An SEO strategy is a detailed plan that shows what is being optimized when, why and how. – Kevin Indig.
✅ Market Research (The Why)
You need a comprehensive understanding of the industry and how customers search.
Discover the words your audience uses when they are searching for your product or service. When you know these search terms you have the ability to research your industry and discover competitor’s who will show you what’s working.
Start with Google Keyword Planner. Add the words you know that are relevant to your industry, and this will pull a list of keyword ideas with their search volume.
Once you pinpoint the primary keywords with high search volume, use them to find competitor’s. You can use SEO tools to discover what keywords they are ranking for, as well as how they are structuring their website.
? Understand the business goals and purpose of SEO in the organization.
? Use SEMRush or AHREFS to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for and their top pages.
? Crawl websites with Screaming Frog SEO Spider to see how they are structured and discover SEO technical issues.
✅ Choose Your Tactics (The How)
You have an understanding of the industry and the websites in your industry. Now, you need to create measurable campaigns that are focused on what’s working in your industry.
Choose your tactics carefully:
? Technical SEO
? Content Marketing
? Link Building
? Content Optimization
? Local SEO
Are your customers searching and reading informational content in your industry and at volume?
Are there opportunities for link building campaigns, such as guest posting, broken link building, infographics, or interactive tools?
Are your landing pages not optimized for the keywords you discovered?
✅ Create Your Roadmap (The When)
Once you have pinpointed the opportunities available to you, it’s time to create a roadmap.
SEO Roadmap = Objectives / Time (Kevin Indig).
This is normally done over a year period segmented into quarters. and months. You need to define your goals and projected traffic for the year, the quarter, and the month. These are rough estimates, but having these projections will keep you on track and notice when your strategy is not going as planned and needs to be revised.
Rather than explain what an SEO roadmap looks like, I’d rather you see for yourself. Here is a template and example:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/139Ym51hBzMF4lzcyEVN-FwfSi1xGqagvS_rPHDDUUwg/edit?usp=sharing
