31 Jan Four Pillars of an Effective SEO Strategy
Getting your website to climb to the top of the Search Engine Results Page, SERPs, is the first step to driving reliable organic traffic to your website. To achieve this it is important to lay out a long term roadmap in the form of an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Strategy.
While formulating an SEO strategy, it is important to take into consideration the ever-changing technologies and the regular changes in the search engine algorithms, in the form of Google Core Updates, rolled out last during November 2021.
Although changes in the algorithm and technology are inevitable, there are certain foundational pillars in SEO that remain consistently important to assessing your current performance, see our SEO Audit article for how best to do this, and developing a high performing SEO strategy to improve SERP rankings.
The four pillars of an effective SEO Strategy:
1. Technical SEO
As the name suggests, Technical SEO refers to improving the technical aspects of the website so that the search engines can effectively crawl your site, understand the content, and index the pages correctly.
A few points to consider under technical SEO are as follows:
- Crawlability: The ability of a search engine to crawl through a website and access the content
- Indexing: The discovered and crawled pages are indexed and stored by the search engine.
- Mobile: Assessing a website’s mobile usability
- Speed: The page-load that affects user experience and conversions within the website
- Structure: The hierarchy followed to place content on the website that enables usability and accessibility.
2. On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO is the process of optimising the website content to improve website traffic and ranking. Over recent years, Google has shifted focus to prioritise providing an excellent user experience, with placing the right content in front of users remaining at the core of this. As a result, Google looks into the content on the page to decide whether it is relevant to the search query so that it can be presented to the user in the form of results. A few of the core areas to look into under On-page SEO are as follows:
- Keyword: Perform Keyword research to identify the words and phrases that allow people to reach your website via search engines.
- URLs: Use a URL that is simple and descriptive, containing relevant keywords & phrases.
- Meta-description: Add a compelling description that is reflective of the page.
- Title tags: Ensure that each page title includes relevant keywords
- User Experience: Ensure that your website is easy to navigate and appealing to the visitors
- Internal links: Make sure there are no broken links within the website
3. Content
‘Content is the king’, a famous quote made by Bill Gates when stating how content is the real source of money made on the internet. High quality content lets you connect with your audience and in recent years a lot of importance has been given to content marketing.
A good Content SEO is a key element in any SEO strategy. Content on the website should be relevant, high-quality, and well-structured. Optimising the content on the website with relevant keywords would help your business improve website traffic and ranking. To achieve this objective it is important to formulate a content marketing strategy and execute the same. Core areas to look into under Content SEO are as follows:
- Keyword Research: Performing keyword research will help you understand the search terms used by your audience. Targeting the audience by including such keywords makes it easier to optimise the website and improve visibility.
- Site Structure: Having a good site structure will make it easier for Google to crawl and index. This enables the search engine to identify where the right content is placed on the website.
- Copywriting: The content on the website should be original, readable, and unique. Content should be created based on what your user needs and in the format and language they would like to read it.
4. Off-Page SEO
This involves the actions performed outside of the website to impact the traffic and ranking. Although link building is one of the main tactics of Off-Page SEO, there are other equally important tactics such as content marketing, brand building, social media, reviews, and influencer marketing.
- Link-Building: Off-Page SEO is associated with link-building which involves adding inbound links to the website to gain additional traffic from other websites. Attaining quality backlinks from websites with a high domain authority helps improve the website ranking.
- Brand Building: When you undertake brand-building activities for your business, the process by itself creates backlinks, driving traffic to your website.
- Content Marketing: Content marketing under off-page SEO includes creating and posting content on other websites and linking it to your website. This can be done through infographic posts, guest posts, comments, and surveys.
- Social Media: Having a strong social media presence and using the social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter to communicate with the audience is another important Off-page tactic.
- Reviews: Ensure that your business has a good online presence and reputation, which can be tracked with the help of reviews received on social media platforms and Google My Business, GMB.
- Influencer Marketing: Product endorsements by influencers on social media platforms provide better ways to promote your business and expand the reach.
An effective SEO strategy does not just involve improving your website’s online presence and attaining a higher rank on the search engines. It is a process that involves providing your audience a great experience, increasing leads and revenue for your business.
By understanding the searcher’s intent, you will be able to generate content that provides the best solution, optimise it and present it on the results page. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
