Characteristics of a Successful SEO Strategy

The benefits of creating a successful SEO strategy, one that gives results and really maximizes the potential of your business are undeniable nowadays when search engine optimization has become a necessity in the process of reaching online consumers. It helps you with increasing traffic, reaching more people, generating new leads and eventually boosting sales. However, not every SEO strategy is the one that can help you with these goals. Since different approaches help you focus on different aspects of your business, you can expect different results. What we want to focus on in this article are some of the characteristics an SEO strategy should have if you want it to be successful.

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Realistic

The essential characteristic of a successful SEO strategy, or any other strategy for that matter, is to be realistic. This means that the strategy is built on the realistic assessment and predictions, two actions that should be at the core of every strategy. Firstly, we have assessment as a way of analyzing the current situation and determining both positive and negative sides of the situation. Thinking about what you have and what you can do with it is an approach you should take when developing an SEO strategy. Here are a couple of things to consider when thinking about a realistic aspect of the strategy that will help you with establishing a foundation for developing the strategy even further: Analyze your website This process should involve the following actions:

• Determine the keywords and check the performance of those keywords for your website
• Determine the position of your website in the search engine results
• Compare the ranking of your website to the competitors

Put down some numbers Numbers are always a good tool to use in strategies as they help you compare quantities:

• Monthly unique visits
• Page views
• Average time on site
• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate

List available assets Make a list of all the things you have at your disposal related to search engine optimization. Here are some suggestions:

• Website
• Blog
• Ebooks
• Graphics
• Mailing list

Once you have everything listed and put together, you’ll know how you can use these assets, and what would be some realistic goals you could achieve using the elements we’ve listed above. Setting up realistic goals is important because this will allow credible evaluation of the strategy, and also they’re more probable to achieve. Obviously, this contributes to your strategy being successful, allowing you to improve your business through this type of online marketing.

Purpose-driven

Without knowing what you want to accomplish through search engine optimization, there is no way to create a strategy that brings success. How can you evaluate success if you don’t know the purpose of the strategy and the goals you want to achieve? This is why an SEO strategy needs to be purpose-driven if you want it to be successful. Working towards a specific goal and trying to achieve a certain purpose, you’ll be more motivated and more comfortable when choosing the approaches, using different tools, examining the case studies to find a solution that would work best for you, etc. When it comes to finding and defining purpose, you need to think about each aspect of your website, as all of those combined will add up to the strategy success. Firstly, define the purpose of your website. Why do you have a website? Is it a simple website presentation of your company or do you have an online store which brings a certain percentage of the overall profit? Do you want to inform or to entertain the users? Would you like to interact with the users through comments, polls, or would your company benefit from obtaining emails and lead generation? Answering all of these questions allows you to determine the purpose you want to achieve with your website, regardless if that is increasing sales, generating leads, etc. It also helps with determining your approach, whether you want to enhance the website design, work on creating more content, etc. And once you know the purpose, it’ll be much easier to achieve it. The same approach should be applied for content, selection of keywords (learn how to make a Keyword Analysis) and link building. Since all of these are part of SEO, you have to find purpose for each of these parts, so that you leave nothing to chance. When it comes to content, thinking about the purpose will help you when choosing topics and when setting up the style you’re going to use. Selection of keywords is important as your entire website and content marketing is based on those keywords, but considering purpose can help with keyword selection tremendously. For example, if you want to increase sales in the online shop, the selected keywords should be related to this purpose, so comprising long-tail keywords with words sale, buy, or purchase, could be what you need for your website. Since link building continues to be an important part of SEO, you should have this purpose-driven approach in mind when coming up with a strategy that will enable you to obtain links to your website. Not all links are equal in the eyes of Google and other search engines, so think about what you want to achieve through this strategy. Authority websites could bring much more value to you than a bunch of links from irrelevant websites. Therefore, forget the quantity in link building and think about quality. Think about how to obtain links that you could benefit from, in terms of them forwarding relevant traffic. If you have this purpose in mind, you’ll be able to select only relevant websites you would be interested in collaborating with, exchanging links, considering guest blogging opportunities, or any other approach you decide to use in the process of obtaining links.

Coordinated

Good coordination is at the core of any successful project, so SEO strategy is no exception here. In order for you to fully grasp the meaning and the importance of this aspect, we’ll explain how this coordination affects SEO strategy, and what you need to have in mind when exploring the potential of search engine optimization. SEO is a marketing strategy with boosting your online performance as the main goal. What it helps you achieve is maximize the number of online users you reach, which then results in a profit increase for your business. This means that SEO is closely related to: Overall business goal You as a business owner are constantly focused on achieving your overall business goal, regardless if that is selling more products, attracting more people to your classes, obtaining more clients, etc. Hence, you should consider SEO as a way to achieve this goal. In this sense, business goals and goals of SEO should be coordinated, in which case you’ll maximize the performance of your business. Sales department The sales department is closely related to the SEO, as it basically evaluates the results obtained through SEO. If the sale is the main profit your business obtains, it’s obvious you need to determine which actions generate most sales, enabling you to invest more into those actions. Furthermore, if you want SEO strategy to be successful, you need to coordinate it with the sales department in terms of current prices, promotions, discounts, etc. Other segments of marketing You’ll get the most out of SEO if you coordinate it with other marketing segments, which include:

• SEM (Paid advertising)
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Content marketing

Coordination in this sense refers to creating joint campaigns, using the same visual resources, sharing the analytics data that create a clearer picture of the website performance, etc. Use other types of marketing as a way to enhance the performance of website optimization and rely on website analytics to determine the pros and cons of website optimization.

Up-to-date

Search engine optimization is a part of a turbulent world, where changes and new updates are introduced every week. With algorithm changes, new updates for modules and tools you use, with numerous best practices emerging on the horizon, SEO needs to be up-to-date in order to be successful. It isn’t enough to simply learn everything there is to know about SEO and start using it on your website. You have to keep up with the trends and keep an eye on anything that might affect SEO strategy you have going on. This will help you stay on top and always be the one who uses the most out of website optimization. At the same time, this approach is good for avoiding penalization for using outdated practices or conducting a strategy that will give no results due to its obsolescence. Here are a couple of ways to stay up-to-date in the world of SEO: Monitor the news from Google Since Google holds the largest percentage of the search market share, monitoring the news and updates released by Google is always a good start to keep up with the new changes and practices recommended for those interested in improving the performance of their website and using all the available assets in this purpose. We recommend several resources:

• Google Help Center with information on all Google resources
• Think with Google with lots of useful resources for marketers
• Google Webmaster Central Blog designed to help webmasters optimize websites

Follow influential blogs Here is another way to stay on track with anything SEO related. There are lots of SEO blogs out there, and you should browse and find those that you like and the ones you trust the most. As with every industry, the years of successful blogging and leading experts have created some of the most influential blogs, and we’ll recommend some of them:

• Moz Blog
• Search Engine Land
• Search Engine Watch
• HubSpot Blog
• Kissmetrics Blog

Follow influential people Influential people in the industry are experts in the field, and as such they represent authority that can be trusted. They’re usually very active on social media, which is where you’ll be able to see a ton of useful SEO content shared by the influencers who are diligent about keeping up with the trends, exploring new practices and using the power of SEO as much as possible. The best way to find influential people is to join a certain social network, such as Twitter or LinkedIn and look up people through keywords in the search bar. Alternatively, you could use a tool to find influencers. Followerwonk is a good solution if you want to focus on Twitter users exclusively, and it’s free, or you could choose Klout, a paid tool for influencer discovery. Attend conferences/webinars By now you realize that SEO is an industry where you’ll be faced with lots of learning and reading regularly, if you want to remain successful, so attending conferences or webinars is a good way to achieve that. Not only will you learn a lot about industry news, but these are also great opportunities to meet other people with the same interest and create contacts that could turn out to be very beneficial for you. Obviously, conferences are a great solution if you’re able to attend them, but even if you’re not, try finding webinars, they can be as much fun, plus lots of them enable you to communicate with the host, ask questions, etc.

Conclusion

Learning everything there is to know about website optimization and mastering an SEO course is a perfect way to start the journey, but in no way is this enough for your SEO strategy to be successful. All that knowledge you have might be in vain if your strategy doesn’t have these four characteristics that would make it successful. Think about realistic, purpose-driven approach, think about coordination as a necessary component, and in the end consider the fast-changing environment we live in, and focus on staying up-to-date. When you combine all of these elements and apply them to an SEO strategy, you’re going to get great results, as this kind of thinking helps you create a thriving and goal-oriented strategy, one that will help you with achieving your goals and thus taking your business to the next level.