THE ART TO THE
START OF:
CONTENT optimisation

Hello!I am Grant Merriel
- SEO for 8+ Years
- Have had thousands of pieces of content written
- Had clients ranking on the first page with only content
updates
- Run and operate multiple businesses

TALK
Why are you listening to me

1.
EASY TO FIND CONTENT
IDEAS & OPTIMISATION
RELEVANCE

2.
INCREASE RANKINGSMain Keywords & Long Tail Keywords

3.
BETTER
ENGAGEMENT WITH
YOUR AUDIENCE

4.
LEARN FROM THE
EXPERTS

INPUT
Lets get to know each other

“We are goingto pull
back the curtain on our
internal processes
around SEOContent”
*We do not do this for lowcompetition
keywords or blog posts

HARDEST
Why is SEO Content Optimisation so
Hard?

41%of content marketers say they are generating return on
investment from their content
http://www.stateofinbound.com/
ONLY

Content Is
NOT
Sexy
NOBODY
Talks about
It!
Content is
significantly
Undervalued

51%
Of people found the #1
Content Challenge to be:
“Lack of Time /
Bandwidth to
create content”
http://www.slideshare.net/hschulze/b2b-content-
marketing-report-40688285

DON’T WORRY!You won’t need to master these concets or what they mean or
the conceptsbehind them (yet) … as I will show you how to find
the solution to all of these issues in just a few easy steps

Competitor
Benchmarking
Stealing what your
competitors havedone
Semantic
Phrases
Crafting phrases forbetter
interpretation
Entity Salience
People, places, associations,
etc that areguiltyby
association
On-Page Links
Mastering internal and
external links from you content
Synonyms
Substitute, replacement,
alternative, stand-in content
Value Add
Tactics and concepts that
deservehonourablementions

COMPETITOR
Stealing what your competitors
have done

We can understand a lot
about what impacts our
keywords rankings by
getting data from our
competitors

No competitive advantagefollowing everyone
else but serious issues if the basics are missed

WHY?
Google have alreadyshown us
what pages and websites they find
most relevant (we just need to find
the reasons)

77%
Of marketers will increase
content production in the
next 12 months
http://www.slideshare.net/hschulze/b2b-content-
marketing-report-40688285
77%
23%
INCREASE CONTENT
PRODUCTION
YES NO

HOW TO –
Analysing Text
1. http://textalyser.net/
2. Put in your competitors URL's (that
are already ranking)
3. Benchmark keyword density against
the top 10
4. Benchmark content length against
the top 10
5. ALWAYS sit at the lower end of the
'density' within the rankings

HOW TO –
Structure
1. http://www.browseo.net/
2. Open your competitors URL's (that are
already ranking)
3. Review the heading text
4. Review image alt tags
5. Review amount of images
6. Review content structure

IDEA
If data is inconclusive,
expand your search to
websites also ranking
for closely related
keywords

ON-PAGE
Mastering internal and external links
from you content

× EXTERNAL: Further
reading and authorities
× INTERNAL: Promoting
our pages for keyword
targeting

Business owners hate the thought of loosing
traffic by linking out to other sites or navigating
visitors to pages that do not produce money -
so, we can build our authority from this

WHY?
Expresses depth of knowledge and
associates your content with
authoritativenetworks

67%
of B2B buyers rely more on
content to research and
make B2B purchasing
decisions than they did a
year ago
http://www.demandgenreport.com/industry-
resources/research/3141-2015-content-preferences-
survey-buyers-value-content-packages-interactive-
content-.html

Place your screenshot here
HOW TO –
Books/Author
1. http://www.amazon.com/
2. Filter by amount of 'Reviews’
3. Use books in informational categories
4. Select only paperback / hard cover
(no Kindle)
5. Find books with ‘Look inside’ option
6. Reference Quotes / Authors / Books /
etc
7. NOTE: Can also use Google Books, if
needed

HOW TO –
Industry Expert
1. http://www.google.com/
2. Search Operator:
[keyword] + inurl:blog
3. Ignore all ranking competitors
4. Reference highly valuable blogs

HOW TO –
Research PAPER
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/
2. Search your keyword / search term
3. Scroll to references section
4. Find any research papers,
government funded research, etc
5. NOTE: If you cannot find, look on other
relative wikipediapages

HOW TO –
Authorities
1. http://www.google.com/
2. Search Operator: [keyword] + site:.gov
3. Search Operator: [keyword] + site:.org
4. Search Operator: [keyword] + site:.edu
5. Ignore all ranking competitors
6. Reference highly valuable blogs

NOTE
We typically have 7 links in our
content:
• 3 Internal Links
• 4 External Links

IDEA
Always try to reference
location / country
relative websites

IDEA
Do not only link out to
the same pages. Use
synonyms, semantic
phrases, entities, etc to
expand your search

SEMANTIC
Crafting phrases for better
interpretation

Search engines look into the real
meaning of words within a search,
when they are placed together
Example Search: REDSKIN
× AmericanIndian
× Football Team
× Sunburn
× Lollies

SEO’s using their OWN experience and
interpretation of a keywordto create Semantic
Phrases, instead of databacked research

WHY?
If search engines misinterpret the
real meaning of the your keywords,
you will never rank to the website
and contents full potential

Search engines look into the real
meaning of words within a search,
when they are placed together
Example Search: REDSKIN
× AmericanIndian
× Football Team
× Sunburn
× Lollies

HOW TO –
LSI Research
1. Latent semantic index (finding
relationships between terms)
2. http://lsigraph.com/
3. or http://semantic-link.com/
4. Enter your keyword / phrase
5. List words and phrases that
consistently appear
6. NOTE: Focus on phrasesthat support
your keywords

HOW TO –
WikipEdia
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/
2. Search your keyword / phrase
3. Open the keyword
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page to the
“Related Links box”
5. NOTE: If these do not appear, look at
'pages linking to this page to help

HOW TO –
Keyword Plan
1. https://adwords.google.com/Keyword
Planner
2. Select “Search for new keywords”
3. Input and search your keyword /
phrases
4. Look for keywords that can be
interpreted the same as your keyword

IDEA
Want to get serious
about Semantic
Phrases?
http://searchwilderness.c
om/semantic-keyword-
research/

WORD
Substitute, replacement,
alternative, stand-in content

Synonyms are words that can be
used to replaceother words without
loosing the original meaning
EXAMPLE: CHICKENCOOP
× Chook house
× Chickenpen
× Chickentractor
× Chook enclosure

No searcher references to the same productthe
same way

WHY?
The English language has the most
‘Synonyms’ out of any language

70%
Of all searches use
Synonyms, as outlined by
Google
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/helping-
computers-understand-language.html

HOW TO –
Wikipedia
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/
2. Search your keyword / phrase
3. Open the keyword page
4. In sidebar, under 'tools', click 'What
links here'
5. Hide 'transclusions'
6. Hide 'links'
7. All that is left are 'redirects’
8. NOTE: Sometimes "External
tools: Show redirectsonly" works

HOW TO –
Thesaurus
1. http://thesaurus.com/
2. http://www.visualthesaurus.com/
3. Enter each word of the keyword / key
phrase separately
4. Find synonyms and merge them into
phrases

IDEA
For specific phrases
WolframAlpha can also
be used to assist
further

ENTITY
Words that are guilty by association

Extracting different ‘entities’ within
content to weigh the relevance to a
topic (keyword)
EXAMPLE: OBAMAChookhouse
× Republican Party
× FEMA
× Boehner

SEO’s typically only look at the information
relevant to the targeted keywords– not highly
relevant people, places, agencies, reports,
associations, etc

WHY?
This was what Search Engines
implemented to improve on the
original form of relevancy scoring
(keyword base relevancy)

MOST
IMPORTANT!
Top SEO’s consistently
refer to this as the most
important patents Google
ever released relating to
content writing
http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.
google.com/en//pubs/archive/42235.pdf

HOW TO –
Wikimindmap
1. http://www.wikimindmap.org/
2. Enter the keyword / phrase
3. Expand out all keyareas
4. Look for relevant entities / people /
associations
5. NOTE: Use synonyms to find more
Entities

HOW TO –
Wikipedia
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/
2. Search your keyword / phrase
3. Open the keyword page
4. Click the 'pages that link to this page'
in the left side bar
5. Only view people, agencies, reports,
associations, etc that are relative
entities
6. NOTE: Use synonyms to further
expand your research

IDEA
Look through Youtube
and competitor
websites to find other
entities that they
reference in their
content

ADDING
Tactics that deservehonourable
mentions

1.
ADD VALUE BY
BEING INFORMATIVE

2.
SEARCHES INTENT× Products: Price, compare, for sale, etc
× Service: Expert, experience, quote

3.
UNIQUE,
INTERACTIVE &
RELEVANT IMAGES

4.
SAVE RESEARCH:
LINK BUILDING & BLOG
POSTS

THANKS!You can find me at:
@grantmerriel
grant@businessprocess.com

Special thanks to all thepeople who madeand released theseawesomeresources for free:
× Presentation templatebySlidesCarnival
× Photographs byStartupstockphotos