I am working with a client who has a large health and wellness company. I'm in charge of the marketing strategy, which includes lots of potential landing pages, individual product and services promotions, and other sales events that might require SEO keyword-rankings along with other marketing strategies, etc.
I could just have our web development agency develop the site in wordpress (using their preferred themes and skins) without thinking about SEO issues up front, but I do not want to do that. I want to make sure that we have a strong platform for organic search into the future... not only for the website itself, but also have the capability to organically rank individual landing pages for various promotions and specials...
I would like for someone to help us navigate this as we build the foundation. I distinctly feel like there are some blindspots I'm not aware of and I also feel that I'm not sure what questions really need to be asked in order to build the overall integrated marketing strategy that takes into account organic searches.
All help is appreciated. I am interested in calling someone in early February, so this is a good way to introduce me to your solutions.
You're throwing the word strategy too much I think and referring to it wrong.
-Wordpress is a great platform to create websites, and is hardly a negative as far as SEO goes. Although it is a good thing that you realize the possible implications and postponed development until you have a plan in place - hence the strategy being thrown too much, it seems you are figuring things out thus you cannot have a strategy in place, I think what you might have are goals, common mistake though.
-SEO is not all about keyword and their "ranking" in Google.
It has a lot more to do with general search marketing, the ranking of a website or individual pages within a website are calculated based on words, backlinks, social media uploads from third parties (users), the general location of the business, the areas Google knows you cover, amount of content within a page, how many links are coming out of each page, meta tags, a lot goes into SEO. That's why professionals always say that once you get started in working on your SEO it becomes a non-stop maintenance effort.
-Also creating landing pages alone won't necessarily improve your search and ranking because essentially those landing pages themselves would need to also have considerable ranking. If you use something like Instapages.com you wont have native tagging/keyword options for Google to crawl.
what some us do is allocate server spaces that essentially create and generate simple websites backlinking to each other, when you open them they are very plain and ugly but the crawlers see only how they each support each other and relevant to whatever search term and how they all backlink one way or another to the main website page you want to improve. Content will always be king, so keep that in mind you want completely annexed websites linking to the pages, you want people sharing that from all regions on their blogs and on their social networks, you want retweets and clicks, you might also want ppc... Think of it as an ecosystem (SEO) with each organism (pages/links/relevance/virality,etc) depending on each other but also each organism (pages/links/relevance/virality,etc) grow from something, its own source of life (your strategy/steps,measurable actions,rejections,risk aversion/embracement,etc.) creating that larger ecosystem (SEO).
Whatever you do, just keep in mind that wanting to create landing pages, improve seo, have individual products and service promotions doesn't make it a strategy. You have a set of goals. I have made a career in stepping into companies after other contractors/consultants have almost killed a business with unmeasurable effort, fluff words and high level jargon that leave business owners confused and with a halo effect on all other consultants. Strategy does not come easy and is unfortunately wrongly referenced. Once you figure out what goals you have (which you have) then you go into each goal and create a set of steps, paths, considerations, rules, expectations, rules for leadership to follow,etc. so that you can achieve those goals, know when to be risky and when not to, when resources must be allocated and how much, when to remove, reduce or add features or efforts... There is more to strategy than listing goals. You are off the the right start though, but don't consider that a strategy. From what you wrote, you just have goals. :)
My name is Humberto Valle, international strategist and cross functional business developer. I have a masters in business, focus on finance and have worked with amazing companies of all sizes in many industries, if you have any further questions please feel free to reach out. Also don't fall for your own 'ego', there are many other 'experts' that just pass opinion from something they read once or heard other say or went through once themselves and now share their opinions. There are a lot of good ones here and out there, but there are also a lot of bad ones. Clarity for example allows us 'experts' to generate free VIP links with discounts, but some use it as a way to make it look like they have more paid calls than they actually d but in reality they are just free links given to friends or clients on their own business, etc. If an expert is truly an expert they should have no problem answering your basic questions for free over the messaging feature. Dig deeper in conversation prior to paying for any consultation, extend the same to your clients. :)
We have a great many SEO experts here on Clarity - but I'll call out one in particular for your case: Sujan Patel. He's done almost 100 calls here on Clarity - and has rave reviews. My personal interactions with him have always been amazing and insightful.
His profile link is below:
https://clarity.fm/sujanpatel
Best of luck on getting a solid SEO foundation laid for your client!
If you're developing a website, this is the time to get an SEO involved. In fact, the process should largely be driven from their keyword and audience research. Have the SEO team put together the navigation structure so you know exactly how the site will lay out. It's also a good idea to get the content developed for each page before you even begin with the site wire frames and design. The content needs will determine much about how the design works.
You'll want the SEO team to review all wire frames and comps just to provide their input to make sure all necessary elements are in place. Finally, they should also review the code to make sure the site is search and mobile friendly.
I am nowhere near a SEO Expert but I have worked very closely with one and I can tell you for sure SEO doesn't mean what it use to 4-5 years ago.
Please check this article - http://entm.ag/1O5dTax
You need to stop thinking SEO and start thinking much broader and out of the box. Like Humberto very well said here "Think of it as an ecosystem".
Think about Social Media Optimization (SMO), Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and so on.
It's not about how many pages of content you create for google to index. People don't have time to read so Instead you should think about how little but high quality content you create that users love to read and share. It could be a Video or Infographics.
You can schedule a free 30 mins call and I can give you some insights about SMO and CRO which will help you create quality landing pages. As far as my background you can check my profile, in nutshell we recently released a CRO Landing Page Template, so please check it out http://bit.ly/1PlzZSr
I have been helping healthcare companies for many years in marketing, business development, startup, and business growth. The key is to make every page user friendly and packed with really useful information. No junk. Use lots of articles related to your products and services, but make them really informational and worth something. Quality is the King of SEO.
I am not trying to sell you on calling me. Really, I am pretty busy with my businesses and consulting. However, I need more info before I could have a greater impact in helping you.
Ask, Ask, Ask, then Ask again.
Bonus:
Here is $10,000 worth of information for free and in a nutshell.
Concentrate on the 3 M's. There are actually 7, but 3 will do for now. These are Market, Message, and Media. They come in that order.
Who is your target market (customer, clients, buyers, users, etc.)?
Tailor your laser focused message for this target market.
What is the best media mix to get your message to that market?
Here's what you do...first, make it an offer that is so incredible that they cannot resist. Secondly, do all the work for them. Make it so easy to make the purchase now that they can do it virtually without effort. Thirdly, give them an incentive to act right now. Fourthly, offer an almost unbelievable guarantee. Fifth, offer a bonus for acting now. There are many other incredible steps, but these steps should help the novice to the professional sell anything.
Whether you are selling B2B or B2C, you have to focus on selling to only one person. You can actually sell to one person at a time while selling to millions at a time. They are one and the same. Don't get off track, what we call digital marketing selling is just selling in print. And that has not changed since Cluade Hopkins wrote "Scientific Advertising." Really long before he wrote the book.
The secret to success: I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with some of the biggest names in business, celebrities, actors, entrepreneurs, business people, and companies from startup to billion dollar operations. The number one reason for their success is doing what they know and love while doing it in new, creative, and innovative ways.
Ask, Ask, Ask. Have thick skin and learn from each "mistake." In a short while, the market will tell you what you need to do and who and what you need to ask. But get started now even if that just means asking a contact on LinkedIn.
While you are thinking, think big and think of something at least 1% better, newer, or different. And being cheaper is not a winning strategy.
Make decisions quickly and change decisions slowly..unless you are actually going off a cliff.
Remember these two 11 letter words...persistence and consistency. They are two of the most important tools ever invented.
Treat everybody you talk to and everybody you meet (including yourself) like each is your number one million dollar customer.
Bootstrap when possible and reasonable. Read "How To Get Rich" by Felix Dennis. Or better yet just remember the camel's nose in the tent story.
However, sometimes you just need to make a deal.
Listen, in any business you have to take some chances and some risks. Make sure you don't need a license and go for it. Remember, timid business people have skinny kids. Paraphrased from Zig Ziglar.
Best of luck,
Take massive action and never give up.
Michael
Michael Irvin, MBA, RN
Categorizing your potential audiences correctly from the start will give you a good foundation. From my perspective as a health insurance company, there are essentially four audiences we deal with and you could consider. Patient - The individual using or benefiting directly from the service. Provider - The entity delivering or perhaps also benefiting from the service. Purchaser - The entity ultimately covering the or absorbing the cost of the service, which may not be the patient but could be an employer or other entity such as government. Finally, the payer which pays for the services such as an insurance company, but is not the ultimate purchaser. So in summary, think about the strategy in terms of Patient, Provider, Purchaser and Payer and what each might want/need.Happy to speak more if you are interested.
