A deep dive into what you can expect from an SEO strategy, and what it all means
Intro
If you’re wondering what type of work I’ll be undertaking whilst working with you on developing your business’s online presece, then look no further than the below.
Still need to chat it through? Then get in touch!
On-Site SEO
Keyword Research & Optimisation
Keyword Research is the process of discovering which words and phrases people are searching that are relevant to your business or service. The specifics of learning these keywords also includes the following:
- How frequently these words and phrases are searched for
- Synonyms of the initial keywords and phrases
- Other keywords and phrases that are topically relevant to your intial keywords and phrases
- Seasonal trends these search terms follow
- Which locations the terms are searched for most prominently
- How interest in keywords trends over time
Understanding the above allows us to create optimisations to your website’s content to align what you’re talking about online with what your target audience are searching for.
Competitor Research
Sometimes the best place to start researching what you’re missing and what your online marketing priorities should be is competitor research. Figuring out what your competitors are doing, how they’re approaching their content and keyword strategy, UX, linkbuilding and productisation can be critical to understand if you need to pivot from your current position to become more competitive.
There are two types of competitors to asses when undertaking competitor research:
- Direct Competitors – these are competitors known for being directly competitive in your field of business or service and you are competing with them for share of market and customers.
- Indirect (SERP) Competitors – these are competitors who have strong visibility and rank well for keywords you are also interested in, but do not have a direct competition with you for customers. Websites like Government and University websites are usually good examples of indirect competitors for online commerce brands.
By distinguishing your competitor types you can develop a prioritised list for actions you want to take that will deliver the highest ROI.
Technical & Speed Auditing
Technical Audits
Traditionally known as the foundation of an SEO strategy. There is some truth in this, but there is a lot less importance on Technical SEO for small websites (this website, for example) than there are for big websites (eBay, for example).
There are fundamental technical questions to investigate and answer, regardless of your website’s size. Examples of these could be:
- Can search engines crawl your website?
- Can search engines index your website?
- Are there any instances of pages being accidentally created, leading to a bloated site?
- Can search engines properly render your pages?
Speed Audits
Building a website that loads quickly for a user is a great indicator to Google that you are creating a positive user-experience for anyone who visits your site. With that in mind there are definite SEO benefits to increasing your website’s loading speed – the two biggest being improved rankings and increased conversion rate.
The majority of Google searches happen on a mobile device, and Google is now indexing websites based on their mobile website version, so it’s imporant also to measure your website’s speed performance by mobile network connectivity speeds, and not just broadband speeds.
Content Research & Creation
Creating content is an important part of an SEO strategy because it allows you to target keywords that your users are searching for, especially if you don’t already have content dedicated to those keywords.
However, it’s important that content isn’t created for the sake of it, and time and effort is applied to each piece of content that’s being created. Not only that, ensuring each piece of content also has a specific purpose is critical to creating highly useful and relevant content.
Creating good content takes time, it’s not the case of throwing together 400 words with a few keywords dotted throughout. Content needs research. Content needs to tie in to the rest of your website and marketing efforts. Content needs to be better than anything else put out there by your competitors, and give users real value. You need a content strategy.
Investing your time and effort into content is one of the best things you can do with regards to driving marketing ROI.
Off-Site SEO
Backlink Analysis & Auditing
Investigating who is linking to you, how they’re linking to you, and sometimes why they’re linking to you, can be a real eye-opener when auditing the performance of a website. Google discovers new pages on the web via links, but historical manipulation of link tactics was rife before Google had robust algorithms good enough to catch *most* spam and manipulation tactics.
Sometimes a clean-up of prior malpractice is required in order for performance to start improving, and that history all comes out in the wash with an audit.
Linkbuilding & PR
Linkbuilding isn’t what it was. You can’t just throw some money at some semi-related blogging websites and expect that keyword-rich anchor text is going to propel your website to number one.
That’s why I combine linkbuilding with PR.
There is a baseline of link hygiene (3xx and 4xx links), using the right branded terms and images etc, but there are still legitimate ways to earn links for your website that don’t have to involve tactics that Google expressly declares as manipulative.
PR is a great way to do this, as you have to have a robust, compelling and comprehensive story to tell in order for distribution and coverage to occur. This is the best way to natural links, because you have something worth talking about, that other websites want to cover and credit you or your work for – i.e. links.
Diretory Listing, Maps & Google Business Hygiene
For local businesses, Google relies on local signals to help it understand that you are the business you say you are and you are legitimate. Examples of this is making sure that you have the correct Business Name, Address and Contact Information on important places on the web that Google considers as authoritative sources of information.
These types of citations across directory websites and Maps, for example, can help your business appear in local business-specific placements on Google. This can happen more often when Google is more certain about your website.
Another string to the local business bow is Google Business, a platform which allows businesses to own their own brand presence on Google search results by sharing key business information, as well as products, images, content, reviews and more.
Google Property Maintenance
Measurement and reporting are critical to get right if you want to ensure your SEO investment is paying dividends.
That’s why I will also investigate the correct set up of your Analytics, Tag Manager and Search Console platforms as a minimum standard, so I am able to generate reports for you to prove the efficacy of my work.
Final Word
And there you have it, my topline outline of what simple SEO deliverables look like to get you and your business on the way to increased visibility through search engines.
Focus on the basics touched on above, and once you’ve nailed them you can start to invest in more advanced SEO strategies such as Digital PR, crawl analysis, advanced site speed improvements and moving onto Conversion Rate Optimisation tactics.
Questions or thoughts? Leave them in the comments below!
Image couresty of Vecteezy: Businessman Stock photos by Vecteezy