Website SEO is a complex process that should be preceded by a thorough website audit and determination of an SEO strategy based on the business goals you want to achieve. Only armed with this basic knowledge, a specialist is able to start any work that may increase the visibility of the site in the search results. But what should such an SEO strategy look like and how do you know if the plan you have proposed is well structured? Let’s take a closer look at these issues and tell you about the process of creating your website’s SEO strategy.
Changes in SEO strategies – the natural sequence of things
When you think about an SEO strategy, first of all, you have to accept the fact that it is impossible to create a long-term action plan that will work without corrections. Google’s environment is very volatile – new updates of the search engine algorithm are constantly coming out, which often significantly change the rules of the game. Additionally, what worked on 100 similar pages may not necessarily work on page 101 as well. Therefore, changes in the strategy of activities are completely natural and even advisable if the chosen path does not bring results. Positioning is about constantly monitoring the effects, modifying, correcting and re-measuring the results. A properly selected strategy is therefore flexible and may change over time if changes in the algorithm or simply the specificity of a given website require it.
Clearly set priorities are essential
Most websites require many changes in various fields at the beginning of positioning – some of the corrections are purely technical, others require modifying and expanding the content or taking care of external linking. Such modifications cannot be made entirely in a week, month or even six months. Hence, SEO strategies should prioritize tasks to be performed, identifying those that are most urgent and those that can be introduced next.
The best strategies are divided into stages, thanks to which the client knows what to expect from a positioning agency. Not all changes are visible to the naked eye to someone who is not a specialist in a given topic. On the surface, it may seem that the positioner is doing nothing, while he is doing a lot of work necessary to improve the visibility of the website. Such changes take time, especially if the website is extensive, has many tabs, and has been modified frequently.
White hat SEO only!
Properly constructed SEO strategies focus only on good positioning practices, without assuming any prohibited actions or those resulting from the so-called the gray area. Attempts to take shortcuts and trick Google’s algorithm may result in the filter being imposed – either automatically or manually by an employee – and this causes the page to stop showing up in search results. Of course, you can try to remove the filter, but even if it is successful, the page drops in the search results, and restoring its good opinion in the assessment of the algorithm is extremely difficult.
What activities do you need to watch out for? For example, Google does not recognize the automatic mass generation of links to a page on unrelated websites, forums or blogs. Attempts to deceive search engine robots by presenting them with a version of the page other than users, or trying to “hide” texts on the page (eg creating white text on a white background) are badly seen. These types of naming activities are Black Hat SEO and should be avoided entirely.
SEO strategy – the role of cooperation
All changes introduced by the positioner must be accepted by the client, and the sooner the acceptance takes place, the earlier the website begins to achieve results. In addition, there are also such activities that the client must carry out on his own according to the recommendations of the positioning company. For example, the loading speed is very important for the visibility of the website, while some customers use slow and emergency hosting, which limits SEO possibilities. Then it is on the customer’s side to change the service provider, because without it, other activities become much less effective.
Sometimes the system on which the website was created is also a problem. If the client uses a proprietary solution or a less popular CMS, it may turn out that it lacks the functionalities necessary to improve the visibility of the website. In such cases, it is necessary to transfer the website to another system, which the client also has to do with his own resources. At this point, however, it is worth mentioning that such action must take place in cooperation with an SEO specialist who prepares recommendations on how to carry out the change so as not to lose the power of the website.
Cooperation must be based on trust
A mistake of many clients is blocking some of the changes recommended by the positioner. Most often it concerns interference with the content on the website, adding new content or changes in structural data. Lack of consent to some activities does not completely eliminate efforts to increase the visibility of the website, but it does not allow the website to use its full potential and achieve optimal results. Therefore, when deciding on services in the field of positioning, it is worth choosing a proven agency that you can trust. Then the client can be sure that all changes recommended by the positioner are necessary and work to the benefit of the website. Agreeing only some of the actions listed in the SEO strategy generally does not bring any satisfaction or measurable benefits to any of the parties.
However, it is important not only that the client can trust the SEO specialist, but also that the positioner can trust his client. SEO strategies cannot be fully implemented if the client makes changes to the website on his own without informing the SEO company about it. Such actions can destroy months of SEO work and cause an immediate drop in the visibility of your website. What activities are we talking about? Most often it concerns changing the CMS without prior information, changing the URLs of subpages, deleting subpages or deleting content on the website.
Linking strategy – an integral part of your SEO strategy
A very important part of the SEO strategy is the so-called off-site SEO, i.e. acquiring external links to the website. These types of links can be obtained from various sources, including online forums, product catalogs, back-end sites or through platforms selling sponsored articles. Less common methods of getting links are also possible, such as exchanging guest posts with bloggers or linking to a page on social media. However, it is important to remember that only good quality links give the website power – from thematically related websites, highly rated by algorithms. Therefore, the selection of linking sources is one of the most important elements of an SEO strategy. It is also important to schedule the publication of links – too many links that appear at the same time can alert the algorithm that starts suspecting us of unfair practices.
The strategy of building a link profile must be closely tailored to the industry, and even the specificity of the positioned page. It should also be preceded by an in-depth analysis of the competition’s link profile – on the basis of such information, we can decide what can be done better and how to expand the collection of links to gain a competitive advantage thanks to them.
What does an SEO strategy consist of?
The SEO strategy should include all the activities that will be carried out to position a given website on Google – both on the website itself and outside it (external linking). Its main elements are:
– a list of keywordsfor which the website will be positioned – it should contain all the keywords whose positions will be monitored by the positioner. Such a list is prepared by the agency in cooperation with the client, who can determine which areas of activity are the most important for him and which subpages, product categories or the products themselves are crucial for him from a business point of view.
– website architecture optimization plan – this means building a category tree, layout of website navigation, organizing tags, etc.,
– technical optimization plan for the website – that is, all those activities that are to increase the loading speed of the website, improve its responsiveness and user-friendliness. The purely technical changes include such activities as: code minification, graphics compression, implementation of browser caching, entering structured data, creating sitemap.xml, setting redirects, implementing canonical tags and many others,
– content development strategy on the website – at the planning stage, it is necessary to determine which page tabs should be enriched with new content, whether it is worth introducing space for additional content (e.g. blog or news), at what stages of work individual content will be added, etc.
– the concept of building a profile of external links – this means selecting sites for linking, determining how many links should be obtained and when to publish them,
– a plan for building a network of internal links – that is, creating links on the website to other subpages of the positioned website. A well-developed internal linking strategy makes it easier for the user to navigate the site and find the information they need.
