SEM and SEO Front and Centre: A Review
I have arrived at Week 9 of my mini degree. SEM and SEO were at the centre of my studies this week, as the CXL Institute instructors dove into very specific facets of each arena. The SEM course titled “Maximising Your Audience with PPC Campaigns” put the spotlight on leveraging audiences in SEM, looking at various strategies and cross-channel opportunities. Additionally, the course on SEO titled “SEO Driven Editorial Calendar” took a closer look at how to conduct topic and keyword research to build out a more SEO-dedicated editorial calendar.
These instructors all did an excellent job at breaking down, in detail, the step by step process for implementing these tactics and explaining the reasonings behind them. I’m pleased to know I will be completing this mini degree with a holistic skillset on the concepts and pragmatic actions behind SEO and SEM, which are two arenas I have been eager to expand on.
The PPC Podcast
Michelle Morgan and Joe Martinez hosted the course on SEM in a podcast-type format, while also sharing screen shares from time to time to explain certain concept-applications.
Their first class looked at using existing tools to find audiences. These tools included the Google Display Network, Google Analytics and other Social Media insights tools such as LinkedIn.
Michelle and Joe explained how to uncover audience interests through affinity and in-market analyses, revealing what users are searching for/are demonstrating clear purchasing intent for. Also, they dove into the power of segmenting to better understand who your audience is and how they behave.
Crafting strong retargeting audiences was next, where they explain key things to consider when looking to re-market. For one, customising settings in Google Ads is essential as the default cookie length is set to 90 days which is simply too long for most business’s buying journeys.
A valuable takeaway is decreasing the “Call-to-Action Price” over three 30 day increments. An example would be when retargeting at 30 days, the CTA might say: “Request a Demo.” At 60 days however, you soften the CTA to something more educational like “Download the Guide.” Finally at 90 days, you simply ask them to “Watch a Video.”
The course went onto expand on valuable nuances around defining a strong retargeting audience, including a wide array of prompts to keep top-of-mind, as well as how to use exclusion and expansion wisely. Also, they emphasised how critical having a good audience size is as well as not over-segmenting in order to capture valuable patterns.
A couple of these tactics in particular included specific exclusion segments such as those visiting your Careers page and very fast bounces also known as fat thumbs in mobile. Moreover on the expansion side, we should remember the value of feeding good data to our tools in order for them to yield the most accurate Lookalike audiences (audiences who look like our customers).
The course on Intent-based Audiences for Remarketing was one of my favourites. Michelle and Joe delved into Google Tag Manager’s ability to capture real user intent by pushing event tags to Google Analytics, as well as YouTube video triggers. They praised Simo Ahava as the GTM King, as they shared some of his teachings.
Ultimately, Intent-based audiences can help marketers craft better messaging based on the actions they have previously taken. This allows for more direct contact with the user, leading to an enhanced experience while moving them through the funnel.
Another great lesson was on Building Funnels with Audiences, which is meant to get people to Search in the first place prior to moving them down through it. This lesson reiterated a lot of their previous teachings, such as matching ad copy to user intent, as well as higher-level concepts such as what type of assets are best for each stage of the funnel.
I particularly enjoyed Michelle’s elaboration on B2B funnels. She explained how to dislodge users who are stuck in the funnel by retargeting them to Request a Demo, or to nurture them through an Engagement campaign (send users to content they haven’t seen, and not a conversion-based campaign but rather an awareness/educational one). She also shared ways to move leads from Opportunity to Closing by retargeting them with custom-messaging or offering them something they can’t resist i.e. buy now and enjoy 25% off your first 2 months.
The final lesson in this course was on leveraging audiences across channels. This takes into account a holistic view of what Digital Marketing is, and how to find your audience where they are. Also, we can’t ignore the strengths and weaknesses of each channel and should consider these when crafting our strategy.
Step-by-Step SEO Content
The second course I took was with Daniel Shure, who taught “SEO Driven Editorial Calendar.” Here, he explained a step-by-step process on how to develop content that ranks without link-building, networking etc. He said that this method has been designed to allow you to publish content that ranks in SERP.
His first class focused on brainstorming seed topics, where he drew a mind-map on the board with a broad term in the middle. As you expand the mind-map, you get a big catalogue of ideas. The next is to look at Content Competitors, which are other sites that publish content related to your topics, but aren’t competitors in product/service.
Daniel suggests adding two Chrome extensions to begin the keyword research, including Keyword Tool and the Moz bar. He also recommends other platforms throughout the course, including big players such as BuzzSumo, Moz and SEMRush.
As he explained how to conduct this research step-by-step, he noted that we shouldn’t analyse or critique the terms we pull, but rather what we’re aiming for is to compile a broad list to get started with. Daniel also shared how to use his Editorial Calendar spreadsheet where he measures/ranks different criteria in order to gauge which topics to target. This includes Effort to Create, Topic Saturation in SERP, Annual/Monthly Traffic Potential, Ranking Gaps, and more.
The ultimate goal of this research is to attain a strong priority list of topics, typically long-tail, to the research in-depth and achieve high quality content. Once we have this list, we can then map out the best structures and formats for these content pieces.
Daniel explained each one of these types of content, and what can be done with each. I’ll provide a brief summary.
- Subject: This is very broad and shows no real intent. Usually this type of topic requires a definition to start i.e. “content marketing”
- Topic/subject list: This, on the other hand, does show intent. These pieces are usually centred around “tips, examples, skills” etc.
- How To/Process: This is typically a step-by-step article on how to achieve a specific goal. Daniel suggests avoiding any extra fluff and getting right to the how-to.
- Versus: This allows you to do a comparison of two or three topics, and elaborate on the pros and cons for each. Some examples may include Silver vs. Gold or VPN vs. Proxy.
- Yes/No: While these questions can be answered in the featured snippet, your content can then follow the why/background behind that answer i.e. “is butter dairy?”
Daniel wrapped up the course by sharing a content check-list which converges all of the best practices in SEO-dedicated content. From copywriting to links to titles and more, this checklist will certainly become a fixture to my future content marketing projects.
He recommends about 10 hours per SEO-dedicated content. This is meant to ensure the highest quality writing, including research, formatting and more. Then, we must consider the amount of resources at our disposal, and based on this, aim for 50% of our entire content mix to be SEO-dedicated content.
