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Search Experience Spotlight - How Paychex is Winning at SEO
The document outlines the SEO strategies employed by Paychex, emphasizing a framework focused on usability, relevance, and authority to enhance search experience. It discusses the concept of 'democratizing SEO' through cooperation among various disciplines and illustrates successful case studies showcasing collaboration with public relations. Key actionable tips for building relationships with PR teams are also provided, highlighting collaborative strategies for effective SEO.
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Search Experience Spotlight - How Paychex is Winning at SEO
- 1. @seoClarity Search Experience Spotlight How Paychexis Winning at SEO
- 2. Your Presenters www.linkedin.com/in/keithlgoode@keithgoode Keith L.Goode Chief SEO Evangelist
- 3. Your Presenters Erica Bizzari SEO& Content Marketing Manager
- 4. Democratizing SEO Creating theSynergy that Propels Sites Toward Success
- 5. Search Experience Framework Usability Is your site fast, responsive, engaging, shareable, crawlable, and indexable? 01 Relevance You establish relevance with great content that inspires, educates, informs, and entertains. 02 Authority Earned links, company online reputation, article references, citations, co-citations, etc. 03
- 6. Usability in theURA SEO Framework Usability is all about providing a fast and responsive experience for users (bots and humans) that enables a flexible foundation for an awesome content strategy. Disciplines Involved: • Systems Administrators • Designers • UX/UI • Developers/Coders
- 7. Relevance in theURA SEO Framework Relevance is all about addressing the needs of the user and creating an engaging, educational, and/or entertaining experience that fulfills the intended purpose. Disciplines Involved: • Content Strategists • Content Writers Producers • Copywriters • Social Media • Video Production • Podcasters • Marketers/Advertisers
- 8. Authority in theURA SEO Framework Authority is all about user engagement and reaping the rewards of creating a delightful experience by way of earned links, earned notoriety, and earned social media signals. Disciplines Involved: • Public Relations • C-Suite • Social Media Team • External Bloggers
- 9. What does DemocratizationLook Like? 9 • Social • Promotion • Industry Outreach • Drives Corporate Priorities • Company Vision • Voice of the Company • Proper Merchandising • Content Best Practices • Building Content for the User • Proper Coding • Responsive Design • Server Uptime and Speed • Adapting to Tech Advancements • Audits • Analysis • Education • Staying up-to-date
- 10. How Does DemocratizationHappen? 1. Start the Conversation 2. Find Common Goals 3. Foster Cooperation on Projects 4. Share the Spotlight 5. Rinse and Repeat
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- 12. THE PR & SEO IN T E G R AT I O N O F
- 13. TO @ericabizz D E MO C R A T I Z E SEO IN THE E N T E R P R I S E
- 14. Founded 1971 in Rochester, New York 135offices in 39 States Germany & Brazil #1 Small Business Payroll Provider #2 Mid-Market Payroll Provider 10M Employees Paid #1 Retirement Recordkeeper- 70k plans TOP ASO/PEO for Small Business >850k Worksite Employees
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- 16. PR and SEO atPAYCHEX @ericabizz
- 17. @ericabizz 5 Tips to Builda Relationship With Your PR Team
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- 24. CASE #1 Small Business Week(Campaign Based) @ericabizz
- 25. CASE #1 Small BusinessWeek @ericabizz 1. Pool your resources 2. Set the strategy together
- 26. T H E RE S U L T S @ericabizz • SlideShare – 3.5k views • The Washington Post – DA: 98 / 1.5M daily visitors • Gene Marks – 88,719 Twitter followers • Inc.com –DA: 93 / 3M Monthly Visits • Smallbizdaily – DA: 55
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- 28. CASE #2 SHRM @ericabizz 1. Builda list of target influencers
- 29. CASE #2 SHRM15 @ericabizz 1. Builda list of target influencers 2. Engage via live social coverage
- 30. CASE #2 SHRM15 @ericabizz 1. Builda list of target influencers 2. Live Social Coverage 3. Blog: daily round ups, top tweets, etc.
- 31. T H E RE S U L T S @ericabizz 105 513 44
- 32. CASE #3 Influencer Outreach (dayto day) @ericabizz
- 33. CASE #3 Influencer outreach @ericabizz 1.Share lists
- 34. CASE #3 Influencer Outreach @TracyVanAuker| @ericabizz 1. Share lists 2. Reference influencers in content Example 1 @ericabizz
- 35. CASE #3 Influencer Outreach @ericabizz 1.Share lists 2. Reference influencers in content Example 1 Example 2
- 36. CASE #3 Influencer Outreach @ericabizz 1.Share contacts 2. Reference influencers in content Example 1 Example 2 3. Build off-page presence
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- 38. Action Plan @ericabizz Find CommonGround Pull the Data Invite PR to your next meeting
- 39. Y O U! THANK @ericabizz
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Editor's Notes
- #16 Give some background history to how my relationship with PR came about Not an overnight relationship, 3 years in the making. I approached it all wrong in the beginning so I’m hoping you can avoid those pitfalls Offer up some tips that I learned along the way to help build a relationship with your PR team I have some examples of projects we’ve worked on together on to amplify our content, build influencer relationships, and increase brand awareness, mentions and links
- #17 PR does not role up under Marketing Right off the bat caused problems because we reported to different people meaning -Different budget -Different resources -Different goals/objectives When I first proposed outreach I was told I had to get permission from the PR team—didn’t understand because I thought this fell under SEO “why wouldn’t PR let me do my job?” They felt I was stepping on their toes and I felt they were stepping on mine Flew under the radar..hired agency Guest blogging-no bylines Trying to avoid the PR review Couldn’t byline
- #19 GET BUY-IN-without it, you will never build a true partnership. PR needs to understand where you’re coming from and what benefits they’ll get out of the relationship. Realize that you both have something to bring to the table: PR: -Internal Connections-ties with SMEs -access to information first (compliance) -relationships already built with the media -Understands and knows how to pitch SEO: -different set up data, able to help them vet out sites based on spam score, DA, site traffic, backlink portofolio, etc. -Able to show what impact outreach has on bottom line-web traffic, rankings
- #20 Share: Lists-share your list of sites you want to engage with as well as top influencers. Able to see overlap, but also gaps Tools-grant access to all of the tools, we have access to the data so should they Resources-we have very small team so sharing resources is crucial. Knowledge- share knowledge of SEO, PR doing seo and didn’t even know it. Educate them on SEO best practices -PR links, boiler plate -optimize titles/meta for search -optimize PR before they go out -technical SEO
- #21 Establish who does what, what makes the most sense from an organizational standpoint. Should the SEO reach out to the CEO, probably not. Who pitches who Break list into tiers Who bylines--We don’t guest blog often but when we do we have a vetting process. My team writes the content, PR works with the internal SME on reviews and securing bylines Who writes
- #22 The more you know about what each other is doing the less likely you are to duplicate efforts. This also helps build the relationship. Don’t work on something and then go silent. I invite PR to all of our content meetings, I include them on our strategy meetings. We set up a “content council” to align all content efforts in the organization Develop a cadence of communication. Meet weekly. Example: when an opportunity presents itself for a “guest blog” I always include PR, and vice versa I’m onboarding a new agency to help with content, I’ve included them in the vetting process We are launching a new content hub and worked with them to establish technical requirements
- #23 This is the most important tip. Make sure to monitor all activity to prove the value of the relationship and to continue to drive progress. Celebrate success and let the larger team know what you’re up to.
- #25 PR always “owned” content and coverage for small business week and this was the first year we came together to execute a campaign. This year’s campaign centered around summer being a prosperous time for small businesses. Used data from our SBJI that showed historical trend of employment growth that wasn’t just seasonal. We created an infographic, distributed a news release, and created a summer-long campaign Brought Erica into the fold from an SEO and Content perspective Created a Summer of Small Business series for Paychex.com article section as a way to start testing the waters for the content hub that’s now in development
- #26 EB: Paid syndication Offered writers to assist with article series TVA: We also brought in SurePayroll, one of our subsidiaries that has a blog, to help us with disseminating the content Did separate blog posts based on our content Pitched content to media, and used content for byline opportunities Our partner companies got involved too – Biz2Credit Working with a lot of different teams, important to bring everyone together at the front end, and give everyone a voice so they can benefit from the campaign In addition to our “promotional” partners, worked closely with our data scientists to analyze data and trends for the infographic, and what was really at the heart of the whole campaign Our counterparts at SurePayroll have more experience than we do when it comes to this sort of thing, so they offered valuable insight and helped steer us in the right direction Social – in this case, not only helped amplify the content Having him at the table from the beginning, he could provide insight into what would resonate in our social channels, how to frame it and design it.
- #27 Key Takeaway: Content truly is at the heart of what we do. It’s not SEO, it’s not PR, it’s content. And when you have good content, and utilize all the teams you can to amplify it, SEO and PR will always benefit. Results - Second most viewed infographic on our slideshare channel – 3,117 views 1st is HCR related, and has been on the site for more than a year Biz2Credit- Inc. Colum, Gene Marks washington post blog , SurePayroll – smallbizdaily byline (with link back to paychex) Gene on Twitter – 88,719 followers, Wash Post Daily visitors – 1,505,548 Inc daily visitors – Smallbizdaily - 5 SoSB artilcles on .com
- #28 After working together, we realized that industry bloggers = untapped potential, how do we pool resources to target In the HR space, there’s about 2 dozen bloggers that are very influential, especially as we start targeting the mid-market space Since neither of us was targeting this group, we decided to approach it together, along with our social media group With one of the three major trade shows Paychex participates in right around the corner – SHRM - we decided that would be a great way to start interacting with this group
- #29 Identified a list of bloggers that would be at SHRM, created profiles, split into tiers-PR took tier 1, SEO took tier 2 Divide and conquer
- #30 Team up and live tweet the event-be conscious of mentioning and engaging with influencers Target sessions that our key influencers were participating in Retweeted and favorited their tweets
- #31 Get in the content game, create content specifically from the event-able to reference or mention influencers one last time
- #32 We’ve made online connections with our target influencers They are following us personally, as well as Paychex They are retweeting us Learned just how interconnected they are Already had connection with Steve Boese – HR Executive Magazine, HR Happy Hour, HR Tech Co-Chair, best buds with Trish McFarlane Trish McFarlane – Blogger, CEO of HR Advisory firm, Co-founder of WomenofHR.com with Jennifer Payne Solidified 3-part series on Women of HR around American Business Women’s Day At HR Tech last week, one of our key influencers moderated a panel that one of our executives participated in – if we hadn’t started this initiative wouldn’t have known who he was Created 3 content pieces for paychex.com, referencing influencers Of note – We’re still in the beginning stages of this initiative, and we are expanding our efforts for more day-to-day interaction. For now, a lot of our success is anecdotal, but as we continue to grow this initiative, we’re confident we’ll have start to see quantifiable results.
- #33 Some of these examples of how we continue to work together on a day to day basis to achieve small wins in the outreach space
- #34 Add image of PR media list tool [TVA] 1. Share contact lists-PR shared media list and EB gave access to Buzzstream-we both knew who each other wanted/needed to target, no overlap 2. But then we realized overlap is ok, as long as you are communicating about it. Need to make sure you’re working as team, otherwise reflects poorly PR uses our content to pitch
- #35 2. Reference influencers in content [TVA] Background - PR Team’s worked with him in the past as part of his small business influencers program. Not much else Example 1 [EB]-Ramon Ray-targeted small business influencer In 2014 we reached out to Ramon Ray for a quote June 2015-Ramon was on a panel with colleague, met in person, what’s next? September 2015-did an interview –PR was on the phone [TVA] now has an opening to build a partnership – working to solidify ongoing contribution, and see how we may be able to work with him on snap polling – what does he want to know from SBOs
- #36 Example 2 [EB] business news daily is creeping in on organic S.O.V. Published an article, linked to an article from business news daily editor Reached out for permission She said of course, and tweeted ‘thanks’ [TVA]-able to build relationship with Biz news daily – In the past had a really solid relationship with BND, recently they haven’t been interested in the story ideas we’ve been pitching. This gives us a way back in.
- #37 Off-page presence: SmallBizDaily – opportunity landed by SEO, PR executed HRO Today, Employee Benefit Advisor, CPA Practice Advisor, HR Magazine (print edition) – PR pitched publication using an article from paychex.com WomenofHR – opportunity landed through relationships built at SHRM Not sure where to begin? We work with a lot of associations and alliances …they are craving content
- #38 --Since Tracy has left, will need to work on re-creating the partnership with PR Teaming up with our social team we are trying to put a standard process in place for interacting and building relationships with influencers So far, we’ve come up with our top list of influencers and sites that we want to target based on our own set of criteria. NOTE: Buzzstream has a discovery tool in beta to help search for influencers, but you can see their engagement and activity levels as well as who they influence and who influences them. We’ve pooled them together and narrowed down the list to make it more maintainable. We’ve put all of twitter and blog feeds into one location. We are using Dynamic Signal Now, we assembling a larger team to amplify our efforts. We will create a calendar for the year with events such as podcasts, webinars, twitter chats, conferences, etc. where we can monitor and cover from a social perspective and create content accordingly.
- #39 Find Common Ground-What’s in it for them? Educate PR that the lines are starting to blurring. There are over 33 million results with PR & SEO in Google…this is definitely a thing Figure out what they are doing and how you can help them. Pull the data-pull a report to show PR how they are influencing SEO and web traffic Can you help attribute what PR activity is driving traffic to the main site. Can you build a dashboard for them to take to their boss. Can you help them optimize their PR? 3. Include them-invite them to your next strategy meeting, give them access to tools that will benefit them The more they know and the more they feel included they will want to help