5 ways to
improve your SEO strategy
The purpose of an SEO
strategy is to help you form an action plan for achieving both your short and
long term online goals. If you already have a strategy or if this is something
you will create now, the 5 ways outlined below will help you improve it and
make it more efficient.
What
is a Search Engine Optimization strategy?
In general, when you
set goals (business goals, personal goals etc.) you also need to have a plan
that describes step-by-step how to achieve your goals. This action plan is your
strategy for meeting your targets. Likewise when we talk about the Internet and
SEO you need to have specific measurable goals on what you want to achieve
online and a search engine optimization strategy will tell you how to get
there.
Why
it’s important to have an SEO Strategy?
Without an SEO
strategy you won’t know if what you are doing is in the right direction. For
example you don’t just run Facebook ads for the sake of running ads but this
should be part of your overall strategy. Every action you do should be in
accordance with your targets otherwise you are just wasting your time and
money.
An SEO strategy is
necessary for every online property. If you are running a small business online
or if you are a solo blogger you need to have in mind a strategy that will help
you meet your targets. It doesn’t have to be complicated or too detail but what
is more important is to have one.
What
are some typical items in an SEO strategy?
A good SEO strategy is
tailored to the needs of the particular web property but in general these are
some typical items that are part of every strategy (don’t forget that a good
SEO strategy is not only about SEO):
Content
marketing –
Everything starts with good content and your task is not only to publish
content but create content that users want to read and share
On-Page
SEO – This is now more
important than ever and one of the first milestones in your strategic planning.
Before doing anything else you have to get on page SEO right and then move to
the next items.
Off
Page SEO –
Link building is not the same as it used to be, but it is still an important
ranking factor so you have to learn what you can do and what not to do for
getting results
Social
media marketing –
When you reach to the point that you have great content and a fantastic
website, the next obvious step is to utilize the power of social media and
distribute your content in the various social media networks.
How
to improve your SEO strategy?
Your SEO strategy is
not something static, in other words you don’t just ‘set it and forget it’ but
it’s a dynamic process that needs fine tuning and control depending on the
results produced.
Over the years I have
worked with many clients establishing their SEO and Internet marketing
strategies and found that some areas need more attention than others. It is
also surprising that as we get deeper into SEO we tend to forget the basic
rules that’s why it is always suggested to go back and review your strategic
plan on a regular basis.
1. Go back
to the basics
You should do exactly
what the name suggests i.e. go back to the basic SEO rules and work on your
titles, descriptions, URL structure and all those items that we consider not
important but play a huge role in the end.
From my experience the
best way is to use an SEO Audit Checklist that will guide you through the
process and produce a clear action plan in the end.
2. Check
for manual or algorithmic penalties
One of the possible
reasons that your SEO strategy may fail is that external factors cannot let it
succeed. To be more specific, if during the lifetime of your domain you have
violated any of the Google webmaster guidelines that led to a manual or
algorithmic penalty then following your SEO strategy is not enough.
You should first make
sure that corrective actions are taken to remove any penalties from your domain
and then continue with your long term plan.
For example, if you
have being doing link building by purchasing link packages or exchanging links
with other webmasters then most probably you were hit by Panda or Penguin and
your rankings have dropped. In such cases you should first remove any unnatural
links by either asking the other webmasters to remove them or by using the
Google disavow tool and then start with SEO again.
3. Start
thinking beyond SEO
As already mentioned
above, when creating an SEO strategy you should think beyond SEO. The term ‘SEO
Strategy’ may be misleading since what we actually mean is setting up an
overall Internet marketing strategy or even better a digital marketing
strategy.
Try to think of other
sources of traffic besides Search engines and other ways to enhance the user
experience besides the browser. To give you a real example, part of my SEO
strategy in growing caloriesecrets to 250,000 visits per month, was the
development of mobile apps (for Windows, Amazon and Android) so as to give my
readers another medium to access my content. This action did not only increase
my traffic but it also gave me a great opportunity to position my brand in the
mobile market as well.
When you think out of
the box and invest on alternative sources of traffic you also gain in terms of
SEO since the extra visibility and exposure works like a natural link building
magnet.
4. Take a
look on your competitors
When you operate in a
competitive niche success or failure depends on what your competitors are doing
as well. For example let’s say you have a Jewelry shop without an online
presence but the shop opposite the street (a jewelry shop as well) has a
website and is getting more customers than you because they can find them
through the Internet. In this case your competitors are a step ahead and
winning over your back.
What I am trying to
say is that besides concentrating on building the best possible presence for
your company, you should also take a look at what your competitors are doing
and make sure that you don’t let them take the lead. If they have an app in the
Apple Store then you should make one, if they have thousands of Facebook
followers then you should have too, if they hire an SEO to get better results
then you should hire an SEO too.
That’s also another
reason why you need to have an SEO strategy in the first place. Your strategy
needs to take all these factors into account and formulate the best possible
path to out pass your competitors.
5. Try to
increase engagement with your content
Last but not least,
user engagement. Search engines and social media networks are looking for
websites that users like to engage with. These websites are more likely to
appear higher in the search engine results pages and when searching though the
various social networks.
When we talk about
engagement we mean comments, Facebook likes, +1s, Tweets, social media shares
and anything else that indicates that the content of a website is interesting
and sharable.
Assuming that your
content is good, some ways to increase engagement are:
Ask users to comment
on your posts
Always reply to user
comments and encourage them to do so
Promote your posts
after your publish them
Run a ‘Q and A’
session on social media so that users can ask you questions and you can provide
them with an answer in the form of a new post on your website
Offer incentives to
encourage user comments – Users who enter a valid comment can enter a draw to
win a price
Make sure that social
media sharing buttons are visible while users are viewing your pages and posts
Advertise – You can
use Facebook ads, Twitter promoted tweets or Google Adwords to get your content
in front of more users. This may be really useful in the beginning until you get
your own tribe of loyal visitors.
Conclusion
Having an SEO strategy
is like using a GPS to take you from point A to point B. In this case point A
is your starting point and point B is what you want to achieve online. Each SEO
strategy is different and depends on the type of business (website), what the
competition is doing, the complexity of the niche and availability of budget
and resources.
Some common items to
find in any strategy are: content marketing, SEO (both on-page and off-page)
and social media marketing.
From my experience
some items that can improve your overall SEO strategy and give you better
results are:
Ensuring that you’ve
got the basics covered
No external factors
are holding you back
Your strategy covers
other areas and not just pure SEO
You know what your
competitors are doing
You always try to
improve the user experience
Finally, for any
project or strategic plan to be successful it needs to have proper monitoring
and control. Part of your responsibilities is to review your strategy on a
regular basis, analyze the results, identify the failure and successes and take
correction actions until you reach your final targets.
5 ways to improve your
SEO strategy by Alex Chris
