This presentation is about what I feel is the right way to do content marketing. A strategy first approach is essential to making sure you're not just going from campaign to campaign, instead you're building short-term impact into longer success. 

1. 20STEPS
to drive content
marketing success
with SEO
K E V I N G I B B O N S

2. LET ME
tell you the story
behind this…

3. CONTENT
MARKETING
can be a fantastic way to take
your SEO to the next level...

4. In competitive sectors especially, you need
engaging content and authority link reputation
in order to compete at the top...

5. BUT
Make sure you
do it for the right
reasons...

6. All organisations start
with WHY, but only the
great ones keep their WHY
clear year after year.”
S I M O N S I N E K

7. Your content
marketing strategy,
should start here

8. A content
marketing
strategy isn’t
about one-off
campaigns
It’s about
moving the
needle
where it
really
matters.

9. Give me six hours to
chop down a tree and I
will spend the first four
sharpening the axe.”
A B R A H A M L I N C O L N

10. Strategy - we’re not
ready to jump into
the exciting ideas just
yet, take time to build
your plan of attack...

11. 01
STEP
What
does
success
look like?

12. TRAFFIC
£
DIGITAL PR & SOCIAL
MEDIA COVERAGE
RANKINGS
SOLID ON-SITE SEO &
CONTENT STRATEGY
Don’t fall
into the trap
of getting
excited
about
coverage...
without
having a
clear plan of
how you can
make £!
Clearly
define how
you will
measure
success from
the very
start.
Business
Goals
SEO &
content
marketing
strategy

13. 02
STEP
Get the right
team in place

14. CONTENT
MARKETING IS
BROKEN
DOWN INTO
3 MAIN
CATEGORIES
01
Strategy
02
Creativity
03
Promotion
Being aligned in all 3 of these areas is vital in order
to hit the sweet spot of content marketing results.

15. Make sure you
create an action plan
based on these
3 key pillars of
content marketing:
1
2
3
Strategy - SEO &
content strategy
Creativity -
Outstanding
content creation
Promotion -
Digital PR & social
media coverage

16. 03
STEP
SEO short-term wins - Almost
every site I’ve seen has technical
or on-site issues, that can be
improved to make an impact to
organic performance

17. following technical SEO recommendations
to improve how Google was crawling and
indexing the site.
305%increase in
organic visibility

18. 04
STEP
Competitor
marketplace analysis -
who’s winning,
where and why?

19. Use tools like SearchMetrics for competitive analysis on
organic visibility and market share, and then dig deeper - are
they winning because they have better content?

20. 05
STEP
Audit your existing
content before you
create anything new

21. § What content do you have already?
§ Can you improve it?
§ What worked best / what didn’t?
§ What has generated the most traffic in the past?
§ Where is the social engagement or links coming
from?
§ Your internal site search could be a gold mine!
§ Give feedback to editors on content
performance; social, traffic, links, pageviews
etc…
§ Have you got an offline magazine? Newsletters?

22. 06
STEP
Persona analysis - who
are you targeting at each
step of the journey?

23. Classic Purchase Funnel
AWA R E N E S S
Something sparks an interest – it
meets a need or creates one.
C O N S I D E R AT I O N
People think about it and
ask around
A C T I O N
People buy, join,
share etc.
§ Awareness: Interesting,
engaging, fun, entertaining,
thought leading content
§ Consideration: targeted
content around research
based keywords
§ Action: to help people to buy,
subscribe or navigate back to
what they liked before

24. 07
STEP
Build your content strategy
- think short-term impact,
long-term success...

25. 1. Improve top converting content from your
PPC data, Google Search Console and
analytics.
2. Perform a content gap analysis vs key
competitors - what are you missing out on?
Create it!
3. Focus on narrow topics - putting into
keyword groups that drive the highest
revenue and engagement.
4. Build a seasonalised editorial calendar,
prioritised by value - focusing on topical
subjects.
5. Measure and improve - building your key
learnings back into how you can create
future content.

26. Creativity –
stand out from
the crowd

27. 08
STEP
Solve real problems that
your customers and
target audience face

28. Leverage tools to build insights on what
keywords people are searching for.
This can also be a great way to
secure Google Answer boxes!

29. 09
STEP
Research top performing
content and build data-driven
insights to give a newsworthy
and credible hook

31. 10
STEP
Run content brainstorm
sessions to spark
creative ideas

32. Brainstorms should also be
prepared - start individually,
and then each share ideas as a
group to discuss and refine.
Keep a digital bank of ideas -
not everything is content that
should be created today, but it’s
worth keeping in mind for future
campaigns.

33. 11
STEP
Create the best on-site
content on the internet
for a given topic

34. If you want to rank number one in Google,
you need to deserve to be there.

35. 12
STEP
Leverage creative
campaigns for big content
ideas & PR coverage

36. UK Search Awards 2016
Winner: Best Use of
Search in Travel
§ Strategy: We identified three clear themes to generate
content campaigns to different target influencer
groups: fashion, movies and food.
§ What we did: We developed a series of creative data-
driven guides and ran a blogger event to involve
influencers and engage with Expedia’s target audience.
§ Results: Across our campaigns, we generated
coverage from over 125 authority publishers, with a
significant impact on organic-search-converting
keywords and traffic to key target landing pages.

37. Promotion –
Become an
Authority Within
Your Industry

38. 13
STEP
Get publishers excited
about your content with
digital PR coverage

39. Agreeing an exclusive with a
publisher in advance can
help to get their buy-in.
e.g. “did you see this article on
the dailymail.co.uk? I saw you
did something similar last year,
perhaps you’d like to cover this?”
But make it 100% clear
who the original source is!

40. 14
STEP
Work with influencers to
maximise outreach success

41. For a street food campaign, we
invited top London food bloggers
to our Leather Lane office and gave
them a lunch to remember...
§ Identify who the top publishers and
influencers are within your niche - then
you can learn from:
§ What they’re doing
§ What type of content they like
§ What they don’t like
§ Who their original sources are (who
influences the influencers)

42. 15
STEP
Build influencer profiles to
build credibility & attract
publisher writing slots

43. § We built a content strategy focused around
key topics, hiring nutritionists & building
up their writing profiles to provide
authority content.
§ We secured coverage from 93+ authority
health and fitness publishers, with regular
writing slots on HuffPost, Men’s Fitness and
Cosmo (also featured in magazine).
§ This generated a 144% YoY increase in
organic search traffic!

44. 16
STEP
Build an engaged
audience of potential
customers

45. 01 Identify – who is
your target
audience and
where can you
find them?
02 Acquire – acquiring
traffic to your
content, across
marketing channels.
03 Nurture –
provide content
your readers
love, in a content
hub environment
you control.
04 Engage – by providing
consistently great
content, the goal to
continually create
outstanding &
engaging content.
05 Capture – provide
useful content to
build your audience
of email subscribers,
social followers and
re-targeting lists.
06 Grow – build real
loyalty and
advocacy with your
readers. Increasing
sales down the
customer journey.

46. 17
STEP
Push content
further with paid
amplification to get
the ball rolling

47. Paid social can build credibility and get you get
in front of publishers - the popularity of this post
we ran for Bloom & Wild helped us to open doors to
secure digital PR coverage for an Easter campaign.

48. Measure –
prove your work
has been a big
success

49. 18
STEP
Report on success
to show real impact
and business value

50. TRAFFIC
£
DIGITAL PR & SOCIAL
MEDIA COVERAGE
RANKINGS
SOLID ON-SITE SEO &
CONTENT STRATEGY
Visualise the revenue impact to organic traffic by
building key insight reports in Tableau
Demonstrate monthly and year-on-year
organic search growth.
Measure and report on organic
keywords and groupings.
Showcase your digital PR
coverage and metrics.
Reduce SEO errors and
improve indexing.

51. 19
STEP
Build upon your
successes and learn
from the failures to
recycle content into
fresh new ideas

52. NOW
you’re ready to
get started…

53. 20
STEP
Your blueprint to
SEO & content
marketing success

54. A N A L Y S I S R E S U L T S
Persona analysis
TechnicalSEO audit & implementation
Competitor marketplaceanalysis
Editorialcalendar roadmap
Ideation
(Research/insights &
brainstorming)
Promotion
(Digital PR, influencer
outreach, audience
building & paid
amplification)
Creativity
(On-site content
& creative
campaigns)
C O N T E N T M A R K E T I N G
S T R A T E G Y
C R E A T I V I T Y &
P R O M O T I O N
Insight Implementation Performance
Benchmarking
goals & KPIs
Organic traffic
& new
customer
acquisition
Content audit and gap analysis

55. Thank you
for listening.
K E V I N G I B B O N S
kgibbons@blueglass.com
www.blueglass.co.uk
@kevgibbo