Creating an SEO Plan Prior to Site Development
Developing an SEO plan prior to site development is essential. Before you begin building your website, it is important to develop a SEO strategy. In order to create a successful SEO strategy, you must choose a content management system, plan the architecture of your website, then create, optimize, and publish the contents of your website. These steps are crucial in creating an SEO plan before you begin developing your website. Some critical factors to remember is that the decisions you make when developing your SEO plan will deeply impact other departments in your company. This means that if you don’t have a successful SEO strategy, your company’s website will be negatively effected by it. It won’t have organic visibility or be SEO-friendly. To prevent these negative side effects, there are specific steps to follow in creating a successful SEO strategy:
Define the Purpose of Your Website
In order to develop an effective SEO strategy, it’s essential to know the purpose of your website. Is the purpose of your website to sell products or services, gain leads, sell advertising, etc.? Knowing the purpose of your website and what you want to accomplish from your website is key in creating an SEO plan that will greatly benefit your business.
Understand Your Audience and Their Patterns
It’s important to first, identify your target audience, and then learn everything you can about them, such as, their demographics, geographic location, preferences, patterns, and more. You can discover this information through Google Analytics. If you don’t know who your target audience is and what their patterns are, you won’t be able to drive traffic to your website and, therefore, you won’t rank well in the search engines. When you know everything you possibly can about your target audience, including what they do when they are searching for services or products like yours, you can optimize your website to fit the needs and wants of your audience.
Know Who Your Competitors Are
Knowing who your competitors are is another important factor in your SEO plan. If you are competing against another business that is stronger than you in a particular segment of the market, you should focus on a different segment of the market so you can become number one in that particular area. On the other hand, if you are the current leader in your market, you should strive to maintain your spot at number one. Not only do you need to maintain your position as the current leader, but you also need to make sure you are continuously gaining more customers.
Establish Your Branding Goals
Potential customers are going to be searching specific keywords to find the websites they want. It is critical that you include these popular keywords in your website so that you can have top search exposure. The specific keywords that you choose can make or break your SEO strategy. A great tool to use to figure out which keywords you should use is Google Keyword Planner. This will help build your brand which will lead to more customers and more sales.
Optimize the Content of Your Website
The creation and optimization of high-quality content on your website is another essential part of building an SEO plan. It’s important to continuously update and improve the content of your website on an ongoing basis. By optimizing the content of your website, your website will improve by having more content in the search engines, more links, and more customers. As you can see, SEO is an ongoing process. Not only will your website greatly benefit from creating an SEO plan prior to it’s development, but it will also lead to a successful future for your business.
-Nicole Litizzette