SEO and Content Marketing For Startups

3 Free Google Tools

Passion drives startups. Passion is an important fuel, but selling someone something is important too. Google provides three FREE tools every startup should know and use: Keyword Tool (in Adwords), Google Analytics and Google Trends.

Google Adwords

"Our new widget will blow the widget business up," I can hear an entrepreneurial team thinking. Attempts to scare a market into submission rarely work. Seduction almost always works. Keywords are instruments of seduction.

Google's keyword tool inside of adwords shows monthly global and local search demand. I like to compare search demand with documents returned (something you can get by simply doing a search on the keyword and noting how many documents Google finds). Dividing demand by return provides a valuable "efficiency" ratio.

Efficiency means are we likely to get a return if we invest in content for a keyword or key phrase. If a keyword is a "read ocean" of competition where sharks are so hungry they eat each other best to NOTE the situation and avoid creating content directed at those keys.

Many websites fight amongst themselves for nothing. When you factor DEMAND in you are less likely to get into meaningless turf wars, wars you fight with competitors where no customer cares. Efficiency can also show "blue oceans" or keywords that have more searches and less competition. Blue oceans are the holy grail of keyword research.

Everything you learn is valuable. Knowing where red oceans are helps focus a startup's content marketing to ROI. Knowing how existing customers speak (and so think) about the market can help a smart startup change the keywords, demand and thinking of an entire business vertical.

Google Analytics

How is your website performing? What is happening when customers search for and arrive at a startup's website? Google Analytics tags a startup's web pages providing valuable information about what pages are working or not. Startups should look to build their list of subscribers FIRST. Many startups pitch their service first and building a list is a distant second thought. Good luck with that.

Few things startups create are so immediately needed they can be sold immediately. Startups have a limited track record and may not be fully understood. Better to lower the bar and ask visitors to join an email list as the PRIMARY Call To Action.

Once in your list use PERSONAS and SEGMENTS to organize email "drip campaigns" to help develop a relationship, make offers and make the sale. Search traffic floats on the wind. When a visitor joins your email marketing chances for conversion go up.

Google Analytics will help you know if keywords you are targeting bring converting traffic. Startups should create 5 to 7 Key Performance Indicators such as Unique Traffic, Time On Site and Pages Viewed to gauge website performance. I like to use those "basic" metrics to create more advanced metrics too.

I like to know my conversion % (visits / goals completed), my conversion by pages (pageviews / goals completed) and know my 80 / 20 points. 20% of most web traffic controls 80% of everything (clicks, conversions, money), so knowing where those 80 / 20 points are is important.

If your website has 100 pages, 20 will be the most important. Knowing which 20 is a KEY piece of startup information. You can speculate on WHY until the cows come home. Better to TEST assumptions and beat your control. DON'T try to rehabilitate laggard pages. Double down on your winners instead as time spent with winners teaches you more faster than attempting to rehabilitate laggards.

I can't tell you exactly what your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be because they vary by vertical and marketing goals. Watch some KPIs daily and trend critical KPIs weekly, monthly and quarterly.

Google Trends

Google Trends creates overviews of traffic by keyword and keyword phrase. When I saw this graph for "content curation" I created a "Curation Contest":

Google Trends can show how one phrase or keyword compares to another (in demand over time). Use Google Trends to shape startup marketing and tune language.

Made To Stick

Highly recommend all startups buy a copy of Made To Stick by the Heath Brothers. There is art and science involved in communicating new ideas. Learning how to dress a NEW idea inside of trusted clothes is art. Watching the metrics to know if your marketing is doing its job is science. The Heather brothers cover art and science in ways sure to help startups succeed. 

Technical SEO

Sartups need to understand "technical SEO" too. Search engine spiders use keywords and social signals to "know" and categorize a web page. If that sentence makes it sound like your startup needs the approval of others via social signals it was on purpose. You do!

Creating content to achieve social shares is another blog post for another time, but here are a few simple rules to follow when pluming your content:

• Title is most important meta data so be sure to use keywords in your titles.
• Each page title should be UNIQUE.
• Put most important keywords that are not your name to the left (name you should get so put to far right).
• Write SPECIFIC and try to avoid I, Me, And, This, That and other phrases spiders can't understand (see my note on SEO writing).
• Use Keywords in your copy, but don't STUFF.
• Make sure title, body coy and alt text for images are aligned but not spammy (don't repeat over and over).
• Make sure your navigation is keyword dense (because those links do get used over and over).
• Only use one H1 (heading) tag, and do use H2 subheads too (you can have more than one).

I could literally write another 10,000 words on technical SEO, but those tips will get you started. Startups have different SEO needs than established companies. Many startups, especially in the mobile space think they don't need SEO and content marketing. Many startups fail too. If you want to be a successful startup your chances increase if you know a little bit about content marketing and SEO

SEO and the Wiki-ization of Marketing

The New SEO

Google had to do something. They were drowning in User Generated Content (UGC) as Eric Schmidt shared at the Techonomy Conference in 2010 when he so famously said:

Every 2 days we create as much content as from the down of man until the year 2003.
former Google CEO Eric Schmidt

How one would know such a thing is impenetrably complex, but Schmidt's statement sounds true. Schmidt went on to identify the culprit - UGC from social networks.

Panda To The Rescue

Google's brilliant engineer Navneet Panda solved Google's drowning with a new and much faster machine learning algorithm. Google's Panda and Penguin algorithm changes have done nothing short of shift Internet marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to a new and as yet unrecognizable place.

This "New SEO" with its stress on engagement and claims supported by social signals creates an Internet marketing makeover - the Wiki-ization of marketing.

The Wiki-ization of Marketing has many important dimensions including:

• Claims NOT supported by social signals should not be made.
• Marketers must LISTEN at least as well as they talk.
• Authenticity and sharing rule.
• A strong (i.e. high Klout scores) tribe of supporters is a must. 
• When "the mob" repeats something it is TRUE. 
• Not repeated claims are FALSE.
• False claims do more damage than good. 
• User Generated Content has never been more important. 
• Creating a "multi-author" ecosystem is important. 

This last bullet, the need for multiple authors and UGC, may seem remote. A comment is a social signal. A Facebook share is a social signal. A GPlus share is a social signal. A review is a social signal of the first order. Marketers must play for, reward and request confirming social signals. 

The New Ask

Marketers ask for things. We ask for attention and money. This "new ask" is less LOOK AT ME and more "help us to help you". When marketers LISTEN and curate customer and brand advocate language, ideas and comments marketing becomes aligned to the web. This "alignment" is the wiki-ization of marketing. Our conversations must be supported or we marketers are better off not having them.

"We can say whatever we want," is a natural marketing Type A reaction. No you can't. Google considers unsupported claims SPAM. Spam enough unsupported claims and you could be docked (i.e. lose listings and traffic). Content unsupported by social signals is another form of SPAM in this new wiki-ization of marketing.

The new ask is seeking the magic 1% willing to contribute, advocate and share. The 1:10:89 Rule says 1% of your website's visitors will contribute UGC, 10% will vote on content created by the 1% and 89% ride for free. Internet marketing is about the 11% of visitors willing to contribute.

Increasing engagement so MORE than 11% contribute is an important marketing mission. Panda's stress on website heuristics, those previously plebeian metrics such as average time on a website, pages viewed and the number of return visitors become paramount when engagement is prized. 

It's not hard to see why the Google wants engagement. When customers spend time on your website after a search Google gets warm and fuzzy. They spent LESS MONEY to accomplish their prime directive - RELEVANCE. Google's algorithm must do the impossible and path random web searches to their appropriate and relevant destination by picking relevance from an infinite group of web pages (billions and billions of pages and more every second of every day as Schmidt noted).   

The New Give

Marketing's "wiki-ization" changes the GIVE too. Where once we marketers "gave" products in exchange for money now we must give CONTENT in exchange for ATTENTION before money changes hands. There is a good reason content marketing is all the rage. In a connected social and mobile search marketing time digital content is arguably the most important content any marketing team creates.

Imagine your company's new widget or service WITHOUT a mention on your website or someone's website. What would be the half life of such a widget? I'm speaking at Product Camp RTP tomorrow and will argue that a "digital good" starts earlier (than any other product or service), is the cheapest form of marketing since "early and ugly" online marketing insures much needed advocacy and creates the tribe of supporters required to be successful.

The New Give kills "lecture marketing". Push marketing is all but over. Push marketing, the relentless barnstorming of interrupting broadcast media, can't afford its own weight. Even if you HAD the money for such absurd marketing spending money on such foolishness as one sided interruptions would do more HARM than GOOD. 

Time and the Wiki-ization of Marketing

Father Time is something every marketer FORGETS. Time is part of Google's algorithm. Your website is expected to grow. Growth is modeled. Grow at 5x your modeled rate and your website looks like it is spamming. Google will send a human editor to discover what is going on. . 

Nonprofits who hold an annual gala can be hurt in the gala's first year because so much traffic coming so quick looks suspicious. ASK for social support BEFORE the gala, DURING the gala and AFTER the gala. Think of social support, those LIKES and SHARES your content generates, as an asbestos blanket putting out potential "spam" fires.

When you know your website is about to violate past modeled performance such as when having an event or gala create #hashtags and curate social support. "Call attention to who tweeted, sharing the best social media content and thank contributors. When your content meets THEIR content balance results.

If your content and claims get out ahead of your social support don't panic. It pays to have a substantial network of highly influential supporters. Being able to contact and explain an evolving situation to a tribe of influential advocates can act as an asbestos blanket too.

Benefits from creating and maintaining a tribe of brand advocates, something requiring careful planning, don't stop with SEO. In a crisis your company, brands and services is best defended BY SOMEONE ELSE. When a supportive tribe of unpaid advocates stands up and sets records straight PR crises can be successfully reined in. 

Marketing's New Social Reality

Hearing remnants of the "Social media marketing has no ROI," meme so prevalent a few years ago now sounds dangerous. All marketing is social now. Market without social signals and you are spamming. Market without a supportive tribe of brand advocates invites danger. When danger comes if YOU defend yourself you are spamming.

Marketers must get past social media marketing's need for ROI explanation. Once Google changed their algorithm based on Navneet Panda's machine learning Internet marketing became inextricably social. Denying social's primacy now eliminates your company, product and service from search marketing.

In an era when any company's DIGITAL content is arguably more important than actual goods and services not understanding how completely social media marketing impacts everything can be fatal and unrecoverable. On the positive side, understanding how SOCIAL your marketing must be or become can create competitive advantage.

The next time someone snorts at a meeting, folds their arms and plays, "Devil's Advocate" about social media marketing tell them about the wiki-zation of marketing. After sharing this story about marketing's undeniably SOCIAL present if they persist and are in positions of power above you RUN.

Leaving the building immediately may feel impetuous, but each day you exist in an environment whose primary marketing tactic is denial personal branding is damaged. Blog about the truth as you experience it, make sure you are use #GPlus and play for social signals whether your management team understands the wiki-ization of marketing or not and your personal brand will thrive.

Post Publication Note
As if to prove the point about G+ a great tribe of Internet marketers broke out an awesome conversation about SEO and the Wiki-ization of Marketing well before sunrise on a Saturday morning. Join the conversation on Martin W. Smith on G+. Thanks to the great marketers who were up early with me this Saturday :).M

Related Atlantic BT Posts

The Rocker and Brand Doctor and GIVE and ASK At TED

The Commons Revolution

David Amerland What If We Had A New System To Value Goods and Services

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Internet Marketing A Hero's Journey

Is Your Marketing A Hero's Journey

I am the hero of my life. You are the hero of yours. Marketers who speak to us as if THEY should be the hero of our lives miss the mark. In our social and connected times any company's ability to form a quest and include their "tribe" will win.

These points hit home reading my friend entrepreneur Byron White's Creative Content Marketing: Making Your Customer The Hero post on his Writer's Network site:

A successful content marketing campaign for your SMB should, in effect, make your business an adventure and your customer the hero of that adventure!

How To Make Customers Heroes

"Experiences," said Will Dean the CEO of Tough Mudder recently, "are the new luxury goods". In a social connected mobile era customers crave experiences especially experiences that promote the "I am the hero of my life" idea. Tough Mudder and Spartan Races testify to how much today's customers crave challenge and love having "luxury" experiences that help tell their HERO story.

Ways To Make Your Customers Heroes Online

• Gamification (nothing like social kudos to reinforce a heroic journey). 
• Curate and Use UGC (User Generated Content). 
• Contests (who has the best Tough Mudder Pinterest board etc...). 
• Leaderboards (part of gamification, but a constant reminder that a game is going on NOW). 

Online's disadvantage is it isn't tactile. Tough Mudder, a race run through mud and electric shocks, will win as an "in the world" experience. Internet marketing teams can close the gap between real life touch and feel experience and the virtual world with some simple tips.

Website Design Tips To Promote Experiences

• Copy that uses all five senses. 
• Images that provide a sense of touch, taste, sound, smell and sight.
• Content from other "like me" supporters. 
• Simple, clear navigation (confusion destroys the illusion of a "hero reality"). 

Making Customers Hero Examples

REI.comREI uses specific language to speak to "hero" and "comfort" simultaneously in the copy for their Perception Sit On Top Kyak (words in yellow are heroic or comfort based):

Share the fun with a friend! Now with comfortable padded seats, the Perception Tribe 13.5 tandem sit-on-top kayak offers plenty of room for 2 paddlers and the gear you need to make a memorable day.

• Ample storage and a speedy ride creates a popular choice for large kayakers; open cockpit is user-friendly, even for beginners
• 3-seat configuration offers room for 2 adults and a small child or 4-legged friend; middle seat is positioned to accommodate a solo paddler
• Versatile design performs well on flatwater and slow-moving rivers, but don't hesitate to take the Tribe 13.5 into surf

Another way to read REI's copy is older, less in shape Kyakers this is the one for you. To write that copy straight out would diminish the heroic side of the product. Don't do that :).

Woot.com
Woot is the master storyteller online. Here is the copy for their Hisense 40K360 40" TV:

Andrew?

Everything's more exciting on television. Even you!

Andrew awoke at 7am, as he always did, poured himself a bowl of cereal, and turned on the television to check the weather. The only problem was that when he dialed in the number for the weather channel, what he saw was not the forecast but himself, staring back.
He clicked around. The news was the news, the kids channel was cartoons, the cooking channel showed a woman putting fruit into a blender. Only the weather channel served as a reflection. 

"What the deuce," mumbled both Andrews. He leaned in for a closer look. It was like a mirror, except for a few minor differences. On the screen, he had a few gray hairs, a minor scar on his left cheek, an extra wrinkle below his right eye. His pajamas and the room behind him, exactly the same. 

Andrew felt a cold feeling run up his spine. "I gotta get out of here," said he and his reflection. He backed out of the room slowly, towards the door out of his apartment. Without turning from the screen, he reached behind and turned the knob, waited a moment, and then slipped out.
Where he went from there isn't important. 

Because this isn't a write-up about Andrew. It's a write-up about his television, which was a Hisense 40" 1080p LED HDTV, and it worked great, aside from the minor quirk outlined above, and honestly we don't foresee this happening with the one you buy. 

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Share your examples of heroic copy, presentation or gamification and we will curate them in.

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If you have ideas and want to help develop ScentTrail Marketing leave a comment or do one of these:

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