CXL Institute Growth Marketing Minidegree review Part 13

Understanding SEO driven editorial calendar, Youtube Ads and Technical SEO.

Source: marketoonist

This penultimate week was filled with learning about so many things that seemed so basic from the outside. However, when you dwell in the details with some of the best instructors, you realise that these pieces are filled with some great insights and beautiful results.

In this article, I will talk briefly about my learning from this weeks tracks.

A) SEO driven editorial calendar:

The track was taught by Dan Shure from Evolving SEO and covered how to increase traffic through blog content and articles. Unlike some other courses this one did not focus on linking, content density or keyword stuffing but basic logical stuff on finding, creating and scaling engaging content. So let’s look at some of the top learnings:

1. Brainstorm and Research for topics: Start with finding the seed topics which are broad ideas related to your product or service. Use google and SEMrush and Moz to find more seed topics. A great way to start here also is through brainstorming within the team. You then need to find the search volume, business value, knowledge required for producing the content. Once you rate these and find content competitors for your content you will end up with such a list.

Seed topic list

Content competitor list

2. Prioritize your topics for specific ones: After the seed topics are listed, pick any out of it and try to go deep with the specific ones. Try to add certain action items with the seed topic to land on such specific ones. You can also use tools like Keywords everywhere and Moz to know what more people are searching for. Once you have this list then prioritize on the basis of potential traffic and also by analysing SERP for relevance, authority and quality.

3. Map keywords to pages and your business type: Look to avoid topic/subject type content pieces as these match seed topics but lack clear intent. Topic/subject lists refer to keyphrases like Facebook ad tips, preschool curriculum ideas or content marketing examples. Object/thing list could be a digital or virtual object or a real object.So piano apps, business podcast. How to/process content, vs content pieces, yes/no pieces and other content types are some of the type of content that should be correctly mapped to the business type.

4. In order to map keywords to pages, we need to list the keyword-content type relation, effort to create the content piece, the medium of content (like images or text or memes) and then basis the traffic estimates and ease of creating the content and monthly volume you can decide on the content pieces to be published.

5. Dan then briefed upon some of the key points to take care while curating the content pieces. These involved Structure (images, headings, text), links (internal and external), copywriting, title tags, meta description, URL structure and image structures.

Overall this was a great track to understand the way one can approach content creation calendar. It was relatable and easy to digest.

B) Youtube Ads and how to create and scale them

1. The core of understanding the ad model in Youtube relates to why people visit YouTube? It is because they want: to know, to do or to buy.
2. Youtube is majorly advertising to intent as compared to FB that advertises to interests.
3. The most relevant equation on Youtube is Revenue-Profit = Cost. Where, revenue=Average Order Value (AOV) x Funnel Conversion Rate (FCR). This will give us the per lead budget which can act as a directive for the ppc team.
4. The keyword research on Youtube is a little different from the conventional KW research. Start by brainstorming the seed keywords basis point 1. Then type a keyword in the youtube search bar and copy the first 10 titles. Expand the keywords by putting them in the search bar again and jotting the auto-suggestions. Try to run keyword specific campaigns.
5. There are two types of ad format in Youtube: Display ads and instream ads. There is a great method to help in storyboarding the ads Aim, Difficulty, Understand, Credibility, Action, Plan, Teach, Exit (ADUCATE).
6. On Youtube you only pay for engagement, i.e when a viewer clicks the link to visit your website or when a viewer watches more than 30 seconds or when a viewer reaches the end of your video (if before 30 seconds).
7. The Youtube ad math Cost Per Lead = VR x CPV/CTR x WCR. Working on these numbers can easily half your cost per lead. Aim for a higher CTR and WCR and a lower VR or CPV.
8. Google AI is a strong tool but should be used intelligently and with some courage. Furthermore, targeting correct audience type with the correct campaign type was one of the biggest takeway from this track.

Overall, I found this track to be less intensive but more insightful. I never knew there could be difference in the keyword research and to get the process of all these steps from someone like Tom Breeze.

Refreshing my understanding on technical SEO and learned these points:

1. The goals of a technical SEO ranges in the below mentioned 4 categories

2. The refresher on canonical tags, OG tags, URL structure, HTML structure, META tags, Meta description, Meta robots Twitter cards and HREFlang were on point and insightful.

3. Martijn then took through the basics of sitemaps and XML sitemaps. There were some great tips on sitespeed and international sitemaps covering HREFlang.

Overall, the course gave great refresher on the basic concepts of technical SEO.

These tracks really helped me learn and refresh my concepts on such insightful topics. Inching towards the end of this minidegree I am absolute love with the content. If this makes you interested in growth marketing and you wish to learn more, I can definitely recommend CXL Institutes’s Growth Marketing Minidegree or any of their other courses.