5 Steps For Grouping Your Keywords - Content Marketing Strategy

In my last blog I talked about the major change in the way Google and other search engines are ranking keywords -- keyword groups vs. individual keywords -- and the major impact it is having on SEO and content marketing efforts.

After receiving several email requests to share the best practices on how to group keywords, I decided to write a blog on that subject.  It also gave me a chance to play around with a new infographics maker tool called Piktochart. 


Summary of Steps from the Infographics:

Step 1: Talk To Your Customers
Talk to your customers.  Ask how do they refer to your product / service. Ask them how did they find you.  What are the keywords they used in the search engine query -- if that's how they found you.

Step 2: Talk To Your Support and Sales
Ask your support how your customers are referring to your solution when they are having a problem.  Ask your sales people the same question about how your prospects refer to your product.

Step 3: Conduct Competitive Research
Find out what are the keyword variations that your competitors are ranking for.  Run SEO tools on their site to find out what are their target keywords.  Then compare these with the keywords they rank for. The keywords that are not targeted but still ranked belong to one of the keyword groups.

Step 4: Use Google's Suggestions
Type your main keywords in the search engine and see what are Google's suggestions.  These may belong in the same group. Look into Google Adwords for related and suggested keywords.  Also look for specific queries in Adwords.

Step 5: Organize in Groups
Map out all the relevant keywords and organize them in logical groups -- based on the steps above and your subject matter knowledge.

Keep Testing!
This process will give you a starting point with the keyword groups.  Keep testing and updating your keyword group map -- since the groupings change and your competitors activities impact SERP rankings.

Some of the SEO tools that could be useful are Moz, SEMRush, Screaming Frog, Majestic SEO, and Positionly.

A Major Shift in SEO and Content Marketing: Keywords vs. Concepts

One of the key trends discussed at SMX West 2015 is something we have been increasingly noticing from search engines -- focus on concepts vs. keywords.

This paradigm change has been causing shifts in SERP rankings for the last several months and we have been adjusting our SEO and content marketing strategy to align with it.

Concepts vs. keywords change is pretty fundamental and will most likely be continuously impacting your search engine rankings.  This article examines more details behind this change, discusses how it can affect your rankings, and provides five strategies for taking advantage of this trend.

Keywords vs. concepts/themes.  For years we have been focused on specific keywords.  We have been identifying target keywords,  monitoring their performances, and creating campaigns to improve our rankings.

Hard to Manage.  You can easily see how this SEO approach can get overwhelming and unmanageable.  Each product can have hundreds of keywords to target.  If you have multiple products, you may need to be tracking and promoting thousands of keywords.

How do you accomplish that? Do you create thousands of content pieces a month to rank better?  That sounds like a daunting task.  However, many companies have been doing exactly that -- either manually or by using tools to automate the process of creating individual content pages for each keyword.

Poor content quality.  It's obvious that it's impossible to create unique and engaging content for thousands of related words every week without astronomic budgets and resources.  As a result, the content produced through this strategy has been highly repetitive and lacked value.

Search quality issues.  These tactics allowed companies manipulate search engines for a while, resulting in low quality search results.  However, Google has been catching up with such tactics and penalizing low quality and duplicate content with Penguin and Panda updates.

And now a more fundamental change is happening.

Semantic search.  With the semantic search becoming more prevalent, Google is increasingly ranking groups of related keywords vs. individual ones.  The grouping criteria is based on the word order, paid/organic search history, contextual meaning, word relationships, content relevance, domain authority, and other factors.

Good news!  This means that your SEO work for specific keywords may result in uplifting your rankings for related keywords as well, even the ones you have not been specifically targeting.

Less on-page SEO.  It also means less emphasis on the on-page SEO -- less counting how many times specific keywords should show up on your web pages.  The practice of creating a page for each specific (related) keyword becomes mostly irrelevant.

Unexpected results.  On a flip side, you may discover wild swings in your target keywords rankings because these specific searches are not as compartmentalized as before.
They are viewed in a wider content of keyword groups. 

As a result, your efforts on individual keywords may not be as effective as before.  This could be especially the case if you have a better established competitor that dominates related keywords in SERPs.



Here are five recommendations on embracing this change and making the best out of it:

• Do research and understand top keywords you want to focus on
• Do monitor your individual keywords so you know how they perform and which competitors to focus on
• Do try to understand how individual keywords are grouped in concepts / themes
• Do create good quality and unique content around the themes/groupings you want focus on
• Do use social channels to promote your content and generate high quality links

Also check out my blog on 5 steps to organize your keywords in groups for best SEO & content marketing results. 

5 Characters You Meet In Successful Modern Marketing Teams

What does a winning marketing team look like nowadays?

How different is it from 5 years ago?

There are many new challenges we face today.  There are also traditional marketing challenges that never went away.

- Create differentiated positioning
- Create & update messaging
- Establish thought leadership
- Establish a repeatable and scalable lead generation program
- Improve lead conversion rates  
- Decrease customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Gain social and search visibility
- Support sales
- Build meaningful and accurate metrics 
- Collect and report daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly numbers  

Add all different programs, communication channels and angles that need to be built and maintained:
- SEO
- SEM
- Email nurturing
- Social media
- Industry communities
- Customer boards
- Gamification
- Blogs
- PR
- Analysts
... and much more

The process of addressing these challenges starts with an effective marketing team.  To build it, CMOs often have to reconstruct their existing teams.  Some skills are unchanged and are still in demand.  Others may not be needed anymore or may have morphed into new ones.  For example, marketing communications skill has transformed into product journalism and corporate reporting.  There are also brand new skills, like SEO Analytics & Messaging Manager.

Below are top 5 essential skills for today's marketing teams:

(NEW) Product Marketing++.  This skill is relatively unchanged. You still need somebody on your team that can develop in-depth product, customer and marketplace understanding.

This person has to be able to come up with clear product messaging, top differentiators -- things that none of your competitors can do and things that matter most to your customers.

This person will have to stay connected to your development team, as well as keep abreast of the market and competitive changes in order to update the core message as necessary.

The skill upgrade (the "++" component) comes in the ability to utilize the web, social media, hashtags, communities, SEO and other web tools to proactively conduct competitive research, industry trends analysis, message A/B testing, etc.


(NEW) Product Journalism and Corporate Reporting.  (f.k.a. Marketing Communications).

Yes, MarComm is dead.  The time of fluffy and meaningless collateral materials is gone.  In today's world, unique and engaging content is the king!   

In my previous blog entry I talked about the heroes and zeroes of content marketing.  You definitely want to be looking for a hero -- somebody that has a very creative way of telling your story.  This person will break down the higher-level message into many engaging, shareable and (when possible) viral product, customer and industry stories.

Once developed, these stories will have to be further modified, enhanced and formatted to fit well into different channels, e.g. blog entries, press releases, TTL+description, social media blurbs, community posts, emails (or series of emails), etc.

In an essence, each story becomes a mini-launch of content that drives your SEO, improves your thought leadership position, engages your prospects and customers, and generates high quality leads.

It took me a while to figure out the core skill set requirements and find the right fit for this position.  I interviewed lots of candidates with marketing communications and product marketing backgrounds, but none of them fit the bill. However, I had a really good luck with finding and hiring people with journalistic experience that have been writing to the audience we are marketing to.


(NEW) SEO Analytics & Messaging.

For many CMOs SEO remains a black box.  Yet, there is no dark magic in using SEO to maximize results and generate revenue.  No shady practice of buying links.  No figuring out how many times a certain keyword has to appear on a page.

There are essentially two important skills here:

1.  Ability to find & utilize tools to find relevant information, like numbers, keywords, content utilization, etc.

2.  Making sense out of these numbers in order to identify trends, provide actionable suggestions on keywords, landing pages, content needs, inbound lead generation opportunities and lead hacks.

The ideal SEO analytics person will have both analytical and creative skills.  There is an increasing number of marketing tools that generate lots of interesting data.  But it takes a skill to translate numbers into actionable suggestions.  For example, Google Analytics gives you tons of data on site visits.  Yet, most of it is buried and is accessible only through custom reporting.  A good SEO analytics person will figure out how to make sense out of this data and find relevant and meaningful trends that could show the flow of most valuable visitors, pages and assets, as well as how they change overtime.

A great SEO analytics person will work with your SEO agency to research the latest trends, explore different tools to give you an edge against competition in defining the most valuable keywords, reference sites, competitive moves, link building and PR opportunities (that your PR team / agency has most likely missed).

Ultimately, 80% of your inbound marketing success depends on the right messaging and whether or not you are focusing on the right keywords.  Use shortcuts here and you can spend millions on your inbound efforts and not get any meaningful results.




Marketing Automation & SFDC Black Belt.  

Marketing automation tools have been around for a while. There are many ways you can use them - from a rudimentary bulk email sending to sophisticated lead scoring, establishing and capturing new types of leads, customer flows, and generating in-depth metrics and powerful dashboards.

Every single one of these areas can get really complex, really quickly.  Yet, it can make a huge difference in your bottom line results.

For example, email marketing is a seemingly simple concept, but it has quite a few complexities that can generate results anywhere from no leads to hundreds of leads.

Some of these factors include the ability to create mobile-friendly content, come up with effective subject lines, pick conversion-friendly calls to action, A/B test 5-10 variables, decide on HTML vs. Text vs. Video, pick the most optimal colors, frequency, days of week and times of the day, figure out how to categorize and break down your database, etc.

There is also lots of data that exists in sales and marketing automation tools.  It is important to understand and establish a regular flow of critical metrics, such as conversion rates (lead to oppty; oppty to deal), conversion times, numbers of touches, lead sources breakdown, lead lifecycles, etc.

It will bring a complete transparency to marketing activities, as well as a clear understanding of which marketing campaigns do work and which don't.  It will allow to shift priorities and marketing budgets to the programs with the best ROI.

For this role, you may want to find a person that has strong skills in analytics, data visualization, presentation, multi-tasking and project management.



Employee vs. Outsourcing.  Project Management.  

Use contractors in as many areas as possible.  Avoid the team bloat and racking up costs that unnecessarily increase your CAC .

However, blindly outsourcing can be a mistake as well.  The key thing is finding a working balance for each of critical marketing micro-skills.

For example, SEO and PPC have a very technical component, as well as creative one.

For the technical component, it is almost impossible to match the depth of a good SEO or PPC agency that spends 100% of their time on learning technical details as well as keeping up with the latest trends and changes from Google.  It is clearly a good idea to outsource that part.

However, no agency is ever going to develop an intimate understanding of your customer base and your industry.  They will never be able to completely nail down your keywords.  You may want to have your SEO and content person (people) working closely with the SEO agency for the best results.

That approach works well with other areas too, such as content creation, graphics design, landing page coding, etc.

Needless to say, the more contractors you have, the harder it is to manage them.  So it is important to have a team member with strong project management skills to keep all the trains moving and on track.  Since the marketing automation person has to be a good project manager too, you may want to combine these two roles in one.


Not a Recipe.  Naturally, each company and industry is different.  There is no one size fits all recipe for building a winning marketing team.  While the skills above are critical and often essential, you will have to assess your specific needs and scale requirements.  That may call for adding other skills and team members, e.g. channel marketing, event coordination, lead qualification, etc.

Cycling: 5 Branding and Social Media Lessons Learned

Cycling. Is. An. Obsession.

Cycling for me is a combination of exploring the nature, endurance training and creative thinking.  It is also about constantly pushing my physical and mental limits.

It started as casual riding on a hybrid bike.  Then it turned into a regular exercise.  It soon progressed into commuting, century and group rides, cyclocross and climbs.  I have ridden over 2,000 miles and climbed 35,000 feet so far this year.  

My cycling obsession got me actively working on myself and my bikes.  It is amazing how much the Web and social media can tell about brands.  Combine that with brick and mortar presence, and it is fairly easy to put together a realistic brand image.

Below are 5 key elements of telling a brand story online, engaging the target audience and growing the customer base with examples from my latest experiences with bike companies.


1.  Product Info On The Web.   In this day and age it is common for almost all companies to have at least a generic web site.  Majority of bike brands are no exception -- they seem to have decent web sites and product pages describing bike details and specifications.  At the surface, however, most of these bikes can look similar. Same frame materials (carbon, aluminum, steel and titanium) and same components (Shimano, SRAM and Campi).

This said, some brands find ways to differentiate themselves by telling a unique story behind a brand or a product.  Video is a great media for that.  For example, the following video from #Specialized tells an informative and credible story:

This story accomplishes a lot.  First, it comes from a product person that has a very similar profile with a target buyer.  He appears very straight forward, honest and passionate.  Second, the story covers everyday usage, feature descriptions and championship pedigree.  It is very down to earth and believable.


2.  Brand Story Over Social Media: Social Media is a great way to tell a brand or a model story.  For example, people that "like" a brand on Facebook are usually very interested in following the brand and finding out what's new on an ongoing basis.  One can't get a much more captive audience for telling a great story that Facebook page followers.  But there has to be a story to be told and it has to be interesting.

On the contrary, one of the worst things to do in that case is to post generic, quick sale-oriented, useless posts with images like this one from #RaleighUSA:

The problem with this post is that there is no story.  It is a blank and a lazy statement.

Raleigh makes decent bikes.  I own one and I like it a lot (photo on the left).  I am confident there are plenty of stories out there that can really connect with people that follow this brand.

For example, why not break down the  post above into a series of 5-10 real life stories about interesting people in these races, their achievements, their struggles, along with some engaging images?




Why not take a page from #Bianchi's book?

They posted a fun photo (on the left) that grabs attention, inspires re-posts and drives people to the brand.

It doesn't scream "buy me", it looks really cool and invites people to explore and experience new and cool things.













Here is another good post on Bianchi's Facebook page that tells a story:

3.  Social Media Posting Frequency and Timing.  It is important to find the right frequency of social media posts to avoid fatiguing the audience with too many of them or getting forgotten with too few.

Timing of the posts is critical as well.  There is only a small window of opportunity for the target audience to notice an entry and get engaged.  You can have the best content at the wrong time and it will be ineffective and may go unnoticed.

A/B testing is really useful in identifying days of the week and times of the day when the message is viewed most and when the audience is really engaged.


4.  Support Via Social Media.  This is a big one.  Once a brand has a social media channel that is open for anyone to post, it is important for the company behind that brand to stay on top of it.  Timely response and useful help is critical.  It can  influence a buying decision, elevate or damage the brand.

For example, Specialized does a fantastic job supporting its community.  Here is a screenshot captured by CanProve tool.

If you read the comments, you can see what an excellent job Specialized did responding to this thread.  BTW, they handled a problem I had with one of my bikes the same way.  This type of response instills confidence that the company stands behind its products and its customers.


Contrast that with a response from Cannondale.  Here is a link and a screenshot from their FB page:

Based on this (and other similar posts) and lack of any response from Cannondale on their own Facebook page, I would never buy a bike from them, especially an expensive one.

The math is simple here.  If Cannondale loses 1 customer per day due to their Facebook screw-ups, with an average bike price of $1,000, their loss is over $350K per year!!!  That number can grow into millions if you factor in the negative word of mouth this creates.


5.  Content Strategy & Company DNA

Like in many other industries, it is critical for bike brands to have a solid content strategy and content / social media manager that oversees online communities and serves as a customer ambassador.

It is a relatively easy task when the company DNA supports it.

However, it is almost an impossible task in a large corporation with many brands, yet no particular passion towards any single one of them, and a focus on revenue and margins only.

Most of people I know want to deal with brands that share their passion for bikes, companies that employ cyclists and are in sync with their customers.  Specialized is a great example of such a company.  Their products, employees and online communications tell a consistent story of excellence and great customer care.

With all this in mind, when the time comes for getting my next bike, Specialized (Roubaix SL4) is definitely going to be my choice:

8 Steps for Creating an Effective Main Message

 It's a familiar situation.  A company or division is formed.  It develops a product, then races to launch.  Somebody throws together an initial message and a web site.  Product launches.  Revenue starts flowing.

It's time to hire a marketing exec and build a team.  Founders emphasize leads and conversion rates.  Good things like SEO, lead nurturing, online marketing get implemented. But one fundamental is often missing.

Sin #1.  Positioning / Main message.  Let's look at the main message from two companies web sites:

-  Zoho

- Workday


Are these accurate and good in the eyes of these companies?  Probably.
Is this the way their customers think?                                      Probably not.
Do these miss a chance to communicate the true value?          Yes!

A strong main messages gives the best opportunity to grab prospect's attention... the right way. It also flows into the rest of messaging, impacting  PPC, SEO and the conversion rate.  In fact, vague main message  results in wasted money and ineffectiveness of marketing campaigns.  This is especially painful for startups with little brand recognition.

Here are examples of effective and clear messages from Pandora and AppAssure:







How do you develop a strong main message?  Here are some key principles:

1.  Grab attention.  It has to be unique enough to grab visitors attention and encourage further browsing.
2.  Differentiate.  Has to communicate at least one unique angle or a customer benefit.
3.  Specific. The benefit has to be specific.  Statements like having "all-in-one," "complete," "best" are often subjective and indicate vendor's point of view.  In the examples above, the word "complete" may have a very different meaning for target customers vs. the vendor.  It can discredit the message.  What I like about the message from AppAssure is that is specific.  "Recover in Minutes" sets a pretty specific expectation.
4.  Believable. It is important to keep the balance between reality and outrageous statements that prospects discount as zealous or exaggerated.
5.  Language.  The message has to be in the language used by target customers, which is often different from the vendor's language.  If your target customer is CIO, too technical of a message may be a mistake.  If you are targeting sysadmins, you may want to be fairly technical and specific.
6.  Easily understandable.  The prospect has to be able to quickly grasp the message.  Don't make them think too long - often people don't have time or desire to do that.  They will just leave the site.
7.  Customer tested.  It is critical to test the main message with a number of customers and prospects before going live.  You can start with a qualitative test via customer conversations.  Then, you can finish with an online survey.
8.  Not Perfect.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  You don't have to spend months on this.  It OK for some internal folks to struggle with it.  It can be work in progress, however you don't want to change it very often.  It just has to be effective.

To summarize, a strong main message could drastically increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and ROI of your marketing spending.  I will discuss the sin #2 in the next Hack Marketing blog entry.

Here is an example of a message that we developed about 6 months ago: www.forgetsecurity.com

How To Generate Leads Without Pushing Products

My friend George owns a mega insurance brokerage, as well as a ridiculous number of apartment buildings in LA.  His success formula is very simple: "I never sell, I help people buy."

His agents are probably the most relaxed group of sales people I have ever met.  They never "close hard." Instead, they spend time understanding prospects' needs, then explain why certain plans would work better.  The conversion ratio is very high.  So is his referral business.  Below are my recommendations on applying this principle to online content strategy execution:

1.  Great Content.   Create relevant and interesting content that helps prospects understanding  and solving their challenges.  Brief, interesting articles / blog entries several times a week can help transforming your site into an industry "water cooler," where people can find news and practical information on their challenges and the ways to solve them.

2.  Content Mix.  Try to have a mix between industry news, industry "guest speaker" opinions / interviews, customer stories (not too product focused), industry event commentaries and "non-marketing articles".  This will provide a variety necessary for visitors to stay interested in keeping coming.

3.  "Non-marketing Articles".  Find a specific challenge that your market really cares about and your products help to solve.  Write about this challenge and best practices for solving it.  Then talk about the approach your company took to solving it and why.  This should be an "approach discussion," and not a product pitch.  Not mentioning the product name often is a good idea at this stage.  At the end of the article, you can provide a link to solutions and tools.  That link will lead to a landing page with product info and a call to action.  This way your article is credible, interesting, and actionable.  And it is not pushing products.

4.  Landing Page.  The landing page picks up the discussion and shows how your product or service solves this specific problem in details.  Later, you can add other features that you think the reader may find interesting.   Finish the page with a call to action, such as a free trial, purchasing options, etc.

5.  Promote The Content.  Since the article is fairly neutral and is not talking about products, you can promote it at industry communities, social media and forums, generating a lot of traffic to your web site that you can turn into leads, opportunities and sales.

To summarize, with this approach your prospects are learning more about their challenges, ways to solve them.  Once they decided on buying your product, they feel like they are making a purchase decision vs. somebody forcing them into buying something they may not need, understand or may not be ready to buy.  So, they are more enthusiastic and excited about their decisions and your products they are buying.