This document discusses strategies for SEO success in 2015 and beyond. It emphasizes optimizing for users rather than solely focusing on rankings. Key areas of focus include making sites mobile-friendly, understanding keyword themes and intent, building brands through quality content and links, and ensuring sites meet basic technical standards. Successful link building requires identifying popular content on authority sites and creating valuable resources like tools, templates and ebooks to generate links.

1. SEO has evolved

2. SEO in 2015
Tactics that move the needle

3. – Rand Fishkin, MOZ
“SEO is no longer just a job
title, it has become part of
everyone’s job description”

4. – Sujan Patel
“SEO is F*#%ing hard, don’t
let your business rely solely
on it”

5. Areas of Focus
• Optimize for Humans
• Mobile Friendly
• Keyword Themes
• Build Your Brand
• Quality Links & Content
• The Basics

6. Who am I?
• I’ve been doing Digital
Marketing for over 12 years
• I’ve helped 137 companies
successfully with SEO
• I am the co-founder of
ContentMarketer.io and the
VP of Marketing at When I
Work
• In 2007 I ranked one of my
clients for the hardest
keyword in the industry:
“mesothelioma”
• I’ve experienced 27 Google
algorithm updates
• I’m a regular contributor at
Inc., Forbes, WSJ, &

7. Optimize for
Humans

8. Human
Optimization• Optimize Page Titles & Meta Descriptions for
CTR
• Fill Content Gaps
• Write Copy for Conversions instead of SEO
• Help people get the job done
• Focus less on rankings and more on user experience

9. Mobile Friendly

10. Create a responsive or dedicated website for mobile
devices

11. Optimize Site
Speed
• Optimize your images
• Cache your database
• Keep plugins to a minimum
• Lazy loading
47% of users expect your web
page to load in under 2 seconds

12. Understand the difference between
desktop and mobile keyword research
Desktop Search for Pizza
• Pizza
• Pizza dough
• Incredible pizza
• Pizza sauce recipe
Mobile Search for Pizza
• Pizza restaurant
• Pizza delivery
• Pizza shop
• Nearest pizza

13. Focus on Keyword
ThemesOur customers refer to When I Work in many different ways:
• Scheduling Software
• Staffing Software
• Work Force Management
• Scheduling App
• Scheduler
• Employee Scheduling Software

14. Play to the long
tail

15. Focus on Keyword
Intent

16. Learn who your customers really are & what they want through surveys
(qualaroo.com), talking to the sales & support teams or talking to your customers
directly (trade shows).

17. Build Your Brand

18. Tie your brand to a
keyword

19. Forget links, build brand mentions

20. Link Building
That Still Works

21. – Sujan Patel
“Link building is hard f*#%ing
work. Put in the time & use the
right tools and you’ll be
successful…don’t
half-ass it.”

22. Quality Link
Building• Steal your competitors links with tools like ahrefs.com & steal links to their latest content
with tools like buzzsumo.com & majestic.com
• We monitor popular content weekly and have 1 person dedicated to hunting down links and doing outreach.
Use ContentMarketer.io (my tool) for outreach.
• Get interviewed on blogs & podcasts using podbay.fm
• For my growth hacking ebook 100daysofgrowth.com I used Buzz Sumo to find everywhere Sean Ellis and
Morgan Brown (top growth hackers) were interviewed and had an intern pitch me. As a result I received 33
links and 500+ ebook sales .
• Round Up Posts. Use: “intitle:roundup” + [keyword] and pitch your latest and greatest
content
• wheniwork.com/blog gets included on 7-10 round up post a month. At first we did a lot of outreach to be
included on a round up post. Now that we’re on round up bloggers’ radar and the links keep coming in.
• Guest Posts still work but focus on authority sites/publications
• wheniwork.com receives over 75 links & 5000 visits a month from our guest posting efforts.

23. Build Links with 10x
Content
34 inbound links
wheniwork.com
2,015 inbound links
quicksprout.com

24. Build a tool. Our Excel template has 97 links, receives 12,500
visitors a month and is responsible for over ~50 new
customers a month.

25. Create a resource. Our HR templates has received 7000 visitors and 49 quality
links in just four weeks. We came up with from looking at customer support logs
+ keyword research.

26. Create a ebook. Our management hacks ebook has been
downloaded over 10,000 times and has over 130 links.

27. The Basics
• Simple URL Structure
• Keywords in Page Title, H1 & H2
• Focus your meta description on CTR (think of it as ad
texts)
• Use Schema/Rich Snippets
• Internal Linking & Proper Sitemap (HTML & XML)
• Minimize 404 pages & HTML errors