An SEO strategy is a plan of action which aims to improve rankings on search engines for keywords that matter to a particular website. You need to have a solid blueprint to go ahead with your SEO strategy which will save you from ranking for wrong keywords or ending up with no considerable improvement in rankings.
Your focus should be on getting traffic and securing high rankings for keywords that you want to rank for and not just for any keywords. Here are some of the very important steps which you can use to solidify your SEO strategy and get as much as 100K organic visits per month.
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Step 1. Get to Know Your Niche and Competitors
You aren’t the only one who is competing for the same keywords. The online landscape is ruthlessly competitive and thus your first course of action should be to obtain a deeper understanding of your niche and your competitors.
You need to study your competitors and then ask yourself if you have a realistic chance of competing against them and outranking them. Will it be a prudent decision to invest your time and resources in outranking them?
You also need to figure out what you stand to gain, if and when you achieve the top rankings for the keywords that you are targeting. You need to do some soul searching and find the answers to such questions as that will help you in refining and improving your SEO strategy for better results.
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Step 2. Get to Know Your Website
Once you have obtained a fair idea of your niche and competitors, the next logical step is to get a detailed report about your website. You need to figure out different aspects like how much SEO traffic you get per day, which keywords drive traffic to your website and which are your most popular landing pages. If and when you do so, you will have a fair idea of where you stand against your competitors, which will help you in setting up realistic goals.
Step 3. Start an SEO Log File
After you have analysed your niche, competitors and your own website, it is time to make chances for your website. This can be done by beginning an SEO log file. This spreadsheet will keep you honest and sincere in your intentions as it will note all the SEO related changes that you will be making to your website. It is important for all website owners to have an SEO log file because SEO is a continuous process and takes considerable time to deliver results.
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Step 4. Conduct A Technical SEO Audit of Your Website
It is very important to figure out the technical SEO performance of your website and you can do so by performing a technical SEO audit. If and when you do so, you will figure out if the technical SEO infrastructure of your website has any issues or not. If the findings are positive, then it means that the search engines will be able to index your content without any issues. The best part is that you don’t need to be a technical genius to do an SEO audit. It’s no rocket science and there are many free resources on the internet which can guide you on all issues related to conducting an SEO audit.
Step 5. Identify The Keywords for Which You Need to Create Pillar Content
It goes without saying that keyword research is a very crucial component of any SEO strategy. In the earlier steps we have already identified the keywords which bring traffic to your competitors and to you.
Now it’s time to use the information gathered to create your master keyword list which will contain all the important keywords that you want to rank for. If and when you make the list, you will need to sort it by traffic and then pick the top 10 keywords for creating pillar content. If you aren’t able to identify keywords for pillar content on your own, then you can hire a digital marketing service provider, for the same purpose.
The pillar content should ideally have incoming links from other websites, should be unique and should target a particular keyword or phrase. It is advisable to go ahead with pillar content and not treat content equally because it is impossible for any business to rank all the relevant keywords in a niche. This strategy will considerably improve your chances of ranking for keywords that are really important to you.
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Step 6. Build Topic Relevance
After you have identified keywords from your master list and have created pillar content to target such keywords, it is time to examine those keywords again and identify long-tail keywords that you can target.
If and when you do so, you will be able to get more search engine traffic because long-tail keywords that have less competition are comparatively easier to target. Further, the most important reason for doing this is that you can build topic relevance through this method, which is very important for anyone targeting high volume competitive keywords.
Websites who are able to build topic relevance around content marketing are able to rank high on search engines for that particular keyword and also for a lot of other related keywords.
Step 7. Become an Expert in On-Page SEO Optimization
On-page SEO is necessary to help the search engines understand your content and its meaning. Hence it is very important that for your pillar content and supporting content, your on-page SEO is optimized to the fullest.
On-page SEO is all about things like optimizing your titles, optimizing your meta descriptions and also your H1 tags and headings. On-page SEO further extends to proper use of keywords in a content and also the use of links. For ensuring effortless on-page SEO optimization of your site, you can engage a digital marketing reseller program of a white label digital marketing agency.
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Step 8. Perform A Content Audit
In this step you will need to conduct a content audit to make sure that your existing content synchronizes with your SEO goals. Again conducting a content audit is no rocket science and you don’t need to be a technical guru to do one.
In a content audit, you will be required to examine all the pages of your website and determine whether content should be removed or improved or merged or even re-published. Your focus should be removing pages which don’t add any value to the overall website through rankings, traffic or links.
You should have no hesitations in removing pages which aren’t aligning well with the rest of your website. If they aren’t up-to the stars you want, you need to take them down as it is better to have less but higher quality pages than many low-quality pages.
Step 9. Promote Your Brand Online
After that you have done everything mentioned in the previous steps, it’s time to move onto off-page SEO. Off-page SEO as the term implies relates to SEO techniques that go beyond the content of the website. To improve your rankings on search engines, you will need a lot of brand mentions.
Search engines consider brand mentions to be a very strong ranking factor. Since they are identified by search engines it translates to stronger site authority. Thus it is imperative on your part to track your brand mentions across the entirety of the internet and then take proactive steps to increase them.
Social media networks and guest posting on high-authority websites are a great place to start, if you intend on getting brand mentions for your business.
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Step 10. Develop A Solid Link-Building Plan
Link building might be a complicated area but it is very rewarding. They are one of the most important ranking factors on search engines and you need to get links if you want to get high rankings for your targeted keywords. Links will help you in getting to the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs) and staying at the top so that you can get a bigger share of SEO traffic.
If your website has something valuable to offer, then many webmasters will be more than willing to link back to your site. Recommendations are expressed through links in the digital world and to increase your chances of getting them you need to publish great content which provides value. You also need to reach out to other webmasters and establish mutually-benefitting relationships with them.
Step 11. Stay On Top of Latest SEO Practices
SEO is an exponentially evolving discipline and thousands of changes are made by Google to its ranking algorithm each year. Hence, it is imperative upon all website owners, digital marketers and SEO experts to know about the latest changes and how such changes can affect their SEO performance. One easy way of staying on top of all the development in the SEO world is by following reputable and trusted websites which cover all facets of the SEO industry. Subscribing to such a website is a very good idea as it will keep you updated of the changes.
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Step 12. Measure Results Correctly
It is important to have a solid tracking system for any strategy that you implement. Make sure that you have an accurate idea of your rankings and traffic before you begin implementing your plan. You also need to make sure that you are measuring the right Key Performance Indicators.
Step 13. Keep Your Content Up-To-Date
One of the best ways of ensuring healthy traffic to your website is by keeping your content up-to-date. It is easy to get rankings but it is difficult to sustain them. You are competing in a ruthlessly competitive space and that’s why you need to ensure that you are taking all actions necessary to gain competitive leverage over your counterparts. One way of doing so is by keeping your content up-to-date. Your focus should be on creating new high-quality content and every once in a while you need to go back to review your previous content and then make necessary changes to it.
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The Bottom Line
If and when you follow the aforementioned steps, you will have very high chances of growing your SEO traffic over time. Whether you are able to get 100,000 organic visits per month or not is something which depends on how big or small your niche is. If you are aiming for topics that have high search volumes, then you have high chances of achieving your goals quickly, provided you have followed all the steps mentioned above.
If you are in a niche which isn’t so popular, then you should try to expand your reach so that you are better placed to target more topics and keywords. For better results, in addition to the aforementioned steps, you can also hire digital marketing services of an offshore digital marketing agency or a 360-degree digital marketing agency.