An SEO strategy can be described as a plan of action to achieve your search engine optimization goals. Your SEO strategy provides direction for your SEO efforts. Because an SEO strategy sets the foundation for your SEO efforts, you should take time to thoroughly think it through.
Why is it Important to Have an Effective SEO Strategy?
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” This is a quote supposedly said by Benjamin Franklin. It applies to a lot of things…including SEO. Having an SEO strategy is important because it establishes a blueprint for your SEO campaign’s success. An effective strategy will ensure that your efforts are not gone to waste.
So how do you create an effective SEO strategy?
The following includes tips for creating and executing a good SEO strategy:
1) Perform Keyword Research
Keyword research allows you to uncover valuable data that will help you execute an SEO strategy successfully. Data such as average monthly searches and keyword difficulty can be found via keyword research. The number of average monthly searches gives you an idea of how many searches a certain keyword gets per month. Keyword difficulty shows which keywords are more competitive to rank for and which ones are less competitive.
Performing keyword research can also help you determine potential blog post topics. Knowing what people are searching for is useful data to have. This information allows you to provide quality content for your website visitors. With all the benefits of keyword research, you should definitely consider making it a priority in regards to your strategy.
2) Identify “Easy Wins”
This SEO tip goes along with keyword research. An “easy win” can be described as a keyword or phrase you could rank fairly easily. An “easy win” in the SEO world is a result of having little competition standing in your way. If you’re looking to see SEO results fairly quickly, identify and go after “easy wins.”
3) Determine Your Goals
To have an effective SEO strategy, you need to determine your goals.
Optimization factors you’re looking to improve might include:
- Organic traffic (overall, regionally, demographically, etc.) to your site
- Conversions (contact form submissions, emails, sales, etc.)
- Impressions
- Links
Identifying goals for your SEO strategy will allow you to track your progress and measure the success of your SEO campaign.
4) Research Your Competition
A huge step for beating your competition is researching them. Find out what they’re doing to rank higher in Google and other search engines by performing a competitive analysis. After all, your competition is outranking you for some reason. Taking time to do your research will allow you to get ideas and new phrases for your SEO campaign. You’ll be surprised by the potential opportunities you find while researching your competition.
A competitive analysis should include:
- Identifying your competitors
- Checking your competitors’ backlink profiles
- Obtaining information about your competitors
- Evaluating the competition’s strategy
- Identifying your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
3) Audit Your Website
The same way researching your competition can reveal missed opportunities, auditing your website can also uncover issues with your website that may have gone unnoticed. A website audit may be difficult to complete on your own but it pays off in the long run. It gives you a diagnosis of your website in regards to SEO.
A website audit involves checking factors such as:
- Content
- Mobility (mobile friendliness)
- Performance (site speed, etc.)
- Links
- On-site SEO
- Social Media
- Redirects and Other Technical Factors
You should consider auditing your website regularly. It’s vital to check for issues that may be impacting your website’s performance and rankings.
6)Take Care of the “Quick Fixes”
As you perform an SEO website audit, you may come across issues that can be resolved quickly. When you do, be sure to take care of these “quick fixes” right away. Even though they may be small issues, they can have a negative impact on your website’s rankings and overall performance.
7) Write Quality Content
When it comes to SEO, content (along with link building) can play a role in how well your website ranks in Google and other search engines. Because of its impact on rankings, you should consider writing quality content that attracts users to your website and gets them continue to revisit the content. A big part of having quality content is making sure its unique. Having duplicated content on your website can negatively impact rankings.
In addition to making sure your content is unique, you should also make sure it’s relevant and is what users are looking for. This is where keyword research comes into play. As mentioned earlier, keyword research can uncover ideas and new phrases you’ve never thought of. These ideas and/or phrases can help you create blog topics to draw in readers and generate on-site content to get visitors to visit your core service or product pages.
8) Build Quality Backlinks
To have an effective SEO strategy, you should consider building quality links. Although link building can be a tedious task, landing links on quality websites can have a positive impact on your website’s ranking. While building links, be mindful of the right way to perform link building.
9) Create a Schedule for Your SEO Efforts
If you’d like to track your SEO efforts, you should consider creating a schedule. For your blog posting, guest posting, and on-site content efforts, a content calendar is a useful resource to have. A content calendar could include things such as due dates, the assigned writer, date of publication, status of the content, notes, etc.
For your link building efforts, you could use a simple Google sheets document to track your work. You could also decide to invest in applications designed for link building (and guest posting) such as Buzzstream. This app is also very valuable for blogger outreach.
10) Continue to Re-Evaluate
After you’ve done your research and started your SEO campaign, you should continue re-evaluating your strategy. SEO involves a lot of moving pieces. Continuing to stay on top of your efforts and improving your strategy is necessary for developing an effective SEO strategy.
Conclusion
A good SEO strategy requires research and planning. Although it takes time to create, the value you receive from creating a well thought out SEO strategy will be well worth it. The tips mentioned in this article provides things to consider for developing an effective SEO strategy. Use these tips for your own website or your clients’ websites and you’ll have an SEO strategy set up for success.
Author Bio:
Elliott Jeter is an SEO guru and the founder of E. Jeter Marketing, an internet marketing company located in the Charlotte, NC area. He has developed successful SEO strategies for businesses in various industries.
