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How to Plan an SEO Strategy for the Year 2023

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t what it used to be, according to a cliché among digital marketers.

Here’s something you don’t hear very often: in 2021, your SEO approach shouldn’t be focused on keywords.

Most organisations nowadays are aware of the fundamentals of SEO and why it is so essential.

When it comes to building and implementing a solid SEO plan for your company, however, just generating content for the keywords your consumers are searching for is both time-consuming and ineffective.

We’ll discuss what an SEO strategy is and how to develop one to assist you achieve your content marketing goals in this piece.

What is an SEO strategy?

The practise of arranging a website’s material by subject in order to enhance the chance of showing in search results is known as SEO. In a nutshell, it’s the method you use to increase the amount of organic traffic you get from search engines.

It’s crucial to have an SEO plan in place since it keeps you on target while generating content. Rather of generating content based on your assumptions about what people want, your approach will ensure that you provide material that people are seeking for.

An SEO plan is a crucial component of content marketing since it determines how your material will be discovered in the first place, particularly on search engine result pages (SERPs). Search engine bots will have a tougher difficulty indexing your site, recognising your area of authority, and ranking your site pages if your material is disorganised and unstructured.

Mobile SEO Strategy

When developing your overall strategy, mobile SEO is a crucial consideration. Mobile optimization is making sure that your site and its content are available and accessible to users on mobile devices, so that they can have the same experience and benefit as desktop browsers.

Because Google has a mobile-first indexing strategy, mobile optimization is critical. This implies that instead of crawling a desktop site, the algorithm will index and rank pages for SERPs using the mobile version of your site. Furthermore, mobile devices account for 61% of Google search inquiries in the United States. In the end, your SEO strategy would be useless if mobile optimization was not prioritised.

While mobile SEO isn’t a completely unique process, it does have its own set of concerns, such as page speed monitoring, adaptable site design, local SEO, and generating high-quality content that can be seen on any device.

What is an SEO?

SEOs are persons that improve websites to help them rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and acquire more organic traffic. In essence, an SEO is a highly trained content strategist that assists a company in identifying chances to answer concerns that consumers have about their businesses.

An SEO strategist can concentrate on one of three forms of SEO:

On-page SEO is concerned with the material that appears on site pages and how to optimise it in order to improve the website’s ranking for certain keywords.

Off-page SEO is concerned with links pointing to the website from other websites. The amount of backlinks a site has from credible sources helps search engines trust it.

Technical SEO is concerned with the backend infrastructure of a website, such as the site code. Because Google values technical setup equally as much as content, this position is critical for rankings.

Keep in mind that every business has distinct goals, so it’s up to an SEO to research their sector, figure out what their target audiences care about, and design a plan that provides them with what they want.

We’ll go through some actions you can take to guarantee that your SEO strategy is successful.

  • Content Strategy for SEO
  • Make a list of potential subjects.
  • Make a list of long-tail keywords that are related to these subjects.
  • Make a page for each subject.
  • Create a blog.
  • Make a regular blogging routine.
  • Make a link-building strategy.
  • Before adding media files to your site, compress them.
  • Keep up with the latest SEO trends and best practises.
  • Measure and measure the success of your content.

1. Make a list of topics.

Although keywords are still important in SEO, they are no longer the initial step toward organic development. Instead, establish a list of subjects you’d like your content to address as the first stage.

To begin, make a list of around 10 words and keywords that are related to your product or service. To study these terms, determine their search traffic, and come up with variants that make sense for your business, use an SEO tool (Google’s Keyword Tool, Ahrefs, SEMRush, or GrowthBar, to name a few).

You’re connecting these subjects with popular short-tail keywords in this way, but you’re not devoting specific blog articles to these terms. Let’s look at an illustration of this procedure using the image below.

Assume a swimming pool company is attempting to rank for the term “fibreglass pools,” which generates 110,000 monthly searches. This short-tail keyword can serve as the material’s main theme, but the company will also need to pick a number of related keywords to add in their content. They might, for example, utilise the keywords “fibreglass pool pricing” or “fibreglass pool cost” to boost their ranks for the general term “fibreglass pools.”

You may build a list of 10-15 short-tail keywords that are related to your business and are being searched for by your target audiences based on search volume and competition. Then, depending on monthly search traffic, rank this list.

Each of the keywords you’ve discovered is referred to as a pillar, and it serves as the major support for a broader group of long-tail keywords that we’ll go over later.

2. Make a list of long-tail keywords based on these topics.

You’ll start optimising your pages for certain keywords in this stage. Use your keyword tool to find five to ten long-tail keywords that go deeper into the original theme keyword for each pillar you’ve discovered.

For example, we frequently publish articles on SEO, yet ranking high on Google for such a prominent topic with just this acronym is tough. By generating several sites that all target the same keyword — and perhaps the same SERPs — we also risk competing with our own content. As a result, we provide articles on keyword research, image optimization for search engines, SEO strategy creation (which you’re reading right now), and other subtopics within the SEO umbrella.

This assists firms in attracting individuals with diverse interests and issues, resulting in more entrance points for those interested in what you have to offer.

Create blog articles or web pages using your long-tail keywords to explain the specific subjects inside the pillars you’ve chosen. All of your long-tail keywords come together to form a cluster around a pillar issue. The relationships between clusters are used by search engine algorithms to link consumers with the information they seek.

Here’s a little movie on the subject:

Consider this: the more precise your content is, the more particular your audience’s demands may be, and the more likely you are to convert traffic into leads. This is how Google determines the worth of the websites it crawls: pages that go deep into the inner workings of a broad topic are deemed the greatest answer to a user’s query, and therefore rank higher.

3. Build pages for each topic.

When it comes to websites and search engine rankings, getting a single page to rank for a few keywords can be nearly difficult. However, this is where the rubber hits the road.

Utilizing the long-tail keywords you came up with for each cluster in step two, develop a page or post that offers a high-level summary of the issue using the pillar themes you came up with. These pillar pages can basically serve as a table of contents, with a description of the primary topic and briefings on subtopics that will be covered in subsequent entries.

Finally, the number of pillar pages you build should correspond to your company demands, such as the amount of items and services you offer. This will make it lot simpler for potential consumers and clients to discover you in search engines, regardless of the terms they choose.

4. Set up a blog.

  • Blogging is a fantastic strategy to rank for keywords while also engaging your website’s visitors. After all, each blog post is a new web page and a fresh chance to rank in the SERPs. Consider starting a blog for your company if you don’t currently have one.
  • You should do three things when you create each blog article and expand on your clusters:
  • Because Google no longer considers precise keyword matches as often as it used to, don’t utilise your long-tail term more than three or four times across the page. In fact, having too many repetitions of your term might signal to search engines that you’re keyword stuffing to boost your ranks, and they’ll punish you.
  • Second, always provide a link to the pillar page you made for each of your themes. This may be done using tags in your content management system (CMS) or simple anchor text in the article body.
  • When you’ve finished writing each blog post, include a link to it on the parent pillar page that supports the subtopic. You’re showing Google that there’s a link between the long-tail term and the broader topic you’re seeking to rank for by linking both the pillar and the cluster in this way.

5. Create a consistent blogging schedule.

You don’t have to include a subject cluster in every blog post or web page you write. Writing on tangential subjects that your clients care about can also help you gain authority with Google’s algorithms.

Make it a point to blog at least once a week with this in mind. Remember that you’re writing for your readers, not search engines, so research your target market and write about topics that they care about.

To stay consistent and focused on your goals, you might want to develop a content strategy.

6. Create a link-building plan.

Although the topic cluster approach is the way to go in SEO, it isn’t the only technique to get your website content to rank higher once it’s been generated.

While we focused on on-page SEO in the first five phases, link-building is the primary goal of off-page SEO. The practise of drawing inbound links (also known as backlinks) to your website from other websites is known as link-building. Sites with more authority that link back to your material have a greater influence on your results in general.

Spend some time thinking about all the many methods you may get inbound connections. Perhaps you’ll begin by exchanging links with local companies in exchange for connections to your site, or you’ll produce a few blog articles and distribute them across other social media platforms. You may also contact other sites for guest posting opportunities, which will allow you to connect back to your own.

7. Compress media files before uploading them to your site.

This is a minor but crucial stage in the SEO process, particularly when it comes to mobile optimization.

You’ll definitely have more photos, videos, and associated media to complement your content as your blog or website expands. These visual elements keep your visitors’ interest, but it’s easy to overlook the fact that they might be rather huge. Because page speed is such an essential ranking element, you should keep an eye on the size of the media assets you upload to your site.

The larger the file, the more difficult it is for a web browser to render your site. It’s also more difficult for mobile browsers to load these pictures because their bandwidth is much lower. As a result, the smaller the file size, the more quickly your website will load. But how can you reduce photos while maintaining their quality?

Before uploading pictures, movies, or gifs, think about using a compression tool to minimise file sizes. Images may be compressed in bulk using sites like TinyPNG, and picture files can be shrunk to tiny proportions using Google’s Squoosh. Keeping files around the kilobytes (KB) range, regardless of how you compress your material, is a solid rule of thumb.

8. Stay up-to-date on SEO news and best practices.

  • The search engine environment, like marketing, is always changing. Keeping up with current trends and best practises is a crucial approach, and there are several internet tools available to assist you. Here are a few websites to look into:
  • Search Engine Roundtable with Moz SEOBook
  • Diggity Marketing on Search Engine Land
  • This Website!

9. Measure and track your content’s success.

Because SEO takes a lot of time and effort, you’ll want to know if your approach is effective. It’s critical to keep track of your metrics in order to assess the overall performance of your process and discover potential areas for improvement.

You may use your favourite web analytics tool to track organic traffic or Excel or Google Sheets to construct your own dashboard. Tracking indexed pages, conversions, ROI, and SERP rankings may also help you acknowledge your successes and spot areas for improvement.

SEO Process

You should also develop a procedure to continuously optimising for new keywords and changing search intent once you’ve created your SEO plan. Here are a few things you can do to help.

1. Historically optimize your content. 

To stay on top of the SERPs, set aside some time each month to update old blog entries with fresh and up-to-date material. You may also take use of this opportunity to fix any SEO best-practices that were not handled previously, such as missing picture alt text.

2. Look out for changing keywords and new search intent.

Track how your blog entries are doing and which keywords they’re ranking for after a few months. This can help you tweak subheadings and text to capitalise on fresh search intent that your target audience might be interested in.

3. Add more editorial value to your old content.

You could come upon a post that is entirely out of date. In this case, you should go above and beyond the standard historical SEO update and give it a complete overhaul. This may be accomplished by updating out-of-date material and statistics, adding new sections for increased depth, and using quotations or original data to increase referral traffic to the article.

4. Create a monthly content plan.

Creating and refining a monthly content plan might help you stay on top of your SEO approach. You may enter it into a spreadsheet, and your teams will be able to keep track of it. The list below is an example of a monthly content strategy that incorporates the aforementioned phases.

You may develop and implement an effective SEO strategy using a monthly SEO plan like the one above, as well as a tracking document like a search insights report. You may also find and use low-hanging-fruit themes to talk about in your business.

Create A Strategy That Supports Your Business Goals

It might be tough to get a high ranking on search results pages. While it may appear appealing to generate content around high-traffic keywords, this technique may not help you achieve your company objectives.

Instead, for higher marketing success, develop an SEO plan that helps you meet your specific business objectives, such as improving client acquisition. Check out our Ultimate Guide to SEO to learn more about SEO.

Need help with getting your business found online? Stridec is a top SEO agency in Singapore that can help you achieve your objectives with a structured and effective SEO programme that will get your more customers and sales. Contact us for a discussion now.