How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy

How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy

1. Keyword Research

Keyword research includes analyzing long-tail keywords and keyword variations. Brainstorm some topic ideas that your niche audience will be interested in and use tools such as Google and Pinterest autofill suggestions to come up with long-tail key-phrases.

Inputting these phrases into free and paid tools can show you data such as keyword suggestions, search volume, how competitive the phrase is and the top-ranking pages. Just because the search volume is high does not mean it should be a keyword to target – when competition is extremely high, it decreases your chances of ranking high on Google.

This research can show keywords with more potential for ranking highly – keywords with lower competition and a fair amount of search traffic. Additionally, keyword research means you can develop your content to be targeted at your audience and not too general. Content that meets your audience’s needs can lead to higher conversions.

2. Competitor Analysis

You cannot blindly create content to rank highly in search engines without knowing more about the content you are competing with. You need to know information like:

• What keywords do your competitors rank for?
• Who owns the top-ranking pages for your relevant keywords?
• How valuable is their content and what makes it rank well?
• How many backlinks/referring domains do those have to their pages?

This information – particularly the number of backlinks – is needed to inform the next steps in your strategy. Knowing the number of links gives you an idea of how many you will need to compete with them, as links contribute massively to search engine results. 

3. Be Better Than Your Competition

Now you’ve now analyzed the competition, you don’t simply want to copy what they’ve written and add a little more. You want your content to be different, unique and more valuable in order to rank.

Create content that:

• Provides a new perspective
• Is highly authoritative

Are you an expert in your field or is your website a trusted brand/name that will attract people to click on your content? If not, how can you match the authority of your competition? Something like expert interviews or endorsements from trusted people directing them to your content could be the answer.

• Is bigger and better

The content you create needs to add more value to your audience. This typically means longer and more in-depth content. You can create skyscraper content, merge multiple, related pieces of content into one or create ultimate guides like pillar pages.

4. On-Page SEO

SEO consists of many elements that are split between on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO contributes to your website’s ranking and includes:

• Mobile optimization
• Keywords
• Meta descriptions
• Titles and headings
• Website speed
• Visual content

Search engine crawlers will analyze this data on each of your pages and evaluate it in relation to search queries. That’s why it’s not just the content you create that is important, but also your website and visitors’ experience of your page.

As a result, your content should include more visuals, audio or video content that is SEO-optimized for visitors to enjoy, as well as headings and subheadings that break up content and optimized metadata and URLs.

You can perform regular site audits to check on the health of your site and these on-page SEO elements as part of your strategy (more on this later).

5. Search Intent

In addition to keyword research, you want to make sure your content meets the requirements of the target audience. This is why long-tail keywords are important to ensure that the focus of the article is correct for search intent.

Users should not land on a page with content that is irrelevant to their queries. This will only harm your SEO, as visitors are likely to bounce off your page when they do not find what they are looking for.

Therefore, putting yourself in the shoes of your audience allows you to create targeted and valuable content for them. Ask questions like:

• What does your audience want to know?
• What is their goal and motivation for this search?
• How can I add more value to them than my competitors?

This will result in better and more targeted content.

6. Link Building

Backlinks are seen as one of the most important elements of SEO. You need to get it out there in order to obtain traffic and natural links. Reaching out and manually obtaining backlinks is essential for this to happen.

Outreach is a great way to get your article in front of many potential links. You can use outreach for:

• Broken link building
• Guest posting
• Content promotion
• Building relationships for potential backlinks

Creating an effective plan for link building is necessary because of its weight in search engine results. Also, from the research you conducted on already ranking pages, you know how many links you need for your page to rank.

So, consistently reaching out for links, even months after publishing your content, is going to be necessary for your SEO strategy.

7. Check Competitors’ Links

Link building can seem challenging when contacts are limited. However, a good technique for building your contacts for outreach can be analyzing the links your competitors have. 

Using free and paid tools, you can find pages on the same topic you are writing about and find a list of all the linking domains to that one page. These would be ideal potential backlinks as they are already linking to similar content. 

Make sure to exclude websites that have already linked to you or have already been contacted through your outreach strategy.

8. Content Promotion

Typically, blog owners create a piece of content, have a list of the usual things to do to promote the post and then leave it. The work really starts after your content is published to get it ranking on Google.

Social sharing, contributing to communities and all the other activities after publishing a post might not help SEO as much as you think. The graph also shows that websites with a high domain ranking tend to get to Google’s top 10 much faster.

Therefore, building your website’s authority and backlinks can speed up the process of ranking.

9. Website Audits

A website audit was briefly mentioned earlier and is definitely something you want to add to your SEO strategy. This is because an audit can evaluate the health of your website and various elements of on-page and off-page SEO.

Performing a site audit regularly is a good idea in order to continuously improve your website’s SEO. This helps to avoid errors, reveal potential areas for better optimization (in titles and metadata, etc.) and so improve your website’s chances of ranking.

10. Update Old Content

“Fresh” content has the potential to rank better in SERPs, as Google will see the information as relevant, new and up to date. Often, outdated and inaccurate content can rank poorly. Updating old content makes it more relevant to search queries.

When going through old content, keep an eye out for pages that are duplicated and pages that could possibly be merged to form better content. Also, delete any content that is no longer relevant and doesn’t produce much traffic. This can boost your SEO as pages that do not add value to your visitors can negatively impact your overall ranking.

11. Site Architecture

The architecture of your site focuses on the design and functionality of it. If users can’t navigate the site easily, it loads too slow, and certain elements are hard to get to, it will be more difficult for Google to navigate the site as well.

12. HTML

Title tags, meta descriptions, alt text, and headers are important pieces of the SEO marketing puzzle. You’ll use these to tell Google more about your content and what readers can expect when they land on your site.

SEO Strategies: Black Hat Vs. White Hat

I’ve always played the long-term entrepreneurial game. However, this isn’t the case with everyone. Some people would rather take the quick gains and move onto something else.

When it comes to SEO, going for quick gains is often referred to as “black hat SEO.” People who implement black hat SEO tend to use sneaky tactics like keyword stuffing and link scraping to rank quickly. It might work for the short-term and get you some traffic to your site, but after a while, Google ends up penalizing and even blacklisting your site so you’ll never rank.