What is an SEO strategy?

On the surface, an SEO strategy's purpose is to grow organic visibility, and increase organic traffic to a site. That is, to sit at the top of the organic results within Google (not to be confused with paid ads!). Why? Because customers predominantly click the first link they're presented with. They're highly unlikely to scroll past the first page of results, so that's where you want to be when they make a search that's relevant to you/your business.

SEO strategies encompass optimisations that span across technical, content, and local SEO that will facilitate improvements in your position.

But, in my (perhaps biased) opinion, it runs far deeper than that. While SEO is indeed the practice of achieving a higher position in Google, it is also at its core about your (read: your client's!) customer.

SEO works best when it's engrained in your/your client's teams; the ever-changing nature of search, as well as the websites themselves, mean you are going to be able to support them through periods of change, monitor their site, and ultimately bring more traffic to their site. Helping your client/business to understand the value of SEO, and what falls under its remit, is what will keep the momentum moving forwards. This, I believe, is what makes for the ultimate SEO strategy.

Where to start with your SEO strategy?

First and foremost - you need to understand the customer's journey. Understand which categories drive the most traffic, the most revenue, or perhaps on the flipside, the most customer frustrations. Ask LOTS of questions!

On top of this - you need to understand your client's business performance too. Which marketing channels do they tend to prioritise? What are their seasonal priorities? Do they operate in a restricted industry? Perhaps most importantly - is the business doing well?

Finally - understand the maturity of their SEO strategy thus far. What's worked well/not so well for them? Have they been impacted by any algorithm updates lately? Are they considering a site migration anytime soon?

All of these questions are going to help you build a really rich understanding of your client, and their site's needs. Excitingly, this is only going to scratch the surface of everything that's yet to come…

Content, technical, and local strategies

Separate, dedicated blogs are needed to delve into content, technical, and local SEO strategies specifically. It would be overwhelming to try and do each of these pillars' justice together, but if you are a beginner, the below should be useful in setting you off on the right track.

• Technical SEO is how we ensure that Google can crawl and index all of the valuable content on your site, as well as ensuring that the site is easy to navigate, and quick to load for the customer. Without technical SEO, your content strategy will struggle to come out on top.

• Content SEO is how we optimise the written copy on your site towards relevant target keywords. Using the tools at your disposal (keep reading!), you need to have a clear understanding of how your customers are searching for relevant information/products relating to your business. Use those search insights to build a strategy for optimising the content you already have live, as well as finding opportunities to fill competitive gaps.

• Local SEO is how we ensure that a business is discoverable in local search (i.e. Google Maps as well as Google). This is vital for businesses with a local presence, as customers predominantly use their mobile to search locally. If your business isn't presented when that customer searches, that's going to be a problem.

Do SEO strategies need to vary across industries?

Yes and no. Your core strategy will remain the same - everything you will do should be embedded in best practices. However, you should expect to tailor your strategy to your particular industry/business.

For example - some industries are heavily regulated (think healthcare, finance) in what they can say/how they reference certain topics on their site. So while you may find a significant search volume opportunity for a keyword, it may not align with industry regulations. Are there clever ways around this in how you word your content? Sometimes, but it can be a struggle to get it approved by regulatory teams.

Google algorithm updates… What are they and should I be worried?

Essentially, Google's algorithm is used to determine the results that are presented to you in organic search. Throughout the year this algorithm is regularly updated, and it can have a negative impact on your site if the latest update doesn't swing in your favour.

Useful resources:

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/

https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2GwMi/history

Because Google rolls these updates out regularly, it's important to keep on top of the different resources at your disposal. There are some fantastic SEOs out there who will update on platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter regularly.

Google is placing significant value on the quality of your site; this includes from the perspectives of having valuable content present, to improving its site speed. All with the site visitor in mind, of course. Adhering to Google's guidelines and best practices are what will ultimately support you in your mission to achieve those much-desired top spots in search.

The most important thing to keep in mind is this - at all points throughout the year, your SEO strategy should be engrained in best practices. While the algorithm updates on the surface seem scary, the main thing is to ensure that throughout your optimisations, you are keeping best practice at the forefront. It's impossible to guarantee that you won't be hit by an update, but it's going to really help.

What tools do you need for your SEO strategy?

You're going to need a variety of different tools to support you on your way to building your strategy/make onwards recommendations. Some of them are freely available, others aren't.

At a very (very) high level, you're going to need:

• First party data: GSC, GA/AA (or a chosen analytics platform)
• Technical tools: Screaming Frog, PageSpeed Insights, WebPage test
• Keyword/trends tools: Search interest tools such as SEMRush/Ahrefs, Google trends

Of course, there is a plethora of tools available out there. For example, a business with physical stores may use Yext to manage all of their local listings or pay for tools such as Brightedge or seoClarity for more enhanced tracking purposes.

One thing I will say on usage of tools, is to always do your due diligence on the site, and SERP itself. The most successful SEOs will use the data that's available to them in platforms, and combine it with what they themselves experience. Don't just rely on a Screaming Frog export to tell you what issues a page has - spot check them yourself too.

Your long-term SEO strategy will then form around the data you collect, weaved in with the answers to the questions you asked at the beginning of your mission. Look out for quick wins that can get the ball rolling quickly (think: quick technical fixes, metadata updates, enhancements to existing copy), as well as the longer-term optimisations that will facilitate growth. This might include fixes that require more development time, site speed fixes, or creating new content to push live.

Reporting on SEO success

SEO impact reporting

Depending on the nature of your optimisations, you may not always see immediate results – this is especially true in the instance of new content that you push live. It can take time for Google to rank your content, but you can try and speed things up by submitting the new URL for indexing.

In general though, it’s important to monitor your optimisations so that you can feed back to your team/client, and proactively make any tweaks if needed. While content optimisations may take longer to see results, you’ll know almost immediately if a technical optimisation has/hasn’t been implemented properly.

To increase the value of your impact reporting, don’t just use SEO vanity metrics. Use the metrics that mean most to your client. For example, if organic traffic has increased, how did that impact revenue?

SEO monthly reporting

On top of reporting on the success of your optimisations, monthly reporting is a great opportunity to take stock of how organic traffic is faring over time. This is your chance to give your business visibility over performance.

While you may be working through a roadmap that’s been created off the back of auditing, this is static, and often won’t take into account the fact that customer search trends can change/external factors may impact priorities. Monthly reporting will support in reviewing the types of pages and keywords that are increasing/decreasing in traffic. It’s your opportunity to be reactive to these trends, and help your business with staying ahead of the curve.

The quickest way to get your monthly report up and running is to get yourself set up in Looker studio. Connecting to GSC and analytics as a minimum is a great start, but you can also start exploring the different connections that are available to make this richer/more detailed for the business.

Sitewide reporting isn’t going to help you with providing actionable insights to the business. Consider what is going to be most valuable within your monthly report; which sections of the site require monthly tracking? Have you separated out insights for local search? Are you pulling in site speed insights?

How can SEO integrate with other marketing channels?

When not acting as a siloed channel, SEO can be even more impactful and integrated within a business’s marketing strategy.

SEO and PPC

On a basic level, businesses that operate PPC can leverage this to support overall site traffic while SEO optimisations are underway. For example, if a new piece of content has been written, PPC spend could be upweighted to bring traffic to that page while organic position picks up. On the other hand, SEO optimisations can support with improving efficiency metrics such as Quality Score.

SEO and experimentation (CRO)

Finally, a really exciting relationship to talk about is that of SEO and experimentation. Looking to understand how naming conventions (for example) resonate with customers? Consider undertaking a test and learn approach, by monitoring how customers interact with a change before it’s pushed live. The ideal outcome here is that confidence can be instilled in not only SEO optimisations increasing organic visibility, but also that these optimisations won’t harm/may increase overall conversion rate.

In summary...

So, that's the mere surface of SEO scratched, but should prove useful in understanding how SEO can be a strategic partner with a business. A successful strategy will delve into the needs of your business and it’s customer, and keep that at the core of it’s optimisations; while also adhering to best practices.