January 26, 2011

SEO is a Discipline, Not a Project

By Stephen Laliberte

I just read an article on emediavitals.com titled "SEO in B2B: A miniature case study". The article describes an editorial project which incorporates SEO into a website during a conversion to a new publishing platform.

The author describes in detail how to determine which keywords are relevant to the franchise and how to use that information to tag articles.  The editorial team went through years of archives tagging content. 

I decided to validate the author's work and visited  their website to see if I could see the SEO.

Over the years we have worked with nearly a dozen SEO consulting firms who performed SEO evaluations of our publisher's sites.  I am a bit of an SEO skeptic and am  leery about many of the SEO consultants because they rarely provide any measurable metrics that indicate that their recommended changes have any impact on SEO.  I am also a statistical listener.  When I hear the same recommendations from more than two experts, I give it some credibility.  If I hear it from half a dozen and then see it work, I will consider including it in the iProduction platform

One of the simple items that all experts recommend is placing keywords in the URLs of content.

So I went to the author's site www.csonline.com to do a quick check.  On the home page, I noticed 6 or 7 content containers.  I checked each of the containers to see if the links had keywords in the URLs.  The following were my findings:

News: yes
Most Read: yes
Columnists: no
White papers: no
Videos: no
Web Seminars: no

It was interesting to observe that the only content that had SEO was the articles.  You would think that a white paper or web seminar that directly produces lead generation revenue would be worthy of SEO.

The author is correct, SEO is important.  It is so important that it should become a discipline and not just a project. 

How do you turn a project into a discipline?

The key is to place it into the normal routine of the editor/information producer in a way that minimizes effort.  Try to include it as part of the daily routine and make sure it only takes a minute or two.  Then you train, monitor, correct, and reward.

I recently got a dog.  My wife, Jodi, has had dogs all of her life and by virtue of our 33 year marriage, I have been around dogs for a long time.  They were always her dogs.  They almost never came when I called.  When I got Romeo, I purposed to establish a relationship with him and train him.

Jodi signed us up for some training classes.  The classes forced me to train him one night a week.  I would then  travel and miss a few training sessions.  We fell behind right away.  I was approaching Romeo's training like a project: I would attend a few classes, complete the tasks in the project such as sit, stay, and come.  Then he would be trained.  It did not work.

I decided to take some of my own advice and pick a time in my day that would only cost me a few minutes where I could train and reinforce behavior.  My solution was to modify my morning routine.  First thing in the morning I feed the cats.  This takes about 5 minutes.  I have a problem because as soon as I put the food out, Romeo sneaks up and raids the cats and steals the food.  That was my opportunity.  I would kill two birds with one stone.  When I fed the cats, I would get Romeo and put him under sit, stay control.  I reward him with a release to go get the cats!  I make him wait until the cats were about 90% done eating.  This was 2- 5 minutes.  When I turned him loose, he loved it.  After a week, I saw a general change in his behavior.  At other times in the day he was very responsive to my command to come, site, and stay.

How can we do this with editors and marketers who are handling content on the web?

First, make it easy.  Set an easy requirement.  Here are some examples that are effective:

1. Pick 3 keywords and put them in the URL of the asset and in the meta keyword of the page.  I use the term "asset" because the "DISIPLINE" is to do it everywhere; articles, blogs, white papers, web seminars, videos, and jobs.
2. Place the title of the article in the URL and keywords.
3. Place the editorial taxonomy tagging into the URL and keywords.  Most publishers are now organizing their sites by topic.  These topics are your editorial taxonomy.  Chances are the people handling the content are already tagging.  The discipline is to also place this information into the SEO components of the page.

You may be able to make this easier if you have a talented IT group that can develop functionality so that if you enter or pick keywords, the publishing platform will automatically place them in the correct places.

Watch, Measure, and Reward

No discipline can be established without accountability.  You need to make this accountable or it will never happen.  Who in your organization will watch this?  One challenge is that you probably have different departments handling the content.  This is probably the situation at IDG.  The editorial group may have the discipline, but marketing and custom media may not.  You should drive this accountability into multiple departments, if needed.

The check is very simple.  Once a week, mouse over links on the website.  If you find one that does not have keywords in the URL, the handler of that content is not disciplined.  Let them know.

You Can Measure SEO

The purpose of SEO is to make your content more available to readers who use search engines.  The objective is to bring more readers to your website.  What is it you want them to do when they get to your website?  If you are determining  your conversion architecture, you want them to register, opt into an e-newsletter, perform a lead generation, or buy something.  Each of these audience interactions can track the source of the reader's visit.

On the iProduction platform, whenever a reader visits your website from a search, the reader is tagged with a Source Type of WEB and a source code that indicates which search engine they used and what month and year that arrived.  This data is saved with each audience interaction. 

From iProduction's MailZeen circulation reporting you can  easily determine in a given month the number of people who registered or opted in to a list from each of the search engines.

From Fulfillment sales reporting, you can see how many lead generations and purchases originated from SEO.

If you baseline these reports before you establish your discipline and then watch the numbers monthly as you establish the discipline, you will see the interactions that originate from SEO move north.  This becomes the cat food treat that results from the discipline.  Your lists will grow.  The more people you send editorial e-newsletters, the more page views you get.  Your volume of sales leads will grow.  Your sales will grow.

These are important metrics:

1. Number of new registrations
2. Number of opt ins to editorial e-newsletters
3. Number of lead generations
4. Number of subscription sales
5. Number of Pay per view sales

You need to watch these carefully with the same diligence that you watch your print circulations.  Not only can you measure the effectiveness of your SEO, but you can also measure the effectiveness of all your marketing and circulation building efforts.  Just like you do in print.

Discipline in Internet Circulation Metrics

That's going to take another article!