The 5 Steps to Planning Your SEO Strategy
The goal of SEO is to bring traffic through rankings, this post will cover 5 steps to planning your SEO strategy.
A website’s search ranking plays an important role in the amount of traffic that it receives. According to a study conducted by Chitka, websites in the #1 Google position receive 32.5% traffic share, whereas websites sitting in the #10 position receive just 2.4%. But how exactly do you plan an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy?
Step #1) Identify Target Keywords
Your first course of action should be identifying target keywords. In other words, for which keywords do you want your site to rank? If you run a website that sells diamond engagement rings, your target keywords may include “wedding ring,” “diamond engagement ring,” “buy diamond engagement ring,” etc. Choose your target keywords based on relevant, competition and traffic for maximum results.
Click Here to learn how to research and identify keywords the smart way.
Step #2) Custom Titles and Meta Descriptions
An effective SEO strategy should consist of both on-page and off-page techniques. Arguably, the single most important on-page optimization techniques include the use of unique titles and Meta descriptions. Each page of your site should be given a unique title that’s relevant to its respective content, as well as a slightly longer description, which is also unique.
A good formula for creating a title tag is picking something short, keyword rich and catchy. For example, a blog targeting stock market investors might use the title tag “The Million Dollar Portfolio – Daily Stock Picks.”
The same is true for the description. It should be catchy, keyword rich and short…but not as short as the title tag. A good rule of thumb is that if your meta description has 20 words or so, you’re fine.
~Neil Patel
Step #3) Create Content
You can’t expect Google to rank your website high in its search results unless your site contains high-quality content that’s relevant to its audience. Google has said before that publishing high-quality content is “the single most important thing that you can do.” And when the world’s largest and most popular search engine makes a statement like that, it’s best to follow its advice.
Resource to help you create great content that Google will love:
Step #4) Interlink
It’s recommended that you interlink your pages together for additional SEO juice. If you’re mentioning or discussing a topic that was covered in a previous post or article on your site, link back to the original source. As search engines crawl the new content, they’ll notice and follow the link. This increased crawling activity can help encourage higher search rankings while assisting visitors in finding relevant information in the process.
If you’re running WordPress, download and install the SEO Smart Links plugin. Linking contextual phrases to other relevant pages on your site is something that Google loves and this plugin makes that job a whole lot easier.
SEO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.
Step #5) Build Backlinks
Of course, backlinks will also play a key role in your website’s search rankings. Some people assume that more backlinks equals higher search rankings, but this isn’t necessarily true. Search engines today now place a greater emphasize on the quality of backlinks a site has rather than its quantity. Building just a handful of high-quality backlinks from authoritative, relevant sources will yield far more SEO power than hundreds or even thousands of generic backlinks.
Resource to help you earn or build back links:
Planning your seo strategy is the first phase; once you get your seo strategy up an running, every webmaster should get into the habit of conducting regular SEO audits of their website. The purpose of this is to identify potential elements that could hinder your ability to achieve a top ranking for your target keywords.
