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We Need to Talk About An SEO Strategy. It's a Necessary Evil.
This is the first in a series of articles on Getting your website found and your SEO Strategy. Make sure you check out the other articles in the series:
- We Need to Talk About an SEO Strategy. It’s A Necessary Evil
- Keywords: A Glimpse into Determining What Your Audience Wants and Needs
- Boost Site Authority So Google And Your Visitors Take You Seriously
- Is Your Site Trustworthiness Affecting Your Search Engine Ranking?
- Can the Small Guy Win? Relevancy Matters!
- Let’s Talk About User Behavior and How It Impacts Search Rankings
- Putting it all Together: Developing a Strong SEO Strategy
Trying to get traffic to your website without a solid plan is a bit like a “Sunday Drive’. Out driving around with no real destination in mind, and no directions on how to get there. You may eventually get to wherever you are going, but it will take much longer and will require more effort than if you had your route mapped out.
This is true with website traffic in general, and especially search engine optimization (SEO). Having a solid SEO strategy, you will have a goal in mind, and a plan for what to do to get there. Even if you’re new to the SEO game and you don’t understand what it will take to get a particular keyword ranking, or even what a realistic keyword goal is, it’s good to have a plan. You can always make adjustments in both your plan and strategy as you go along.
When you have a strategy with defined goals in action, and a way to track your results over time, it becomes easy to determine if your strategy is working. Without either, you’re basically guessing, and that’s not the way to run your business. Search engine optimization takes time and effort. And if you’re hiring someone to help you, it can be an investment – that is well worth it.C
Start measuring your traffic
Set up a good website analytics program to assess what traffic you’re getting now and where your traffic is coming from. Google Analytics is a great program that will grow as your company grows. Add it to your site, check over the reports, begin to learn to use it, and gain expertise as you go. Check out this article from Monster Insights on how to install Google Analytics without a Plugin.
Develop a strategy
Now that you’ve started to analyze your traffic, your next step will be to develop your SEO strategy. This five-step process includes:
- Decide on your ideal target audience.
- Determine what their pain points are and what keywords and key phrases they use to find solutions to their pain points.
- Develop high-value content around those terms.
- Deploy on-page/ on-site optimization (according to Moz.com this is “optimizing both the content and HTML source code of a page.”) So basically, the search engines can find you.
- Audit and track results, making adjustments as needed.
After all of this, you will know what is working. You can expand on your strategy by identifying more audiences and keywords and creating more content. You can also slow down on what isn’t working.
Remember, this isn’t a quick fix or magic pill.
Search engine optimization takes time. You’re building your site’s reputation with search engines over a period of time. Don’t give up on your strategy too soon and whatever you do, don’t throw in the towel. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a solid SEO strategy.
In the next article in this series, we’ll discuss keywords. Make sure you are following us on our socials and sign up for our email newsletter so you don’t miss a thing.
Is all of this overwhelming you? Request your free SEO Analysis and we’ll get you started down the right path.
