SEO Strategy Defined

You craft a plan to create, optimize, and promote content, generally in a website, you create an SEO strategy. The intent is to make the site rank as high SERP as possible. Sites with higher SERP tend to attract more organic and converting traffic over a shorter time period.  

You can resort to many techniques including keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, and link building. So, you create and follow an SEO strategy when you’re serious about getting more organic traffic to your site.

Let’s go through the different steps needed to create an SEO strategy this year.

Create a Keyword List

You don’t have an SEO Strategy if you don’t start off by doing solid and comprehensive keyword research. Rely on Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, Moz, or Google Suggest to find keywords. Note that these are just some of the many quality keyword research tools that you can use. There are many others that you can easily find on various search engines.

Here’s how it works. You go to Google’s search field and enter a keyword. You will see a list of suggestions appear as you’re typing the group of words out. You can use these as keywords in your content and they will generally drive droves of converting traffic to your site right away. The reason? They are pulled right from Google! That tells you that people are searching for these terms. So, they will be more likely to come to your site if you include them in your text content.

Note that the longer the keyword is, the less competition it will have. Extremely long keywords are called “long-tail key words.” That makes it much easier to rank faster.

If you don’t want to use a keyword research tool, you can just type a list of words into Google and jot down all of the related keywords and long-tail phrases that appear. Do that until you have a list of at least 10 keywords. However, keyword research tools are useful if you want to learn the keywords’ and long-tail phrases’ competition and search level volumes. Good examples are SEM Rush and Uber suggest.

Analyze Google’s First Page

Your next job is to determine the sites that already rank for your chosen keywords. It’s easy to do. Simply type one of your keywords into Google. Then look at the top 10 results. Take note (write down)any patterns you see. Then create the type of content you see the most. For example, create a blog site if you see mostly blog posts appearing. But create a list post if you see mostly list posts appearing.

Learn About Your Competition

You should use SEM Rush to learn about your competition. The reason is that it’s quick and easy to use. Select the “Domain Overview” button and enter your URL in the appropriate search field. Then go to the bottom of the page. You’ll see a section labeled “Main Organic Competitors.” This section will list the sites that include content with the same keywords you will. These sites are also trying to capture people in your target markets.

Look at the “Common Keywords” section. It will list the total number of keywords you have in common with leading competitors. Note that competing sites will have a high number of keywords in common with your site. You will already know about 4-5 organic competitors if you have done this step right.

Be Unique or Be Better!

Your site will outrank the competition only if it has unique or superior content to theirs. There are two ways you can do that:

●    Create unique content

●    Create superior content

Of course, it’s always better to create unique and superior content. But there are times when you should be unique. The reason is that it increases the chances of Google noticing your content and ranking it faster.

Incorporate a Hook

The only way you can get your site to rank faster is to add quality backlinks. But it’s not easy to acquire these types of backlinks! The more quality backlinks on your site, the faster and higher it will rank on Google (and other search engines!)

You must understand why people in your industry and similar ones will link your site to theirs. They will be motivated to do so if you include a hook on your site. Data is an excellent hook.

Optimize Your Site for On-Page SEO

You should include internal links, or links to different pages on the net if you want to do quality on-page SEO. The trick is to include links from high-authority web pages. That will give your site much more credence. You can even link to pages on your own site if you want. You can also include URLs with short keywords since these generally rank faster and higher than URLs with long keywords.

You should also optimize your site for Semantic SEO. You do that by seeking out and including words that are similar and/or related to your target keyword.

Optimize Your Site For Search Intent

You use The Skyscraper Technique 2.0 when you do that. You create list posts that rank for certain strategic keywords.

Create Appealing Design for Your Content

Presentation matters when you publish content. You can code designs for your content using basic plugins and features in WordPress. There are four elements you incorporate into your site to make it more appealing:

●    Graphs and charts - these work wonders when dressing content up. The reason is that they present data and information in an easy-to-read and understand manner. You may find that people will link your graphs and charts back to you. Not only does that help your site’s SERP, but it’s also free marketing.

●    Screenshots and pictures - screenshots are invaluable because they make it easier for people to understand and follow numerous and complex steps perfectly. But they only work when presenting and/or describing technical concepts and information.

●    Blog post banners - they have no practical purpose, but they do look nice. That makes people more willing to read your content to completion.

●    Graphics and visualizations - they are useful since they help people understand concepts, information, and data better by presenting a visual picture of them.

Build Links Back To Your Page

This is the step where you build links to your content. You can employ one or more of three link building strategies that actually work to do so.

1.   Broken link building - you scour the Net for sites with broken links. Then you contact the owner and ask them if they can replace the content and broken link(s) with your content and links. Note, you need to use specific and salesy language if you want this tactic to work well.

2.   Competitor analysis - it may be an old way of doing things, but it still works. What you do is find a site that’s ranking for one or more of your keywords. Then you look at their backlinks. Third, you analyze all of the backlinks on their site. Fourth, you link your site to a post with a relevant backlink.

3.   Evangelist method - you place most of your attention and efforts in positioning your content in places where people in your target audiences are most likely to view it. You A/B test different email versions of your content to see which version gets the most results. Then you use that to get more backlinks.

Constantly Improve and Update Your Content

You need to update your content regularly and make it more appealing by adding relevant and useful graphics, images, and other visuals when needed.