What Is an SEO Strategy?
Looking to add an SEO strategy to your marketing efforts? You’ve come to the right place.
First, what is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of increasing your website’s visibility online. This refers to the organic results.
There are efforts you can do on-page (on your own website), such as optimizing images, title tags, and meta descriptions, and off-page (from third party websites) like links pointing to your website from another.
As an SEO strategist for coaches and creatives, this is what I preach the most. What amplifies your on-page efforts are blogging, or in other words - creating content that provides value to users.
The goal isn’t to trick Google or other search engines to give your website a higher ranking. Those spammy SEO tactics don’t work, and instead create the opposite effect.
SEO can be an impactful online marketing tool because it allows businesses to reach qualified leads at low cost and with little time investment. Read more about the benefits of blogging for SEO here.
So what is an SEO strategy? SEO strategy is a plan that outlines the steps you will take to improve your search engine rankings.
A solid SEO strategy is based on many factors:
What keywords and target phrases are you trying to rank for?
What content do you need to create in order to rank for those keywords?
What is your site’s current ranking for those target phrases?
How can you improve your current rankings?
Let’s dive into these deeper…
1) What keywords and target phrases are you trying to rank for?
Keywords are the phrases that you want to rank for in Google. You can use keyword research tools to identify the exact phrases people are typing into Google.
When doing keyword research, focus on long-tail keywords (3 words or more). They will be easier to rank for and will attract ideal clients to you. For example, “fitness” vs “weight loss for moms.” The keyword “fitness” would be almost impossible to rank for as a small business owner, and you would have everyone and anyone coming to your website. The keyword “weight loss for moms” is much more niched and you’ll only be attracting the right people to your website.
You want to think of a few target phrases that represent what you do and the services you offer. For example:
Boston wedding photographer
Online business manager
Business coach for women
Then you also want to think of topics that people would be searching for that are related to those services. Whether it’s a FAQ about what to know before hiring you or helpful information, you want to find some keywords that directly correlate with your offerings.
Using the wedding photographer example, here are some topics you can do keyword research on.
Best engagement photography locations in Boston
Questions to ask a photographer before hiring them
How to find the right photographer for your wedding
Unique wedding venues in Boston for amazing photos
This example demonstrates that for location-based businesses like photographers, you want to target both general and location-specific keywords.
Are you a photographer? Check out these other photography SEO blog posts:
2) What content do you need to create in order to rank for those keywords?
Taking a look at the keywords you’ve gathered, you now need to figure out how they will be used.
In addition to your blog content, you also want to make sure that each main page of your website (i.e. home, about, services) has a target keyword that will only be used for that specific page.
Scan through the copy on each page to identify where each keyword makes sense. For example, using an OBM as the service…
Your about page keyword could be “online business manager”
Your services page keyword could be “online business management services”
See how that makes sense? This is how you apply the keywords relating to your services.
3) What is your site’s current ranking for those target phrases?
For this step, it’s important to have Google Search Console and Google Analytics set up.
Specifically, with Google Search Console, you can see:
What keywords your individual pages are ranking for
The number of clicks from Google to those pages
The individual pages’ average rank position (i.e. between 1 and 10 signifies page 1 of Google)
If your website isn’t ranking for any keywords, that’s okay. Everyone starts from 0.
You can also use SEO tools to check your progress and the change in the keywords you’re ranking for.
4) How can you improve your current rankings?
Now that you know what keywords you want to rank for and the keywords you are ranking for, it’s time to see how you can bridge the gap between the two.
Optimize your website as a foundation
If you haven’t optimized the main pages of your website with a primary keyword, do that first. Then identify places in your blog posts where you naturally include the keyword and link it to the associated page.
For example, if you’re a business coach writing a blog post about how to find clients on Instagram, you could include something like this in your blog post: “Looking for specific support in your business to grow your sales? I offer business coaching services for women entrepreneurs who want to scale their impact.”
Then you can link “business coaching services” to your coaching services page. This will increase your internal links between your blog posts and pages, helping Google understand more of how they’re interconnected. Not to mention that it gives website visitors an easy way to check out your services without making them hunt through your website for the information.
You also want to make sure that you are adding your keyword into your:
Title tags (Squarespace / Showit)
Meta descriptions (Squarespace / Showit)
Image file names (Squarespace / Showit)
Make sure you resize all images as well, and add alt text for accessibility.
Start blogging using keywords
Each keyword relates to one blog post. If you try to target the same keyword with two different blog posts, then Google will see them as competing against each other and will typically only choose one to rank.
I’d recommend each blog post has a length of 1,000 words or more since Google favors in-depth content that is going to be most useful to its users.
In each blog post, link to other relevant blog posts and (as mentioned above) pages on your website to direct traffic to.
I hope you found this blog post on creating an SEO strategy helpful!
Please note that these are only on page SEO factors. You can also increase your SEO through off page factors, like guest blogging and backlinks.
If you’re looking for help crafting an SEO strategy and want to hand off the keyword research portion, look no further! Click below to learn more about how I support coaches, creatives, and other small business owners with ranking on page 1 of Google.
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