A sound SEO strategy is an integral part of your company’s marketing scheme. Your position with search engines, especially when people are searching key terms, is a very important part of how you build leads. SEO is a major point in your inbound marketing practices. Understanding the components of a quality SEO strategy will get you on the way to tweaking your current tactics or developing something completely new.
Developing an SEO strategy
SEO can become quite complicated because the process search engines use to rank websites is very intricate. You don’t need to understand the vagaries of the process to employ the practices that will get you results. A quality link-building strategy plus strategic keyword use will boost your SEO rankings and target more people who are searching for a business just like yours.
Build an excellent team
Your SEO strategy needs a stellar team behind it. After all, you need to create valuable content, learn about your audience, and analyze your results. Only with all of these parts in place and working together can you continue to improve your SEO strategy to drive the traffic and make the conversions you want.
Your team will need a project manager. For small businesses, sometimes that project manager is the company head, and sometimes it’s the second-in-command. Many larger businesses hire people to manage these projects. You also need a way to generate content, whether you have writers and designers on staff or you choose to outsource this work. Finally, you need at least one person familiar with tech and SEO who can do the keyword and analytics work needed to discover which parts of your strategy are doing well and which parts need work.
Focus on your target audience
Who is your target audience? You might think your target audience is your customer base, but you’d only be partially right. You must know who you’re targeting, why they are going to care, and how to target them to get effective responses.
You can develop entire strategies around defining your audience, but the basics are the same no matter how in-depth you go. Your audience is made up of demographics, like location, age, and income bracket. Audiences also have needs, and you need to define those needs, too, if you ever want to reach these people in a meaningful way. Basically, you’re using your SEO strategy to direct your content toward people in the audience who have needs that aren’t being met. Your content shows them how you’ll meet those needs.
Many companies create customer profiles to help define audiences. This is like a template for a specific kind of customer you have, and it might include details like age, gender, geographic location, and why they might visit your business.
Develop your long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are how you reach niche audiences on the internet. Short keywords, like “content marketing” for example, turn up so many search results from big-name websites that you probably will never find your way even onto the second or third page of results. Long-tail keywords, however, are the longer queries people put into search engines. Something like “content marketing for cat shelters in NYC” would work as a long-tail keyword.
First, discover possible long-tail keywords by looking at the search terms people use to get to your website. Identify the terms you want to use as long-tail keywords. Also develop your own small list of long-tail keywords that aren’t yet drawing people to your site. Be strategic about your keywords. Not every search query people use to get to you is worth turning into a keyword. These keywords should be possible answers to those needs your audience has.
Create a content plan
The next part of developing an SEO strategy is creating a plan for the content you’ll be posting. Your website and blog are where you use those long-tail keywords you developed. Content marketing is an essential part of an SEO strategy, and getting it right takes some work.
When you create content, you aren’t simply writing any old blog post into which you can stuff your keywords. Think of content as another way to bring value to your audience. Answer some of those questions they have, deliver them information you think they’ll find interesting, and show them you’re a company with the industry knowledge to fulfill their needs.
You should develop several blog post ideas for each long-tail keyword. Do not stuff more than one long-tail keyword into a blog post. As you’re developing these ideas, try to create one for each customer profile you have. After all, even within a niche audience, different customers want different things from you.
Make a link building strategy
You’ve developed quality content and long-tail keywords for your blog. You also must build links to your website via other sites. Part of how search engines rank you involves how many other websites link back to you. Of those websites, the ones with the best search engine rankings give you the best boost. To determine the quality of a blog you consider using as a link building opportunity, check out how many ads are on the blog, what kind of content usually gets posted, and how interactive the bloggers are with their audience.
You have two main ways to build links. The first is to identify industry websites and blogs and offer to do guest posts. Writing expert copy about industry terms, news, or ideas gives you the chance to get your name out there as an expert and to put a link to your own site within this content on a reputable page.
Your second link-building option is to contact influencers. With an influencer, you offer them a sample product or service in exchange for a review. While some influencers expect to be paid, many of them are happy for some reciprocal link-building or social media boosts. The influencer links to your page giving you another valuable link in the SEO chain, and you also get a product shoutout that their followers will see.
Focus on conversion
Leads are one thing, but conversion is what you’re actually after with SEO strategy development. If a bunch of people are visiting your page, but nobody’s buying anything, then you’ve got a big gap in your strategy. The problem might be with the page itself, or it might be with the kind of leads you’re generating.
Your website needs to be easy to navigate and very obvious to use. Buying products or reserving services should be the first thing people see when they visit you. If that’s already the case, then you might be generating leads that don’t have interest in your product. To figure out if your leads themselves are the problem, implement a lead scoring system. When you start scoring those leads, you might discover a flaw in your system. Maybe your long-tail keywords aren’t drawing in the right audience, or you’re choosing the wrong influencers for product reviews.
Track and analyze your results
Lead scoring is just one way to track and analyze SEO strategy results. Keep checking the search terms people use to get to your site. You should be seeing your new long-tail keywords in those lists. As your site brings in more traffic, you’ll discover new long-tail keywords to use.
Check the traffic and lead building each blog post generates on its own. Check your search engine rankings. You’ve got a lot of options when it comes to tracking your metrics. Just make sure you develop a consistent system, so you can easily see the patterns in your data.
Keep abreast of new SEO tactics
Like any other marketing practice, SEO strategy best practices are always changing. Create a Google Alert for new SEO strategies and ideas, so you never miss information about the newest ways to do things. If your strategy development grows so quickly that you can’t handle it, consider hiring a marketer to help, or investing in a plan with a marketing firm who can take over this part of your business.
Your SEO strategy should always be evolving as you analyze your data and expand your customer base. Prune the bits that aren’t working and expand the parts that are. Never be afraid to change something if you think you can do better, and always remember that, in the end, the focus should remain on the customer.
