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How Does SEO Strategy Work?

How Does SEO Strategy Work?Photo from seodesignchicago

 

Originally Posted On : https://seodesignchicago.com/seo-blog/how-does-seo-strategy-work/

 

 

The SEO strategy has become one of the most important services in the marketing industry. Not having an SEO strategy and expecting to rank high and earn more revenue is like searching for a treasure blindfolded. This article will help you understand how an SEO strategy works. We have an effective strategy to help you build a successful SEO strategy in four simple steps.

 

 

What is SEO?

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your website for increased incoming organic traffic and improved ranking on the search engine results page. If you think SEO is unnecessary, you are wrong. If you want to appear first when your ideal client or customer looks online for a service or product similar to yours, SEO will make that magic happen. 70% of online marketers say that SEO is better than PPC for generating sales.

Why Do You Need an SEO Strategy?

An SEO strategy is the process of optimizing a website’s content in order to appear higher in the search engine results. Can you believe that 75% of people who search online for a service or product do not view results beyond the first search engine result page? Imagine how much traffic and revenue you are missing out on (nearly 5.3 times more return on investment) by not getting ranked on the first page? This is the value of search results rankings and exactly why you need an SEO strategy.

The SEO Process to Formulate a Winning SEO Strategy

This is our four-step SEO process to create a winning SEO strategy:

The 4-Step SEO Process:

  1. Optimize your SEO content strategy
  2. Give your on-page SEO strategy a facelift
  3. Build an off-page SEO strategy
  4. Enhance the user experience

All the above are steps in an SEO process to achieve the best SEO strategy. Every single step is equally important in building a successful SEO strategy. So, let’s look into them one by one.

 

SEO Process Step 1: Optimize Your SEO Content Strategy

Content strategy is the aspect of SEO strategy that analyzes how much related, useful content you have on your website. For any website to rank high, it must have topical authority, i.e., people who land on your website must be immediately impressed by how much you know about your niche. When they read more articles on your website that are useful to them and add value to them, you become well-placed in their minds and hence earn brand loyalty. So how do you go about optimizing your content? Follow these 6 simple steps:

1. Create a Content List

Identify all the topics most relevant to the products or services you offer and list them. Say you own a yoga studio that offers classes and sells related products. Then yoga, yoga mat, yoga blocks, vinyasa yoga, yin yoga, etc., will be your keywords for your website. Articles based on these head words form the pillar pages. Pillar pages act as the launchpad for articles with related keywords via internal links. Internal linking strategies also help boost your SEO.

2.   Make Keyword Research Your Friend

Search engines crawl and index your website pages based on the abundance of keywords (within ethical limits, of course.) So to use this SEO content strategy to your advantage, use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner to find long-tail keywords based on your main keywords.

If your main keyword is “yoga,” then a sample long-tail keyword might be “does yoga make you stronger?” Hence, after obtaining several long-tail keywords using keyword research, you will finally have a list of topics related to your focus keywords.

3.  Create Your Own Blog

Now, write separate articles with a specific head keyword as the primary keyword, which will make the pillar pages. Each pillar page will link to clusters. Imagine articles using the related long-tail keywords as primary keywords as planets orbiting a single pillar page. Now, you will have several suns (pillar pages) and several planets (cluster articles for every related long-tail keyword) surrounding them. Internal links will connect every pillar page as well as their clusters. This makes it easy for search engines to craw your website and decide that you have enough topical authority to rank on the first search engine results page.

Doing this will also help keep your visitors engaged longer while they get immersed in reading several related articles. When visitors to your website stay longer on your website, this will again help improve your search engine ranking.

Note: A few precautions to take while doing keyword research for an SEO content strategy:

  • Make sure your own articles do not compete against each other for a single keyword. When that happens, there’s a high chance for some other website to swoop in and grab the rank you are targeting. Hence, have only one article for each target keyword.
  • Keep in mind the keyword intent. Do not write articles for keywords that might have an instant answer. For example, “time in Chicago now” would not help your article rank high. An instant answer will appear at the top of the search result page, and it won’t be yours.
  • Do not choose brand names as keywords. Say you choose “Nike shoes” as your keyword. Nike’s pages will occupy the entire first page in search engine results since they have the highest authority for that keyword.

 

4. Be Consistent in Your Blogging Efforts

Now that you have a blog, it is imperative that you post on a regular basis. For a content strategy to work, your website must not lie dormant after posting a limited number of articles. Keep watching what works for your competitors by keeping tabs on what strategy works for them and what keywords they use to rank better. Make sure to post at least once a week. And also, revamp and update your old content as well.

But why update your old content?

Search engines are always hungry for new content. Fresh content is critical for SEO. A search engine will also consider sufficiently revamped old content as new content.

So how to update old content?

  • Make sure the dates, statistics, and information are up-to-date.
  • Add more content to pages. Sometimes increasing the word count on a page could help it rank better.
  • Add more unique images, illustrations, infographics, and original visuals.
  • Embed related videos or podcasts created after the previous posting date.
  • Create more internal links as you are bound to have created more articles after the previous posting date.

5. Keep Yourself Updated on the Latest SEO News

The world of SEO is constantly changing. That is why you need to keep yourself up-to-date about the latest SEO news, trends, best practices, and SEO strategies.You can follow our marketing blog for the latest news and tips!

6. Measure How Well Your Content Strategy Works

It isn’t enough to plug in your light; you must also turn it on. Measuring your SEO content strategy’s performance is essential. Only when you measure your organic traffic, return on investment, and conversion rate can you realize the effectiveness of your current SEO strategy. And tracking your KPIs will also help find opportunities for improvement.

For measuring these metrics, you can use any web analytics tool like Google Analytics or plugins like Jetpack (for WordPress), or you can even use Excel or Google Sheets to create your own dashboard. Whichever way you prefer to measure, keep measuring to keep improving.

 

SEO Process Step 2: Work On Your On-Page SEO

To optimize the pages of your website:

  • Use power words in your title and meta. For example, extraordinary, amazing, bizarre, instant, simple, free, easy, elite, professional, expert, etc.
  • Make sure you use the primary keyword in the URL, title, H1 tag, first sentence, and last sentence of your post.
  • Ensure that your website loads quickly. If all your visitors bounce back, it will affect your ranking.
  • Check whether all your images have alt image text.
  • Optimize your hero content. The content that your visitors see immediately on landing upon your page must be precise, clear, and confident.

SEO process Step 3: Build an Off-Page SEO Strategy

  • Social media can bring quality traffic to your website and build brand awareness. Identify in which social media channels your ideal customers hang out. After that, start posting valuable and authoritative content regularly with clear calls to action on those channels.
  • Explore backlink opportunities. Backlinks from websites with good authority and with their own high search ranking can improve your own website’s search engine ranking.
  • Create quality content and market it well so authoritative websites find linking to your content worthy. In this way, you can organically earn inbound links from reputable websites.

SEO Process Step 4: Improve User Experience

  • The customer is king. If a customer landing on your page needs to wait more than 2 seconds for your page to load, they will go to the next search result page. And the loss is yours. Hence, ensure the page loading speed is minimal and that the website is responsive on all devices such as mobiles, tablets, laptops, and PCs.
  • The website navigation buttons must be easy to use for the user.
  • Place calls to action buttons in such a way that your visitors don’t leave without clicking on that button just because they couldn’t find it.
  • All pages on your website shouldn’t be more than three clicks away. This site structure makes it easy for Google to crawl and index your website.

 

Create an Effective SEO Strategy with SEO Design Chicago

Now, you have a clear knowledge of how an SEO strategy works. Therefore, by following the four simple steps in the SEO process, you can build an extremely successful SEO strategy that is sure to increase your search engine ranking. SEO Design Chicago can work with you to create an effective SEO strategy for your business!

FAQ:

  • What is an SEO strategy?
  • Do I need an SEO strategy?
  • What are the 4 important stages in SEO?
  • How to create an effective SEO strategy in 2022?
  • What is SEO?
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