Things That Every SEO Strategy Needs
Almost any SEO strategy can benefit from these five elements. Build them into your framework and make them a part of your business.
In this industry we spend a lot of time sharing SEO tactics and ideas for mutual benefit.
It's a wonderful thing. Not every industry does that.
Unfortunately, we spend less time talking about how to develop our own SEO strategies.
Although every SEO strategy is - and should be - different, there is one strategy that underlies the development of strategies.
Here are five things that every SEO strategy needs:
A mind map
A mind map is a place where you can build your strategy from scratch. A mind map is simply a branching series of categories, usually starting from the center and moving from more general to more specific categories, with ideas becoming more granular.
It is not a visualization of your final strategy. A mind map does not exist to help you present your plan, but to help you think about it.
Mind maps are tools that help you visualize your thought process in a way that makes it easier to combine ideas by helping you see how they fit together as a whole. They help you to reduce the stress that your strategy imposes on your working memory so that you can focus on thinking and brainstorming.
You can use a tool like Mind Meister or simply write down your ideas when they come to you in visual form.
The main advantage of using a mind map is that it helps you think in a non-linear way.
Using a mind map allows you to see everything at once, in a structure that resembles the networked way your real brain works, so I strongly recommend using a mind map when developing your SEO strategy.
A visual representation
As soon as your strategy becomes more concrete, you need a more in-depth and professional document than your mind map.
Remember what a strategy is: a plan.
That is, you have goals, certain tasks that are related to those goals, some tasks that must come before others, recurring tasks that must be repeated and refined, and subtasks that become more numerous and specific over time.
You need to be able to present all this to your client and your teams quickly and easily, and you need to do it in a format that is simple enough for all parties to understand and work on.
You can use Google Sheets, Trello, Workzone, Basecamp or whatever you prefer. The specific tool is not as important as your method of using it.
It must be immediately clear to all parties how they can read the plan and make changes if necessary. It must also be clear:
- What task is assigned to whom
- Which tasks follow the first one
- Which tasks are recurring, planned, in progress and completed
An understanding of the company
Regardless of whether you are an internal or outsourced SEO, you need to have a solid understanding of the business to make any SEO strategy successful. You need to know what strengths you can leverage to achieve the highest possible SEO value, what brand identity tactics work best for you and what stands in your way.
Here are some of the most important factors you should consider when developing your strategy:
- What is the unique selling point of the product?
- We may be referring to a product line or a single product, but whatever the case, we need to know what makes our company different from others in order for any strategy to work. This has a strong impact on the type of reach that makes sense, the type of audience we want to reach, the type of keywords we pursue, and much more.
What is the company's vision?
We need to go deeper than just knowing what industry we're in and that we want to be profitable if we're going to create the kind of waves that affect search engine visibility. Dig deep into this vision statement to look for ideas that guide your strategic goals and metrics. If your vision statement does not do this for you, you may want to consider developing a new vision statement for your own campaign that serves this purpose.
Where is the company really suffering at the moment?
This is one of the things that can seemingly be avoided early on, but which will always creep in and decimate an SEO strategy (or department or partnership) if it is not destroyed. Understand what the company really needs to see and really can't accommodate before you commit to a strategy.
An understanding of the audience
You need to know who your audience is, and that means much more than just what keywords they are looking for.
Here are a few things you need to determine, either by talking to your customer, by interviewing your audience, by searching some relevant internet hangouts, or by all of this and more:
How acceptable are they for marketing, upselling and so on?
If you have ever consumed anything in the self-help industry, you may have noticed how conveniently "gurus" in this industry are willing to upgrade their audience, even spend a certain portion of a paid presentation on advertising their other products. Or if you've ever tried to link to something on Reddit yourself, you know that they are oversensitive to any kind of advertising. This is something you need to be highly aware of when developing your strategy.
What is their level of knowledge?
Do you talk to people who know everything about their field and will laugh at anyone who tries to pass on introductory material? Do you talk to people who have completely forgotten the industry jargon?
How close are they to the industry?
Is your audience consumers (B2C) or companies (B2B)? Are these people closely familiar with your industry or are they almost completely outside the industry? Are they interested in understanding more about the industry or are they only interested in how your products can benefit them?
Precise objectives
For a goal to be useful, it must be precise, and for it to be precise, we should focus more on the working parts and how they fit together than on a specific dollar amount.
We need to be careful when choosing our metrics and KPIs.
Yes, we want revenues to grow faster than costs, and yes, it can be useful to set a financial target. In any case, we should set targets that are limited in time.
But a strategy is about achieving goals that have a concrete impact on the company, its direction and future, and on the way the company itself operates. This means that our key figures should reflect what happens to the work pieces themselves. This could mean links and authority, it could mean rankings, or it could mean organic search traffic.
The point is that everyone should agree on which metrics make sense and why.
I strongly believe in the value of task-oriented goals over KPI goals. That's because our impact on KPIs, especially when it comes to inbound marketing and SEO, is indirect. That's why I believe in setting goals for projects, meeting those goals, then measuring the impact and adjusting the strategy accordingly.
This is an approach that leads to knowledge and actual optimization rather than finding ways to manipulate the KPIs while losing sight of the long-term impact.
Conclusion
Almost any SEO strategy can benefit from these five elements. Build them into your framework and make them a part of your business.