Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) gives us the ability to get websites found for many different keywords phrases on the natural (or organic) search engine results pages. Google, Yahoo! & Bing prioritise websites based on what they see, and SEO allows us to help the search engines to give our websites better rankings in their search results.

Why create an SEO strategy?

Like anything, if you don’t plan for it, it won’t happen! Strategy is about aligning everything that we do towards a common goal and this philosophy has never been more relevant. We only have a finite amount of time and resource for SEO, therefore it’s essential that we’re clear about what we want to achieve and how we are going to achieve it.

It’s simply not realistic to want to be number 1 in Google for highly competitive keywords quickly, so initially we look for long tail keyword phrases that include the top performing keywords. By being realistic we are much more likely to generate traffic and revenues quicker, as we work towards achieving top search engine results for the best performing keyword phrases.

Steps to an SEO strategy

1. Keyword Discovery and Research

This involves finding and understanding the keywords and phrases that potential customers are using to find your product or service. Viewing competitor websites and understanding the keywords that they are trying to be found for is a good start.

2. Keyword Priority

Now that we have a list of keywords and phrases, we need to prioritise and categorise them. We now need to assess, commercially, which keywords and phrases are most important to be found for. This should be based on the competencies and overall objectives of your business.

3. Long Tail Phrase Development

Once we have prioritised the list, we can start to assess the competition for each term and increase the focus by adding related keywords. This may be by geographical location or by a more specific description of the product or service.

4. Website Development

Before starting any SEO strategy we need to answer some technical questions about the website. Can the web pages be found and indexed by the search engines? Is the website easy to search? Is the website tuned for your SEO priorities? Does the navigation reflect the keywords that you want the website to be found for?

5. Optimising Website Content

Now that we are focussed on the keywords and phrases that we want the website to be found for, we can write textual content that targets the keywords and phrases. Content includes the on-page text that visitors and search engines can read, and also the web page Title Tags and Meta Tags which are crucial for SEO. In most cases, the text in the Title Tags and Meta Tags is displayed in the search engine results. In other words, we control what people read in the search engines, so we can influence people to visit “our” website.

6. Link Building

Google wants to be assured that your website is more relevant than all the others for the keywords that are being searched for. One way Google does this is to measure the relevance of the external links that are pointing to the website / web pages. The best quality links are from related-content websites, authority websites and respected blogs and social media sites. Whilst the best things in life are free, the best quality links aren’t!

Internal website links are often overlooked but are important as they help search engines to easily find other pages on the website.

7. Reviewing

We need to take a snap shot on a regular basis to ensure that we are following the original strategy, or that we are consciously making decisions to change it based on the ever moving feast. There are a host of useful tools including Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to help with this. Setting key performance indicators (kpi’s) really drives our understanding of the market and our position within it.

If you’d like to know more about developing successful SEO strategies for your business website, please call the SEO consultants at Pixel8 in Manchester on 0161 228 6489 / 0845 230 1336 or contact us by e-mail.