1. What do you want to achieve? In terms of both business goals and marketing goals?

SEO isn't a business goal or a marketing goal. That's why you don't start by scratching your head over which keywords you need to get onto page 1 for. That would be a backwards approach. You start by making it absolutely clear what your business and marketing goals are.

If you own an online clothes shop, one of your business goals could be to sell far more dresses from your new collection than the number of dresses you sold from your last collection. To achieve that, you need some marketing goals.

More brand awareness
More traffic to your website, which can teach you more about your target audiences and what makes them convert
Reaching the dress lovers out there who are ready to buy and can't wait to click your dresses into their basket

Once you know what your marketing goals are, you can put together your SEO strategy.

The key takeaway here is that your SEO strategy has to tie in with your marketing goals, which in turn have to serve your business goals.

This is where it's important to get clear on what SEO can and can't do.

2. Why does SEO make sense for your business?

If you have a limited marketing budget, SEO may not be the most important thing for your business right now. Maybe your website is so old and slow that it's smarter to put your money into a new website.

Maybe you have a time-limited sale of last year's collection that you need to sell quickly, where PPC marketing such as Facebook Ads or Google Shopping Ads makes more sense.

3. What resources will you put into your SEO strategy?

Every strategy takes resources to put into practice. Find out whether you already have a team that can handle your SEO, whether you need to hire new bright minds, whether you should bring in an SEO agency or something else entirely.

4. Who are your target audiences?

Before you throw yourself into the big SEO work, you should take a good, thorough look at who your target audiences are. What are they interested in? And what matters to them?

5. Where in the customer journey is it important for you to reach your target audiences? And what pain points do they have at that stage?

Naturally, your target audiences google different things depending on where they are in the customer journey. What they google when they've only just started to notice their pain point and don't know the solution yet isn't the same as what they google when they know what they want to buy, where and why.

Part of your SEO strategy should be mapping out which stages of the buying process it makes sense for you to be visible in.

It's a good idea to be visible and helpful at every stage, from start to finish. But if the resources aren't there, you need to prioritise. Read much more about how to do keyword research based on the customer journey here.

6. What search intents do your target audiences have?

As part of your keyword research, you should brainstorm all the different intents your target audiences might have when they google. When a page ranks on page 1 of Google's search results, in 99% of cases it's because Google believes it answers the searcher's query.

So get a clear picture of what searchers intend when they hit the keys, and surprise them with even better content than they dared hope for.

7. What's special about your business?

Find out what you can do differently or even better than your biggest competitors. Think about:

How can you position yourself?
What can you play up in searches like “your product/service/name vs. your competitor's product/service/name”
How can you deliver something better, or completely different from your competitors?
Which unique selling points can you play up?

When you become more aware of how you stand out, you also become more aware of how you can help your target audiences, and how they should find you in the search results.

8. Who are your competitors?

To understand your market, and your own business down to the last detail, you need to understand your competitors. The same goes for when you put together your SEO strategy.

Zoom in on what your competitors do well, and what they do less well. That covers everything from their content and the structure of their website to the links they have and the keywords they go after.

9. What are you ranking for right now?

When you look into what you're ranking for right now, you get an insight into where there's untapped potential. Low-hanging fruit or outright gaps in the market.

Maybe you're on page 2 for the keyword “maxi dresses”, and aren't found at all for the search “summer dresses 2019”.

Or maybe you've been at the top of page 1 for a long time for a keyword you thought would be your big break, but which hasn't given you noticeable results. That can be a sign that it isn't the right keyword for your business.

When you look into what you're ranking for right now, you get an insight into where there's untapped potential. Low-hanging fruit or outright gaps in the market.

Maybe you're on page 2 for the keyword “maxi dresses”, and aren't found at all for the search “summer dresses 2019”.

10. What are your competitors ranking for?

By looking into which keywords your biggest competitors go after, you can get inspiration for your own keyword research.

Are they ranking for keywords you should be ranking for too? And are there gaps in the market?

11. How will you get links to your site?

Link building is one of the most important ranking factors. A good, well-thought-out link building strategy can kick the door to Google wide open. Right now, in 2019, the most important thing about your link building is that the links you point at your site are relevant, quality links.

We're not talking Russian porn links. So think relevance. Think PR. Outreach. Partners. Mentions, local newspapers and good stories.

Sit down with your team or your agency and map out what you should play up and who you should get in touch with. Not just right now, but tomorrow, next month and for the rest of the year.

12. How will you get links to your site?

Remember to look into what type of content often gets linked to in your industry. Then create even better content than what's out there right now. If people love the content you create (landing pages, blog posts or videos), there's a good chance they'll link to it on their own blog or website.

When people link to your content because they think it's awesome, it's called an editorial link. And that's a link Google gives a lot of weight.

13. What type of content should you create? And how often?

You can't optimise your website for search engines without good content such as landing pages, blog posts and videos.

But good content isn't just good content, and you can't let yourself be guided by one-size-fits-all rules.

So do your own analysis of what your industry and niche expect and want.

Do they expect checklists and bullet points? Videos or mostly text?

Every niche is different. In the fitness industry, the pages with lots of videos rank highest. That suits the industry well.

By contrast, high-ranking pages on divorce rules and legislation often use bullet points and lists. It's a heavy subject that needs to be made easier to digest.

In the furniture industry, people like lots of images rather than lots of text. And so on.

So find out what's going on in your niche and what your target audience wants.

Next step: Make a clear plan for how often you'll create new content for your website.

14. How will you get more Google reviews?

The number of positive Google reviews of your business has an impact on your visibility (and, naturally, on how your potential customers see you). It always pays to put together a strategy for how you'll keep collecting positive reviews.

15. Are you on top of the latest Google algorithms?

You need to factor Google's latest algorithm changes into your SEO strategy. That makes sure you're always “aligned” with Google's quality guidelines, and deliver what Google believes matters to searchers.

But strike a good balance between staying up to date and chasing the algorithm. By studying and understanding the long-term trends, you have the chance to get ahead of your competitors. Not by blindly following suit every time Google rolls out a new algorithm.

16. What does your website's architecture look like?

Your users need to know where they can find what on your website. They should have a fantastic experience and feel guided without having to use a single brain cell.

Just like when you go shopping at the supermarket, and the cheese is in the cheese section and the toothpaste isn't.

There are also a few things you can fix so that Google's bots find it easy to read and understand your site.

You can read much more about good website architecture on Moz's blog.

17. How do you make sure you're not just increasing traffic, but also the conversion rate?

It's important not to fixate on figures like monthly searches for a keyword and top rankings if those searches don't bring you relevant traffic.

So think about what best “nurtures” your target audiences through the customer journey. What converts them? And what keeps them as loyal customers?

18. Who will handle the technical side of SEO?

Consider who will make sure your website works from a technical point of view. Who will set up correct tracking, optimise its speed, compress images, add microdata, make sure it's mobile-friendly and that redirects are set up?

If you haven't hired someone who knows technical search engine optimisation, and you can't afford an SEO agency, you could consider outsourcing a few small tasks.

19. When should you update your strategy again?

Strategy is a process, not an event. That's why you need to revisit it regularly, evaluate whether it has gaps and add new initiatives when it makes sense.

Keep a close eye on how your rankings develop and let the results guide you.

Get help with your SEO strategy

Well begun is half done. Badly begun is…. well, not good. If you don't have the resources to put together a well-thought-out SEO strategy, you're always welcome to drop me an e-mail at seo@amplify.dk or get hold of one of my colleagues at info@amplify.dk.

19 questions for your SEO strategy