Let's dive into the basics of creating a successful SEO strategy.
Perform a site audit for SEO
The first thing you need to do is perform a site audit. A site audit acts as a roadmap for what to do, showing you what to work on and helping you determine the KPIs critical to success. A site audit examines various aspects of your website.
First, look at the site name, age, and history. Older sites with good practices are in better initial condition than newer sites or sites that don't adhere to content development best practices.
A site audit also examines page elements. Page elements include headings, user engagement, general keyword targeting, and more. A website with clear keyword-focused headings and good user engagement is set up for success.
The content itself is then reviewed. An audit examines how content is organized within your sitemap and whether it meets the needs of your readers. When reviewing content, we also look at the images used in the content. If stock photos are used on many sites on his web, SEO content can have a negative impact on his campaign goals. Images should also be properly optimized to load quickly. The auditor is also looking for duplicate content, which is bad for his SEO strategy.
The audit also examines your website's architecture. Your site should be easy to navigate and find useful content. We also consider technical aspects such as schema and markup. Your audit should also look at your current click-through rate (CTR).
The audit takes into account the quality of your inbound links. A list of spam links is created so that you can disavow these links. You need high-quality external inbound links that increase the credibility of your website. You don't want your site to be perceived as a spam site by search engines.
Start keyword research
A keyword is a single word or phrase that describes what a searcher is looking for. Keywords tell search engines what your content is about. It needs to correspond to the search intent, be relevant, and have search volume. Volume refers to how many times a month searchers search for that word or phrase in a search engine query.
Search intent refers to the intent a reader has when performing a search. Are they looking for advice? do they want to buy? Search intent is very important in driving traffic to your website. For example, someone searching to buy car insurance might enter the term “cheap car insurance.” Understanding your intent allows you to create content that meets your needs. In this case, it might be a roundup of the cheapest car insurance providers that the searcher clicks to learn more.
Search volume tells you how relevant a term is and whether people are asking a lot about it. You can create content for less high-volume keywords, but you might also target relevant high-volume keywords.
We want to correlate search terms and limit the number of topics covered on our site. For example, a bicycle website can search for keywords related to road bikes and mountain bikes. Having content about skateboarding as well is off topic. You want to stay on topic so that search engines recognize you as an expert on that topic.
Establish an MVP page
Just like most valuable players, your website should have a most valuable page (MVP). These are the pages that target your highest volume keywords and are the core landing pages your readers will visit. To identify these pages, think about what your company is known for, or what you want to be known for. A good example of an MVP in SEO content is a category page on an e-commerce website. A category page provides an overview of the products featured in that category. This type of landing page is more suitable for searchers than the actual product page. Start with the category pages and move on to more detailed pages if you're interested.
If you can drive more traffic to these MVPs, you'll gain leads from searchers who are specifically looking for a solution to the specific problem you're addressing. These pages serve as a hub for readers to access more specific solutions within your site.
Perform competitive analysis
It's important to know what other websites are doing in the topic area where your website exists. Competitors are other websites that are trying to rank for the same keywords that you are targeting. Look at what they're doing and what's working for them. Once you see what's working in search results, create content that's better than search engine content so search engines see you as the best answer to their users' questions.
Research the most competitive keywords in your industry and see what content ranks for it. Check out their backlinks to see where they are recognized for creating useful content. The more you understand about your competitors, the more you can develop a plan to outperform and beat them in this SEO game.
Think about UX
User experience (UX) goes a long way in determining SEO success. Great content is content that keeps users hanging around for a while without returning to the SERP to find better content. As mentioned earlier, your site needs to be easy to navigate so that people who visit your site can click through to different pages and find the content they're looking for.
Much of your UX is determined by your site's architecture. You need a meaningful sitemap that provides a hierarchy of content to your users. The broadest content can be informational, and clicking through to other content can be more sales-oriented and help you choose a solution to your problem. You don't want to confuse people on your website. This means that users are likely to leave her website quickly and it won't rank high on search engines.
