With more than 53% of all website traffic coming from organic search, businesses need to rank higher on search engines. A robust SEO strategy is essential to achieve higher rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
However, SEO has never been more competitive. More than 1.7 billion websites exist on the internet, and their number is only increasing. Website owners need a fail-proof SEO plan that helps them rank better and provides them with a competitive edge.
Here’s the ultimate guide to creating an SEO strategy that works.
What Is an SEO Strategy, and Why Do You Need It?
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A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy comprises a well-planned approach to boosting a company’s visibility on the internet. The primary focus of an SEO strategy is to achieve a higher organic ranking for a website on SERPs to attract more traffic, increase brand awareness, and generate more leads and sales.
Here are some reasons why every business should have an SEO strategy.
- Increase website traffic
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase authority
- Get a competitive edge
- Get more leads and sales
- Increase customer loyalty
With almost 70% of online experiences beginning with a search engine, websites that rank high on SERPs enjoy substantial benefits over their competitors.
Key Components of an SEO Strategy/Types of SEO
An SEO strategy has three core components: technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO. Let’s discuss these areas of SEO and their significance.
Technical SEO
The technical aspects of SEO focus on how search engines access, index, and crawl your website. Getting technical SEO right is the first step in any SEO strategy. It begins with listing indexing your site on Google Search Console, so Google can find and index your website. Other aspects of technical SEO are URL structure, site structure, page speed, schema, page load speed, and mobile responsiveness.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO comprises all the changes you make to your webpage and content to boost SEO performance. This includes creating keyword-rich content, including graphics, following an SEO-friendly format, and including HTML tags.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO includes all the actions outside your website that can improve your site’s search engine visibility. This includes building backlinks, promoting your site on social media, and supporting your SEO efforts with paid advertising.
How Does Google Rank Pages?
Before we delve into the nitty-gritty of creating an SEO strategy that helps you rank better, let’s understand how Google ranks a website.
First, it’s crucial to understand that Google doesn’t rank a whole website but individual pages. For example, if you want to target the keyword “top smartphones,” you can’t rank your entire site for it. You’ll need to optimize individual pages on your website. However, optimizing each page on your website for that keyword can ultimately optimize your entire website.
Search engines use myriad factors and signals to rank web pages on SERPs. The two most crucial factors are:
- Relevancy: Search engines pull up results that are relevant to the search query. The more relevant the result, the higher it will rank.
- Authority: high-authority websites tend to rank higher than low-authority websites. Authority essentially means the popularity of a website, which is measured by the total traffic and backlinks it gets. Google uses E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness) to rank websites.
Here are some other essential SEO signals that you can’t overlook:
- Website security and accessibility
- Page load time on all devices
- Mobile-friendliness
- Content optimization (on-page SEO)
- Technical SEO
- User experience – responsiveness, navigation, etc.
- Links – inbound, outbound, and internal
- Social signals – social shares and traffic from social media
Steps to Create a Winning SEO Strategy
Now that we have discussed the key SEO components and ranking factors, let’s unravel the seven-step process to getting your SEO right. Let’s delve in.
1. Get Technical SEO Right
Indexing and crawling your site are the most vital elements of technical SEO. However, there is more to technical SEO, including but not limited to:
- Site structure
- URL structure
- Breadcrumbs navigation
- Spot indexing
- XML sitemap
- Google Search Console “Inspect”
- Non-index pages
- Canonical URLs
- Web page size and load time
- Dead and broken links – 404 pages and 301 redirects
- Thin and duplicate content
Here’s a comprehensive guide to technical SEO for more information.
2. Find Appropriate Keywords
Once you have the technical part of SEO in order, you can begin with on-page SEO. Finding appropriate keywords is the first step in any on-page SEO strategy.
There are various ways to conduct keyword research. These include:
Google Suggest
When you type a word in a Google search, Google suggests popular keywords that people search for. For example, suppose you offer recruitment services. Here “recruitment services” can be a potential keyword people can search to find you. To find related keywords, you can type “recruitment services” in Google search (don’t hit enter). Some suggestions will come up.
You can pick a few key phrases you feel are relevant to your business. Also, feel free to play around by entering different phrases and combinations.
Another way to find keywords using Google Suggest is by searching a keyword and scrolling at the end of the SERP. You’ll find a “Related searches” section that will likely include some highly relevant keywords.
Google Keyword Planner
Though Google Suggest offers amazing keyword suggestions, it doesn’t tell the search volume of each keyword. Search volume refers to the number of times a keyword is searched for in a month. Here’s what you get when you enter “recruitment services” in Google Keyword Planner.
In addition to showing monthly search volumes of keywords, Keyword Planner offers keyword suggestions to help you find the best keywords. It also enables you to find location-specific keywords by specifying your target location.
Keyword Research and SEO Tools
There are numerous keyword research and SEO tools out there that help you find the most appropriate keywords. Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Ubersuggest are some popular examples. These tools also offer additional features like clicks data, backlink information, SERP history, content ideas, etc. Most of these tools are paid and require a monthly subscription.
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3. Create a Content Strategy
Once you have created a list of keywords you want to rank for, the next step is to create a content plan. You can’t rank your website with a single blog post, regardless of how well it is written.
Ideally, a website needs 10-30 pages of well-crafted content to climb up the SEO rankings. However, don’t limit yourself to 30 pages. The more content your website has, the better chances it will have to rank higher.
You’ll need a well-planned content strategy to create these many pieces of high-quality content. You can get content ideas by following your competitors closely and seeing what they are writing about. Then, pick those topics and write them better than your competitors. You can also write about the latest news, industry trends, etc.
Just make sure your content is helpful and creates value for your audience. You can also work with a content writing company and outsource your content requirements to experts.
4. Optimize for On-Page SEO
Every blog post is a new page added to your site, and hence, a new ranking opportunity. After creating a blog post, optimize that page of on-page SEO. This includes creating content of more than 1,000 words, incorporating keywords (but not stuffing them), adding high-quality images with alt tags, and properly formatting your content using header tags, bullet points, and shorter paragraphs.
5. Use Links Wisely
Links play a vital role in SEO. They are of three types:
- Outbound Links: Links on your website to an external website
- Inbound Links: Links on other websites to your website
- Internal Links: Links on one page of your site to another page on your site
Using outbound and internal links is a part of on-page SEO. When writing content, link important concepts or statistics to relevant, high-authority sources. Similarly, include some links to other blog posts or pages of your website. However, use links in moderation. No more than 2-5 external and internal links should be on a blog post.
Getting inbound links is more powerful. When other websites link to you, Google thinks that your website has the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EAT), and it will rank your site higher. There are two proven ways to get inbound links:
- Create unique, high-quality content worth linking to.
- Write guest blogs on high-authority websites and earn a backlink to your site.
6. Leverage Other Off-Page Tactics
This step is optional, but if you have the resources, you should utilize off-page SEO to boost your website’s SERP rankings. Here are two off-page SEO strategies to follow.
- Social Media: Create profiles on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and share your blog post with your followers to direct traffic to your website.
- Paid Ads: Run search engine ads to make your website appear multiple times in search results and attract more traffic.
7. Measure and Optimize
The final step is to measure your SEO performance and optimize it accordingly. Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to measure various important SEO metrics, including:
- Total traffic
- New and recurring traffic
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Bounce rate
- Average session time
- Conversion rate
You can also use third-party tools like SEMRush and Moz Pro to measure other relevant insights like:
- Domain authority
- Optimization scores
- Readability metrics
- Keyword rankings
- Number of indexed pages
- Improvement suggestions
Based on these insights, you can identify the scope for improvement and tweak your SEO strategy.
Over to You
SEO is competitive, but it doesn’t have to be complex. By following the steps discussed above, you can optimize your website and rank it higher on search engines. When developing an SEO strategy, consider technical, on-page, and off-page SEO aspects and focus on creating high-quality content for your readers.
Author’s Bio
Founder at Content Writing Agency – Italics
LinkedIn- Harsh vardhan Dutta
Harsh is a seasoned entrepreneur, Digital Marketer, and Professional Copywriter.
