A big part of helping companies with Search Engine Optimization and content based marketing efforts is to assess the assets available. Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) involving multiple media, file types and distribution/search channels isn’t going to be efficient or effective unless there’s a firm grasp of a company’s available media and content production processes.
When TopRank works with prospective companies that want to take advantage of search and content based marketing, we go through a discovery process with them.
Here are a few of the questions companies should ask themselves to determine readiness for optimizing digital assets:
Resources:
- Is there a person or committee that “owns” the search marketing or social media marketing initiative?
- What departments, business units, cost centers and approval entities will be involved with the SEO program? Social Media?
- What internal resources are available within your company for support and implementation of search/social media marketing initiatives? Web strategist, web developer(s), programmer(s), copywriter(s), in-house SEO(s), web analyst(s), etc.
Content:
- Besides product/service content, what are the primary categories/types of online content produced?
- How many press releases are distributed each month and through what distribution channels?
- Is there a blog? If so, what is the URL and what is it’s purpose?
- Is a podcast or any other type of audio recording published?
- Is there a print or email newsletter? If so, how often is it published and in what format? Is it archived to the web? Private or public? URL?
- Does anyone in the company author articles pertaining to your company and/or industry and if so, how often? In what publications?
- Is there an online newsroom? Is past media coverage archived?
- Are webinars, PowerPoint, PDF or any MS Word docs published to the web?
- Are there aggregated resources such as FAQs, Knowledgebase or archived customer support resources posted online?
- Are there job listings, events, articles, technical specifications, partner or syndicated content published on the company web site?
- Is there a user generated content component of your web site? Profiles, comments, reviews, content sharing: text, image, video or audio?
- Are images related to the business, products or services published on a regular basis? Ex: candids, product shots, staff, collateral, direct mail
- Does the company produce or outsource the creation of video content for online or offline use?
- Are there marketing partners or coop marketing resources that include media such as images or video that can be re-purposed?
- Is there an affiliate program?
Understanding what content is currently available for use and repurposing as well as planned content will assist the tactical plan for a proper Search Engine Optimization strategy. Many companies have substantial digital assets to work with and are simply unaware of how to optimize and promote them for search marketing benefit. Many other companies are not in the “content publishing” business per se, and have little more than their product catalog or service descriptions available online and no plans to produce additional content.
To be successful with marketing online and especially on the social web, companies need to adopt a “publisher” perspective and commit to creating content that will help better connect with and inform both prospects and customers. Applying keyword optimization to purposeful content will best serve consumers as well as search engines.
The (loaded) question is, “Do companies figure out how to move from limited content production to publisher on their own or should they enlist the help of a consultant that’s “been there, done that” and developed processes?”
What Content Marketing resource questions would you add to this list?
