How to create an SEO Strategy that increases web traffic and sales

2. Identify Keywords

By analysing your audience and selecting the right keywords, you can streamline your workflow and focus on the content that will help you outrank your competition whilst encouraging more high quality traffic.

Keyword research is the process of identifying relevant keywords to include in your website’s content and metadata. You can use tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner to help you find words and phrases associated with your products and services as well as their monthly volume and difficulty. This allows you to improve the relevancy of your content and gain insight into how your audience may be using search to find products and services similar to your own.

Different Keyword Types

There are several types of keywords to consider when reviewing your SEO strategy:

• Short-Tail Keywords - short keywords used to target a broad audience. They tend to include only one or two words and are usually very competitive as they are generic and many websites are trying to rank for them. (e.g. bag)

• Long-Tail Keywords - longer and more specific, these keywords are usually three or more words and are often used by people further along in the buying process with a more specific query. (e.g. brown leather bag for women)

• Brand Keywords - include the name of a specific brand. (e.g. Gucci bag)

• Product Keywords - describe a specific product or service. (e.g. waterproof backpack or copywriting services)

• LSI Keywords - LSI means “Latent Semantic Indexing” and refers to words which are related to the main keyword. For example if the primary keyword is “banana” then LSI keywords might include “fruit” “bread” or “smoothie”. LSI keywords help give context to your page content.

• Geo-Targeted Keywords - include a location and are useful for businesses who offer a product or service in a specific area. (e.g. copywriting services in London).

Topics and Subtopics

Topics and subtopics are important for giving structure to your content. They help search engines understand what your content is about, enabling them to index your page more accurately.

A well-organised page complete with a clear topic and subtopics will allow users to navigate your site more efficiently to find the content they are looking for. A positive user experience is more likely to encourage engagement and ultimately improve your conversion rate.

By interlinking your topics and subtopics, you can guide your users through your site to encourage them to explore more of your content and remain on your site for longer. Interlinked pages based around a particular topic are called topic clusters and can assist search engines with crawling your site and tell them which pages are the most important.

3. Review On-Page SEO

“On-page” or “on-site SEO” refers to the practice of optimising the elements on web pages such as content, structure and source code so they rank higher and gain more traffic.

Components of On-Page SEO

• Keywords & content - the page includes target keywords or phrases in a natural way and content is of high quality.

• Title tags - the page has a descriptive title which is relevant and includes the target keyword.

• Headings - the page is well-structured with H1, H2 and H3 headings.

• Meta description - the page has a clear and concise summary which will display in search engine results.

• Image optimisation - images are optimised with alt text, captions and descriptive file names that include the target keyword.

• Internal links - the page includes links to other relevant pages across the site.

• URL structure - the URL is descriptive yet concise with the relevant keyword included.

• Site speed - the page loads quickly to provide a good user experience.

• Mobile optimisation - a positive user experience is maintained across mobile devices and meets Google’s mobile-friendly requirements.

When executed correctly, on-page SEO helps users and search engines interpret the page content and quickly understand what it is about. Search engines look at these elements to determine whether a page matches a user’s search intent and whether or not the page’s content would be useful to the user. The more relevant or useful it deems a page, the higher up it will display in search results.

Link-Building

Link-building refers to securing high-quality backlinks to your web pages from relevant and high-authority domains which assist in improving search rankings. Web authority looks at the overall ‘strength’ of a domain such as the likelihood of it ranking highly in search engines.

Although domain authority alone isn’t a ranking factor, securing backlinks should form an integral part of your SEO strategy as a strong backlink profile will help show Google that your website is worthy of appearing high up in search results.

Having backlinks from high-authority sites can help boost your own site’s authority, however links from sites with a lower domain rank are still beneficial if the referring web page is relevant to your page topic!

4. Develop a Content Strategy

Content forms a critical component of any SEO strategy - randomly peppering your page with keywords is not going to help you achieve your goals, in fact Google might even penalise you! You need a well-thought out strategy in order to develop high-quality content that is both informative and relevant to your target audience.

Your content strategy should span your entire portfolio of channels, not just SEO, to ensure your brand, key messaging and tone of voice are maintained throughout. Once you’ve determined your target audience, spend time identifying how your products or services solve their problems and how you can offer value. Think about which channels you’ll publish on and the formats you’re going to use such as video, articles, imagery, infographics etc.

It’s important to strike the balance between providing your site users with informative content and also maintaining the SEO best practices we’ve outlined in this article. Refresh your content frequently in the form of regular blog posts or updates to your static page content - Google (and humans!) prefer fresh content as it’s more likely to be accurate.

Search Intent

Also known as user intent, this refers to the purpose behind someone’s query on a search engine. Knowing the motivation behind your users’ query will help you understand what areas to focus on. Search intent can be split into four categories:

• Informational intent - they want to learn about this topic or they’re looking for an answer to a particular question

• Commercial intent - they are far along in the buying cycle and want to purchase a product or service

• Transactional intent - the user is looking to take a specific action such as making a booking

• Navigational intent - the user is looking for a particular website or page such as their favourite blog or recipe hub

By reviewing your users’ search intent, you can improve user experience with relevant content that provides value.

5. Local SEO

Do you offer products and services to a specific geographic location? You may want to review your local SEO efforts. Local SEO is the process of optimising your website and content to rank higher in local search engine results - the primary goal being to increase your visibility to potential customers in the local area.

Hotels are a prime example of businesses who should focus on local SEO tactics as the majority of queries are going to relate to a specific location such as “places to stay near central London” or “dog-friendly hotels in Berkshire”. There are a number of techniques and tools to help businesses appear in local search results - one of the most important tools being Google’s “Business Profile” formerly known as “Google My Business”.

A Google Business profile allows local businesses to be easily found on Google and Google maps. Creating a profile is simple and has a number of SEO benefits all for free. - learn more about the benefits of a Google Business Profile.

6. Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to the process of optimising your site to assist search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo find in crawling your website’s pages. The goal is for search engines to easily understand and index your pages to ultimately improve rankings.

The technical side of SEO can be complex, which is why many businesses lean on an SEO partner to implement and maintain the fundamentals. Technical SEO encompasses a wide range of elements including:

• Site structure - how a website is organised, it shows search engines which pages are the most important.

• Mobile optimisation - mobile optimisation is a priority for Google when it comes to ranking factors, it’s important to ensure a positive user experience for mobile users

• Site speed and performance - a cumbersome website won’t provide a good experience for users, review Google’s PageSpeed Insights to see how your site is performing

• Schema markup - structured data that allows you to add further information to web pages to make it easier for search engines to understand the content. It uses a specific set of HTML tags that provide context about the page, you can include elements such as author, dates, review ratings, pricing and more.

• URL optimisation - there are a number of elements to review when building URLs including site architecture, URL structure and ensuring your URLs accurately describe your content.

• Redirect management - reviewing any broken links or errors and redirecting your pages accordingly.

• Site security - there are many ways in which poor site security can negatively impact search rankings including poor site reviews, crawling errors, browser blacklisting and SEO spam.

7. Tracking and Reporting

Without proper reporting software it’s near impossible to measure the success of your new SEO strategy.

Implement website tracking software such as Google Analytics before actioning any of the above so that you’re able to accurately track any benefit of your changes and make data-driven decisions moving forward.

There are a number of factors that form a cohesive SEO strategy from small, quick wins to more considered ongoing activities. All of these elements are pivotal in improving site health, website traffic and ultimately conversions and so SEO should form an integral part of your overall digital strategy.

Are you looking for SEO support for your business? Get in touch hello@mondayclicks.co.uk or 07477987943.