For the past 8 years I’ve been a big fan of using content as a marketing vehicle to acquire new customers. In fact, during our agency’s 10 year history, we’ve never had a sales person and have engaged in very little outbound marketing (long before the notion of “inbound marketing” became popular).

The growing popularity of content marketing within the SEO world has evolved from white hat SEOs that would proclaim “content is king” to recent declarations that Google’s Panda updates have now validated the need for quality content. But if Panda is the primary reason your SEO efforts are focusing on best practices content marketing, then you’ll still be at a disadvantage.

This post will outline a critical element of Content Marketing adoption for SEO practitioners who want to maximize the value of their content investments for both improved search visibility and customer acquisition.

Traditionally, SEO has focused on identifying the most popular and relevant keywords representative of a company’s product/services mix. Web pages would be optimized with those keywords and links acquired as signals search engines would reward with improved search visibility.

Web page links are giving way to links from other sources like social streams and sharing. Consumers expect, not only to find what they’re looking for, but to interact with and share what they find in search results.  Content that is solely optimized for search keywords doesn’t account for the importance of content that will inspire sharing.

There are multiple objectives with consumer interaction with content. Of course, converting prospects to customers is paramount. But it’s also important to publish content that is topically interesting and relevant for sharing to inspire links in social streams.

Not everyone is ready to buy and if our content is thoughtful about consumer information discovery, consumption and sharing preferences, it may inspire links and shares that result in better visibility on both search engines and within social networks where the links are shared.

Optimizing for search keywords will always be a best practice. Optimizing for social topics will help content creators include subjects that can inspire readers to share. That means researching social media keyword research. What are the most often discussed topics (on the social web) related to your target keywords?  Producing a list of search keywords as well as well as social topics will help optimize content that is findable in search and more sharable in social.

Content Marketing and SEO are a powerful combination. By optimizing for customers, vs. just keywords, search engine optimization professionals can gain the benefit of top rankings in search results as well as more relevant interaction with the content they click through to read.

Learn more about Content Marketing & SEO! I’ll be drilling down into the details of Content Marketing & Optimization on Thursday, August 18th at 9am during the SES San Francisco conference.

• If you’re in a content production role, this will be a great way to understand the real value of SEO to boost visibility of your customer-centric content without compromising quality and creativity.
• If you’re a SEO practitioner or if you have SEO as part of your responsibilities, then this session will provide you with a roadmap to elevating quality content that’s optimized for keywords as well as the customers you’re trying to attract.

Attendees of the Content Marketing Optimization session will also get a copy of our TopRank Guide to Content Marketing to download. Hope to see you there!  Of course, if you really want to drill down into Optimize for Search, Share and many other aspects of Online Marketing, be sure to check out “Optimize” (Wiley).

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Do you ever notice how of all your customers, typically you’ve only got a few that cause you problems…but boy do they cause problems!

No doubt you’ve heard of the 80/20 Rule, which is actually another name for what was originally called the Pareto Principle.

The gist of the Rule is that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts, and likewise, 80% of your problems will come from 20% of your customers.

The question I love to pose to business owners is, “How can you use this principle to your advantage in your business?”

There a few major ways you can use this principle to your advantage in your business:

1. Fire the 20% of your customers that give you more problems than profit.
   • Look, the headache you incur just to keep these people happy isn’t worth what little they bring in for you.  It’s in the best interest of your sanity and energy level to just let them go – they can go cause someone else problems.  You won’t even notice the fact they’re gone when you look at your balance sheet.
2. Focus on the 20% of your customers that bring in 80% of your profits
   • These are your good customers that are a joy to work with and that come back to buy from you repeatedly (which is what you ultimately need if you want to make any real money).
   • You’ll have more free time to service them now that you’re not messing around with the lower 20% that was wasting all your time and energy!
3. Realize that the 80/20 Rule applies to your top 20% all over again
   • What this means is that when looking at your top 20% of customers (let’s say there are 20 of them for easy math), 20% of those 20 equals 4 customers.  And if those 4 customers (20% of the top 20%) are responsible for 80% of the profit from the original 80%, that means those 4 customers are responsible for 64% of your total profits! (80% of 80% is 64%)
   • So if your net profits were $100, 4 customers will statistically be responsible for $64 of it!

Once you’ve identified your best customers, be sure to create incentives and preferred customer programs to keep those top 20% and top-top 4% happy, loyal, and evangelistic customers for life and you’ll enjoy higher profits, less stress, and an overall better quality of life.

Many times owners of small businesses have a hard time letting go of that lower 20% of their customer base, thinking that they’ll make more of an impact than they actually will, myself included.

But I speak from experience when I say, “You won’t notice a dime of it!”, and the peace of mind that comes from not having to deal with yet another email or phone call about issue #3,467 is a wonderfully liberating thing!

Try it – I promise you’ll love it.