Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Keywords are king when it comes to engaging users and increasing your search engine ranking.
As a result, search engine optimization (SEO) has become a multi-million dollar business with a host of experts offering advice on how best to move up the search engine results page (SERP) and claim the coveted number one spot.
Most actionable SEO advice boils down to a few solid suggestions: Do your market research so you know which keywords are relevant to your target audience, and create content that’s timely and relevant.
Something that doesn’t make the SEO rounds quite so often is keyword cannibalization. While this unpleasant-sounding issue won’t sink your website, it can cause your pages and posts to rank lower than they should and — if left unchecked — could harm the overall reputation of your site.
Here’s what you need to know about finding, evaluating, and eliminating keyword cannibalization.

What is Keyword Cannibalization in SEO?
Keyword cannibalization occurs when two or more pages on your website end up competing for the same keyword.
Let’s say your company sells roof shingles. Your blog content will likely include posts about how to extend shingle life through proper care and maintenance — with the right combination of authority and actionable insight, this kind of content can attract the attention of your target audience and lead them to purchase shingles from your site when their home requires repair or replacement.
To ensure you’re capturing the right audience, you do a keyword search and find that “roof shingle prices” ranks extremely high. You then create multiple pages that all leverage this keyword — one piece might deal with the most costly shingle types, another with less-expensive options, and a third with the costs of potential repairs if shingles are damaged.
The problem? By using the same keyword for each page, you’re essentially stealing search engine rankings from yourself.
Here’s why: From the perspective of search engines each of these pages is its own separate entity with its own authority and page ranking, meaning your pages are fighting for SEO attention.
What’s more, these similar-but-different pages will split your click-through rate (CTR) across multiple links, in turn decreasing the value of each page. As a result, these three pages might rank sixth, seventh, and eighth in SERPs while a single page could rank second or even first.
How to Detect Keyword Cannibalization
The simplest way to detect keyword cannibalization is to create a spreadsheet containing the keyword(s) for any content you create.
Before making a new post, check your spreadsheet and see if you’ve already used the same keyword. If so, consider tweaking your content to focus on another keyword or ensure that the content you’re creating is substantially different than that of previous posts.
You can also check for keyword cannibalization with a quick online search of your most relevant keywords. If you see multiple pages from your site listed close to one another in SERPs for the same keyword, you have a cannibalization problem.
In addition, keyword cannibalization checker tools can help ensure you’re not missing potential overlap — better to know ASAP and modify your content before it gets pushed down the search rankings by more targeted posts from your competitors.
How to Eliminate Keyword Cannibalization
So what happens if you discover keyword cannibalization on your site?
First, take a look at the content on each page. Wherever possible, combine the information from both pages into a single post to boost search rankings and increase authority.
In the case of our shingle company, for example, it’s worth combining the “most costly” and “least expensive” shingle pages into a single post that targets the “roof shingle prices” keyword. If there are particular aspects of low-cost or high-priced shingles that could help customers make their decision, create new posts with new keywords, and link to them in the original post.
In other cases, you may find that older posts on your site are still ranking highly thanks to targeted keyword use but are no longer relevant to your company’s product line or service offering. Here, it’s a good idea to integrate any useful data from older posts into newer content and then delete the original, in turn allowing search engines to rank up your most relevant post.
Worth noting? As with anything in SEO, there are exceptions to the keyword cannibalization rule.
For example, if you have two posts with the same keyword that are both highly ranked and their ranking position isn’t fluctuating, there’s no need to combine them.
If competitors’ pages start to rank higher, however, or if your top-ranked page stops delivering sustained click-through rates, this could indicate the need for action.
Keyword Cannibalization Checker Tools
While keeping a spreadsheet of page URLs, metadata, and keyword use can help reduce the risk of unintentional cannibalization, this becomes prohibitively complex as sites scale up.
Consider an ecommerce site that sells multiple types of winter jackets — with a product page for each jacket, category pages for each jacket type, and blog posts around jacket care, storage, and repair, it’s easy for keywords to overlap and SERP to suffer.
Keyword cannibalization checker tools can help streamline this process and reduce the risk of missing a potential keyword problem. Some popular options include:
1. Keylogs Keyword Cannibalization Checker

The Keylogs Cannibalization Checker offers a free trial — simply log in with a Google account that’s connected to your website(s) and the Checker does the rest.
You’ll get results about any pages on your site that are competing for the same ranked keyword along with strategies to resolve the issue. Worth noting? The free tier of this tool only tracks three keywords across one site. Paid plans are required for multiple sites and unlimited keyword tracking.
2. SEMrush Position Tracking Tool

SEMrush is a popular SEO tracking and monitoring toolset. With a paid plan, site owners have access to a Cannibalization report within the SEMrush Position Tracking Tool, which provides a cannibalization score for the keywords entered.
A 100% score means no cannibalization has been detected — lower scores indicate potential problems and will specify both affected keywords and cannibal pages.
3. Google Search Console

Using the performance report section of Google Search Console lets you view the queries that have earned your site impressions and clicks from Google searches.
Drill down into these queries with the “pages” tab to see a list of URLs that rank for specific keywords and queries — if you see more than one URL from your site listed for the same keyword, you may have a cannibalization issue.
4. SEOScout Cannibalization Checker

SEOScout’s Cannibalization Checker offers an alternative to managing keyword spreadsheets. Simply create an account for a 7-day free trial, enter your site’s domain and the tool will create a report detailing any duplicate keyword rankings, allowing you to quickly track down and eliminate cannibal content.
5. Moz Keyword Explorer

The Moz Keyword Explorer lets you find ranking keywords, determine page ranking positions, and make decisions about which pages to keep and which ones need to be reworked or eliminated. Moz also makes it easy to download CSV spreadsheet files which can then be analyzed offline for duplicate keyword listings.
Staying Aware of Keyword Cannibalization
For site owners and admins, cannibal keyword content is problematic — multiple URLs ranking for the same keyword can negatively impact page authority, frustrate potential customers, and reduce SERPs.
Solve for keyword cannibalization by finding duplicate keyword use, then combining or deleting content as needed to ensure your most relevant content earns the highest SERP placement with popular search engines.

Did you know that there are more than 600 million blogs on the internet, and that 77% of web-surfers read blogs regularly?
Blogging has exploded since its humble beginnings in the 1990s, and many people today interact with blogs frequently if not daily.
By setting up a blog, you have the opportunity to make meaningful connections with other people, whether you want to share your recipes, talk about your lifestyle, or sell products and services. Whatever the topic, blogging serves as an outlet that can even become profitable.
But before you see dollar signs, you’ll need to set up a blog, which involves choosing a content management system (CMS), deciding on themes and color schemes, and reaching your target audience.
This guide will help you navigate the process of setting up a blog successfully across various platforms.
But before you set up a blog, you’ll need to choose a CMS. Let’s dive into that, first.

How to Choose a CMS
You can’t have a blog without a CMS, or a content management system. As the name suggests, this is a system that manages your content. While you could certainly build a blog from scratch with savvy coding skills, a CMS does the hard work for you.
This software makes it nearly effortless to switch up your blog’s font styles, colors, and overall theme. It also means you can generate content much easier, simply clicking a few buttons to add photos and videos.
All of these seemingly simple actions can be difficult to implement through HTML and CSS coding, which is why many bloggers opt to use a CMS. This way, you can dive right into making great content.
When you’re looking at different CMS platforms, there are a few things to consider.

User-Friendly Interface
Price
Customization
Support
Extensions
Security
Marketing Capabilities

Let’s dive into each element to help you decide what you need in a CMS.
1. User-Friendly Interface
The point of choosing a CMS is to make creating your blog easier for you. If you find it difficult to navigate the dashboard or the text editor, blogging will just like a chore.
Look for a CMS with drag-and-drop capabilities, and unless you have top-notch developer skills, steer clear of anything that requires heavy coding.
2. Price
As we’ll cover below, it is completely possible to start a blog for free. But if you are looking for more robust features, you’ll need to consider your budget.
If you are looking at paid platforms, consider what you get with each CMS for the price, and double-check for hidden fees.
3. Customization
You want your blog to look and perform how you’ve envisioned it, so make sure your CMS allows for customization through different themes and templates that can also be adjusted as you see fit.
For example, with Ceros, you can completely customize every element of the content you publish without adding a single line of code.
4. Support
If your blog glitches while you’re writing an important post, you’ll want to be able to get help right when you need it.
CMS support ranges widely — you might only find a digital handbook or FAQ page full of common issues and fixes with no number or live chat to reach for urgent matters.
Or the platform could only have an email or number available during standard office hours, Monday through Friday. Meanwhile, some CMS platforms have extensive support options, including agents available 24/7.
If you don’t have experience working with CMS systems and want access to hands-on support, take this into consideration when comparing platforms.
5. Extensions
One of the most helpful features for CMS platforms is the ability to work with third-party extensions or plugins, which add even more functionality to your blog.
There are extensions for nearly everything you could think of, so whether you want help with search engine optimization (SEO) or the ability to create galleries or social media feeds on your blog, extensions and plugins can help you do so. If your CMS isn’t compatible with most of these applications, your blog could suffer.
6. Security
Protecting your information and your content is important. You could also lose your audience’s and customers’ trust if your blog is compromised. As such, you’ll want to make sure the CMS you choose has plenty of security features.
Check if SSL, Firewall and content delivery network (CDN) are included, and be sure updates and vulnerability scans are done frequently. This also relates to support — is someone available to help you should your site be compromised? If not, run — don’t walk — to another platform.
7. Marketing Capabilities
Once your blog is established and you are producing content, make sure you can get this content to your target audience. Check to see if your CMS offers options for social and email marketing, or if it offers compatibility with extensions such as UpContent to make sharing your content simple.
How to Set Up a Blog for Free
If you are working with a limited budget, you can certainly start blogging for free. There will be some limitations, but you can always choose to upgrade or move your content to a paid CMS. To get started, you’ll need to find a free blogging platform. Common free blogging platforms include

WordPress.com (not to be confused with WordPress.org)
Blogger
Wix
Weebly

Tumblr. Keep in mind that some free blogging platforms will restrict your freedom with domain name and may be limited in services like support, security, and customization. After choosing a free platform, you’ll sign up and head for the dashboard to choose a free theme or design template, then use the platform’s CMS to add content.
How to Set Up a Blog
Whether you decide to invest in a blog or go the free route, there are a few different ways to get started depending on the platform you choose. Here are some of the most-popular blogging platforms and how to set up your blog on each one.
1. WordPress
If you want to blog on WordPress, you’ll need to choose a domain name and a hosting service. The hosting service is the server space that stores your website’s files and information, making it accessible to others on the internet.
Hosting is typically a paid service; there are free options, but be wary of the security, support, and functionality if you do choose a free host.
Once you’ve selected the domain name, such as yourblog.com, and a host, you’ll be able to create your WordPress account. From there, you can access the dashboard, where you can decide on themes, add plugins, and, of course, write and publish content.
2. Blogger
If you are looking for a popular and free CMS, Blogger, formerly BlogSpot, is a free blogging platform by Google.
To get started, visit Blogger and create an account with your Gmail address and password. From there, you’ll choose a profile. If you don’t wish to have the name associated with your Gmail address on your blog, you can choose a limited profile.
After this, you’ll be taken to the dashboard, where you can choose your blog name and theme. Then it’s as easy as using the straightforward CMS to write your blog.
3. Wix
Wix is another free and simple CMS to consider when setting up a blog. Simply sign up for an account, then you can choose from templates.
Note that while Wix offers many templates, only certain ones offer Wix Blog. If you choose one without this application, you can still add it on later through Wix’s App Market.
Customize the template to fit your vision, then go to the Wix Editor>Menus & Pages>Show More>Rename to name your blog. Wix offers free hosting, but if you want your own domain name, you’ll need to establish that and then connect it to your blog via the Wix Editor. Once these logistics are set, you’re ready to start a new post and get to blogging.
Now that you know the ins and outs of starting a blog, you’re ready to get started! Evaluate CMS platforms based on support, security, and design and functionality features.
Once you’ve decided on a CMS, the platform will make the rest of your work a breeze. And once that blog is up and running, you can start considering even more options, like marketing and advertising, to make your brand known and even turn a profit.

If your SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) teams exist in complete silos, it’s time to change that.
Commonly held opposing viewpoints are: PPC is too complex, and SEO is too slow. (For the record, I don’t agree.)
When these two teams collaborate, you’ll be rewarded with magical insights, learnings, and results that neither team could get on its own.
These channels aren’t meant to be siloed, and getting them aligned is one of the most underrated ways to improve your overall digital marketing performance.
PPC is one of SEO’s most powerful tools — and vice versa. Here are seven ways to thrive in both SEO and PPC.

1. Avoid paid keyword traps.
Sharing keyword intelligence is a standard best practice. Sometimes, certain types of keywords can have subtle differences, and end up aligning to the wrong intent. It’s important to understand the intent behind search terms, because you want to avoid keyword traps.
SEO-focused marketers are the masters of understanding search intent, and therefore collaboration between SEO and SEM is critical.
For example, the restaurant POS software, Toast, is bidding on “phone systems for restaurants” but they don’t sell phone systems! They’re broad match bidding on terms containing “restaurant.”

This is why Google has become a modern day casino for advertisers. The marketing team at Toast is gambling on the mere possibility that restaurant managers seeking a phone system might also be in the market for POS software.
While it might work, the potential for bleeding is likely. That said, Toast is venture-backed and valued at $4.9B, so this is probably a gamble they’re comfortable taking.
You need to study the search results closely if you want to master the art of understanding keyword intent. Google often signals their own interpretation of a search term, based on the types of results.
For example, if you Google “sales funnel” the search engine results page (SERP) indicates you’re looking for the definition of a sales funnel.
The results are largely definition style SEO pages, and therefore it’s obvious that a product page wouldn’t rank for this query.

Let’s examine another example of a keyword trap. If you perform a Google search for “online training” you’re going to see two vastly different results in the ads.

Cisco – Virtual Classroom Solutions

Udemy – Best Selling Online Courses

These are two wildly different search intents. How do you know if a searcher wants online training software versus online courses? There’s no way to be 100% certain.
However, the organic results are overwhelmingly online course companies such as Udemy, Lynda, and Coursera. The people also ask box is hinting at the search intent, because most of the questions are about online training.

Based on what the organic listings are showing, I would conclude that Cisco’s ad is largely irrelevant. They might get lucky and grab some clicks, but they’re probably losing money on this ad set.
Now, the question becomes, do they care? Probably not. After all, they’re a $180B market cap, which means Cisco can afford to continue making Google rich.

What about the small guys? This is where SMBs have a tremendous disadvantage, and can’t afford to bleed on paid ads like the behemoths. For that reason, I would recommend startups prioritize SEO efforts in order to avoid the royal rumble of paid ads with giant companies like Cisco.
Let’s also examine “sms marketing examples” where Mobile Monkey nails the search intent with this page, and gets rewarded with the organic featured snippet. Meanwhile, advertisers are off the mark.

Vonage – hoping that a subset of searchers might be interested in APIs for SMS.
Remarkety – hoping that a subset of searchers might be interested in SMS marketing solutions.

What’s the bottom line?
SEOs will habitually review SERP signals to make sure the content they publish matches with Google’s organic search results, and ultimately delivers a high degree of satisfaction with regard to searcher task accomplishment.
Is your content helping searchers accomplish the task they need to complete?
This is particularly useful when there are potential keyword traps — words and phrases that sound good, but have dual meanings or a mismatched intent.

If potential dual meanings exist in your industry, SEOs will catch them. All that’s left to do is to get them to share their insights with your PPC team.

2. Share PPC insights on best performing headlines and descriptions.
When your SEO team decides to pursue a new keyword, it can be months before they see measurable results. If it was the right keyword and phrase to target, that’s success.
But if click-through rate (CTR) and engagement is low — even if it ranks on page one — you’ve now spent your time and budget running circles in an SEO hamster wheel. And, by the way, CTR is an indirect SEO ranking factor.
SEM is the exact opposite. You’ll know whether or not PPC ad copy is working — usually within a matter of days with low investment. So you might consider using PPC to get fast, short-term results, and use those insights to fuel your larger SEO strategy.
Test as many ad copy variations as possible, until you have the data that will support your SEO campaigns.
Here are some things you can test:

Headlines, title tags, and description copy.
Keywords and topics.
Specific keyword angles.
Landing page variations.
New product messaging.

PPC campaign results will reveal each headline’s impact on clicks, time on page, bounce rate, goal completions, and other meaningful engagement signals. If you run longer tests, you can also learn how a specific keyword’s demand fluctuates from month to month, which will help you set more accurate expectations with your SEO team.
Use PPC insights to choose the best topics, write and optimize your headlines and meta descriptions, and align to your audience’s needs and expectations.
3. Optimize your landing pages to reap both SEO and PPC benefits.
Spending money on paid ads without running efficient landing page tests could result in tons of wasted money and effort. 
The benefits of optimizing your landing pages are fairly obvious: you don’t burn precious marketing dollars on ineffective content experiences.
If you’re looking for more in-depth specifics on creating landing pages that convert, I would recommend checking out 19 of the Best Landing Page Design Examples You Need to See in 2020.
Ultimately, SEO & PPC teams must align their most valuable assets —landing pages.
3 important actions need to happen:

You have a noindexed, conversion focused landing page built for PPC advertising. Your main goal conversions are going to be form completions, demo requests, live chat inquiries, etc.
You are working with the SEO and CRO teams to build new landing page variants with intelligent hypotheses. Your goal is to split test these pages and monitor the results.
You are working with the SEO team to create a separate asset, which is longer-form and educational, on the same topic for which you want to drive organic visibility.

Ultimately, marketers should craft a surround sound search engine marketing strategy.
Say, for example, a shopper searches for your brand or product name, clicks on your PPC ad, stays for a minute, and then exits the page.
Days later, they search for guides to help them choose a solution, which leads them to an educational piece of content you produced on that same topic.
As they click around, browse, and scroll through the online listings, your brand is on their radar. They get used to your tone, visuals, and messaging. If they liked what they saw through your PPC ads, they’ll look for your name in a sea of organic listings the next time — and vice versa.
In brand marketing, what gets repeated gets remembered, and what gets remembered, gets done.
SEO expert, Rand Fishkin, wrote about the ludicrously powerful influence of brand repetition in his 2020 election recap article:
“Hear a song over and over, and even if you hate it, your brain will subconsciously hum it. Hear a brand name over and over and you’ll assume the company behind it must be a big, important, and probably trustworthy one.”
4. Work together to achieve SERP domination.
Taking up the first organic spot for your target keyword is not enough anymore. There’s so much noise and clutter in Google’s result pages, that you need to occupy as much digital real estate as possible.
Udemy has clearly figured this out. Check out their ad + organic listing, flying high together for the SERP targeting “excel courses.”

Check out GetVoIP’s SEO + PPC combo strategy for an insanely competitive SERP. They’ve got a killer landing page targeting “Business VoIP” and it’s soaking up both organic and paid traffic. This particular SERP is a double whammy for GetVoIP, because they’ve also got the precious featured snippet.
You can also see Nextiva ranking organically below GetVoIP. Since Nextiva is mentioned positively and has excellent reviews on GetVoIP’s listing page, this is a strategic chess move which is part of the surround sound search marketing playbook, coined by Irina Nica from HubSpot.

The list of SERP features that could push your organic success down the page is endless, including: 

Rich snippets.
Google shopping results.
Knowledge cards.
People also ask.
Video carousels.
Image packs.
Localized results.

It can leave your SEO team feeling deflated, doing all that grueling work to earn a #1 organic ranking just to be thwarted by Google’s UX schemes.
The reality is that Google is extorting companies for playing brand defense. (Bing is just as guilty).

While this is a challenge for some marketers, don’t hate the player — hate the game. You can still fight back with smart collaboration between SEO, PPC, and affiliate partners.
Apart from Google’s questionable ethics, you should still continue to bid against the high value search terms you’re already ranking for, in order to achieve what’s known as SERP domination.
Here’s how the productivity platform ClickUp achieves this.

Out of the top five results we can see above the fold, ClickUp took up two. The paid result takes you to a product page, while the organic result is a blog post — both super specific to the search term.
To implement this, analyze your SEO performance to find your highest-ranking pieces and run paid ads against those keywords. This will unlock SERP domination for your most valuable keywords.
5. Reveal “hidden keywords” within the buyer journey.
It’s unrealistic to expect every keyword, blog post, landing page, and paid search ad to convert visitors into leads. In fact, I’ve talked about this extensively with Chris Walker on the state of demand generation podcast — stop creating content purely for lead generation, and instead focus on educating a niche audience.
All roads lead back to user intent. Your keyword research needs to focus on the searcher’s ultimate goal and be broken down into three main intent buckets: transaction vs. research vs. education.
Here’s how we’ve mapped out the customer journey at Nextiva within the context of marketing our commercial phone service offering. Each stage of the buying process has a distinct emotion tied to it.

Unaware: Not aware I have a problem → I’ve never actually considered we may have a problem communicating with our customers, prospects and partners.

Problem aware: I think I have a problem but I’m not doing anything about it yet → I think we’re having issues communicating with our customers, prospects and partners, but I haven’t started searching for a solution yet.

Solution Aware: I’m actively searching for a solution → I’ve finally realized we have a problem communicating with our customers, prospects and partners, so I’m searching for a solution online.

Product aware: I’ve found a few solutions, including yours → I’ve seen your solution, but I’m not entirely convinced you’re the right one for me.

Most aware: I’ve chosen your product and I’m ready to commit → Show me the buy button.

This concept is nothing new. HubSpot pioneered the buyer’s journey in B2B before it was a big thing.

Based on the buying process, you should bucket your keywords for SEO and PPC campaigns into:

Educational: Guide, tutorial, resource, questions like ‘how,’ ‘what,’ and ‘why,’ examples, tips.

Solution: Best, reviews, integrations, comparison, top.

Transactional: Demo, free trial, buy, pricing.

Advertisers should avoid bidding on education keywords, and focus on solution + transactional.
The following graphic is a brilliant resource from Mike Sonders, outlining the highest demand keywords for SaaS consideration stage content:

At this point, you should align with your PPC team on the following:

Which keywords have tolerable CPC (cost per click) + high conversion rates?
Which keywords have the best cost per acquisition?
Which keywords are the most profitable?
Which keywords actually generate meaningful pipeline value?
Which keywords have the best sales close rates?
Which keywords drive the longest LTV customers?

At this crossroad is where the greatest SEO and PPC magic typically happens.
6. Use audience insights to test and clarify messaging.
I mentioned the value of instant results that come with PPC campaigns compared to SEO. Another key benefit of PPC is testing ads against various demographics and interests.
You can analyze specifics such as:

Age groups
Gender
Household income
Locations
Devices
Interests and lifestyle

We once tested some aspirational messaging on Nextiva’s homepage. And I’ll be honest, it bombed.

At least we were able to course correct quickly, thanks to the speediness of learning via paid ads.
The greatest benefit of audience targeting is that you can test brand and product-specific messages against various demographics and interest groups. Some companies claim they’ve mastered the art of personalization based on the website traffic segment visiting the page, but I have yet to see one company do this excellently.
Pro tip: Look at the search terms report in your Google Ads platform (formerly Google AdWords) to find those long-tail gold mines. These are the search terms that are actually generating clicks from your broad and phrase match campaigns.
With this unique wealth of knowledge, you’ll be able to better inform your SEO strategy by unlocking hidden long-tail opportunities, aligned to your different target audience segments.
7. Apply PPC conversion data to your SEO strategy.
The benefit of search engine optimization is that the longer you do it, the more actionable your data becomes. At Nextiva, our SEO strategy is aligned closely to our PPC campaigns, therefore allowing us to grow organic traffic in a meaningful way, rather than vanity driven top-of-funnel visibility.

We’ve followed HubSpot’s classic pillar clustering model to rank for outrageously competitive head terms like VoIP (mind blowing 80,000 monthly searches), supported by adjacent longer tail content all cross-linked together.
Not only is this a brilliant internal linking mechanism, but it helps your website build authority and topical depth. Eventually, Google starts to closely associate your brand with important concepts and entities. This is how you evolve past SEO 101 and unlock SEO mastery.
Ranking for an 80,000 monthly search volume keyword is pretty damn sweet. But it’s even better when you’re at position zero with a glorious featured snippet.

Why did Nextiva focus on ranking for VoIP? Because our PPC data told us it drives larger line size opportunities. That’s the beauty of SEO & PPC alignment — uncovering those precious hidden insights.
Your PPC team operates like a stock broker, optimizing for the highest return on investment. This means that their marketing campaign reports tell them which keywords:

Convince the most visitors to become subscribers and leads.
Generate the most engagement.
Lead to most purchases.
Are the most profitable.

Believe it or not, most SaaS companies are not running profitable Google Ads campaigns. There are many reasons why this happens. I’ve spoken extensively about this with Chris Walker on the State of Demand Generation podcast.
What’s the bottom line?
PPC conversion data is powerful. When you match these keywords to your SEO goals, you can focus your organic SEO efforts on keywords that will make the biggest difference to your organic search traffic — including brand awareness, engagement, and net-new customer acquisition.
SEO + PPC = Search Marketing Glory
When you break down your SEO and PPC silos, you’ll unlock a world of opportunities. Use this list and start uniting your SEO and PPC teams without getting overwhelmed.
It’s not about SEO vs. PPC anymore — it’s about crafting a holistic approach to search marketing, increasing your competitive advantage across your best performing channels, and reaching your target customers exactly when (and how) they are looking for you.

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This is a guest post from Charity Engine.
Businesses and nonprofits alike had to adjust to the “new normal” brought about by coronavirus. Everyone had to change strategies to adhere to new social distancing guidelines and safety precautions. It’s likely that your nonprofit’s doors are still closed and your staff members are still working from home. 
Given all the commotion, your organization probably enacted some short-term fundraising goals and marketing objectives to weather the crisis. But, as the year progressed, nonprofits adjusted their strategies to think more long-term. 
Specifically, nonprofits are starting to think beyond immediate fundraising needs to how they’ll develop long-term relationships with their supporters and strengthen big-picture fundraising while following COVID-19 guidelines.
To do this, nonprofits need to think critically about how they’re reaching supporters by leveraging their CRM software and donor data. In this guide, we’ll be covering four top tips to help nonprofits with these donor management concerns.
Now, let’s dive deeper into an ideal donor management strategy. 
1. Build comprehensive donor profiles. 
Before you start compiling donor data and incorporating it into your organization’s relationship-building strategies, you need to ensure you have the right tools to store and organize the information.
This comes back to the idea of having a donor database that can build out donor profiles with all the information you need. CharityEngine’s CRM guide explains that nonprofits need to track donor data to build out a complete view of all the engagement metrics that compose the donor journey. For instance, be sure you have access to engagement data such as: 

Donation history. When you know donation history, you can tailor fundraising appeals to meet their needs. For example,  let’s say one donor has contributed to your online donation page three times in the last few months. You should send them an email that details your recurring gift options and explains how they can sign up if interested. 

Events attended. Keep track of the nonprofit events (including virtual fundraising events) your supporters attend to support your mission. If a supporter frequently attends your events, you might create specialized invitations for them to the next one you plan. Similarly, if a supporter hasn’t donated in a while but regularly attends events, you’ll know that you haven’t lost their engagement altogether. As we all know, this is a tough time and some people might not be able to stay involved in their usual way.

Connections with other supporters. Understanding the familial connections within your donor database can go a long way in your communications. You can address entire families at once, particularly when it comes to direct mail. Also, be sure to track business connections to determine if your cause resonates with a specific company’s employees. If so, that business might be a good potential partner for your organization. 

Contact information. Many people have multiple email addresses, phone numbers, and several other ways to contact them. So, you should be able to save various aspects of contact information to a single profile when applicable. Also, keep track of how each supporter prefers you to contact them so that you reach out using the best channels. Otherwise, they may feel as though you’re overlooking their preferences and only doing what’s convenient for your team.

Collect and save this information to take the first step in developing an effective and engaging marketing strategy. From here, you can use supporters’ preferences to create smart donor segments, which we’ll discuss more in the next section. 
2. Create smart donor segments.
The best way to develop relationships with your donors is by paying personalized attention to each one of them. But, it’s not feasible to send individualized emails to each supporter every time you want to contact them. That would take far too much time. That’s why nonprofits create smart donor segments to reach out to supporters in a more efficient way. 
Donor segments allow your organization to tailor outreach to address groups of supporters who share common characteristics. 
To get a better grasp of this concept, let’s walk through some of the segments that your organization may consider creating: 

Giving levels. Consider how much and how frequently your donors give to your organization then create segments based on this data. After all, you wouldn’t communicate with your low-level donors in the same way you would with your mid-level supporters. Your mid-level donors have greater potential to become major donors, so your messages should lead them toward this goal. Meanwhile, if you sent those messages to a low-level audience, the difference in giving will be too great of a leap, which might steer them away.

Major and prospective donors. Use your prospect research and wealth screening tools to identify your major donors or major prospects. These individuals should be held in high regard and stewarded accordingly. Consider giving them their own segment in your donor database. 

Engagement level. If you have donors with high engagement levels, it’s important to note that in your donor database. This means you’ll have a group of accountable individuals that you can reach out to for volunteering, contributions during tough times, and so on. You can also reach out to prevent a supporter from lapsing altogether if someone from this group suddenly drops in their engagement rate. 

Once you’ve identified and created meaningful donor segments for your organization’s outreach, you can craft the most effective message possible tailored to each group of supporters. You’ll know that the message will be relevant to every person in that group, but you won’t need to spend time crafting individual messages. 
3. Track nonprofit communications.
One of the purposes of your nonprofit donor data is to guide your organization’s marketing strategy. According to this guide, your organization should consider the channels that will interest your audience. Then, use a variety of those channels in your outreach strategy.
By collecting more data and tracking communications with supporters, you’ll add more data for your nonprofit’s donor profiles. Using this data, you can craft more marketing segments that can be used to hyper-personalize outreach and get the most use out of your strategies.
Consider the following personalization strategies that you can use to reach your supporters: 

Use individuals’ preferred names in direct messages. Using names assures supporters that they’re not just receiving mass communications. Specifically, you should use their preferred names, to further develop your relationships.  

Use the preferred method of communication with supporters. Send a simple survey to ask supporters their preferred method of communication. Then, make sure you honor their preferences. For those who don’t respond to the survey, you can use data in their donor profile to make inferences about their preferred channel. 

Send personalized invitations for things they’re interested in. Take note of your supporter’s interests. In another survey (or the same one) ask supporters about their interests, such as their preferred events, programs, and volunteer opportunities. Once you know what their interests are, you can send personalized invitations for those activities that interest them.

Your nonprofit will need a place to store information and data to make all this possible, which leads us back to the importance of your CRM system. 
Within your CRM system, you should track your marketing campaigns to see how successful they are with your intended audience. From here, you can analyze the success rates and make adjustments to your marketing strategy where necessary. 
For instance, keep an eye on metrics such as: 

Email open rate. This shows how initially appealing your emails are. If it’s low, you may consider adjusting your subject line or further diversifying your content. 

Bounce rate. If people are bouncing from your emails or your website, you’re probably not meeting their expectations in terms of content. Consider what it is they want and expect from the marketing materials. Then, deliver that material. 

Click-through rates. High click-through rates for emails, social media, and other marketing sources indicates that your message successfully drives supporters to your targeted action. 

These metrics are key to understanding the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. If it’s not going well, you may need to go back to the drawing board with donor data. Ask yourself: what isn’t meeting expectations or where are interests misaligned? 
4. Craft and track campaign data. 
One of the functions of your donor database is to track your fundraising campaigns as a whole. When you have a software system that’s interconnected with your donor data, your fundraising tools, and marketing solutions, you can track all campaign information in a single location. 
Using your CRM to track and analyze campaigns helps measure the impact of campaign elements. Then, you can make necessary adjustments to your marketing strategy.
Campaign data is, essentially, the composite donor data that you collect. For instance, consider the following campaign data: 

Total money raised. When you set up your fundraising campaign, you created a primary goal that you want to reach. We recommend that you also set benchmarks and checkpoints along the way as well to make sure you’re on track. If you’re not on course to hit the goal, take a look at your marketing strategy. Is your message reaching the right audience? Are they paying attention?

Donation page abandonment rates. With the right technology, you can track your website’s visitation rates. If you find that potential supporters navigate to your donation page but leave without giving, you may need to optimize that page. Try streamlining the donation process by requiring supporters to fill out fewer fields on the donation page itself.

Giving platforms used. If you’re employing a multichannel fundraising campaign, you’ll have multiple places to track incoming donations. You may have gifts from your donation page, direct mail, a peer-to-peer fundraiser, or social media fundraising platforms. Use your data to maximize your most effective platform and improve the other ones.

Analyze campaign information within your database to visualize fundraising campaign trends and make adjustments.
These trends can lead you to make smart decisions that will improve your fundraising efforts. However, you need to have the right software in your toolbox. re:Charity’s list of the top fundraising software for nonprofits can guide your organization in the right direction to choose solutions that will make this analysis possible. 
Wrap up
Effective donor management is essential to help nonprofits like yours collect data, enhance fundraising, and better build relationships with supporters. Be sure you have a software system that empowers your nonprofit. It should help you conduct research, collect data, store information, analyze trends, and take appropriate actions. Good luck! 
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