SEM KWR SEO Plan Template for 2017

Having a coherent SEO monthly plan is all part of running a successful SEM strategy for volume (hits) and value (cost/revenue).

This free PDF resource provides an SEO strategy plan template that both looks to the results of 2016 and helps to look forward into 2017 with a monthly breakdown.

To fill it out, I suggest you get a pen -- yes, a real pen -- and write on a printed copy: preferably expanded to A3 and stuck on your wall near where you work.

Actual physical writing helps with personal engagement and accountability; and the higher quality the pen, the more successful the process will be.

(Time magazine did a great piece on the benefits of hand writing, available on their web site.)

The PDF is divided into the following sections:

• Traffic - three core statistics about organic traffic;
• Content - three important things you should have tracked in 2016;
• Activity - three sets of guidelines that look to the past and inform the future (2017);
• Keyword Calendar - 12 months of stats relating to ongoing SEO/SEM activities.

The idea is to follow startegic management theory and use the past to inform the furture whilst developing new insights from managing and applying your resources (keywords and content).

Creating Your SEO Plan of Action for 2017

Here's how to best fill out the sections of the SEO plan:

2016 Organic Traffic

These are three important numbers:

• raw number of visits - how many eyes on your pages;
• number of return visits - how many came back for more information;
• bounce rate - how many clicked away without engaging.

These numbers will have different meanings for different people. For example, this site has a low bounce rate (high engagement) and reasonably high return visit rate. Traffic, though, is considered to be low -- by comparison to other blogs.

However, other client's sites are the opposite: mainly because they are keyed towards getting lots of visitors to take immediate action, which takes them straight out of the site and off to the order page provided by their partners!

2016 Content Statistics

Knowing the numbers is linked to:

• Entry Pages - how people get into your site;
• Exit Pages - where they leave;
• Keyword Phrases - how they find your site.

The PDF suggests listing the Top 5 in each category, but feel free to add more. The point is to know whether the site is delivering the value that you expect.

If you are an affiliate for (say) 5 products, then you'd expect the "landing pages" to list high, as well as the pages that take the consumer away to a third party order page.

You could consider swapping the idea of an "Exit Page" for an "Exit Link", if that's the case.

2017 Activity Plan

This section starts to bridge 2016 into 2017 by looking at activities that worked, those that didn't and new ones that should help to improve your SEM either by volume or value.

If you catch yourself doing something that you did last year 'just because', then you should probably swap that task for one from the third column.

On the other hand, if you feel that you are neglecting the first column, then take moment each week to address that.

This section is both an action plan, and a reminder!

2017 Keyword Calendar

The Calendar is an attempt to help you plan tour SEO and keyword research activities for the year ahead. Those with multiple sites, will need multiple PDFs: that's okay -- print as many as you need!

(I have one per client; numbers vary, but by the end of the year, I'm wallpapering with these things!)

Each month, you want to note down a new Root Keyword to create content for or research around.

Set these out by quarter if need be, but try to at least have an idea of what should go in each month: use the Keyword Planner and publishing schedules from niche magazines (for example) to pick out seasonal trends.

Then, each month note the number of Items presented, how much traffic was generated, and what the Return Visit percentage was. Also, note the Estimated Earnings for that month, from that site.

It's to be hoped that the annual trend is upwards, or some course correction will be in order!

The free PDF can be downloaded on this special SEO, SEM and KWR planning page. If you find it useful, be sure to share this resource using the social share bar below.

Keyword Research for Hotel SEO Strategy

With direct bookings both more profitable and becoming more frequent, it pays to have a keyword research and SEO strategy specifically tailored to the hospitality industry. There are two drivers for this:

• Search engines become smarter and attuned to local search;
• Consumers becoming more comfortable booking online.

While sites like TripAdvisor and Expedia are also key to a hotel's success and cannot be ignored, more and more consumers are turning to Google first to find their perfect getaway location.

Along with some excellent advice in the Hospitality Net article "How to Jumpstart Your Hotel's Direct Bookings Through Search Engine Marketing" there are some surprising figures to back this up. According to the article 61% of potential customers come through a search engine with a 20% year on year increase in relevant searches performed on Google.

This would indicate that SEO is going to be a deciding factor in a hotel's long-term direct booking success.

Hotel SEO Strategy 

While it is entirely possible to reduce the SEO process through concentrating on "7 Steps for Your Small Business Survival" (NuWireInvestor web site) including local search, social engagement and creating attractive, valuable content, many experts seem to gloss over the keyword research strategy as part of the marketing process.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) both rely heavily on an integrated keyword management strategy, and so it is surprising that it doesn't seem to get the emphasis that it richly deserves.

For example: while a long tail keyword research policy can help identify a good starting point for SEO and SEM activities, unless it becomes part of a test, measure and adjust cycle the research will always be second hand.

Keywords are the communication conduit between your target market and your hospitality offering, so properly researching them ought to be a priority: and conducted by a keyword research specialist rather than consigned to being merely part of the SEO/SEM process.

Keyword Research for Hotels

For those who have the time and confidence to go it alone, here are a few salient tips from the trenches of keyword research strategy.

Firstly, local search is highly important. Search engines can not only deal with hyper specific local searches (such as "hotel near <landmark> in <city>") but also there is a rise of the "near me" syndrome: as in "hotel near me".

However, this last is also very location-specific, so the key takeaway here has to be to remember to use geographic targeting when researching keyword usage using a tool such as the Keyword Planner.

There is a big difference between a search conducted locally ("hotel near me") and a search conducted for a location ("hotel near new york grand central station"), and this difference needs to be reflected in the SEO/SEM strategy and in the keyword research.

Next, review local restaurants, landmarks, museums, events and places of local interest in order to generate useful, valuable, attractive content, but make sure you concentrate on those that qualify in one of two ways:

• high search volume
• long-tail low-traffic low-competition

The first is obvious; it takes very little effort to create a piece of content highly optimised towards a very popular attraction, and if it has a very high number of requests you may find yourself with a (small) piece of a large traffic pie.

The second might not be so obvious. However, if your hotel is the only one where a visitor from out of town can get a great idea of what the event (restaurant, attraction, landmark, etc.) has to offer, then you will naturally score highly and attract high conversion rates.

Finally, remember to go for social sharing and engagement with other local businesses. For example, consider writing a piece that is highly optimised towards your chosen long tail keywords (i.e. "hotel near conference center in miami with sauna" -- I made that up, by the way!) and encouraging other local businesses to publish it, and link out to your site from theirs.

At the same time, use social keyword research to find out what conversations people are having about hotels and facilities in your area, and then jump in on the conversations with opinion (and links to your hotel booking facility) as well as using that keyword research to fuel content creation.

All of this takes time, granted, but is worth the extra effort. While The Keyword Coach has some very reasonable plans (you can take us for a test drive for $5!), there's no reason why computer literate, internet savvy hoteliers with time on their hands can't use the information in our keyword research and SEO tutorials to make a start on their own.

Just remember: Research, Test, Track, Adjust.

Strategic Management + Search Engine Marketing = Strategic Keyword Marketing

Today, I'm coining a phrase: strategic keyword marketing.

It might not be the catchiest catch-phrase out there, but understanding it is vital to your business; be it online, offline or hybrid. At least, that's my position: and I'll do my best to explain it to you in the next few hundred words.

It all starts with marketing, and as discussed in "The Marketing Book" by Michael Baker and Susan Hart (an excellent read if you really want to get into the guts of modern marketing), the fact that a lot of people miss out on the opportunities offered by marketing.

The reason is that marketing is one of those iceberg topics, where we all see the tip, and try to base our marketing around that, without a deeper understanding of 75% of what goes into a proper marketing plan.

For the record, the iceberg idea, as applied to marketing, is presented by Baker & Hart on page 5 in the very first chapter What is Marketing? It's that important.

They also identify three items at the tip:

• Advertising
• Promotions
• PR

These are the obvious external signs of a marketing campaign. A campaign.

As consumers, that's all we every really see: the adverts, the money off promotions and the PR stunts or press releases.

The rest, all of which has been vital in getting the organisation to the point at which they can construct adverts, promotions and manage the PR around a product launch, is below the marketing iceberg's waterline.

Those activities are aligned with their strategic marketing efforts, and consumers never really see them.

Strategic Marketing

Any organisation, from a one person blogger pushing products as an affiliate, through to international, multi-tiered behemoths that have become something of a hallmark of globalisation need to have some kind of strategy.

There are many strategies, and this isn't the place to go into them all.

Everything from a low-price, high volume discount through to a high price, low volume, quality differentiated product line represents a strategy. And, all aspects of a business need to align with a central strategy, that is usually linked to a core vision and mission statement.

In "Applied Strategic Marketing", by du Plessis, Jooste and Strydom, the field of strategic management (which pulls together all the aspects of a strategy) is merged with that of marketing to give a marketer's viewpoint of the development of strategy.

Specifically of interest is how the below-the-waterline stuff relates to an ongoing strategy. This includes:

• Selling
• Market Testing
• Innovation & New Product Development
• Identification of Marketing Opportunities
• Market Intelligence
• Researching Customer's Needs

(List adapted from Baker & Hart)

All of the above need to be aligned in order to derive competitive advantage from the marketing activity. Advertising, Promotions and PR are important, too, but the business is won or lost on the basis of the other stuff.

So, what does this mean for modern business?

Search Engine Marketing

One of the most popular ways for dynamic, modern businesses to satisfy the tip of the iceberg is by engaging in search engine marketing, and there are any number of SEO and search engine marketing books to choose from that will help you construct an entirely online-biased business view.

That's okay, as far as it goes: but it doesn't really deal with the strategy behind the advertising or promotional push.

Current books deal with the nuts and bolts. How to get ranked. What keyword phrases to target. Where to try and get back-links from for best effect. How to create content, where to post it, and, importantly, how to get your message across.

This is all important stuff, but worthless if you get the underlying product, market and customer needs wrong.

Enter strategic keyword marketing.

Strategic Keyword Marketing

The one thing that ties this all together is keyword research. But, on its own, KWR isn't enough; it's just a series of tools and methods to work out what the target market is trying to communicate to us, the entrepreneurs.

Keywords are a means of communication. We use them to communicate with search engines, to tell them what we're about. Our customers use them to communicate with search engines to tell them what they want.

Our advertising copy uses keywords to impress on the customer the value of our products.

Keywords, trigger words, words that allow us to imply buyer intent: these are all important things to research, track, and make part of an integrated online, offline, or hybrid marketing strategy.

Even if you don't have a web site, strategic keyword marketing is vital for the insights that it gives you into your market, and your future markets.

All aspects of the marketing iceberg can be influenced and enhanced by a proper understanding of strategic keyword marketing.

As more and more people use online means to communicate, research, and reveal their wants, needs, and desires, it is up to us to make sure that we tap into this cheap, reliable business and market intelligence resource.

That's why I'm writing the book on Strategic Keyword Marketing.

To get on the list, and receive the discounted version of the book, just join The Keyword Coach private mastermind group on Facebook. Let's unlock your web site's true potential as a strategic marketing asset.

(And make you some real money at the same time!)