Getting started on SEO can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you have never done it before. There is a whole new world of technical terms, guidelines, penalties and thousands of online resources. To make it easier for SEO newbies we have broken down a short 5-step strategy to help you get started! Keep reading for some handy tips and a great way to build your foundation.
Step 1: Prioritise!
Sometimes when starting SEO you want to do everything at once; avoid doing this, especially if you have site with an extensive number of pages. Start small and focus on a select amount of pages that you wish to promote and optimise. This way you won’t bite off more than you can chew and still see results. A good rule of thumb is to select pages that are the most popular or unique to your business in order to distinguish yourself.
Step 2: Know the competition
You can’t beat the competition without knowing their strengths and weaknesses. So once you have established what pages you want to optimise, analyse your competitor’s tactics – particularly focus on their on-page and off-page factors. On-page factors to look out for include: keywords, titles, images, content structure and length, meta deions. Keywords in particular are an important factor to consider as the correct number and placement of keywords has a significant impact on your overall ranking. Off-page factors that are important to analyse are the number of backlinks that lead to the targeted page and what type of backlinks they are.
Step 3: Compare strategies
Now that you have looked at your competitor and analysed their strategies, it is time to make comparisons. What aspects are they surpassing you in? And how are they doing it? This stage is piecing together the information you have gained from your analysis. From this point you can mix and match tactics from your own strategy and other strategies that best suits your business.
Step 4: Test the new analysis on your selected pages
This is the stage where you begin implementing the tactics that you have chosen. Once you have established these behavioural factors on the targeted pages, ensure that you are simultaneously using an analysis tool. Analysis is another key aspect to this stage as it allows you to identify what works and what doesn’t. Features to focus on CTR, user experience and conversions. The former two criterions hold particular significance as they are identified by Google to have major ranking factors. This is because Google perceives a high CTR to be equivalent to high relevancy; therefore these sites are awarded higher rankings. User experience is similarly important as the longer that a user uses your site, the higher the perceived relevancy. A simple factor that you can use to measure this behaviour is the bounce back rate.
Step 5: Establish your strategy
If you have not recognised any distinguishable positive changes, simply adjust your behavioural factors. Don’t be disheartened by trial and error, keep trying and you will eventually find what works for you. Once you have deduced the successful formula, implement this throughout the site. It is important to remember that SEO is an ongoing process; there are continually new updates, features and guidelines that are introduced. Often because of the continually changing industry, it is most time savvy to employ a professional SEO agency such as SEO Premier to ensure that your site stays updated and relevant. Written by Katreena Pevec
