1. They created educational content to help prospects with sales compensation challenges.
2. They researched keywords and optimized pages around 2-3 relevant terms each.
3. They built links from authoritative sites in their industry.
4. They followed up on website leads to convert trials to subscribers.
5. They continually monitored results to repeat top-performing tactics.
This systematic process, incorporating content creation, keyword research, link building, lead conversion and monitoring, led to a 200% increase in traffic and leads for Makana Solutions.
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4. You will receive a webinar-exclusive special offer on the 2012 Search
Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition
5. Connect and share
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• 500,000 “decision-makers” surveyed
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7. Today, we’re going to discuss:
1| Top challenges and objectives for search marketers
2| Most important lead sources
3| Using data and processes to inform SEO tactical decisions
4| ABC
5| ABC
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8. Research Background
1,530 Search marketers were
surveyed on:
• Challenges and goals for
search programs
• Lead sources growing in
importance
• Popularity, effectiveness and
difficulty per SEO tactic
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14. Marketers depend on SEO
Traffic
Leads
Rankings
Listings
SEO depends on marketers
Customer research and insight
Relevant content
Optimized content
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15. Too many SEO choices can create confusion
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16. How do you decide
which SEO tactics
hold the most
promise for you?
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17. Try a simple equation.
Data
SEO
Tactics
Process
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18. Benefits of looking at data first
• Harnesses the
wisdom of crowds
• Challenges biases
and preferences
• Heightens
quantitative analysis
• Draws out past
successes and
challenges to inform
present practices
and future decisions
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22. Benefits of a process
• Protects you from jumping
straight into action without
developing a plan of attack
• Arms you with a competitive
advantage
• Uses data as a context for
making and prioritizing decisions
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23. Organizations with a methodical SEO process
21% • No process
• No guidelines
Trial Phase
The disciplined application
of a consistent and
methodical process for
48% • Informal process
planning, executing and
• Few guidelines
Transition Phase • Sporadically performed measuring SEO programs
still eludes many
organizations.
29% • Formal process
• Thorough guidelines
Strategic Phase • Routinely performed
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24. Hear the difference? Specificity.
Please describe the process your organization uses to plan your SEO strategy.
We have a spreadsheet for
Watching trends and our website with all of the
specific pages listed. We have
tweaking as seems
Right now it is hit and fields for meta
necessary. Doing some tags, keywords, and an overall
miss, nothing formal.
testing. page description. We also list
how we want the images
tagged with alt text. We sat
down and prioritized our
keywords, and we now are
working to increase our traffic
-- Trial Phase marketer -- Transition Phase marketer about four keywords at a
time.
-- Strategic Phase marketer
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28. Case Study: Background
Experiment ID: Makana Solutions
Location: MarketingSherpa Case Study Library
Test Protocol Number: #CS31765
Research Notes:
Problem: Makana provides subscription-based software that helps
organizations perform sales compensation planning. But few prospects
knew the SaaS solution was available and weren’t actively searching for
it.
Goal: Become a top destination for advice about sales compensation
planning.
Approach: Execute 5 steps to revamp website and improve SEO
effectiveness.
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29. Step 1: Content creation
Aim:
• Help prospects answer questions about their sales compensation
planning challenges
Methods:
• Created and offered content based
on best practices for sales
compensation planning
Sample sales compensation
plans
Educational webinars
#sherpawebinar
30. Step 2: Keyword research
Aim:
• Optimize website around high-value search terms
Methods:
• Researched broad and longer-tail
key terms that reflected targeted
searches or specific industry
verticals
• Identified a list of 600 keywords
• Optimized specific web pages
around two or three relevant terms
per page.
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31. Step 3: Link building
Aim:
• Boost inbound links to improve search rankings
Methods:
• Identified sites with a high Google
PageRank from which they could
get a link
Online directories
Information sites about sales
compensation planning
News sites to target for their
press release distribution list
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32. Step 4: Follow-up on web leads
Aim:
• Convert trial members to subscribers
Methods:
• Required visitors to register to receive
educational material
• Marketed the free software trial to
these leads
• Kept trial account live until sales rep
made contact with the prospects
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33. Step 5: Continual monitoring
Aim:
• Highlight the best performing tactics in order to repeat them
Methods:
• Monitored keyword, inbound
links, and outbound campaign results
"Repeatability is the key. As a young
company, we have to keep growing our
traffic and leads."
Alan Gehring
Marketing Director
Makana Solutions
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34. Results
First page ranking for key industry search terms
Key performance metrics
Change
after 3 months of adopting strategy
Website traffic + 200%
Lead generation rate + 200%
Lead conversion rate + 100%
Paid search as % of total traffic - 60%
! "We’re very happy with our success, but I’ll be honest and say we haven’t even touched the
potential. The potential is tremendous to be even more successful with the realm of content we
can develop for various verticals. The possibilities just go on and on.“
– Alan Gehring, Marketing Director, Makana Solutions
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35. Want to make better tactical SEO decisions?
Incorporate data into your process.
38. Key Takeaways
When choosing your SEO
tactics, distinguish between –
• What is a good use of your
money from what is the best
use
• What is a good use of your
time from what is the best use
• What is a good use of your
energy from what is the best
use
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45. Communicate What You Do
“Since 1967, our company
has been committed to “Our company sells email
quality products and great marketing software ad retargeting
service.” strategies that allow you to reach
out to new and current customers
with exceptional delivery rates and
ROI.”
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57. Summary
• Traffic and leads are the biggest challenges and goals for search marketers
• Leads from SEO are the most important
• A systematic process for planning, executing and evaluating SEO programs
is lacking in many organizations
• To maximize your investment of time, money and effort going into your
SEO tactics, use both data and a process.
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60. MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012
• Attend the Email Summit 2012
in Las Vegas, NV
• Save $100 by reserving your
ticket before December 31
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Editor's Notes
So adding in the dimensions of difficulty and effectiveness really can change things up. It also raises some important practical questions: do you go for ease or do you go for effectiveness? Let’s say you opt for effectiveness. After looking at this research data, you’re jazzed because now you know which SEO tactics are the most fruitful, the most productive. You’ve got resources, both time and money, that you can put on these, so difficulty does not have to a roadblock for you. But what happens if that’s not the case for you? Perhaps you’re a smaller organization, and resources are tight. When you look at the data on this chart, what does it tell you to do? Do you take the easier path, so you’re at least doing something and making some impact? Maybe you bust through the tactics on the far right of the horizontal axis – those that take less time, money and effort - so you can do more of them? Or do you put everything you have into one or two of the most effective? We could on and on with questions and scenarios. But the bottomline is this.
Most often, the answer is “Do the best possible thing for your audience that a search engine can understand.” Google is an algorithm that tries to measure what human beings like or value. Since Google is attempting to think like a human, don’t get caught up being the human trying to think like a robot that’s trying to think like a human. Do great marketing and if I doesn’t rank today, it will soon, and it will stay ranked as long as humans like it.
Content: Talk about your competency. When you’re making an SEO tactics decision, spend resources communicating to a search engine what you do. Example: “since 1967, our company has been committed to quality products and great service” versus “our company sells email marketing software ad retargeting strategies that allow you to reach out to new and current customers with exceptional delivery rates and ROI.”
Links: references on a resume. Make tactical decisions based on a balance of link quality and longevity. Quantities of links are not as powerful today as they were in years past.
Links from your business partners lend their credibility as a reference Google counts as credibility for your brand.
Architecture: A search engine can only read what you serve it, but its resources are limited. Spend resources only on SEO tactics that produce the kinds of digital signals that can be absorbed by search engine spiders
Social: the frontier of search. Web 2.0 matters to search engines because it’s a better indication of what’s popular to the general public. Most SEO can incorporate social, so make strategic decisions about SEO that can leverage social signals as well:
Strategy : Right side of the box, get your house in order first to sustain your tactical decisions