Where should you use figurative language and metaphors in your writing?
A strategy ensures that you’re on the right track—that you’re working toward relevant and realistic goals—and that all your efforts align with your goals.
When you're developing an SEO strategy (or evaluating your current one), there are many questions you need to ask and consider from every angle.
A common misconception is to opt for every SEO measure. It is, rather, a non-choice—a non-strategy.
I mean, an SEO strategy is about assessing which measures make sense for the specific situation—not just pulling every cool SEO trick out of the toolbox all at once.
That’s why we’ve put together 19 questions you can ask yourself, your (marketing) team, your SEO agency, or maybe even just your cat.
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1. What do you want to achieve? – Both in terms of business goals and marketing goals?
SEO isn’t a business goal or a marketing goal. That’s why you shouldn’t start by scratching your head over which keywords you need to rank on page 1 for. That would be the wrong way to go about it. You start by clearly defining your business and marketing goals.
If you own an online clothing store, one of your business goals might be to sell far more dresses from your new collection than you did from your last collection. To achieve that, you’ll need to set some marketing goals.
- More Fire Safety Knowledge
- More traffic to your website, which can help you better understand your target audiences and what drives them to convert
- To reach those dress lovers out there who are ready to buy and eager to add your dresses to their carts
Once you know what your marketing goals are, you can develop your SEO strategy.
The key takeaway here is that your SEO strategy must align with your marketing goals—which, in turn, must support your business goals.
It's important that you understand what SEO can and cannot do.
2. Why is SEO important for your business?
If you have a limited marketing budget, SEO might not be the most important thing for your business right now. Maybe your website is so outdated and slow that it makes more sense to invest in a new one.
Perhaps you have a limited-time sale on last year’s collection that you need to sell quickly—in which case PPC marketing, such as Facebook Ads or Google Shopping Ads, makes more sense.
3. What resources should you allocate to your SEO strategy?
Any strategy requires resources to implement. Determine whether you already have a team that can handle your SEO, whether you need to hire new talent, whether you should hire an SEO agency for the job, or something else entirely.
4. Who are your target audiences?
Before you dive into a major SEO project, you should take a deep and thorough look at who your target audiences are. What are they interested in? And what matters to them?
5. At what point in the customer journey is it important for you to reach your target audiences? And what pain points do they face at this stage?
Naturally, your target audiences search for different things on Google, depending on where they are in the customer journey. What they search for when they’ve just started to notice their pain point and don’t know the solution yet is not the same as what they search for when they know what they want to buy, where, and why.
Part of your SEO strategy should be to identify the stages of the buying process where it makes sense for you to be visible.
It’s a good idea to be visible and helpful at every stage—from start to finish. But if you don’t have the resources to do so, you’ll need to set priorities. Read much more about how to conduct akeyword analysis based on the customer journey here.
6. What are your target audiences’ search intentions?
As part of your keyword analysis, you should brainstorm all the different intentions your target audiences might have when they search on Google. When a page ranks on page 1 of Google’s search results, it’s because, in 99% of cases, Google believes it addresses the searcher’s query.
So figure out what people are looking for when they turn to Google—and surprise them with content that’s even better than they dared to hope for.
7. What makes your business unique?
Find out what you can do differently or even better than your biggest competitors. Think about:
- How can you position yourself?
- What can you rank for in searches such as “your product/service/name vs. your competitor’s product/service/name”?
- How can you offer something better—or completely different—than your competitors?
- What unique selling points can you highlight?
As you become more aware of what sets you apart, you’ll also become more aware of how you can help your target audiences and how they can find you in search results.
8. Who are your competitors?
To fully understand your market and your own business, you need to understand your competitors. The same applies when you're developing your SEO strategy.
Take a closer look at what your competitors are doing well—and what they’re not doing as well. This includes everything from their content and the structure of their website to the links they have and the keywords they’re targeting.
9. What's your current ranking?
When you analyze your current rankings, you’ll gain insight into where there is untapped potential—low-hanging fruit or outright gaps in the market.
Maybe you're on page 2 for the search term “maxi dresses,” and don't show up at all for the search “summer dresses 2019.”
It may also be that you’ve been at the top of page 1 for a long time for a keyword you thought would take you to new heights—but which hasn’t yielded any noticeable results. This could be a sign that it isn’t the right keyword for your business.
When you analyze your current rankings, you’ll gain insight into where there is untapped potential—low-hanging fruit or outright gaps in the market.
Maybe you're on page 2 for the search term “maxi dresses,” and don't show up at all for the search “summer dresses 2019.”
It may also be that you’ve been at the top of page 1 for a long time for a keyword you thought would take you to new heights—but which hasn’t yielded any noticeable results. This could be a sign that it isn’t the right keyword for your business.
10. What do your competitors rank for?
By researching which keywords your biggest competitors are targeting, you can gain inspiration for your own keyword analysis.
Are they ranking for keywords that you should also be ranking for? And are there gaps in the market?
11. How will you get links to your site?
Link building isone of the most important ranking factors. A good, well-thought-out link-building strategy can really open the door to Google. Right now, in 2019, the most important thing about your link building is to ensure that the links you’re building for your site are relevant and high-quality.
We’re not talking about Russian porn links. So think about relevance. Think about PR. Outreach. Partners. Media coverage, local newspapers, and good stories.
Sit down with your team or your agency and map out what you need to focus on and who you need to reach out to—not just right now, but tomorrow, next month, and for the rest of the year.
12. How will you get links to your site?
Be sure to research what kind of content is frequently linked to in your industry. Then create content that’s even better 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—that's called an editorial link. And that's a link that Google values very highly.
13) What kind of content should you create? And how often?
You can't optimize 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 rely on one-size-fits-all rules.
So conduct your own analysis of what your industry and niche expect and want.
Are they expecting checklists and bullet points? Videos or mostly text?
Every niche is unique. In the fitness industry, websites with lots of videos rank the highest. This fits well with the industry.
Highly ranked websites about divorce rules and laws often use bullet points and lists. It’s a complex topic that needs to be made easier to understand.
In the furniture industry, people prefer lots of pictures to a lot of text. And so on.
So find out—what’s happening in your niche, and what does your target audience want?
Next step:Create a clear plan for how often you should create new content for your website.
14. How will you get more Google reviews?
The number of positive Google reviews for your business affects your visibility (and, of course, how you’re perceived by your potential customers). It’s always a good idea to develop a strategy for how to consistently gather positive reviews.
15. Are you up to date on the latest Google algorithms?
You’ll need to factor Google’s latest algorithm changes into your SEO strategy. This ensures that you’re always “aligned” with Google’squality guidelines and deliver what Google considers important to searchers.
But find a good balance between staying up to date and chasing the algorithm. By studying and understanding long-term trends, you can gain an edge over your competitors—not by blindly following suit every time Google rolls out a new algorithm.
16. What is the page architecture of your website?
Your users need to knowwhereto findwhaton your website. They should have a fantastic experience and feel like they’re being guided without having to use a single brain cell.
It's like when you're shopping at the supermarket, and the cheese is in the cheese section but the toothpaste isn't.
There are also a couple of things—or three—you can do to make it easier for Google's bots to read and understand your page.
You can read much more about good website architecture onthe Moz blog.
17. How do you ensure that you not only increase traffic but also the conversion rate?
It's important not to get too caught up in numbers like the number of monthly searches for a keyword and top rankings if those searches don't bring you relevant traffic.
So think about this: What helps your target audiences “mature” best throughout the customer journey? What drives them to convert? And what keeps them coming back as loyal customers?
18. Who should be responsible for the technical aspects of SEO?
Consider who should be responsible for ensuring that your website functions properly from a technical standpoint. Who should set up tracking correctly, optimize its speed, compress images, add microdata, ensure it’s mobile-friendly, and set up redirects?
If you haven't hired someone who's knowledgeable about technical search engine optimization, and if you can't afford an SEO agency, you might want to consider outsourcing a few small tasks.
19. When should you update your strategy again?
Strategy is a process, not a one-time event. That’s why you need to continually reassess it, evaluate whether the strategy has any shortcomings, and add new initiatives when it makes sense to do so.
Keep a close eye on how your rankings are changing, and let the results guide you.
Learn Even More
Whether you're a generalist or a specialist in marketing, our experts have put together a number of helpful tips for you on our blog.
