7 Main Steps for Effective SEO Strategy
In the battle for higher rankings in targeted search results, the need for an efficient tailored SEO strategy “search engine optimization plan” is critical to guide your journey towards optimizing your website or e-commerce online store for search engines for gaining more visibility in search results of potential customers.
Professional SEO specialists or a professional SEO agency doesn’t start any search engine optimization “SEO” campaign without a tailored SEO strategy for its client “the website owner” needs, goals related to rankings, traffic volume, and conversions with customized search engine optimization solutions to reach the desired results.
A tailored SEO strategy is a detailed SEO plan that covers all aspects of the search engine optimization process for your business website or online e-commerce store step by step customized to improve your website SEO performance in order to reach the first ranking of targeted search results.
Developing an effective SEO strategy whether it’s an SEO strategy for a new website or an SEO strategy for an e-commerce store or even a detailed SEO plan for a small business seeking more visibility and free traffic from search engines should focus on 3 major areas:
Technical SEO: Ensuring compliance with search engines’ standards regarding the user experience “UX”, security, crawling, and indexing status for your website pages and preserving the required compliance level after each search engine algorithm update.
On-Page SEO: Focusing on optimizing your website content for search engines while matching the search user’s intent of visiting your website in addition to guarantee the ease of navigation to different content categories and pages on your website.
Off-Page SEO: building authority for your website through generating more quality links from authoritative related websites, blogs and business directories as the number of quality backlinks referring to a website is the main ranking factor for search engines.
A successful SEO campaign will rely mainly on developing a detailed SEO strategy with predefined steps covering the main aspects (Technical SEO / On-Page SEO / Off-Page SEO) of the search engine optimization process for your website and the intelligent customization and implementation of your SEO plan.
Digital marketing solutions have proved efficient in reaching targeted potential customers on all digital platforms but the major advantage of search engine optimization services is that you’ll reach potential customers in the perfect timing and situation when they’re searching for what your business is providing or finding answers related to your business field to solve current problems and satisfying personal or business needs.
Reaching the highest ranking in targeted search results of potential customers will generate more profitable traffic for your website of motivated potential customers which depends on implementing a tailored efficient SEO strategy.
There are many SEO strategy examples available 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, efforts, and money in your SEO marketing strategy.
The main steps for an efficient SEO strategy are:
The first step in your SEO plan is to define website strengths and weaknesses through performing a detailed complete site audit to provide a clear picture of how your website is optimized for search engines compared to the websites of competitors.
Using reliable SEO audit tools, you should perform an initial site audit and detailed analysis regarding:
- Your website pages crawling and indexing status
- The website ranking in targeted search results of chosen keywords
- Your website navigation experience for search users “mobile or desktop users”
- Your internal linking structure and backlinks profile
- On-Page SEO factors (Keywords Usage – Titles – URLs – Meta Descriptions – Headings – Images Alt)
- The security level of your website
- The overall SEO performance of your website benchmarked to competitors
The initial complete site audit is a mandatory step to increase the efficiency of your SEO strategy as it will highlight the areas which require improvement to deliver the desired results.
Keywords research is an important step with high priority in all types of SEO marketing strategies as the whole search engine optimization process is affected by how efficiently you choose the most suitable keywords for targeting potential clients and creating value-added content that matches their search intent.
Before moving further in your SEO plan, your main duty in this phase is to create a portfolio of “search keywords 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 keywords lists should contain:
- Short tail keywords “one or two words” for products pages content
- Long-tail keywords “3-5 words” for blog posts content
- Location keywords for targeting local search results “ex: best SEO agency in Egypt”
- Questions for targeting voice search queries
Once you have created your portfolio of suitable targeted search keywords, you’re ready to move further in implementing your SEO strategy to a more critical phase which is creating SEO-optimized content that triggers your potential customers’ needs and interests.
SEO-optimized content that adds value to search users “potential clients” is your bridge to reach the highest ranking in targeted search results with effective content marketing solutions used to match the search user intent which can be:
- Informational: Searching for solutions to a particular problem
- Navigational: Seeking to reach specific pages or specific websites
- Transactional: Completing an online action like a purchase, reservation, and calls or offline actions like visiting stores or branches of your business
The current phase of your SEO strategy requires planning, creating, publishing, and updating SEO-optimized content that adds value to targeted search users using chosen keywords through:
- Highlighting your products or services competitive advantages in each product copy
- Answering all inquiries of search users with detailed content pieces
- Demonstrating your expertise in your business field through guides and blog posts created to solve search users problems and increase their trust
- Using visuals to (graphs / infographics / how-to videos) to increase search users engagement
- Optimizing content for local search results using location-targeted keywords
- Capitalizing generated organic traffic by offering leads magnets like free trails, easy to fill leads generation forms and multiple communication options
Creating updated engaging value-added content is an essential component of your business SEO plan to gain the trust of search engines and search users “potential customers”.
The next step in implementing your SEO strategy is to guarantee to provide the best user experience for all website users visiting your website whether they are search users, returning visitors, or referral visits from other websites and social media platforms.
Your efforts in this phase should be focused on improving your website navigation structure “experience” for search engines to crawl and index your website pages easily and for website visitors to reach desired pages, consume created content and complete desired conversions “calls – purchases – filling forums” with much fewer efforts and time consumed through:
- Mobile-friendly navigation experience (responsive design – scalable textual & visual content – clickable elements)
- Internal Links to related product and content pages “from high authority pages to low authority pages”
- High loading speed for your website pages from all devices all over the world
- Accessible communication information and options
- Securing your website databases and finical transactions
The positive user experience “UX” of your website visitors is a critical indicator for search engines to determine your website ranking in targeted search results. Thus, guaranteeing the best user experience for search users will affect the efficiency of your SEO Plan.
While the content quality and the user experience are major ranking factors for search engines, the number of quality backlinks referring to your website is also a major ranking factor that demonstrates your website authority to search engines based on the number of quality backlinks from related websites, blogs, and business directories.
The success of your business SEO marketing plan is highly affected by 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.
Link building is the most difficult phase in applying a developed SEO strategy which in many cases requires seeking professional help from an experienced SEO marketing company in case your internal marketing team is lacking the ability to create and implement effective link building strategy.
The search engine optimization process is a long-term process that requires continuous efforts in addition to periodical evaluation “monthly” for your SEO strategy performance using reliable data and analytics platforms as Google Analytics reports.
The main metrics and aspects to focus on for the evaluation of your SEO marketing plan are:
- Your website current vs. the previous ranking in targeted search results
- Organic traffic volume generated each month
- User experience metrics (Sessions’ durations – No. of visited pages/session – bounce rate – average loading time)
- Number of quality inbound links gained each month
- Conversion metrics (Leads generated – Completed Purchases – ROI)
These metrics will provide a clear picture of the effectiveness of your overall SEO marketing strategy and if it’s a suitable choice for delivering desired goals or not.
The frequent updates in each search engine algorithms and the increasing number of competitors fighting for the first positions in targeted search results will require improving your website regularly and updating your website content with new content pieces or updated ones to maintain the desired ranking in search results.
The results generated from your efficient SEO strategy are long term consistent results of more organic free profitable traffic to your website or e-commerce store as long as you update your website on a regular basis following SEO best practices.
When it comes to applying an effective SEO strategy, the best choice is to develop and apply a customized SEO strategy suitable for your website needs and desired goals from ranking higher in targeted search results by cooperating with an experienced SEO agency with a dedicated team of professional SEO specialists offering affordable professional SEO marketing services.
Contact us today to develop a customized winning SEO strategy
[kc_custom_heading text="How to develop an effective SEO strategy? " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_video link="https://youtu.be/k65xylap1Pc"][kc_custom_heading text="Main Steps of Efficient SEO Strategy " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_single_image image="26255" img_size="large"][kc_custom_heading text="#1. Performing a complete site audit " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal" el_id="Performing-a-complete-site-audit"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="#2. Performing planned keywords research " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal" el_id="performing-planned-keywords-research"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="#3. Creating SEO-optimized valuable content " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal" el_id="creating-SEO-optimized-valuable-content"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_single_image image="26240" img_size="large"][kc_custom_heading text="#4. Providing the best search user experience" font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes" el_id="providing-the-best-search-user-experience"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="#5. Applying suitable link building strategy " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes" el_id="applying-suitable-link-building-strategy"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_single_image image="23161" img_size="large"][kc_custom_heading text="#6. Measuring your SEO strategy performance " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes" el_id="measuring-your-SEO-strategy-performance"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="#7. Improving & updating your website regularly " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes" el_id="improving-&-updating-your-website-regularly"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_video link="https://youtu.be/TpG8lO6Rnp4"][kc_custom_heading text="Summary" font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"]