What Is SEO Strategy And How To Build An SEO Action Plan

An SEO strategy is a method for raising a website’s position in search results so that it may get more natural visitors. EXAMPLES OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TACTICS ARE on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, content SEO, local SEO, and mobile SEO. The user experience and website rankings both benefit from effective SEO tactics.

What is an SEO plan?

An SEO plan lists the steps needed to execute the SEO strategy. Search engine optimization plans include a checklist and an SEO action plan template to follow for a website. A good SEO plan improves the ranking and visibility of the website in search engines to increase organic traffic.

What is SEO marketing strategy?

An SEO marketing strategy is a detailed list of techniques used to increase a website’s ranking in search results for keywords related to a business. Search engine marketing strategies include a comprehensive SEO strategy and call-to-action items to do on a website to improve organic traffic.

How to Build an SEO Strategy

1. Define your SEO strategy goals

The first step in building an SEO strategy is defining your goals.

Once we’ve determined that, we can move on to specifically answer the question of what SEO strategies you can use for your website.

Without clear goals, your SEO plan will lack measurable data to define your ROI (return on investment).

Start by identifying the outcomes of your targeted SEO marketing strategy, then work backward to define the process for your goals.

How do you ask yourself questions like:

Do you want to increase the amount of traffic to a specific webpage or set of pages?
Do you want to increase the number of sales of a particular product or product?
Do you want to improve search engine visibility for certain types of content in the purchase process (eg TOFU, MOFU, or BOFU)?
Do you want to improve brand recognition and authority in the niche?

2. Make a list of topics to be covered

The second step to creating an SEO plan that generates more organic search traffic is to make a list of topics to cover on your website.

But you can’t just pick any subject.

Topics should be focused on the niche the site is an authority on. And the narrower you can go in the subject, the better it is for your growth.

A good SEO strategy is to compile a list of about 3-5 words and terms associated with your product or service. This will give you a good starting point for topics to cover in your content.

3. Create an SEO keyword list

If you want to develop an SEO strategy that works, keyword research is your solid foundation.

And it’s a crucial part of the process that helps you take the topics you created in step 2 and write content that matches them to rank high in search engines.

A common mistake for SEO beginners is producing content that doesn’t target specific keywords that people are actively searching on Google, as well as repeatedly targeting the same keywords on multiple pages of the site.

By doing proper keyword research, you can prevent these mistakes from occurring and get a higher ROI for your SEO efforts.

The basic idea for building an SEO keyword list for your topics is to use a keyword research tool to discover the phrases and terms that directly relate to those topics. Next, you’ll want to group similar keywords on a web page, rather than writing a separate article for each phrase.

You can find related terms like this using a keyword research tool like KWFinder by Mangools (try it for free).

With KWFinder, you can type in an initial keyword and get a list of other related terms that people are actively searching for on Google. It also helps you find long-tail keywords (phrases of 4 or more words) to include in your cluster for the page.

And by grouping them on one page, I can improve organic search traffic for all of them.

4. Write content that meets user intent

Once you’ve figured out your keyword list, the next step in creating an SEO strategy that works is to write content that addresses user intent for these phrases.

Because Google wants to give consumers the most relevant results for each search query as fast as possible, search intent is crucial. And Google offers different types of search results for each query.

If you don’t write and structure your content to match the intent of a specific query, your site will never rank for that query. The same thing is true for the minimum word count.

Simply perform a search for your target keywords on Google, then analyze the top 10 URLs on search engine results pages (SERPs).

In my post on the meaning of SERP, I explain how each SERP is affected by search queries entered by the user and these queries fall into three categories: navigational, informational, and transactional. And once you know the type of content that Google likes to serve for a particular query, you can write better SEO content that can rank for those keywords.

5. Optimize your meta titles and H1 tags

The meta title is one of the most important places to put your keywords in your page’s HTML. The second best place for keyword optimization is the H1 tag.

In my guide on adding keywords to a website for SEO purposes, I explain how a meta title works as a name tag for a webpage and is what appears for the listing on the search engine results page for a user clicks.

Therefore, search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing place a lot of SEO value on this HTML meta field.

To get the most SEO value from your meta titles, especially if you’re doing an SEO analysis for an existing website, it’s important to follow these two tips:

Put your highest priority keyword at the top.

For example, I want this page to rank for these keywords:

what is SEO strategy
what is an SEO plan
SEO action plan template

So I created a meta title like the one below based on the tips given above:

What is SEO strategy? + SEO action plan template strategies

As for the H1 tag optimization, you can simply copy your title meta tag in that field to get the most SEO value.

By duplicating your meta title in the H1 tag, you are giving Google a clear signal about what it should display on your web page’s SERPs. There have been reports that the Google crawler sometimes takes your H1 tag or another header tag by mistake and lists it in the SERP for your URL.

Following this SEO strategy will improve your overall SEO score and ensure the algorithm knows what keywords you want the page to rank for and reduce the chance of the wrong text being displayed on the search engine results page for your page from the web.

6. Optimize your URLs

Another part of a good SEO plan is optimizing website URLs.

URLs with keywords tend to rank higher than URLs without them. And the best URLs are the ones that give your visitors and search engines a better clue as to what the content is about.

A simple way to optimize your URLs is to at least include your main target keyword in the page name and put in some secondary keywords if you can.

For example, this web page has this URL:

/what-is-your-strategic-plan

By structuring the URL in this way, Google can detect that the content is answering questions about SEO strategies and plans, as mentioned in step 5 above, without having to repeat “what is” in the page name more than once.

7. Optimize your On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is a strategy you can use to increase your website’s rankings and traffic by placing your target keywords in specific areas on each page for Google’s web crawler to check and index.

This simple internet marketing strategy allows you to maximize your content’s internal ranking power so that you can worry less about external factors like link building.

On-page SEO elements you can optimize include:

Titles H2 to H6
body content
Images
navigation menus
HTML assigns individual elements on the page

In my Mastering On-Page SEO course, I explain how to perfectly optimize any page for specific keywords. I also reveal the top ranking factors for Google. So check it out if you want to find out how to best optimize your pages for SEO.

8. Use an SEO internal linking strategy

This is another topic that is covered in depth in my Mastering On-Page SEO course and can dramatically create an SEO strategy that works best for your website.

By focusing on an internal linking strategy that uses optimized anchor text pointing to a landing page, you can send a direct signal to Google about what the content is about and the keywords it should rank higher for.

The rule of thumb is this: never repeat your exact match link anchor text more than 50% of the time across your entire site to avoid over-optimization.

You want to vary your anchor text so that it doesn’t send a red flag to Google and potentially penalize your site.

For example, if I wanted to rank for this blog post for the keyword “SEO plan”, I could use the following internal linking plan:

SEO plan (3 internal links)
SEO plan here (1 internal link)
my SEO plan guide (1 internal link)
ideal for SEO (1 internal link)

When using this type of strategy, I’m optimizing the internal link anchors for the main target keyword phrase, but adding enough variations that it’s not over-optimized with an exact match phrase too many times.

9. Fix technical SEO errors

Every good SEO plan should include a technical SEO audit.

Technical SEO is important to understand and implement on your website because there could be some non-content-related issues that are preventing your pages from ranking as high as they should due to crawling and indexing issues.

A good technical SEO strategy will cover these factors on your website:

crawling
rendering
indexing
site architecture
page speed
broken links
301 and 302 Redirects
404 errors
structured data
Mobile Optimization
HTTPS
duplicate content
hreflang
Robots.txt file
XML site map

10. Create a Link Building Plan

Link building is an integral part of an off-page SEO plan that can improve a website’s popularity, experience, authority, trust, and relevance.

Good off-page optimization is achieved when you get other reputable sources online linking to or promoting your site and ensuring the quality of your content.

The Google How Search Works documentation states the importance of external factors such as link building:

“Our systems are designed to identify signals that can help determine which pages demonstrate knowledge, authority, and trustworthiness on a given topic.

For example, if other prominent sites link to the page (known as PageRank), this has proven to be a good sign that the information is reliable.”

You can get more links to your site using these standard link-building techniques:

guest post
content marketing
Link insertions in previously indexed content
Adding your business to local listings directories
Checking sites for broken links and offering a site owner replacement for your URL
blog comments
forum post
Participation in Q&A sites
Posting links on social media
social favorites

What are the top three SEO strategies?

1. On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO is one of the top SEO strategies you can use to optimize individual pages on your website.

By improving the on-page SEO of your content, you can increase the ranking of your keywords in Google because the search engine crawler will understand which queries to match your pages with.

2. Technical SEO

Technical SEO is another SEO strategy you can use to increase your website’s visibility on Google and capture more search engine traffic.

Technical SEO relates to non-content elements of your site that affect user experience and crawl ability, including:

website speed
Compatible with mobile devices
indexing
site architecture
structured data
Security

3. Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is another important SEO strategy you can use to improve your keyword rankings and traffic.

This search engine optimization method is an SEO marketing strategy that helps to strengthen your website’s reputation and authority, which are important factors for Google’s algorithm as the search engine wants to display reputable, credible results and be reliable for its users.

Off-page optimization includes strategies like link building, content marketing, guest posting, local listings, and social bookmarking.

Reusm for SEO Strategy

I hope you have enjoyed this guide on the topic of “What is SEO strategy”.

As you’ve discovered, an SEO plan is a subset of SEO strategies because they are the action items you will take to achieve the objective goals of the overarching strategy.

There are also several free SEO strategy template PDFs and documents that you can use from reputable search engine optimization agencies. All of these are available for you to download and use to improve your site.

Using these resources and the tips on this page on how to build an SEO strategy for your website, you can create a good plan that delivers measurable results for your business.