All companies that have a website should also have a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. A good SEO strategy will cover several areas such as on-page SEO, link building, and user experience. The goal is to offer a site with excellent relevance and value to anyone searching for your business niche. By doing so, you will garner not only a higher ranking on search results, but also a better chance at client conversion.
Still not sure exactly what is an SEO strategy? Let’s take a closer look.
What is the Goal of Your SEO Strategy?
Before you create a strategy, you need to think about and define your overall goals. If you don’t, then you won’t have any measurable way of discovering if the strategy is working.
You will find that the goals for an SEO strategy may change depending on what you want to achieve at any given time. However, some of the questions you may want to ask are:
- Do you want to drive traffic to your website?
- Are you looking to drive market share towards a particular sector?
- Are you looking to move your business online?
- Do you want to drive conversions through special events or social media?
Having a good understanding of how SEO works is key to getting started down the right path. Once you know what your goals are, it will be easier to tailor your SEO strategy to match.
Scaling Your Strategy
Every business is different, some have several pages on their website and a large marketing team, others work alone and run a small website, and most fall somewhere in between.
To accommodate your business, you need to scale your SEO strategy to meet the criteria and size of the company. If you have a large team working on your SEO, then you must ensure they are all kept in the loop.
For smaller companies, it is important to stay within your scope, budget, and workload so you are not overwhelmed.
Analyzing Your Competitors
To understand what you need to improve on your site, you need to see what your competitors are doing in terms of their SEO.
Take a look at how they are maximizing their profile. Test their load times and mobile-friendliness. It can also be helpful to check out their social media feeds, user experience, and target audience. Are your competitors running a blog? If they are, how often are they posting, and what is the subject matter?
Keyword Research
One of the big cornerstones of a good SEO strategy is keyword research. You want to be creating content and web pages that your customers will be searching for. Take a look at the first and second pages on Google, and see what variations of keywords are used and how they are worded. The way your keywords are used is important, and there are certain types such as long-tail keywords that will be better for SEO.
You also want to find out who your competitors are in the search results for these keywords. The companies you want to focus on are those that are a direct comparison to you online.
Search Intent
One aspect of keywords that is sometimes overlooked is search intent. This means looking for what people were searching for with this keyword, and deciding if your content matches it.
Take a look at the first ten results in a search for your keyword and see what comes up. If the results are not similar to your content, then you will need to find another keyword.
If you publish content that doesn’t match with other search results, then you risk people bouncing without looking or staying on your site. Google understands this, and that’s why they reward pages that best match a user’s search query.
Stick With What Works
Once you have found a keyword and content that ranks well, keep going and try to dominate that area.
It can be tempting to recreate it with other high-ranking keywords, but there is no guarantee that it will work as well the next time. Your current success means you have people interested in you and this type of content, so give them what they want.
Conclusion
SEO strategy can sometimes seem like a complicated process. It may be that you need to learn the best methods by taking online courses to help you understand the tools and how to use them effectively.
By trying to create an effective SEO strategy, and regularly monitoring its effectiveness, you can quickly start to see the results you need to grow your website and business.