Make Your 2014 SEO strategy SMARTER.

February 10, 2014

Are you still waiting to implement a winning strategy in 2014? Is the doom and gloom hokum surrounding Google updates preventing you from making the right decisions?

Let me take you back to the past and into the shoes of a university student who chose to follow the straight arrow path of Marketing.

Amongst the countless amounts of acronyms and matrix tables that flooded lecture handouts is the classic SMART formula. The formula exists to guide you to defining better objectives.

SMART

Specific – Define what it is that you want to achieve. Answer those 5 W’s! Who, what, when, why and where.

Measurable – Quantify your objectives, how are you going to back up your results?

Achievable – We all like to overreach at times. When setting objectives make sure that they’re likely to be achieved by your team.

Relevant – Make sure the objectives are relevant to the business and in line with the overall marketing plan.

Time based – Set a date for the objectives to be complete (tricky in SEO).

A smarter SEO would also add

Ethical

&

Recorded

So I suppose you want a SMART example in SEO?

A fictitious Mexican food restaurant business based in the UK … “Guapo – Mexican”

“We want to target food lovers from the UK who enjoy tasting exciting Mexican dishes (specific) to raise awareness to our restaurant (actionable and relevant). We will aim to bring over 30,000 visits to our site (measurable) within 8 months (timely)”.

So, how will the SMART acronym apply to your 2014 strategy?

First you must begin to understand how search will change in 2014. So let’s take a look at the predictions.

2013 saw Google unleash the shackles on countless updates. If you weren’t scared at anyone point, then you’re a liar! We saw more frequent Penguin and Panda updates, Hummingbird and the (not provided) debacle finally hit its peak. Enough to send the SEO world into to complete disarray…

It’s safe to say that the SERPS changed in a big way last year. We saw steps to include more localised results as well as better integration of the knowledge graph.

A basic search for “Mexican food” returns a mixture of locally, knowledge based and contextually relevant results.

Mexican food local google search

To get the most out of your SMARTER objectives for 2014, I’d suggest doing the following:

Make the most of local

1)      Get listed on Google local places, claim your profile and add all the bells and whistles (360 Photos and Videos) to make sure that your profile stands out amongst your competitors.

2)      Encourage sentiment and reward customers who review the restaurant on Google, Trip advisor, Yelp, Top table and other platforms.

3)      A mobile version of your site is a must. The majority of mobile searches are for local services, take advantage of this by making your menu and deals accessible and shareable on mobile devices.

4)      Go social… Nothing new there, but certainly a necessary step to taking up more first page real estate. In the case of the above example, the love of food is universal. Therefore a restaurant is blessed with the amount of social media tools available at its disposal. Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Instagram and Pinterest can also be used to great effect. You could also top this off by adding a blog to your site. Adding a blog is an easy way to increase the amount of pages, helping you rank for a wider set of keywords.

5)      Add separate pages for multiple locations. This helps Google deliver the best result to the searcher, it’s probably a good call to also add your contact details to many pages.

Move away from one type of Analytics

Predicted by Rand Fishkin in Moz’s 2013 predictions was that marketers would need to stop relying on Google analytics as the sole platform for web marketing. He was right by some degree, other platforms such as Mixpanel, Piwick, Omniture and Hubspot did grow significantly last year.

Google’s (not provided) alienated many web marketers who put all their eggs in one basket. Being able to measure and report became tough but that wasn’t the only issue. Identifying opportunities for growth also became difficult. The market is becoming more competitive and margin for errors of ignorance is less forgiving.

Heavier correlation of G+ in search results

A Moz report in 2013 found a high amount of correlation in search rankings and their number of Google +1’s.  Cyrus Shepard reported on the findings as surprising, although “correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation”. The post did create some controversy which sparked Matt Cutts to respond to the debate via hacker news  to poor cold water on the findings.

Google plus correlation in search

Make the most of Google + by building relationships with your audience and like minded businesses in your niche, identify the industry influencers and connect with them. Take advantage of rel=”publisher” and connect your website to your Google+ brand page.

Incorporating Google + tactics in your strategy will be more important than previous years. The research done by Moz and search metrics indicates the social networks significance and correlation to higher rankings. You will also benefit from increased Click through rate, relevant and influential communities as well as growing your brands authority.

Content Marketing continues to grow but who’s taking over the reins?

Content marketing has been the buzz word for the last couple of years now and it’s taken some time for many businesses to adjust, but to give you an idea of how far it’s come, it is said that up to 92% of marketers are now practicing some form of content marketing.  But do marketers really know best?

The content marketing institute estimate that Marketers will have to up their game if they want to remain relevant. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s Journalists who are leading the way with great backgrounds in writing and storytelling and information design. They know how to orchestrate content that makes you care, is different to the competition, is new and surprises people. Beyond their storytelling abilities are tech and research skills and the ability to meet strict deadlines.

Marketer’s who can learn to think like journalists in 2014 will reap the benefits of good content marketing.

Don’t rely on any one tactic

This is nothing new… perhaps it could just be received as conventional wisdom. Relying on anyone SEO tactic will result in either one of two things:

You’ll get burned

Or

Your gains will be short term and eventually … You’ll get burned

Burn your business

Ace job there…

Unfortunately, there will always be digital marketers that will want to get the best returns with as little investment as possible. Hereby lays the problem. The result of this cavalier attitude is low quality content that is happy to be placed on any site that will accept it.

For those of you who pay attention to the latest SEO news might have read about Google unleashing a fire demon on guest blogging this year. My advice to you is, just up your game and you should be fine. Guest posting isn’t dead: Google just raised the quality bar. Matt Cuts has recently blogged about guest posting and its use effectiveness as an SEO tactic. He says, “there are many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community,etc.) Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future.”

The bottom line is, if you love your brand … why risk its demise? Make sure that you comply with the search engine guidelines and stay up to date with best practices. Try to focus on contributing thought leading articles and information that give you exposure, branding and increased reach. When trying to find a blog to post on, ask yourself … Would you be proud to see your brand exposed here? Does this blog capture my audience? Are the blog’s users engaged in its content?

How to be SMARTER in 2014

Specific – Are you taking local and mobile into account? … Your audience probably is.

Measurable – Google analytics is great, but to stay competitive you’re going to need more data.

Achievable – Can your team do the job? Maybe it’s time to look to hire journalists for your content marketing needs. Be aware how the SERP’s have changed this past year, it would appear that the contrast of real estate on the 1st page of Google keeps diversifying, with only 7 positions for some phrase types and 10 for others. Local listings, knowledge graph and semantic markup such as reviews and ratings also mean that there is so much more to play for.

Relevant – Are you tactics still relevant to your business plan. Does local SEO, social media’s integration in search and improved level of guest posting apply to your overall strategy and brand message?

Time Based – Setting a period in which to see results will always be tricky. However, you can set time periods for work to be completed. Reflect on the content marketing strategy, more and more journalist style marketers are going into content marketing not just because they know how tell a story but because they also know how to meet challenging deadlines.

Ethical – Make sure you’re meeting Google’s guidelines. Relying on anyone tactic will get you burned, you have to remember that your brand is at stake.

Recorded – Record the processes that you’re implementing throughout the strategy. Are the tactics working? Are they future proof? Are they following the plan?