A solid foundation is key for effective SEO. How strong is your SEO strategy?

The key element for campaign success is your SEO strategy. Many of you are no doubt aware that SEO is a technique businesses use to get their websites to appear on Google’s first page. However, these techniques are often neglected. Remember, a good SEO strategy is crucial for online success. 

What is an SEO strategy?

The goal of any SEO strategy is to gradually improve your website’s position on search engine results pages, like Google, using a step-by-step approach. To rank highly though, you’ll need to use proven techniques and put in a lot of effort; from SEO marketing planning through to keyword research, studying rivals and developing new keywords for your own website, it’s all required for you to rank on the SERPs (search engine results pages). 

It’s important to keep the big picture in mind too. You may make it from the start to the finish line, and reach your goal of ranking on the first page of Google, but you need to maintain that ranking, which in itself takes a lot of work. 

Furthermore, depending on the situation, you might need to adapt your SEO strategy to address issues that might arise, for example, Google algorithm changes or new tactics being used by your competitors.

Planning Your SEO Strategy

Follow the steps below to create a strategy for SEO:

1. Conduct an SEO Audit
   Review your website to see if there’s anything you need to update or adjust, to improve the SEO process. The audit should review the website structure, sitemap and content structure. 
2. Divide Responsibilities
   Assign clear duties to each team member, or employ an SEO agency to support you. The SEO process takes 3-6 months to produce tangible results. This is why companies without a dedicated SEO team often encounter problems. Since staff have other responsibilities as well, they don’t have the time to constantly review and optimise the website’s SEO practices. SEO agencies, therefore, become a smart choice for business owners to keep in mind. 
3. Conduct Keyword Research
   This is the process of identifying the keywords related to your business that your target market might search for. This research can be carried out using various tools, including SEMRush, KWFinder and Keyword Tool. 
4. Implement Your SEO Strategy
   Once you finish planning your SEO strategy, you can begin working through it step-by-step. Access the backend of your website to adjust it, and create both onsite and offsite content to get backlinks. The key to SEO is that everything must be natural, not too much or too little. Your content must be useful and not a copy of someone else’s work. 
5. Constantly Review
   It’s important to regularly monitor your ranking so that you can react accordingly. Because no matter how good your SEO strategy is, a lack of attention may allow your competitors to overtake you in the rankings.

The Importance of SEO

It may seem like it’s all about getting to the first page of Google, but there are many reasons for this:

1. Customers will see you before your competitors and remember you for future purchases
2. Your business will gain credibility because being on the first page of Google is not easy to achieve
3. It will reduce other marketing costs as you can reduce your ad spend once you make it to the first page of Google 
4. You’ll be able to reach your target group more accurately
5. You’ll have more opportunities to collect data from customers

Business Examples Before & After SEO

An interior design client, 3 months before and after implementing an SEO strategy:

Property rental client, 3 months before and after implementing an SEO strategy:

To say that SEO is the main factor for campaign success would be no exaggeration. Whether you do it yourself, employ an in-house team, or hire an SEO agency on a monthly basis, the most important thing with SEO is consistency. You must stay up-to-date with changes and trends, and remember that you’re not the only one in pursuit of Google’s first page!