ROLE: Senior Marketing Manager, Dragonboat.io
COMPLETED: Beginning of Q3 2022
CONTEXT: At Dragonboat.io, a B2B SaaS startup, we were a marketing team of three and I was responsible for developing our monthly blog editorial content calendar. After severing ties with our SEO agency, I took it upon myself to manage our SEO. After auditing our content, grouping it into clusters, and analyzing the gaps in our funnel, I created a plan to move forward with our content SEO activities.
Previously, with the agency, we had been targeting a wide range of keywords. Many of which were topic-adjacent or long-tail keywords that lacked purchase intent. As a team, we decided to concentrate on optimizing for fewer keywords with more relevance and intent. Since Dragonboat was creating a new market category, product portfolio management, it was critical that we made headway on that keyword and others that directly related to our customers’ pain points.
OBJECTIVE: To turn our focus to the 20% of our keywords that would result in 80% more leads if we ranked on the first page of Google.
The following is a document I prepared to propose a new Content SEO plan to meet Dragonboat’s objectives for the rest of 2022. It covers the overall strategy, 10 primary keywords, planning cadences, tactics, KPIs, and reporting. This document aimed to be a starting point to discuss the plan and agree upon it as a team. By aligning as a team on the plan, we would enable efficient, bottom-up content creation company-wide and scale it quickly.
BELOW IS THE CONTENT SEO PLAN:
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I. Strategy Overview
The Dragonboat SEO strategy is to improve our rankings for a core set of 10 primary keywords that match our value proposition with a high search volume and low difficulty. We aim to receive a mix of organic website visitors in different phases of the buyer journey that fit into our various buyer personas. Our mission is to provide the best answers and resources that each persona seeks at every phase of the buyer journey, from recognizing they have a need (awareness) to concluding that Dragonboat is the right solution (conversion).
As we improve our rankings, we will re-evaluate and add to our list of primary keywords to stay competitive and increase our breadth to grow our organic traffic.
We aim to start small to stay focused on the most fundamental keywords. Before working on new keywords, we will need to get results for these primary ones. We will avoid the mistake of “boiling the ocean” with our keyword strategy.
II. Primary Keywords List
I’ve identified and proposed this core list of 10 pillar keywords to prioritize: [For the sake of this portfolio entry, these are just an example]
- Product Portfolio Management
- Program Management
- Chief Product Officer
- Jira Atlassian
- Product Planning
- Quarterly planning
- Product roadmapping
- IT Portfolio
- Product Management
- Outcome-Focused Management
[Keyword research and analysis were provided in a separate document]
III. SEO Content Plan
Content Cadence
On the last Monday of each month, we will have a meeting to review and prioritize content for the upcoming month. The output of the meeting will be an up-to-date view within our Dragonboat roadmap that specifically displays epics tied to our marketing content sub-roadmap.
We will plan to create a mix of content that falls into our strategic buckets across core themes, personas, and funnel stages, optimizing them for one or more of the 10 keywords.
Personas
- CPO
- Product Ops/Program Manager
- Product Manager
- Agile Transformation
Main Topic Clusters
- Product portfolio management
- Quarterly/strategic planning
- Scaling product
- Product operations
- Portfolio allocation/resource planning
- Outcome-driven product
- How to be a successful CPO
Content Buckets
- Webinars – 10/Quarter
- 1st week of the month – Responsive PPM Certification
- 2nd week of the month – Fireside Chat
- 4th week of the month – Product-Related Step-by-Step Guide
- 3rd week of the month, quarterly – Thought leadership
- Webinar editorial articles – 2-3/ month
- Thought leadership article – 1 per month
- SEO-driven/viral article – 1 per month
- Dragonboat product-related article – 1 per month
- Press releases – as needed
- Contributed content – 2 per month
- Podcast appearances
- Guest articles
- Speaking engagements
- Lead magnets (gated content piece aimed at a persona or core topic) – 1 per quarter
Effort Allocation
It is important to not only create new content (in the form of blogs, webinars, dictionary pages, case studies, and lead magnets), but to manage and maintain existing content, take care of the overall strategy, maintain SEO rankings, and report on results. Ideas will be planned in Dragonboat according to this allocation, and smaller activities will be managed in Asana as needed.
(The breakdown of effort is based on the idea that we have one-full time dedicated resource for Content Marketing, even if it is divided amongst multiple people each month. This effort does not include creating sales and about pages, Zendesk articles, or PPC landings.)
| Hours/Month | Task |
| 56 | Creating new content |
| 32 | Distributing content |
| 24 | Improving existing content |
| 24 | Earned media (bylines, contributed content) |
| 12 | Link building |
| 12 | Content planning & metrics |
IV. Tactics
New Content
- Given our keywords, brainstorm new blog posts/webinars/podcast episodes and put them in Dragonboat. Prioritize existing ideas in Dragonboat.
- See which articles we’ve already written that we can somewhat templatize and substitute the main keyword phrase for another one we want to cover.
- Create rich blog article briefs with SEO metadata details that provide a helpful guide for any writer to write with SEO strategy in mind.
- Employ the SkyScraper technique.
- Write first drafts in Surfer SEO Editor (and hit the content score of 80+)
- Move final drafts to StoryChief – Content Marketing Platform to obtain feedback, fix minor issues, and push the formatted content to distribution platforms.
- Launch our PPM dictionary: Add the 10 keywords and link them to relevant internal blogs. Add several more entries that are related to each. For example, create an entry for product portfolio management and then product portfolio management tool, product portfolio management process, etc.
- Use crowdsourcing to create new keyword-oriented articles quickly, ie, “10 Product Ops Managers Weigh in on Roadmapping Tools.”
Existing Content
- Review our website’s content hierarchy and make changes so that our pages fit into a logical structure to help Google’s crawlers understand our subject matter/domain
- Execute SEO improvement checklist to optimize current top pages for our keyword list and other pages that could have a shot at ranking (low hanging fruit).
- Revise/re-do all internal links and anchor texts based on our content hierarchy.
- Research which articles rank highest today for our primary keywords and borrow their best practices. Use an SEO tool to see where they got backlinks from.
- Find relevant external sites to ask for backlinks and create infographics.
- Research listicles for each primary keyword and ask the authors to include Dragonboat.
- Add snippets for highest priority pages.
V. KPIs and Reporting
I propose we review the holistic content strategy and keyword list quarterly (Zoom meeting) and review progress towards our goals monthly (via a Slack update and a PowerPoint presentation).
Goals
- Rank on page 1 for all 10 primary keywords with 30% in the top 3 positions by EoY
- Move “up and to the right” for our overall SEO metrics
Metrics and KPIs
Overall
- MQLs/SQLs from inbound – find out what exactly got them to convert when possible
- Domain authority
- Referring domains
- backlinks
- Organic traffic
- Organic keywords
- Top pages
- First 30-day performance of new content
- Time on page
Keywords
- Highest ranking
- # of keywords on top 10 SERPs
Google Search Console Data
- Total clicks
- Impressions
- Average CTR
- Average position
Tools
- Moz for keyword planning and tracking
- Content planning and prioritization in Dragonboat
- SEO Task management in Asana
- Content cluster visualization in Miro
- Google Spreadsheet of all published content (for cataloging and tracking)
- SEO checklist to follow when creating new content
- Content sharing checklist for distribution
- Earned media list/Wins spreadsheet
Reports
- Monthly progress reports
- Moz SEO dashboard filled with keyword rankings and campaign metrics
RESULTS: By executing this content SEO plan, Dragonboat increased website traffic by 146% and increase marketing qualified leads by 280% YoY.