How to create a successful SEO strategy and rank on top

What is an SEO Strategy

An SEO strategy is creating a big picture plan in getting your website to rank in search engines.

A successful SEO strategy outlines all aspects of your website in ways that will benefit your online visibility. It is important to spend time doing your research and making goals you want to achieve with your website. The basic outline of an SEO strategy includes Keyword research, content building, competitor research, social media, ads, local SEO and link building.

This initial planning will save you time and effort when building or refreshing your website.

Keyword research

Keyword research seems to be a common thing I bring up, this is because it is so important. You should be creating a list of keywords that are associated with your business or brand and use that information in a keyword researching tool. Keyword researching websites give you an idea of the metrics behind a set of keywords. Ubersuggest, not only shows you what the metrics for a particular keyword are but show you a list of similar keywords. This table lists the keyword, volume, cost-per-click (Paid links), paid difficultly, and search difficultly.

In a perfect world, you want to pick keywords with a high volume and low search difficulty (Organic results).

Content building

Build relevant content around your keywords. This is not just limited to blog posts or articles, but you can cater to a local audience through a landing page. The content building takes time, so knowing your target keyword will make it easier to make the content that will drive traffic to your website. Make use of on-page SEO tactics but do not overemphasise your keywords in your pages, meta description, and alt text in images.

Know your competitors

Researching your competitors gives you an understanding of how your market works. A successful SEO strategy is identifying gaps that your competitor could be overlooking. It also is a great way to see what methods are working and what methods you should not bother with. Check out the Competitor Overview Report, a great tool to use to track your competitors from SEMRush, a marketing platform offers 45 marketing tools where you can track not only your own visibility but your competitors.

Use social media platforms

All websites need a social media presence, and a social media presence needs a website. Using social media platforms is a must if you intend on growing your audience, it also helps connects you with your audience. Make an action plan for posting times and days and stick to it, in time this consistency will help grow your account and send traffic to your website. It is also important to research how certain platform audiences digest their content, whether they prefer videos, short text, or even if you should be using hashtags.

Take control over local SEO

Local SEO is a great way of making the most of the market. Submit your website to the major search engine players such as Google, and Bing (which Yahoo also uses). Other popular search engines include Baidu (which is most popular in China) and Yandex (Russia’s most popular search engine). This includes making use of local keywords such as a city or area but can also include maps. There are three major players in the “map game”, which are Google, Bing, and Apple Maps. Get your website and business location set up on these services to boost your online presence.

 

Reach more people with Ads

As part of your SEO strategy, see how ads could jump-start your traffic to your website. As a good practice, it is best to wait and see how you end up stabilising in SERPS (which can take up to 6 months) before running ads. This allows you more time to optimise your website and find any problems. Once you run ads, go through your analytics and see how you can better optimise for more traffic.

Make a link building plan

Link building is one of the hardest parts of building an SEO strategy. Link building is when other websites create inbounding links to another website, this is also known as backlinks. This strategy has the potential to increase your page authority, as when another website links back to yours, this is seen as important to Google.

There are some methods of achieving this such as linking to other businesses you work with or collaborate. A common practice is to write pieces of content that contain key statistics or data, this is where users other content writers link back to your content.

 

Review and refresh

At the end of the day, a successful SEO strategy requires tweaking and trial. Dive deep into your analytics and review how your pages rank. A website requires regular updates and changes, and your research should drive these changes. You will always need to come back and change your tactics, try new things, and see what works for you.

Dorin

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