over specific recommendations, taking them very seriously, and leaning on every word our team said. We were thrilled. We were hailing their efforts, promising big wins for the relaunch, and even hyping up the launch and it’s projected SEO results in the company SEO newsletter.
Then the site relaunched. Initially we saw a drop. This is expected, especially when you relaunch an entire site of that magnitude. Three weeks passed, and results were flat. Five weeks passed, no upward trend. Three months passed and the product team stopped talking to us. Results never went back up.
Like many SEOs, I was hired with one vague responsibility: to set up an SEO program and achieve results. Like many SEOs, we jumped right in and started spewing out SEO audits, rewriting title tags, offering up link suggestions, rewriting URLs and so on. And like many SEOs we promised results. But what we didn’t do, until that fateful launch, was develop a comprehensive strategy.
Sure, we did keyword research, we recommended partnerships and widgets and architecture advice, but we didn’t step back and take a good look at our target audiences, what sites were meeting their specific needs in search results, and what we specifically could build into the product that would be far more desirable than what everyone else had (not even thought of yet ideally) to make sure our entire site is superior, resulting in the inevitable stealing of search traffic from our competitors.
Instead, in this instance, we started at wireframe stage, plopping in keywords and meta tags. Of course, the site really needed those things, and although it launched technically “optimized”, it wasn’t enough to provide a better product than our top competitor(s). A product that people want to visit, revisit, email to friends, share on social networks, and link to more than our competitors. It wasn’t even enough to move up in the rankings.
From that point on, if a property didn’t consult our team during the early concepting stages of a project, we shied away from working on that project at all. And let me tell you, things got a lot better.
An 8 Step SEO Strategy
Doing SEO strategy right takes targeted competitive insight and very specific recommendations, beyond any SEO basics rulebook. And ideally a good relationship with the product (site) manager.
Over the next few posts, and starting with this one, I’m going to share with you a detailed 8-step process for creating your own SEO strategy (what I often refer to as an SRD (SEO Research Document)), beginning with defining target audiences and taking it all the way through some fairly comprehensive competitive research, search traffic projections, content strategies, and specific goals and prioritizations.
The steps behind this are something you can templatize and use for every project, and your boss/clients will love it, I promise.
Strategy is the type of thing that moves you up to the next level of SEO superstar. Ready?
1. Define Your Target Audience & Their Interests
The first step in most marketing campaigns, Search Marketing included, is to start by defining your target audience. Your target audience is a defined set of people who you are marketing your product to.
Traditionally, defining a target audience involves determining their age, sex, geographic locations, and especially their needs (aka pain points). Check out usability.gov’s description of personas and how to do task analysis & scenarios for more details, or better yet, read Vanessa Fox’s upcoming book about personas related to search and conversion.
What we want to zero in on for our SEO Strategy are those pain points. What do they want? What are their needs that aren’t being met? Knowing these things will help us better define a content strategy and prioritize content to bring to the forefront.
Two reasons why you should start with the audience needs:
1. Content Strategy: You want to provide content and tools that are as relevant and useful as possible to your target audiences. This goes beyond regular SEO practices and into site strategy, although providing relevant, useful content in itself is linkbait.
For example, let’s say I have a health site. I have several types of articles on health, drug information, and information on types of diseases and conditions. My angle on the site is that I’m targeting seniors. If I find out seniors are primarily interested in information on prescription drug plans and cheap blood pressure medication, then I know that I want to provide information specifically on those things. This allows me to hone in on that market’s needs and de-prioritize or bypass other content.
2. Targeted Keyword Discovery: Ideally you’ll want to do keyword research based on what the audience wants, not solely on what content the site already has (or plans to have sans audience targeting), which may be limited. I can do keyword research on health conditions and drugs (content I have on my site) and determine what the general population is searching for and optimize my current content, or I can cast my net wide and look at what my target audience wants first, then do my keyword research. You may find there are needs that your site is not meeting. Knowing my senior audience is interested in primarily in prescription drug plans and cheap blood pressure medication, I can first make sure I’m providing that content, and then further determine the top keywords in these areas (in the next article Step 2), and use those terms in relevant and high visibility areas on my site.
This screenshot from my own Strategy template below simply suggests adding information on the target audience and what they want. Specifics are as good as the research you do, and will likely be very different with each project. Let your Strategy template give you breathing room.
So how do you get target market info? Lets start with these scenarios.
Scenario 1: I know who my target audiences are, but I don’t know their pain points:
- Check out market research studies* online (you can find many free reports, but in-depth ones will usually cost you some money).
- Conduct surveys of your audience by putting surveys on your site, sending emails, hiring survey professionals, or using survey sites like SurveyMonkey
- Conduct focus groups – either on your own (if you can gather a group of people that you know are in your targeted demographic) or through a professional market research company
- Use social media listening platforms that provide topic buzz volume and sentiment by demographic (Nielsen Buzz Metrics and NetBase are two options, although not cheap)
- Forrester has a nifty little demographic profiling tool for social behavior online by audience
Scenario 2: I know my industry but don’t know whom exactly to target:
- Check out industry research studies* online (you can find many free reports, but in-depth ones will usually cost you some money).
- Search for industry statistics online. For example, here I found some great statistics on seniors that would allow me to better understand their current situation and what they need.
- Hire a research company that specializes on your industry
- Use social media listening platforms that provide topic buzz volume and sentiment by industry. I haven’t tested any social listening platforms with specific industries in mind to know exactly who provides demographic info based on industry. If you happen to know of tools that do this, please share with us in the comments.
*A few of the places you can find industry/market statistics:
- eMarketer
- MarketResearch.com
- Forrester
- Federated Media
- InternationalBusinessStrategies.com
- The U.S. Census Bureau
Social media tools are especially useful if you’re planning on integrating search and social campaigns, as they are great research tools for both channels. Here’s a screenshot from NetBase that shows a demographics module on the left, as well as demographic results for the Crest Pro-Health brand being searched.
Research can get expensive when you really get into it, but you can find data if it exists on your industry/demographic, and you’re an experienced searcher. Be sure to check your sources, and don’t be afraid to email people and ask where they got their information if you need to.
Here’s what I found in free online info about my seniors audience in the Healthcare industry
-
Seniors’ specific conditions (source)
- Data found: Arthritis, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory disorders are some of the leading causes of activity limitations among older people. Alzheimer’s disease and dementia alone afflict 4 million Americans, a figure expected to increase 350% by 2050 if no cure is found.
- What this means to me: These are topics I will provide extra information and tools on
-
More senior women with disabilities than men (source)
- Data Found: Older women were more likely than older men to experience disability, 43 percent and 40 percent, respectively
- What this means to me: I will put a little more emphasis on targeting senior women on my site, with articles and tools specifically geared to women.
-
Top geographic locations where seniors are (source)
- Data Found: Florida, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia were the states with the highest proportions 65 and older in 2000: 17.6 percent, 15.6 percent, and 15.3 percent, respectively
- What this means to me: I can provide local information like pharmacies, doctors, caregivers, nursing homes, etc with those primary areas highlighted. I can also target PPC ads in those geographic locations.
-
Retirement info for single seniors (source)
- Data Found: Fewer [seniors] who are married with children from a previous relationship and single females have a clear vision of what they hope to experience in—and what they must do to prepare for—retirement.
- What this means to me: Provide advice column content on retirement, especially geared towards these seniors.
-
Caregivers are a secondary target (source)
- Data Found: 34 million adults (16% of population) provide care to adults 50+ years.
- What this means to me: I might want to consider a section and/or tools/and/or articles targeted at people taking care of seniors as well.
-
Potential advertising partners (source)
- Data Found: Forty-eight percent of caregivers reported using at least one of seven outside services (e.g., transportation, home-delivered meals, respite, etc.) to supplement their caregiving
- What this means to me: These outside services are good targets for partnerships and advertising for the site.
This was all free information I found online in less than an hour, that gives me some great ideas for content, partnerships and potential tools to build into my site to be relevant and useful to my target audience. Of course this is just some quick loose data, so I'll emphasize again: be careful where your data comes from (try to validate when possible), and think about how to use your data wisely.
Start Creating Recommendations In Your Strategy Document
Each of these discoveries is potential content or strategy, and should be written up in your SEO Strategy document. Provide as much data and reasoning as possible for why you recommend this content.
See the screenshot below for some of the sections for specific recommendations that you can add which will provide the meat of the document. Keep in mind this is a very flexible document – add recommendations that make sense (for example you may not always have specific design considerations for a project). Remember, it will be different every time you do it.
For each piece of content you are recommending, try to provide:
- Backup Data: Provide information backing up why this content will appeal to your audience
- Specifics: Be as specific as you can with your recommendations. For example if you’re suggesting partnering with meal home delivery sites, find out which ones are going to provide the most relevant info, at what cost if possible, and what the ideal partnership would look like for content and SEO purposes. Even provide contact information if you can.
This doesn’t have to be completely formalized right now because we’ll be getting even more insights to layer on top of this from our keyword research and competitive research in later steps. But add as much information as possible for now – you can always add more, change it or even change your mind and get rid of it later.
NEXT STEP: KEYWORD RESEARCH
In the next article we’ll take a look at some methods for doing categorized keyword research that allows you to further prioritize content based on the popularity of categories of keywords.
In the meantime, do you have any suggestions, insights, tool recommendations or great places to find market research data or create personas? Please share!
Go to any of the 8 steps:
Step 1: Define Your Target Audience and Their Needs
Step 2: Categorized Keyword Research
Step 3: Finding Gaps and Opportunities
Step 4: Define Competitors
Step 5: Spying On (and Learning From) Your Competitors
Step 6: Customized SEO Strategy & Recommendations
Step 7: Must-have SEO Recommendations
Step 8: Prioritize and Summarize
As Sun Tzu said "Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat"
'Instead, in this instance, we started at wireframe stage, plopping in keywords and meta tags. Of course, the site really needed those things, and although it launched technically “optimized”, it wasn’t enough to provide a better product than our top competitor(s).'
Wow. That sounds exactly like my workplace where the SEO scenario for a website used to be:
Phase 1: Get SEO buy-in
All the stakeholders nod their heads, hold hands and agree to take SEO seriously. Your business case for SEO implementation promises uber returns. +1000% ROI! 1000% Profit! Fairies & unicorns and rainbows!
Phase 2: Get SEO into the product development process
During the wireframe stage, the UX crew add your SEO recommendations ("spewing out SEO audits, rewriting title tags, offering up link suggestions, rewriting URLs and so on") and incorporate them into the IA.
Phase 3: Implement SEO
The developers grumble a bit but finally add your SEO specs to their code. You and the testers do UAT and sign-off the final release with the SEO tick of approval.
Phase 4: SEO Results
Traffic drops/increases/fluctuates/disapparates and I'm not sure why. This was not what I expected. Huh?
Oops!
We now have a dedicated SEO strategist who, among other things, develops 90 day plans for our websites. 90 days isn't longterm planning, but at least we have a strategic objective for the quarter. He also works closely with our UX team to identify the target audience - the crew that does the persona research and focus groups prior to the wireframe stage.
Some additional market targeting tools we use:
Eagerly looking forward to the rest of the series Laura! Anticipate commiserating on more in-house SEO bugbears :)
Now I really want to know what your excuse is for not authoring some posts, Lucas :-)
Seriously though - great comment. Big thumbs up.
I second Rand on this. We want more! and more Laura too! :D
Thanks for those tools!
If you're in-house, check to see if your mrketing department subscribes to any services that provide market research data as well. If your marketing department isnt doing any competitive research or targeting, it should be.
thanks for the links... very useful
.
Hey Laura - first off, congrats on the move from Yahoo! and the opening of your own consultancy. I'm willing to bet you'll be flooded with inquiries :-)
Regarding the post - I really like the concept of strategic data collection prior to making an investment. The standard "keyword research" step could really be bolstered by the use of this methodology. Looking forward to Steps 2-8!
I second Rand's comment! Congrats on moving from the corporate world to the independent consultant. This is my goal for the near future. I too have been testing the waters of independent consulting, but it doesn't quite pay the bills yet! Sometimes I feel like I should find a mentor who has been where I am now and is where I want to go. Perhaps i'll find a few in this community over time!
On another note, we recently went through this same process with an entire site redesign. The executive team demanded we cut out over 75% of the pages on our site because they were useless to the visitor. It's been 60 days since the launch of the new site and I've been able to still increase rankings, long-tail keywords, and even organic traffic. It took a little bit of a "cowboy" mentality to get some simple things done (like using 301's instead of blocking the old content with robots.txt!). I predicted we would lose a lot of our long tail keywords...but we haven't....yet! <fingerscrossed>
That's an awesome post and something useful for internal seos or when working with a large budget but without this given the option what percentage of total budget would you allocate towards step 1?
Also is the new launch because of other aspects such as duplicate content, poor navigation? So a drop is a positive step towards a better website with more accurate visitor figures?
Looking forward to the next 7 steps
edit - Orignial entry was blank. Now to remember what I wrote...? :-(
Dittos!
Same question as The Lost Agency - What % of total time do you estimate for step 1?
If your leaving Yahoo! means we get to tap into your SEO strategy brain, hurray. Congrats!
Although this is a step-by-step series, everyone's methods will (and should) vary, so it really depends on how much time you think it will take (if you're billing hourly). What tools do you have at your disposal vs. how much researching for information will you have to do on your own? Will you have to pay for research reports or companies? Do you pay a monthly service for data or research?
I've seen 5 page strategy documents and 50 page strategy documents (which obviously take more time and in-depth research). Once you've done a few of these and know where to get your info and have some templates you can use at hand, it will take less time.
Sorry it's not a direct answer - but I hope that helps clear things up a little. :)
What I love about this is that the same approach works for SEO, PPC, conversion optimization, etc. There's a very real danger when we get tunnel vision in our own little niches, and an overarching strategy can make all of what we do more effective.
Hey Laura!
Thank you so much for this insanely informative post. I only wish during my years of consulting I had a document like this to double-check my approaches and use as a benchmark of great strategy.
I am definitely looking forward to the new posts, and wish you the best of luck on the new move to consulting!
Thanks Laura, this post gives me a lot of inspiration.
We should conduct keyword research for customers, not just for a website.
I better start collecting similar industry data sites in UK now. Really appreciate your effort.
I haven't seen such a specific how-to on SEO in quite a while. Very helpful. The most helpful parts were the additional research tools and the questions you ask on how to position the product.
I'm not sure I can add much more then what everyone has already said above, but WOW. This is probably one of the best posts I've seen on SEOMoz (IMO). It's straight forward, to the point and very easy to understand. Not only that, it's very powerful information.
A company I work with is in the process of hiring a marketing assistant and I will definitely have this and your upcoming posts 2-8, on their must read and understand list.
Looking forward to the rest of the posts. Certainly has opened my eyes this morning.
Hi Laura,
I must admit it: are few the posts that I've read that are so clear as this one... and just in SEOmoz there are tons of great posts. Therefore, I'll be waiting for the other 7 'episodes' of the series with the same expectation I look for the next episodes of Lost.
On the other hand, I'd like to know how many people constitutes your new experience as an indipedent consultant? Infact, as others noted in the comments here, what you suggest is perfect especially for an in-house SEO situation or in for an Web Marketing Agency with at least 5/8 people working in. Even if all you say is correct and hopefully what everybodies should do, I honestly find quite difficult to dedicate all the amount of time and dedication in order to check all the steps described in your post. Or, at least, I cannot imagine myself doing it for all the clients.
Maybe this mean that this procedure should be "sold" only to bigger clients, also because those researches costs time, and time means money in our world... and just ambitious start ups or medium to big business company can afford the price an SEO project so deeply thought and strategically studied.
Finally... great post, great suggestions (which first I will apply for my own site) and something to reflect about in order to find a "lite version" which could be applied to smaller business clients.
gfiorelli1
I agree with you and things might be a bit different in web marketing agency scenario. But a slightly different approach can help the agency better their process using Laura's Step:1.
This way you may invest a lot of time once for a sector or a sub sector and then when you can fit in your new clients as and when you get them on board. Also in a long run this knowledge base will be a great asset to your organisation.
Regards
Maran.R
Great ideas. And good question.
I consulted a few years ago before Yahoo and CNET and my clients were all small businesses, even friends' sites. No matter the size of the project, you can still try to get some insight into your target audiences and what they need or want. I mentioned in a previous comment I used Search once to determine sentiment on a site vs. it's competitors by searching for a feature the site and its competitors all had, along with "like", "love", "hate", "wish", etc. I also took note of who the people were who said those things and where they were talking (forums, twitter, etc). It's a hacked manual approach and although not nearly as quality as a good market research report, at least I have a llittle bit of insight before going out to make site recommendations based solely on tags & links. If you're recommending the site build things that people want (and fix or remove things that they dont), you're more likely to gain links and traffic naturally.
Really its just a matter of getting creative - grab a cup of caffeine and think for a minute about what resources you have to try to get some insight on your visitors (or target markets) and their needs before you dive in. Think about how much time it might take you (or what the cost of the reports would be if you are going to buy some market research reports), and tack that onto your billing as an optional service.
I should mention - many times clients have already done this work. Ask them for copies of their market research reports when you start a project. It will save you a ton of time and effort!
Hope thats helpful. As long as Search is free, there's likely some information to be found that's affordable for any project. :)
Hi Laura great post, this is the type of info we want to read, very helpful.
You mentioned: "many times clients have already done this work. Ask them for copies of their market research reports when you start a project. It will save you a ton of time and effort!" We do this with most of our clients, like you said we have found that around 75% of the have some kind of Market research done, that saves you a lot of time and helps setting up the right SEO Strategy.
Thanks for this valuable information.
I completely agree with the fact it's easy to lost track of the target audience when focusing on SEO...
We'd better not use the carrot and stick approach, and concentrate on what's really important when starting a project!
Looking forward for the 2nd step... :)
Thanks so much for this entry, Laura! I loved the way your post is so practical, straightforward, newbie-friendly - and most importantly, how it emphasizes the bottom line at all times. It's easy to get "lost in the fog" of SEO with so many looming tasks and forget the main purpose, so it's wonderful to have a straightforward outline of what to do and why certain tasks need to be done. I look forward to reading your future insights!
Hey Laura, I have been looking for a great post like this. It's insightfull and very helpfull. I get lost in the SEO efforts here at VR and posts like this help to bring me back around and to refocus. Please post more ASAP. Thanks vrtimseo
I completely agree that defintion of a target audience isa great first step, but would ask if adding in competitors to the analysis (mentioned here as a later step) helps draw out who your target audience would be via comparisons, i.e. showing who you are an who you are not - would be very interested to hear opinions on how this tactic can be used within the overall step in coordination with targeted keyword discovery.
Thanks for bringing up this point - I agree Eric - competitive positioning can help you determine value that you bring to the table that your competitors dont. I'm all for it. Neilsen does some reports that provide awareness, likelihood to recommend, sentiment and other insightsfor your site/brand and your competitors. You can also pull some of that type of insight out of social listening platforms like NetBase, SM2, Radian6, Dow Jones, Nielsen, and so many others. I've even done some hacked compeitove sentiment comprisons before using Search: searching for [brand or feature] + "like", "love", hate", "wish" etc.
In a later step will do some competitive deconstruction more focused on site feature differences.
As a newbie to the industry (coming from a journalism background) I love this post! Great information and tips to bring to the table when I am introduced to new accounts.
Also looking forward to the rest of this series!
Thanks!
As an inhouse corporate SEO - I'm loving this - and can't wait for the full set of 1-8!
Congrats on the move out into consulting land and all the best of luck with it! By the looks of the above you'll be doing great :)
WOW! Looking forward for more. Thank you for sharing. Will be doing some home work now...
Great entry. Very helpful for beginning and advanced SEOs. Keep the posts coming & thank you!
Is there any way you can attach a copy or Google Doc of your strategy template, or maybe it's there and I missed it?
hi,
it is good.i heard somewhere that yahoo search engine give you very low traffic.Their market is only 20% and 60% market own by google.i think it is better to focus traffic from google.
Hi Laura, Thanks for the really good read! Having someone telling how they do (or should do) their strategy in a really hands-on manner as you did it here always makes me really enthusiastic! Like the rest, I'll be looking forward to the other posts!
As I had a teacher at school who was always really picky on how to draw conclusions I must say that the conclusions you drew for your health situation might be true, but dangerous. For example: If slightly more women than men suffer from health deseases it could be wise to write the information toward women. But, if you take search behaviour into account thing could look a lot different: It might turn up that men search more than women or that (senior) men are more present on the net than women.
So I understand it was a mere example, but it made me think about what that old teacher said (more than) a hundred times to me :)
It is interesting though to see the amount of information you've pulled out in just an hour. That's an important skill!
I love this artical! Many thanks. I needed this reminder, I add alot of SEO into my work but didn't look at it from this angle
Thanks Laura, I'm just enter into my keywords research step, however, i didn't think our keywords are accurately enough, now i read your post, i guess i found the answer. yep~get back to step1 and do more customer research:)
PS peeps - I highly recommend ordering Vanessa Fox's book "Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy"
It gets into searcher personas much more than I have here. Great stuff.
Congrats on the job move Laura! As an SEO specialist, I always find that hindsight provides the best lessons in the industry. This post is a great resource for all those using search engine optimization and search engine marketing to drive traffic and page rank, no matter what budget they have! Thanks for the good information!
If this is Step-1, I couldn't way to see what are the rest of the steps.
From a technical perspective this is a good insight.
As Gary Halbert say, find out who your hungry crowd are and give them what they want.
Thank you for sharing. I can't wait for the Step 2.
This was excellent...and shows the continued growth of SEO. Take this post out of the context of SEO and SEOmoz, and any marketing or product manager would think this was written about their industry and role.
Hats off to anyone and more posts that further demonstrate that SEO falls under the bigger umbrella we call marketing.
One complaint though...I don't want to wait for the other 7 posts to be written and published!! Way to hook the readers ;)
Congrats on the move, as well as all your successes at Yahoo.
Its a informative post, STEP 1 is very important for the success of SEO.
I am looking forward for more update very soon
A great start. I look forward to seeing the next 7 steps!
Laura,Great post. This touches something I wish more SEOs practiced: conversion optimization. I think most SEOs think of what they do as a service for, instead of a partnership with clients. The end result should never be raw traffic, but value obtained through targeted, CONVERTING traffic.You make excellent points about market research, product input, content creation, and other functions many SEOs and SEMs neglect.More and more SEO providers focus only on assembly line basics and worn out techniques instead of challenging themsleves to learn product marketing, usability, and conversion optimization.Your advice on market research is extremely valuable.Great start to a promising series. I look forward to more!
I have to say, the biggest issue I have a lot of the time with clients is getting them to realise that ideally SEO is a two way process where we learn as much about their industry and they do about the online world.
Totally agree with your point though.
And excellent post Laura.
Fellow ex-Yahoo!
Lara
Wow Laura. What a home run for a first post. Thanks for sharing such excellent strategy and for making it so understandable.
That story of yours with your team brought in at the wireframe stage sounded like a living nightmare. It must have been so fun...NOT! in the cafeteria whenever you ran into them.
I join everyone else above in congratulating you on your new venture and in greatly looking forward to your follow up articles.
Great post, Laura! Your graph looks just like the one from our large site (I will be leaving them on Friday, though). All large-site SEOs will understand exactly what you are saying. I look forward to more contributions from you.
Ash
Great post. If the next seven are as good as this one, it's going to be an awesome series.
Have you considered using this as an outline to your first best selling ebook?
Thanks for the post. Yeah, one can get into a panic when actual falls very short of the SEO projections. And your methodical approach takes the panic sting go away fast. Knowing what's the current situation of your target market is a good idea. I'm all over that one!
What perfect timing, I am in the process of applying what I have learned from SEOmoz and other places and will definetly use this to guide my efforts. Can't wait for the rest.
Nice work Laura! This is going to be a great series. I'm working my way through SEOmoz's Advanced SEO Training Series (videos) Vol. 1 & 2 to build upon the advice and guidance that you and your team provided to me during my time at Yahoo!. Now many others will benefit from your knowledge, experience and passion for SEO strategy and tactics. Best wishes for great success in your new role.
Dossett!
Thank you. And thank you for your spectacular level of support for SEO at Yahoo. Not only was it necessary, it was refreshing. :)
Great post.
I am currently struggling with getting to know my audience better. I took the wrong approach and built the product before I knew the audience.
So now I am trying to back into an audience, but every time I search I only find noise and poor sources.
Can you give some search suggestions on how to find the free sources of information online?
Chad
If you havent see it already, check out the links in shor's comment below - there are some great resources in there. In some cases you can also consider surveying your current audience or customers through email, on-site surveys or SurveyMonkey. Be sure to ask for some profiling information that you can use for determining specific persona needs like age, sex, location, etc. (Probably best not to make it sound like a creepy text chat like I just did though...) :)
Hey, this is what we need to for each project, not just an seo project. A goal must be clear before we proceed for defining seo strategy.
Great article.
Really nice post and good work Laura. I've been expecting a post like this for a long time! And grats on the main blog! :)
Awesome post!
Hi Laura,
This is the first time I make a comment because I've just signed up to SEOMoz. So I have no experience. But I like SEO, SEM... So your article is so great for me. Please help me more on this way.
Thanks,
Juan Pham,
Hi Laura,
Thanks a lot for this! Really good post and start of something quite cool. Look forward to reading the next steps and hope those are just as useful!
Great post Laura.
I use most of the information you eluded to, but
I will consider some of your points that I had not thought about.
You covered much more than I usually do when targeting my audience.
Looking forward to part 2
Hi Laura,
Great Post. Loads of actionable information and boy did I love your post. Thanks for sharing and keep it up. This is just awesome.
Hi Laura,
Great post. Although like a lot of people said, this strategy is best for in-house SEO. But it is something which could be provided as an additional package to interested clients with SEO agencies.
I love your take on target audience and pain points, especially, so it's something I'll look into doing on my blog and see how it goes.
All in all, great post and definitely looking forward to Points 2-8. Thumbs up.
Awesome insights. Thanks for all the info...it really helps to have things laid from someone with your background. I will be reading more...
Debralee
https://www.creativewebsolutions4u.com
Incredible post. Was a very enjoyable, informative read. I'm sure it will prove useful to many. I recently began the transition from writing strictly for up front pay to investing the majority of my time affiliate marketing. I appreciate your expertise.
Of course with every single great strategy, there are five awful ones.
https://www.infobarrel.com/5_SEO_Tacticts_to_Avoid
THANK YOU VERY MUCH... Good content and better explanation.
Super stuff, Laura! Love the emphasis on target audience, before you do the keyword resarch. The whole series of 8 posts are awesome! Thank you!
I've got a list of around 500 past customers who have used my clients services in the last 2 years. I'm wondering if profiling them is enough to understand more about the target audience, and their needs etc.. Would be great to hear you thoughts.
Cheers!
Arjun
There's a misspelling in image 1334096347_dc43c50092935bacaa5711cf7bd253dc.jpg, look at the first CONDSIDER.
The Page Description use all your important keywords in order of importance..
https://www.ave-nir.com
This is so frustrating!! i feel like the SEo geniuses do not want to help out. i find my self overwhelmed with data but no idea how to use it. my website is search engine friendly meaning that it has been optimized, but now what???
Great gem! Glad I discovered it today.
Totally learning from this post! Simple prose with personality and humor. Thanks Laura Lippay!
Content is the most important part and without it noone can survive in the long term. Here are another 5 SEO Strategies to Write Effective Content.I think relevant and interesting content should be the prime constituent of your SEO strategy.Saurabh
https://techchai.com
This is very harmful today really helping me
Thank you
6 Year's have passed, still relevant.
Hi Laura,
This is really great and helpful.Target audience is directly depend targeted content. I am glad to read this article thanks for sharing your valuable knowledge with us.
Dear Sir/Madam
I generate leads through Mailing and my target is to approach the audience who are looking forward to avail following services - Website Designing,Hosting,Web Development, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Mobile Application Development.
Leads generation process
1) Search the all email database from Google.
2) Target area is USA and all our Europe.
3) Target Keywords is all Business like Finance, Real Estate, Travel Agency etc.
4) Send the Mails per day and generate the 2-3 leads per day easily.
Best Regards
Jolly Rathore
Mobile: 9718485526
Hi Laura. Thanks for providing this series of steps for an SEO strategy.
awesome article!
I will read this series, thanks for sharing!
This is a great post because it reminds us that it's so easy to get mired in the tactics without being able to see the whole picture.
In our B2B situation, we know who the target audiences are, but we don’t know really understand their pain points. In fact, some of our clients are so big, they don't even know their own pain points because their R & D division doesn't talk to its product division.
Because I'm an SEO guy in an engineering culture, it's hard for me to get customer's pain points. Our product groups spend too much time manufacturing products for one-upsmanship and the next greatest specification rather than for a customer's real need. That makes it very difficult to achieve keyword research based on the pain points.
Surveys and focus groups are usually a waste of time and money because, "Dr. House" is right: People LIE. The best way to get to the truth is by watching what people do, (with their mouses) and in the Forums and Blogs.
Look forward to the next post. Thanks!!
Laura, what a wealth of information! Thank you!
Great article! very informative! looking forwards to reading the remaining steps :)
Been backlogged and finally got a chance to read this article and a great read it was!
Look forward to reading the rest of this series!
Laura,
This appears to be the start of one of the best series i have read on SEO. Early adoption of an SEO strategy can have a huge impact when engaging in a major redesign.
Nice work, I am really looking forward to reading the next 7
I totally agree. We are trying to do more and more of this level consulting for clients. Anxious to see the next steps!
These articels are truly a gift!
Thanks!
It would be super kewl if one of the nice editors at SEOMOZ could link all Laura's posts together for easy reference?
repeated lots of time here anyway 'An Excellent Post'
I am working as SEO and especially working on product promotion, earlier Me too usually focus on Keywords like Model no and brand names.But this post has really changed my way.
This is really an amazing learning lesson for me or for others too if they too involve in such activities of web promotion.
This has given me a clear head to re-look at how we tackle our new project . Thanks for step 1 , looking forward to implementing these suggestions and step 2.
Great insights. The days of "yea, we're on Page 1" are long gone and, as SEOs, our responsibility and accountability have expanded exponentially. I'll be interested in reading your future posts and the comments they inspire. Thanks!
Laura, really great stuff. Thanks a lot!
One question: Have you ever worked for international clients? Especially ones who have sites with content in German language? I ask because I'm wondering if you'd have ressources or hints where I could get this information to target German audience. Of course I could also do my own research - but why not before use help from others.
Would be nice if you or someone else could help me.
Thanks in advance.
Albert
This is excellent and should be intuitive for marketers (and SEO pros are marketers!) but we often take the short cut and neglect critical details. What would also reinforce the strategy is way of providing solid projections for SEO (these could be based on industry trends and statistics). Clients now ask for ways to calculate ROI and they need numbers to get budget approvals. Increase in traffic by X, increase in qualified traffic and leads, conversions etc, some way of quatifying the expected return.
Thank you for sharing this information, this will help me to implement my knowledge.
Thank You!!!
Newpath WEB