Kate Morris will be speaking on the “Hardcore SEO” panel at SearchFest 2014 which will take place on February 28th, 2014 in Portland, Oregon. For more information and to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I got started in search over 10 years ago when working at a marketing firm. A client wanted to do PPC and I was assigned the job of figuring that out. I got my degree in Marketing with a focus on advertising and customer relationship development. I am currently a principal consultant at Distilled in Seattle. I work more on the marketing and technical side of search today helping clients large and small with their growth online.
2) The title of the session is “Hardcore SEO”. Is that a euphemism for “Hardcore Marketing” or is there still a hardcore technical aspect to the work?
Let me just say, I thought the same thing when I saw the title of the session and laughed when I saw your question. After giggling a bit, I will say that there is still a hardcore technical aspect to the work, but I will also admit it’s more rare to use those skills. Five years ago, I was coding sites and making changes for clients. I was fixing the things that search engines didn’t like, but much has changed. Web developers have gotten better about using things like flash and hiding everything in javascript and search engines have gotten better at dealing with most technical items. Our industry has been growing up and evolving, so it’s not the same anymore. There is still need for highly technical people, but not as much as before.
3) Clearly “Content Marketing” is a hot topic. How can one best align content creation and SEO goals?
The user and their needs/wants are the intersection of SEO and content. Content and SEO goals should be the same actually and that all circles around that user. I think the best way to tackle content marketing is to start with two things: business goals and user information. Taking the time to understand who your user is and what is important to the success of your business should give you a direction for content development. That content should have a direct impact on SEO goals.
For example, let’s say I work for a company that sells beauty products like hand lotion. Our company goal for 2014 is to increase sales of a new product, fairy dust lotion to $2 million. Our users are a mixture of personas like little girls playing dress up, party going college students, and drag queens. I would spend time researching each of those groups and write content centered at them. The content should drive more traffic and if the page is set up to influence sales (CRO!), sales will go up for that line as well as traffic and ranking as people share that content.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.