Lenovo Partner Network

The SEO Journey Series

Content
Strategy &
SEO Checklist
Workbook

4
• Overview
• Content Strategy Checklist
• Additional Content Strategy Resources

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Method Savvy
Lenovo Partner Network / The SEO Journey Series Workbook Content Strategy & SEO Checklist 2

Overview

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way to capitalize on the power of search

engines to capture free visibility for your company, drive highly relevant visits to your
website and increase demand for your business and services.

In the fourth webinar in The SEO Journey series, Content Strategy & Best Practices for
SEO, we discussed how to organize, evaluate, develop, and deploy content. Within this
workbook you will find:

• A checklist for defining and implementing a content strategy

• A checklist for deploying content on your website
• A list of additional reading resources where you can learn more about content
strategy elements in a self-directed way.

Please also remember that you can download the full set of presentation slides for the
Content Strategy & Best Practices SEO webinar series at the Lenovo Partner Network
website.

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Lenovo Partner Network / The SEO Journey Series Workbook Content Strategy & SEO Checklist 3

Checklist

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Checklist: Audience

Having a clear understanding of your audience is crucial when creating or evaluating

content. If audiences don’t find your content valuable, neither will search engines.

1. Do you know what your audience wants, how, and when they want to consume it?

2. Have you done audience research?

Do you have an accurate idea of who your ideal

audience is?

Have you created Personas for each of your audiences?

If not, create a Persona. (See Workbook 2)

3. If you don’t have the time or resources to do audience research, try to align your audience
to one of the 12 different archetypes. Use that as a lens when you build or evaluate
content. (See Archetype link in Resources)

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Checklist: Content

Your website content should be purposeful and specific. It’s important to evaluate existing
content to understand exactly what you have, what’s doing well, and what might be missing.

1. Does each piece of content have a clear purpose and goal?

Example: I want to (educate, raise awareness, etc.) with this content. My goal is for the user
to (learn more, request a demo, etc.)

2. Does your content vary or do you have all the same type of content?
6 types of content :
• Copy
• Downloadable assets
• Images
• Video
• Audio
• Social

3. Have you performed a content audit on your website that shows an exhaustive list of every
piece of content you have? If not, create an excel sheet with the following:

•URL
•Title
•Format (standard text, video, PDF, etc.)
•Page type (landing page, article, support page, contact page, etc.)
•“Owner” (person responsible for upkeep)
•Action - Leave as is, remove, improve

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Checklist: Content

4. Onliness/Content Tilt - do you have it?

Can you easily and clearly articulate what makes you special in your space?

Here’s a formula you can use:

[ ]
My BRAND is the only _____________
(CATEGORY OF BUSINESS) that
does ______________
(DIFFERENTIATING BENEFIT) .

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Lenovo Partner Network / The SEO Journey Series Workbook Content Strategy & SEO Checklist 7

Technical
Mandatories
Reminders

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 Lenovo Partner Network / The SEO Journey Series Workbook Content Strategy & SEO Checklist 8

Technical Mandatories Reminders

Have you completed all of the SEO Mandatories?

1. Does your page have a properly formatted Title Tag?

The optimal length is 50 - 60 characters including spaces. The core keywords or topics
should be placed at the beginning of the Title tag. Keep in mind that Titles should be written to
be human readable and encourage users to dig deeper and learn more, much like a well-writ-
ten headline for a newspaper article.

2. Does your page have a properly formatted Meta Description?

The optimal length is 155 - 160 characters including spaces. Keep in mind that Meta
Descriptions should be written to be human readable and provide more context to the user
about why they may be interested in learning more on the destination webpage.

3. Do all of your on-page images have Alt Text?

It is best practice to describe the image as specifically as possible, with the length being
in the range of 125 characters including spaces. Avoid spammy language and keyword stuffing,
instead making the description compelling and relevant to a human audience.

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Lenovo Partner Network / The SEO Journey Series Workbook Content Strategy & SEO Checklist 9

SEO for Video:

On-site & YouTube

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 Lenovo Partner Network / The SEO Journey Series Workbook Content Strategy & SEO Checklist 10

SEO for Video: On-Site

Reminder - use this checklist whenever you have video content on your site:

1. As much as is possible, limit videos to one embed per page.

2. Utilize a video host, such as YouTube or Wistia, that enables fast asynchronous loading
of the page.

3. Include a full text transcript of the video on the page, formatted in a visually appealing
manner for human reader consumption.

4. Create an engaging video thumbnail to improve user engagement rates.

5. Utilize on-page meta language best practices including topic-relevant

Title tag, Meta Description and H1 tag.

6. Establish a properly formatted video XML sitemap that includes video title, description,
thumbnail URL and upload date.

7. Deploy video schema to provide additional structured data information for search
engine indexation. (More on schema in resources)

8. Utilize Open Graph tags on the page to encourage and make easier social media sharing.
(More on Open Graph in resources)

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 Lenovo Partner Network / The SEO Journey Series Workbook Content Strategy & SEO Checklist 11

SEO for Video: YouTube

Reminder - use this checklist specifically for any videos you post on YouTube

1. Utilize a topic relevant keyword in the video filename (e.g. lenovothinkpad.mp4).

2. Utilize topic relevant keyword in the video title.

3. Where possible, say the target keyword within the video itself.

4. Optimize the video description to include topic relevant keywords and to entice
human viewers.

5. Select the appropriate topic tags and category for your video.

6. Upload a custom and engaging video thumbnail image to improve user

engagement rates.

7. Add subtitles and closed captions to your video.

8. Add Cards and End Screens to increase your YouTube channel’s viewership.

9. Enable video comments and seek as well as monitor engagement.

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SEO Learning
Resources
Where to learn
in a self-directed way

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• SEO Content Tips: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/best-seo-content-tips/284899/

• Personas: https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/user-persona-template/

• Archetypes: https://iconicfox.com.au/brand-archetypes/

• Content Audits: https://moz.com/blog/content-audit

• Content Tilt: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/02/killing-content-marketing-ignoring/

• Content Calendar Template: https://offers.hubspot.com/editorial-calendar-templates

• Video Schema: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/video

• Open Graph: https://ogp.me

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Lenovo Partner Network
The SEO Journey Series
Method Savvy is a marketing consultancy that helps ambitious leaders
find better ways to grow their brand and business. Our three focus areas,
brand, experience, and growth acceleration, help create connected brand
experiences that influence behavioral change at scale. SEO is one of many
components we specialize in that help brands build a foundation for the
ecosystem they want.