7 Essential Steps for an Effective SEO Strategy

In the battle for higher rankings in targeted search results, an efficient tailored SEO strategy “search engine optimization plan” is critical to guide your journey toward optimising your website or e-commerce online store for search engines in order to gain more visibility in search results of potential customers.

Professional SEO specialists or a professional SEO agency will not begin any search engine optimization “SEO” campaign without a customised SEO strategy for its client “the website owner” needs, goals related to rankings, traffic volume, and conversions with customised search engine optimization solutions to achieve the desired results.

A personalized SEO strategy is a detailed SEO plan that includes all areas of the search engine optimization process for your business website or online e-commerce store, step by step, in order to increase your website SEO performance and rank first in targeted search results.

• #1. Conducting a thorough site audit
• #2. Conducting planned keyword research
• #3. Creating valuable SEO-optimized content
• #4. Giving the best search user experience possible
• #5. Using an appropriate link-building technique
• #6. Measuring the effectiveness of your SEO approach
• #7. Regularly improving and upgrading your website

How to develop an effective SEO strategy?

Creating an efficient SEO strategy, whether for a new website, an e-commerce store, or a detailed SEO plan for a small business wanting increased visibility and free traffic from search engines, should focus on three primary areas:

Technical SEO: Ensuring compliance with search engines’ criteria for user experience “UX,” security, crawling, and indexing status for your website pages, and maintaining the required level of compliance after each search engine algorithm update.

On-Page SEO: Optimizing your website content for search engines while matching the search user’s intent of visiting your website, as well as ensuring the ease of navigating to different content categories and pages on your website.

Off-Page SEO: increasing the authority of your website by producing more quality links from authoritative related websites, blogs, and business directories, as the number of quality backlinks referring to a website is the most important ranking criteria for search engines.

A successful SEO campaign will rely primarily on the development of a detailed SEO strategy with predefined steps covering the main aspects (Technical SEO / On-Page SEO / Off-Page SEO) of your website’s search engine optimization process, as well as the intelligent customization and implementation of your SEO plan.

Main Steps of Efficient SEO Strategy

Digital marketing solutions have proven effective in reaching targeted potential customers across all digital platforms, but the main advantage of search engine optimization services is that you will reach potential customers at the ideal time and situation when they are searching for what your business provides or looking for answers related to your business field to solve current problems and satisfy current customers.

Reaching the top of targeted search results for potential customers will result in more profitable traffic for your website from motivated potential buyers, which is dependent on adopting a customized effective SEO plan.

There are many SEO strategy examples online for new websites, existing websites, local or small business websites, and e-commerce online stores, but developing a customized SEO plan for your website is the best choice to fit your website goals from investing time, effort, and money in your SEO marketing strategy.

The main steps for an efficient SEO strategy are:

#1. Performing a complete site audit

The first stage in your SEO strategy is to define your website’s strengths and weaknesses by doing a full complete site audit to provide a clear picture of how your website is optimized for search engines in comparison to rivals’ websites.

Using reputable SEO audit tools, conduct a first site assessment and deep examination of:

• The crawling and indexing status of your website’s pages
• The website’s position in targeted search results for certain keywords.
• Your website’s navigation experience for “mobile or desktop users”
• Your internal connecting structure as well as your backlinks profile
• On-page SEO elements (Keyword use – Titles – URLs – Meta Descriptions – Headings – Image Alt)
• Your website’s security level
• Your website’s overall SEO effectiveness in comparison to competitors

The initial full site audit is a required step in increasing the efficiency of your SEO strategy because it will reveal the areas that need to be improved in order to produce the desired results.

#2. Performing planned keywords research

Keyword research is an important step with a high priority in all types of SEO marketing strategies because how efficiently you choose the most appropriate keywords for targeting potential clients and creating value-added content that matches their search intent affects the entire search engine optimization process.

Before proceeding with your SEO strategy, your primary responsibility in this phase is to develop a portfolio of “search keyword lists” for developing your website content “Products or Services Pages – Blog Posts & Guides” based on each keyword monthly search volume and competition level for the first position in search results.

Your portfolio of search keyword lists should include the following items:

• Short tail keywords (one or two words) for the content of product pages
• Long-tail keywords (3-5 words) for blog content
• Location keywords are used to target local search results, such as “best SEO agency in Egypt.”
• Questions to ask when attempting to target voice search inquiries

Once you’ve built your portfolio of relevant targeted search phrases, you’re ready to move on to the next stage of implementing your SEO strategy: developing SEO-optimized content that speaks to the needs and interests of your potential customers.

#3. Creating SEO-optimized valuable content

SEO-optimized material that gives value to search users’ “future clients” is your bridge to the highest ranking in targeted search results with successful content marketing solutions that fit the search user intent, which can be:

• Informational: Looking for solutions to a specific situation.
• Navigation: Attempting to reach specified pages or websites.
• Transactional: Completing an online activity, such as a purchase, reservation, or phone call, or an offline action, such as visiting one of your company’s stores or branches.

The present phase of your SEO strategy necessitates the creation, publication, and updating of SEO-optimized content that delivers value to targeted search users via:

• Highlighting the competitive benefits of your products or services in each product copy
• Responding to every search user requests with specific content pieces
• Using guides and blog entries to answer problems and gain the trust of search users, you may demonstrate your competence in your company industry.
• Using visuals to boost search user engagement (graphs, infographics, and how-to videos).
• Using location-specific keywords to optimise content for local search results
• Taking use of generated organic traffic by providing lead magnets such as free trials, simple lead generation forms, and many communication choices.

Creating compelling value-added content that is updated on a regular basis is a crucial component of your business SEO strategy for gaining the trust of search engines and search users who are “potential customers.”

#4. Providing the best search user experience

The next step in implementing your SEO strategy is to ensure that all website visitors, whether they are search users, returning visitors, or referral visitors from other websites and social media platforms, have the best user experience possible.

During this phase, your efforts should be focused on improving your website navigation structure “experience” so that search engines can easily crawl and index your website pages and website visitors can easily reach desired pages, consume created content, and complete desired conversions “calls – purchases – filling forums” with far fewer efforts and time consumed through:

• Navigation experience that is mobile-friendly (responsive design – scalable textual and visual content – clickable elements)
• Internal links to related product and content pages are provided “from high authority pages to low authority pages.”
• High loading speed for your website pages from all devices worldwide
• Communication information and options that are easily accessible
• Keeping your website’s databases and financial activities safe

The good user experience (UX) of your website visitors is an important signal for search engines when determining your website’s ranking in targeted search results. As a result, ensuring the optimal user experience for search users will have an impact on the effectiveness of your SEO strategy.

#5. Applying suitable link building strategy

While content quality and user experience are important ranking factors for search engines, the number of quality backlinks referring to your website is also an important ranking factor that shows search engines your website authority based on the number of quality backlinks from related websites, blogs, and business directories.

The efficiency of your applied link building strategy in generating continuous opportunities for receiving more quality backlinks and referral traffic of related high authority websites through creating valuable content, in addition to listing your website in local and international business directories, has a significant impact on the success of your business SEO marketing plan.

Link building is the most challenging part of implementing a planned SEO strategy, and it is often necessary to seek professional assistance from an experienced SEO marketing business if your internal marketing team has the skills to construct and implement an efficient link-building strategy.

#6. Measuring your SEO strategy performance

The search engine optimization process is a long-term process that necessitates ongoing efforts as well as frequent “monthly” evaluations of your SEO strategy’s efficacy using credible data and analytics platforms such as Google Analytics reports.

The following are the primary metrics and variables to consider when evaluating your SEO marketing strategy:

• In targeted search results, your website’s current ranking versus. previous ranking
• Each month, organic traffic volume is generated.
• Metrics for user experience (session durations – number of visited pages per session – bounce rate – average loading time)
• Each month, the number of quality inbound links gained
• Conversion metrics (Leads produced – Purchases made – ROI)

These indicators will paint a clear picture of the efficacy of your overall SEO marketing approach and whether it is a viable option for achieving desired results.

#7. Improving & updating your website regularly

To maintain the desired ranking in search results, you will need to improve your website on a regular basis and update your website content with new or updated content pieces due to the frequent updates in each search engine algorithm and the increasing number of competitors fighting for the first positions in targeted search results.

As long as you update your website on a regular basis and follow SEO best practices, the consequences of your efficient SEO strategy will be long-term consistent results of more organic free profitable traffic to your website or e-commerce business.

Summary

Summary When it comes to implementing an effective SEO strategy, the best option is to collaborate with an experienced SEO agency with a dedicated team of professional SEO specialists offering affordable professional SEO marketing services to develop and implement a customized SEO strategy suitable for your website needs and desired goals from ranking higher in targeted search results.