Preview: How to Win Rankings & Influence Search Results
I will be speaking at a PDXTech4Good meetup on Tuesday March 20 @ 5:30. My presentation is titled “Get Found: How to Win Rankings & Influence Search Results”. The meetup is free and open to anyone – more details on the PDXTech4Good site
I’ll be covering how to integrate SEO efforts, content development and social media marketing as well as some other issues affecting the current search engine landscape like Google Plus. The following is a preview of a part of what I’ll cover in that presentation.
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Blogging, Internal Links & Rankings
Many times when I go to talk to clients – I find that most of them are grasping the “content is king” concept of content and are finally seeing blogging and social as a way to do it. However – many times they don’t really understand how to leverage that content and those social media efforts for better rankings. Simply put – the question is usually “how does writing a blog post improve the rankings of my site and product/service pages?”. So I like to explain the concept of the ‘link-building bank shot’ and explain how it’s all about internal links.
So here’s how I explain the general approach.
Search Engine Ranking Factors
SEOmoz does a study every couple years to examine the correlation between search engine rankings and certain SEO factors. Note the prevalence of authority based factors like links, social metrics and keyword usage. Seems obvious right – use your keywords, get yourself some links & social metrics and you’re golden right? Not so easy for most brand marketers. Especially B2B marketers.
SEOmoz's 2011 Search Engine Rankings Factors. Click for larger image. Image copyright SEOmoz
The Link & Social Conundrum for Marketers
The problem? Your product, services & solution content is probably, well, boring.
This cat fell asleep while looking at your boring content.
Sorry, but it’s true. Marketers want to drive leads & sales. That means – they want their “money” product, service & solution content to rank well. This type of content is tough to get links & social attention for, and you can only do so much with keywords. Typically – this is that bottom-of-sales-funnel content anyway and it should be well written (and optimized). With a good copywriter, you can go a long way towards making it interesting, engaging and convert well; but will it be shareable/likeable/linkable? Probably not. I mean – most of you probably wouldn’t put a cute cat picture on your services page.
Rather than pick on anyone else – we’ll pick on ourselves. Let’s face it – who’s going to link to or “like” our SEM services page? I can think of a handful of people we could coerce into doing it – but natural or organic links & likes? Probably not.
Our SEM services page. Not so great for links & likes.
Blogging FTW!
There are a few different approaches to building on the ranking factors discussed above – you can create studies, infographics, articles, community development, etc. However, a blog should be at the center of all of them. There’s no better/faster/easier way to create and distribute linkable/shareable content and connect it to your sales & marketing content . SEO’s and social media practitioners have been hounding on this point for years. You NEED a blog. Not only that – you need to actively blog. Find a way to get it done. Why? Think about a blog vs the rankings factors above. When done right, a blog allows you to:
- Increase page and domain level links
- Increase domain level keyword usage
- Build social metrics
- Market the content you do create (like those infographics and studies)
- Breathe life into and create a “home” for your social media efforts
- Create internal links to sales/marketing content to build its authority
The Authority “Bank Shot”
In the last bullet above, I mentioned “internal links”. This is no small detail. Marketers can use their “interesting” (linkable, shareable, likeable) content to build authority and improve rankings for sales & marketing content with internal links. We call this the “bank shot”…
–End of Preview–
How does the bank shot work? There was a clue in this post… Can you figure it out? Comment below.
Otherwise you’ll have to come to the presentation on Tuesday to find out. See PDXTech4Good’s event page for more details.
OK OK – if you link/like/share/plus and/or comment on this post and ask real nice – I’ll give you part two.
Sometimes it becomes very difficult to prove your point about SEO factors. I have same perceptions about ugly complex seo algorithms like you have but do you think that main clients of seo industry the small business owners which are looking to grab the local market will listen and believe you. I think they will not because they cannot pay for such expensive plans they want to stick with the old days when link building was everything. I strongly believe that their should be a line between marketing a product which is focusing internet users all over the world and the marketing plan of a local business which requires less resources and money.
Thanks for the comment Umair – I think this is your first on our blog?
I THINK you’re basically asking if this applies to small business owners. I do. The size, scope and tactics of the methods you use to do SEO for a small business will be different – but the idea behind it is the same. Generate authority, leverage your community, use every tool at your disposal to build links and mentions. In the case of small or local businesses – different elements may come into play like local (map) listings in Google places etc. The theory is the same – optimize these listings/ profiles and generate authority via reviews, ratings and citations.
Nice and very informative !!