How do you build an SEO Strategy? When thinking of SEO strategies, it is important to understand what SEO is and how to do SEO. Search Engine Optimization strategy is a marketing discipline that centers on growing a websites visibility in organic, non-paid, search engine results. It surrounds the use of technical and creative elements to improve rankings, increase traffic, and build awareness in different search engines. There are 4 main pillars of SEO that people running websites should be aware of when building an SEO plan, those being:

4 pillars of SEO

1. Technical SEO, this consists of how well content on your website can be crawled and indexed.

2. Content, this is key for site owners to understand because having the best and most relevant information on your chosen site topic is paramount to having a high functioning site.

3. On-Site SEO, this covers the optimization of your website content and HTML.

4. Off-Site SEO, this is about building authority and credibility for your site so that Google and other search engines put you higher up in the search rankings.

These areas are complex and have some overlap but understanding the basic differences of each will help you to create the best SEO planning environment for your website.

Going more in depth

To go a little more in depth in each of the 4 pillars will give site owners a leg up when working through the SEO process. Technical SEO is ensuring that search engines can read your content and poke around your website. The main aspects of technical SEO, beyond crawling and indexing, are mobile, speed, hierarchy, and tech. Content is key for a website, and the best SEO strategies don’t forget that. The three main sects of content are service content, credibility content, and marketing content. A site that has all three types of content working in conjunction are on their way to an SEO strategy plan.

On-site SEO ensure that your website is optimized as a whole and at an individual level, the focus areas being: keyword research, descriptive URL’s, page titles, meta descriptions, content optimization, good user experience, strong calls to action, and structured data markup. When you think of how to SEO your website, on-site SEO has to be top of the list. Off-site SEO is where all SEO marketing strategies lead. A large part of this is link building. Links are important to help develop strong organic rankings for you SEO website strategy. To learn more, click here.

The first step to an SEO strategy

Basic SEO strategies will follow a list of steps to ensure that all the major components are hit. A great place to start is by defining your target audience and their interests. This is usually the first step in a marketing campaign. One of the main reasons for this is because it helps you understand your content strategy. We already know is important because it is one of the 4 pillars in an SEO marketing strategy. To learn more about setting up an SEO strategy steps, click here. SEO isn’t a one and done situation, knowing where to start and what components are important will make SEO management easier in the future. SEO is vital for a website’s survival, and having a concrete strategy is an important part of ensuring that survival and having sold SEO plans.

Devin Turner