So what is an Optimized Content Strategy?

An Optimized Content Strategy is the art of deliberately producing content, based on keyword phrases that are driving organic search traffic and conversions, that demonstrates an understanding of your target customer’s knowledge acquisition at various stages in their buying cycle. Then delivering that "optimized" content to them in a relevant and compelling way to grow your business by socializing the content through your organization’s social networks. In this context, content can consist of: website content, blogs, press releases, case studies, white papers, how-to guides, emails, news and events, videos – whatever it is your prospects and customers want to consume, in the format they will best be able to consume it, and on the various platforms on the web they may be receptive to consuming the content.

Search Rankings: Optimized Content Strategy

Here are a few reasons why producing and distributing fresh, relevant, optimized content must be part of your marketing strategy, if you want to rank in organic search and be relevant in the social networks.

1. Social Signals
December 2010: both Google and Bing announced that they factor social signals into their organic search algorithms. According to Google, social media and social networking are about relationships and relationships prove relevance and relevance is at the core of organic search. Social signals are the new back links. It is becoming apparent that social signals will continue to rise in importance as the lines between social media and search continue to thin.

Optimized Content Strategy Approach: Distribute your optimized content strategy to your social networks and give your website visitors and content consumers every opportunity to socialize your content including: tweets, re-tweets, Google +1’s, Facebook Likes and Shares, YouTube views and LinkedIn Shares. Of course, you need to build out your social networks too – not just more followers, but each platform offers different content formats and offers an opportunity to spin your message.

2. Google's Panda
March 2011: Google starts penalizing sites for manufactured back links.

Optimized Content Strategy Approach: For long-term success with your SEO and social media strategies build out your back links by producing and distributing relevant fresh content such as optimized press releases and blog posts. Optimize your content for the keywords you know your prospects are using to find you and that they are converting on. Point back links in the press release, blog post or case study to your website, or better yet, a conversion page. Then socialize the content through your social networks including: Google+, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.

3. The Freshness Updates
November 2011: Google launched an algorithm change called the Freshness Update that gives priority to fresh, timely content such as press releases, blogs, news and events.

Optimized Content Strategy Approach: Give Google, and your customers, fresh, relevant, timely optimized content.

Conclusion

So while the fundamentals of organic SEO remain important – such as ensuring you have a strong technical website with keyword optimized pages, good site architecture, and building local search and industry-specific directories for back linking purposes – a real shift is taking place in the on-going approach to traditional SEO. That shift is the creation, publishing and distribution of an optimized content marketing strategy. This is only possible after the base is built - your website - but the conceptual aspects of a content strategy are actually the foundation for your entire Internet Marketing Strategy. And developing the conversations with customers is an ongoing process....

Effective retail marketing addresses customers’ needs. The challenge is that, no matter what you are selling, your customers will have different needs. A pet store sells to owners of cats, dogs, birds, and more. A CD store caters to clientele with vastly different music tastes. So how can one marketing message speak to all their leads?

The answer is, of course, that it can’t. But now technology has made it easier than ever to send many different messages to groups that have similar needs through the use of segmenting and dynamic content.

Segmenting is exactly what it sounds like: breaking your customers up into groups based on certain criteria. This can include everything from basic demographics such as age and family size to psychographics such as interests and attitudes. Then you can use this information to generate dynamic content, which is a fancy way of saying that your content on your website or email will change depending on which segment the lead is in. You can use this to drive your leads to the right content marketing in order to convert that lead into a sale.

One of most effective ways to segment for retail is to identify the buying stage. But how do you identify what buying stage each lead is in?

Ask. It’s unlikely that your customers will know if they are in the Awareness Phase or not, but there are many other questions you can ask that can help you figure that out.

For instance, if you are selling baby products, knowing the age of your customer’s infant can go a long way towards determining her buying stage for particular projects. For example, a parent of a baby who is ready to start solid foods is likely in the Decision Phase for bowls, spoons, and bibs, but may just be entering the Awareness Phase for the next stage in their baby’s development.

Give your customers incentives to answer questions, such as free information or a discount on products. Then you can use the information to tailor their entire experience from your web page to your email marketing campaign.

Mine the data. You can also determine the buying stage by assessing your leads’ past behavior, such as:

• Responses to Emails: Which messages did they open? What links have they clicked on?
• Actions Taken on Your Site: What pages have they visited? How long did they spend on each page?
• Commercial Interactions: Have they purchased from you before? If so, which products and services?

For example, if a customer purchased the first installment in a DVD series and then logged on to your site to give it a 5-star rating, you can use this information to presume that he may be interested in the sequel and send him a targeted email message promoting it.

Expect an Increased Conversion Rate
The use of segmenting and dynamic content takes more time and effort upfront, but the pay-off can be huge. Here are just a few results reported from case studies involving dynamic content:

• Hewlett Packard reported that implementing this strategy for their e-newsletter resulted in 300% higher open rates and 600% higher clickthrough rates.
• Image Beauty reported a 15% increase in opens, 27% lift in read rates, and 41% increase in click through after implementing dynamic content for their email campaigns.
• Savings.com sent deals tailored to subscribers’ preferences via email, resulting in an 88% boost to clickthrough rates.
• Sprint instituted dynamic content in their newsletter and found that the personalized image was the most clicked-through link each month.

By speaking more directly to their customers’ needs, your content marketing will not just reach your audience but move them to take action – resulting in more profit for you.