Let’s stay on top of our marketing game in 2022. First order of the new year – planning goals. When thinking about SEO content marketing in relation to your business goals, it might not be clear how important it is. Yes, good content will take you far, but good SEO-enriched content will take you even further. Companies that fail to tie their content goals to their business goals are what Rand Fishkin, a marketing expert and the co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, calls “one of the biggest problems in marketing.”  

Tying your goals will not only give you more clarity on your specific marketing strategy needs and the tactics to get you there, but will also help you figure out which areas of marketing you may want to invest in. Since marketing is a costly investment, you need to ensure you’re getting the most for what you pay for. According to a marketing report done by Hubspot, in 2021, 63% of marketers planned to increase their budget. To no surprise, SEO was also the second-most prioritized approach. You might be wondering— how can I incorporate SEO to reach my goals? The following tactics will help guide you in the right direction.

Tactic 1: Make Your Headline Engaging

It may seem simple, but it’s surprising to see how frequently content authors miss the mark on the headline of an asset they have invested heavily in – only to make it less appealing for users to click on. In a recent SparkToro webinar led by Rand Fishkin and Amanda Natividad, they advise writing the headline of the content piece first. Headlines are the first negotiation tool to win over your audience. The people that click on your title and stay engaged in the article, are assisting Google in deciding where the content piece will rank in a search result. Start with having the goal of your article in mind. For example, in this article, our goal was to increase traffic from a company’s “decision-makers” by informing them how content marketing and SEO could be worth the investment. Thus, the title, “Score A 2022 SEO Content Marketing Strategy That’ll Meet Your Goals,” would be fitting. 

At Saltwater Collective we recommend including the following in titles:

Remember, headlines are “the face of the business,” so make sure it catches the attention of your audience without being spammy and still balances the importance of integrating the right keywords to drive the success of your SEO campaign like awareness or traffic generation. One of the first things we do at Saltwater is to find keywords that a targeted audience would be searching for. An in-depth keyword analysis will further lead us to a selection of the right keyword based on the goals we’re reaching for.

Tactic 2: Writing Readable SEO Content 

After you have thought of the perfect title, use an outline for your content.  In the SparkToro presentation, Fishkin provides an effective content outline called the hook, line, and sinker. The purpose of this outline is to grab attention, deliver a promise, and leave something for the reader to ponder or take with them. This will help deliver great content while improving SEO ranking.  Below, you will see we even used the hook, line, and sinker in this article.

Hook:

Let’s stay on top of our marketing game in 2022. First order of the new year – planning goals. When thinking about SEO content marketing in relation to your business goals, it might not be clear how important it is. Yes, good content will take you far, but good SEO-enriched content will take you even further. 

Line:

You might be wondering— how can I incorporate SEO to reach my goals? The following tactics will help guide you in the right direction.

Sinker:

Notice what we did here? We used the tips within this blog post to create the post you’re reading.

At Saltwater Collective, we like to use the following method to increase readability:

Tactic 3: Leverage All Page Optimization Opportunities

 In addition to an enticing headline and readable content, the meta title, meta description, and heading tags go hand in hand with winning over your audience. Ensure these elements reflect the style and tone of the heading you worked so hard to craft. At Saltwater Collective we suggest that the meta title tag be descriptive and include your primary keyword in a meaningful way. As for the Meta description tag, make it informative and compelling enough to entice searchers to choose your page above all others. Within the content, use descriptive, relevant, and keyword-rich headings to help break up the page into sections and ensure they are tagged appropriately (H1 – H6).

Tactic 4: Delivering Your SEO Content

Notice what we did here? We used the tips within this blog post to create the post you’re reading. And LOOKEY HERE – our post made its way to the exact audience we wanted – YOU (hopefully). The same can be done with any topic you choose to write about. You can find opportunities to increase content marketing efforts by adding your perspective on specific topics that align with your business goals. This can be done by leveraging tools to create an alert that will send you a notification when a topic you’re interested in is mentioned in the news. We also suggest sharing the piece on social media with others that could build on it. The article, “20 Places You Should Be Sharing Your Content” offers additional content-sharing ideas. 

Tactic 5: Monitor Your Performance

Once you’ve applied this new content marketing strategy and dispersed it to your ideal audience, check the performance of your efforts in relation to the KPIs selected. SEO and content marketing are long-term strategies, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t see immediate results. At Saltwater we like to allow at least two months for search engines to fully interpret changes to a site or new copy added. Based on performance, tweak old content if needed and remember to apply this strategy to new content.  

We hope you see success with this strategy and that next year you find you’re creating even bigger goals! Looking for additional marketing insight? Check out the Saltwater Collective blog for the latest and greatest on industry trends and marketing wisdom. 

Is there a correlation between a marketer’s favorite Christmas song and their preferred marketing strategy? We decided to find out and ran a large national survey asking marketing executives about their favorite songs/strategies. The results may surprise you! Here are some examples of clear correlations between song and strategy.

Jingle Bells 

Easily one of the most repetitive songs of the entire Christmas season, “Jingle Bells” uses few words to get its point across. The keywords of this song are obviously “jingle” and “bells.” What marketing strategy relies on keywords? SEO and keyword marketing, of course! The connection is so simple just like the lyrics of the song! Fans of “Jingle Bells” and search engine optimization know the power of finding a few good words and how to make the most out of them.

All I Want for Christmas is You

This song is specific in its wants: you. That’s all Mariah Carey wants for Christmas. The song feels personally tailored to a very precise individual. That personal touch based on known demographics like geolocation, age, gender, buying interests, political beliefs and whatever other scary things Facebook knows about their users is aligned perfectly with a lookalike audience targeting campaign on the social media platform(s) of their choice. Fans of this song/strategy know the power of clearly identifying their target audience and are willing to reach out directly to that group. 

Last Christmas

We all know the feeling, you get some attention from a special someone, you invest some time in them… only to have them leave you and move on. We could be talking about a romantic interest or a sales interest who visits your site, clicks around a bit and then leaves without buying anything. “Last Christmas” is the song favored by all bitter exes every December just like retargeting ads are perfect for those trying to recapture the attention of a past site visitor. Just look at these lyrics:

“Once bitten and twice shy
I keep my distance
But you still catch my eye
Tell me, baby
Do you recognize me?
Well, it’s been a year”

The lines “do you recognize me/well, it’s been a year” match perfectly with some of the retargeting ads/emails marketers will seed the internet with hoping to rekindle an old flame. Unlike with issues of the heart, remarketers truly do believe in never moving on.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Put that coffee down and repeat after me: smile & dial. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is all about the persistence (a creepy persistence) of a man trying to have his date spend the night. She has excuses as to why she cannot stay and he just serves up rebuttal after rebuttal. Sound familiar? To us, it sounds like old-fashioned direct selling via a rolodex, a phone and an arsenal of rebuttals while a sales manager listens over your shoulder. Cold calling has been labeled an archaic marketing method and considering this song was written in 1949, the match between this song and strategy only grows stronger. In recent years, the song’s lyrics have aroused controversy and with over 200 million Americans joining a federal do not call list, it might be time to put both the song and this strategy out in the cold. Fans of this song are probably really excited to hear about extending their car’s warranty with a stranger.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Inbound marketing aficionados believe that the key to attracting customer eyeballs is by providing copious amounts of valuable content. This strategy has a devoted following who believe it brings people into a sales funnel and turns prospects into customers. These inbound marketing lovers are the same people who love “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” because the song provides tons of content. Just look at all the valuable content in the lyrics:

“… twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords a-leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three french hens, two turtle doves…”

Now of course, any true inbound marketing evangelical knows to make all these drummers, pipers, lords, and more a gated asset. Sure, all visitors get to see the partridge in a pear tree as a teaser but if potential customers want to see what comes next (doves & french hens), they’re going to have to enter their email, first name, and last name just to start. 

For those inbound fanatics who are looking for an inbound marketing-themed Christmas song that matches their favorite carol and espouses the assets needed for a great inbound marketing campaign, we tasked our copywriters to whip something up. So, here are the lyrics to “The Five Assets of Inbound Marketing.” For brevity sake, we will only include the final verse:

“By the last day of the campaign,
their marketing had prepared for me:
48 topical blog posts,
12 email newsletters,
six traffic generation emails,
two responsive landing pages,
and one post-conversion thank-you page.”

If you want the full song, we’re going to need your email address.

OK, so obviously this is a joke but we hope you enjoyed it as a nice reprieve from the constant Christmas songs and marketing strategy buzzwords floating around the air this time of year in your (home) office and in Zoom meetings.

Seriously though, all of us at Saltwater wish you a safe, healthy and festive holiday season.