8 Essential Steps in Building a Strong SEO Strategy

A sophisticated SEO strategy is an absolute basis for sustainably good rankings. However, why do most businesses today want to be visible online and increase their organic traffic?

Consumers today are very good at researching products thoroughly before purchasing. Google search results (SERPs) can make or break any sale, so it is crucial for all businesses, big and small, to optimize what consumers see about them in their search process. This is why search engine optimization and SEO strategy are integral parts of any successful sales and marketing strategy. Before getting into developing the strategy process, you must initially know what an SEO strategy is. A strategy is essential for reaching your audience to sell to them and is an important vehicle for gaining authority in your corner of the market.

What is an SEO Strategy?

With so much competition online, it is crucial to create a well-thought-out strategy instead of going blindly and targeting every keyword that comes to mind. An SEO strategy is a process of planning exactly how you will get to the top of the SERPs. The result of better rankings is more traffic, leads, or sales. This strategy is a detailed plan to improve the organic positioning of a website on search engines to obtain more natural traffic. In other words, an SEO strategy aims to provide a perfect match between the expectations of indexing robots and the intentions of Internet users' requests. A significant part of a strategy is the analysis of the needs of the users who are served by the service or the products of the company. 

Every business and website is different, there is no one-size-fits-all guide or set of measures that can be applied to every project. What works for one website is not automatically the right solution for another. Therefore, the SEO strategy must always be developed individually for a project. Many factors at play can influence your ranking and location on SERPs, many of which will be heavily influenced by how you shape and build on your strategy.

Do keyword research and build topic clusters

Keyword research and topic clustering are essential components of a successful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. 

Is keyword research important in this strategy?

Choosing the right keywords is an important step in the SEO strategy because they are the link between what people are looking for and the content you provide to meet that need. In search engine rankings, your goal is to drive organic traffic to your site from search engine results pages (SERPs). The keywords you choose during SEO strategy to target determine what kind of traffic you are going to get. In this stage of this process, you should find not only root keywords (short-tail keywords) but also long-tail keywords which related to and describe your brand or products in detail. The brainstorming process is a great place to start your keyword research for the SEO strategy, but you need to use a research tool to be sure you attract the right audience and prove your worth to search engines. Thanks to various tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, MOZ, etc., you can determine the volume of traffic, in particular, according to the estimation of the number of clicks. Be sure you choose your keywords in your SEO strategy based on your audience.

Benefits of Creating Topic Clusters Developing a Strategy

Once you have a list of relevant keywords, the next step in your SEO strategy is to group them into topic groups. A topic cluster is a group of related keywords centered around a primary keyword. Creating well-organized and relevant keyword groups during your SEO strategy will improve your visitor's user experience and make them more likely to engage with your content and return to your website. Additionally, targeting relevant keywords and integrating relevant content will result in your search engine rankings, organic traffic, leads, and sales as a result of this phase of your SEO strategy.

 Analyze Google’s First Page

Managing the search ranking has never been so important for a business. Now it is all about getting on the first page of the search engines and staying there. The competition is fierce if you do not have a successful SEO strategy in place, you are missing out on a lot of potential traffic. It doesn't matter what industry your business is in. If you want to be successful online, you have to be on the first page of Google as a result of the perfect SEO strategy you have developed.

When developing an SEO strategy, the first page of Google should be analyzed because appearing on the first page of Google's search results is an essential goal for businesses. The higher a website ranks in Google's SERPs, the more likely it is to attract organic traffic, which will lead to increased visibility, brand recognition, and ultimately success. Analyzing the first page of Google, businesses can understand what top-ranking websites are doing right in their SEO strategy and use this information to develop an SEO strategy that helps their website rank higher in search results. After defining the keywords of your strategy, analyze the first 10-20 results and try to understand your competitors. After this detailed research and understanding you will see the advantages and disadvantages of competitors' SEO strategies. And these will give you a chance to appear in the first ranks of search engines. This phase of SEO strategy includes understanding the types of keywords and phrases people are searching for, optimizing on-page elements such as title tags and meta descriptions, building high-quality backlinks, and being sure the website is speedy, mobile-friendly, and user-friendly. By regularly monitoring and adjusting their SEO strategy, businesses will stay ahead of the competition and continue to rank higher in Google's search results.

Set Your Goals and KPIs

Goal definitions are critical to the success of your SEO strategy. It is essential to define your objectives before launching a major strategy. The goals of SEO strategy give you and your team a direction. Before starting to develop the strategy, you must be clear about what you want to achieve with the optimization of the website. Without clear goals, your strategy will not have a measurable return on investment.

The goal of an SEO strategy can vary greatly depending on the project:

• Is your purpose to increase sales by developing an SEO strategy? For which business units, which products and services?
• Are you trying to increase your market share in specific audience segments? Which segments and how will you measure your reach?
• Do you want to drive more traffic to your website through an SEO strategy?
• How much traffic do you want to get developing your strategy?
• Are you looking to drive conversions through demand generation or lead generation marketing?

When setting your goals and developing an SEO strategy, it is important to consider that goals are SMART. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Accepted, Realistic, and Timed. This goal-setting method comes from project management and ensures that goals are not formulated as loose wishful thinking, but as concrete, measurable milestones whose progress can be monitored.

Defining specific KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) during the SEO strategy phase help make goals measurable. These should be determined depending on the target vision of the project and can be very individual. Classic KPIs in the field of SEO, for example:

• Visibility index
• Organic user counts
• User Behavior Metrics
• Ranking positions for clearly defined keywords
• Organic sales and revenue figures
• Degree of organic conversion

Once you have completed this stage of SEO strategy, it is advisable to set up monitoring systems such as dashboards or regular reports in order to ensure that progress is transparent for everyone involved.

 Differentiate titles to boost SERP - CTR

When it comes to online visibility, your SERP (Search Results Page) CTR (click-through rate) is one of the most important indicators of the result of your SEO strategy. In fact, the more clicks your headline gets, the more likely you are to attract quality traffic to your site.

However, in a world where competition for the first page of search results is tough, it is essential to differentiate your headlines to increase your CTR in developing the strategy. The tips mentioned below will help you make this phase of your SEO strategy successful.

1. Searchers usually look for information quickly and easily. Preparing an SEO strategy make sure your title clearly reflects the content of your page and is easy to understand.
2. Include eye-catching headlines in your SEO strategy that spark interest and entice users to learn more. Try using metaphors, questions, or catchy titles to create interest.
3. Before finalizing the strategy, make sure each page has a unique title to make it stand out from other search results. It will also allow you to target specific keywords for each page.
4. During SEO strategy do your experiment with different title types to find the one that works best for your content. 

In conclusion, differentiating your titles to increase your CTR from SERPs will make a huge difference in your strategy. 

Optimize For On-Page SEO

On-page SEO optimization is a key part of a successful SEO strategy. You can improve your website's performance by following a few important tips:

1. Content is king when it comes to on-page SEO. Make sure your website content is original, valuable, and relevant to your target audience developing an SEO strategy. Writing high-quality content that engages users will not only improve their experience but also increase the chances of them linking to your website, which can improve your ranking in search results.
2. User-friendly website structure is another factor you should take into consideration for SEO strategy. A well-designed website structure makes it easy for users to search and find what they are looking for. In the SEO strategy development phase, use clear headings and subheadings to organize content and ensure your website's navigation is intuitive and easy to use.
3. With the increasing number of mobile users, it is important to ensure that your website is optimized for mobile devices when developing an SEO strategy. 
4. If you want your strategy to be successful, you need to pay attention to the loading speed of your website, which affects your ranking in search results. 
5. Optimize your images by using descriptive file names and including alt tags that describe the images for a successful SEO strategy. This helps search engines understand the content of your images and improve accessibility for users using screen readers.

By combining these elements with your SEO strategy, you will improve your ranking in search results and provide an optimal user experience for your target audience.

Create an Off-Page SEO and Link-Building Strategy for Your Website.

Off-page SEO, also known as inbound links. But what do links have to do with an SEO strategy? 

Link-Building Strategy is one of the most important factors in improving your website's ranking in search results, so it must be taken into account when developing an SEO strategy. Inbound links to your site tell search engines that your site is reliable and trustworthy. However, it is important to have a solid SEO strategy in place for link building to avoid being penalized by search engines for unethical SEO practices. We are introducing the key steps to developing an effective off-page SEO:

• Before you finalize your SEO strategy, partner with relevant websites to build quality backlinks. When a quality website links to yours as a result of a successful strategy, Search Engines recognize you as an authority on a particular topic and give you extra points. Backlinks from websites related to your industry can help boost your rankings in search results. 
• Participate in online forums and blogs related to the field of activity to include your SEO strategy. This allows you to connect with others in your industry and build backlinks to your site.
• You should create quality content for third-party websites and blogs. By including backlinks to your site in these posts, you can potentially improve the result of your SEO strategy and improve your online visibility.
• One of the ways to promote your site and generate backlinks is by using a social media platform, so your business's social media accounts should also be considered in your SEO strategy. By sharing quality content on your social networks, encourage people to click on links to your site, which will bring you closer to achieving your goals.
• To complete the link-building phase of your SEO strategy participate in online conferences and events. In-person networking opportunities can also help you build relationships and get backlinks for your site.
• It is important to note that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to the off-page SEO and link-building stage of an SEO strategy. Search engines can detect lower-quality links and penalize you for unethical SEO practices. It is therefore important to ensure on the SEO strategy that you establish quality links with websites relevant to your field of activity. Because it can destroy all your efforts to help achieve the goals you set in the strategy

If you follow these steps in developing the SEO strategy, you can activate your SEO and improve your online visibility.

 Focus on Content Design

When preparing an SEO strategy, the content's originality, completeness, stylistic features, etc. affect your position in search engines. But beyond what's listed, does the role of content design help you achieve your SEO strategy goals?

Imagine that you have spent days and months on any topic, but when publishing it, no visuals, photos, charts, or bar graphs were used. But your competitor has created content on the same topic and used different visuals. Experiments show that at this time your competitor will get 94% more traffic than you. Therefore, content design plays a crucial role in creating an effective SEO strategy. Focusing on content design when developing a strategy can help businesses achieve their online marketing goals even more successfully.

1. One of the reasons to consider content design when developing an SEO strategy is that search engines are getting better at how they understand and sort online content. This means that content quality and its optimization for search engines have become even more important when developing an SEO strategy. If a company focuses on content design, it will provide quality and engaging content that resonates with its target audience. This can help increase audience engagement and loyalty.
2. Another important element of content design to consider in your SEO strategy is mobile usability. More and more people are using their mobile devices to browse the internet and it is important that a website works well and looks appealing on all devices. By considering mobile-friendliness in your SEO strategy, you can get your website ranked higher in search engines.
3. Content clarity is an important goal of a successful SEO strategy. Users should be able to find what they are looking for quickly and the information should be clear and easy to understand. The layout also plays an important role as it ensures that the content is visible and easily accessible to the user.
4. Content design and SEO techniques go hand-in-hand to develop an effective SEO strategy. An experienced designer or agency can help you design a website in an attractive way for users and search engines. Content design by using appropriate keywords, titles, and subheadings can make a website more visible to search engines.
5. Another way to incorporate content design into your SEO strategy is to use the so-called "schema.org" markup. These are special HTML tags that help search engines understand what is happening on a website. Designing content using these tags can help a website rank higher in search results.

Finally, the well-thought-out content design will improve a business's brand identity and online presence. In your SEO strategy, a consistent and appealing design can help a business make a better impression on its audience and differentiate it from its competitors.

 Find & Fix Technical SEO Issues

To build a solid SEO strategy, it is important to prioritize the technical aspects of your website. To do this, you need to focus on website infrastructure rather than content. Here it makes sense to carry out a so-called technical audit before the concrete determination of the measures to complete the technical SEO part of your strategy. The entire website is put through its paces and potentials that need to be optimized are revealed by developing an SEO strategy. Until a few years ago, the focus in an SEO strategy was very much on on-page factors such as snippets, H1 and H structure, URL structure, etc. And while all these points are still important, it must be made clear that in 2021 there are now additional technical factors that play a central role. So what technical SEO work should be done to develop a successful strategy?

• To build an effective SEO strategy, it is important to understand the algorithms used by search engines. These algorithms determine the relevance and ranking of your website pages in search results.
• If you want to be ahead of your competitors through your SEO strategy, use website analysis tools to find common technical issues such as broken links, 404 errors, and slow loading speed.
• Site speed is an important factor for both search engines and your website visitors. A slow-loading website will negatively affect your search engine rankings, your user experience, as well as the goals defined to achieve at the end of your SEO strategy. Optimize your website speed during the strategy development phase by compressing images, reducing the size of your pages, and using a reliable hosting provider.
• To strengthen your SEO strategy use an XML sitemap and robots.txt file. An XML sitemap makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and understand the structure of your pages. A robots.txt file is used to control access to your site by search engines.

The best SEO strategy advice is to work with an experienced developer to ensure your site architecture is optimized for success. A web developer can help ensure that your website and server are optimized and conducive to a positive user experience. This part of the SEO strategy is crucial to ensuring that your site is crawled and indexed correctly so people can find you when they search on Google.

Final Thoughts: When to Consider Changing Your SEO Strategy?

SEO is a key part of online marketing, but it can be difficult to know when it is time to change your SEO strategy. Here are some indicators that will give you signs that your strategy needs tweaking:

• If you've been optimizing your website for SEO for a while and are not seeing significant improvement in your search rankings, it may be time to rethink your SEO strategy. There may be technical or content factors that limit your ability to progress.
• If you are seeing a drop in your search traffic, it could be a sign that your strategy is no longer effective. You may have lost positions in the search results, or the search algorithms may have been updated, affecting your ranking.
• If you notice that your competitors have higher search rankings than yours, it could be an indication that you need to change your SEO strategy. You may lose positions due to increased competition or more advanced strategies of your competitors.
• Search algorithms are constantly changing and updates can affect your rankings. If you observe that the algorithms have recently been updated, it may be time to revisit your SEO strategy to make sure you are following the latest SEO best practices.
• If you have new marketing goals, it may be time to change your SEO strategy to align with those goals. For example, if you want to generate more qualified leads, traffic, or sales, you may want to adjust the previous strategy to target more specific keywords or produce more engaging content.

In summary, it is essential to regularly monitor your SEO strategy to make sure it still meets today's SEO requirements. By working with an SEO expert or following the latest best practices in your SEO strategy, you can continue to improve search rankings and traffic while meeting your marketing goals.

It is not easy to compete in the SEO world that is updated every day. Therefore, you can always stay ahead of the competition by hiring experienced and reliable companies like Vitanur to develop your SEO strategy. Our team consists of experienced SEO experts who are aware of the latest industry trends and best practices. They will work closely with you to understand your business goals and develop a custom SEO strategy tailored to your unique needs. With their expertise and guidance, you can be sure that as a result of the cs your website will receive the optimization it needs to reach its full potential in the search engines and bring more traffic, leads, and revenue to your business. Visit our website to get to know our services and portfolio.