+ SEO checklist

Search engine optimization. SEO. It’s one of the hottest digital marketing buzzwords and it continues to consistently increase in importance.

But what is it? Why is it important? How do you implement SEO into your content strategy, and what exactly does that mean?

SEO is more than building links, creating content and peppering in keywords. While those are important, it goes further than that. SEO is dynamic and constantly changing, especially with new trends, algorithm changes, technological advances, and your audience insights.

You want visitors to your website, and your content to be seen by consumers and prospects. It can help with retention, sales, brand reputation and trust, building awareness, and asserting yourself as a leader in your industry. One of the most important ways to accomplish this is by implementing an SEO strategy.

Read on to learn:

• what is search engine marketing?
• how does SEO work?
• 5 things every SEO strategy needs
• what to include in an SEO strategy
• how to measure SEO efforts
• why SEO is important for your marketing strategy

what is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps you maximize the number of visitors to your website or blog by making sure your site appears high on the list of search results returned by the search engine. AKA, it helps your page get listed on the first page on Google, which leads to more web traffic, leads and sales.

An SEO strategy consists of optimizing your content online so that a search engine likes it, and shows it as a top result for searches of certain keywords or phrases. Because search is one of the main ways people discover content and brands online, and less than 25% of users click to the second page of a search engine, ensuring you rank high should be an important part of your strategy.

how does SEO work?

Search engines (like Google) use bots and algorithms to “crawl” pages online, which basically means finding and collecting information about those pages. The information is put into an index, and analyzed based upon hundreds of ranking factors such as content quality, keyword research, mobile-friendliness, and more. This helps determine the order the pages should appear in the search results for a given query.

By doing this, the search engines can surface the most relevant, authoritative and trustful pages and sites, and provide users with the best search experience. By optimizing your site and content for some of these SEO factors, your pages have a better chance at appearing on the first page of the search.

5 things every SEO strategy needs

There are several factors that go into search engine optimization and strategy development. Here is a list of the top five:

1. company knowledge

Be sure to understand the company’s goals, mission and values. What are their strengths that you can leverage to get the most SEO value? What marketing and advertising tactics work best for brand awareness and lead generation? What weaknesses or challenges are they facing?

Additionally, be sure to know the unique selling proposition, or what makes the company different, which helps determine the tactics, audiences and keywords to target. What does the company really need?

Let the answers to these questions guide your SEO strategy.

2. audience information

Who is the audience? What is their relationship with your company? Where do they consume information and spend time? What type of information are they consuming? What do they search for? What stage of life are they in? How accepting are they of marketing and advertising? Are they already familiar with your industry, or the products or services you offer? Do they care?

You can use a number of first and third party data sources to start answering these questions. Analyze existing tactic analytics, such as from your website and social media accounts. You can also actively participate in social listening, read reviews from customers, and even speak directly to your customers. Ask for feedback through surveys.

3. keyword research

While it’s no longer necessary or mandatory for you to include keywords or phrases in title or heading tags, or even within the text of the webpage, keyword research is still important.

Keyword research can help you understand what people are searching for, rather than you guessing what they are searching for. This can give you better direction for content creation, and better ensure you’re creating what your audience needs and wants.

It can also help you understand where you rank in search engines for certain keywords, as well as which keywords your competitors are ranking for. If there are keywords they are ranking for that you aren’t, but are still applicable to your customers, you may want to focus on creating content around those keywords so you appear in that search as well.

Additionally, when you do keyword research, you can see where organic search traffic is coming from, which helps define what your company is known for. By knowing and understanding those keywords, you can apply that information not only to your content, but other digital marketing tactics to increase traffic, generate more leads, and ultimately make more sales.

4. goals

There’s no point in creating a strategy if you don’t have outlined goals.

Your goals can be larger business goals that can include SEO as a way to reach them, or SEO-specific goals.

Your goals should be S.M.A.R.T. – specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound. They should have a specific impact on the company and reflect metrics and KPIs that are important to the customer journey and funnel.

Some examples of goals include:

• Increase organic site traffic by X%
• Increase time on site by X%
• Decrease bounce rate by X%
• Improving our backlink profile
• Diversify traffic/lead generating pages
• Increase conversions from organic traffic by X%

One thing to keep in mind that typically, SEO strategy and content indirectly impacts KPIs. So if your goal is go increase revenue by X%, you may have a hard time tying that directly back to your SEO strategy.

5. strategy map

No matter what you call it, a strategy map is essentially a project plan from the ground up. It helps you visualize your plan, think about it, and present it in a way that can be applicable to all of your channel owners. It’s where you put together the company knowledge, audience information, keyword research and goals into one place.

Start broad by outlining the project goals and objectives. Be specific about what you are trying to accomplish when it comes to your SEO strategy. Are you looking to increase website traffic? Improve conversion rates? Do you need to redesign your website? Add new content pages?

Then, list people needed for each, as well as documents or additional information needed, such as budgets or other resources. Break your project into phases and outline what needs to be accomplished in each phase. This helps make the project more actionable and easier to digest.

Think about how what you know about your SEO strategy fits into your overall marketing strategy. For example, should you begin implementing keywords into your social media content? Should you be linking to different website or content pages in your digital ads? Your SEO strategy can help inform a variety of your digital marketing channels, so use this map to understand and outline how they fit together.

what to include in an SEO strategy

In addition to the above five pieces of a general strategy that you should apply to your SEO strategy, there are additional elements specifically SEO-related that you should plan for.

Here’s a list of a few things to think through, include in your SEO strategy, and implement for a stronger SEO presence.

• Content and Writing

Content optimization for SEO doesn’t need to be difficult, but it’s also very important for your SEO rankings. When you are writing a piece of content, be sure to ask yourself: Why am I publishing this piece of content? You should always have a goal, whether it’s to rank in a search engine, educate your audience, drive social engagement, generate leads, etc.

Keep in mind – quality is better than quantity. Gone are the days where the more you post, the better you’ll rank or the more traffic you’ll get. And, fresh, new content doesn’t even necessarily help. In fact, creating less-than-amazing content with no purpose can even hurt your rankings.

Be sure to align your content with the keywords you’ve researched, and try to include that target keyword in the first paragraph. However, don’t force it, and don’t include keywords all over the place. Be sure you’re being strategic with the placements and that it makes sense. Keyword placement should be natural.

When writing, you should ensure the content is as long as it needs to be to properly explain or cover a topic, but don’t make it so long that it’s difficult to navigate or the reader will lose interest. Some topics and industries will require more or less length than others, so do some research into competitors or others in your industry to learn how they approach content and length.

• URLs

Creating a search-friendly URL can be beneficial in your search rankings. Your audience should be able to see from the URL what the content related to. Avoid complex, confusing, and long structures, and instead make them short and keyword-optimized. At the very least, try to include the article’s main keyword in the URL.

• Share buttons

You should have social share buttons on all of the content you create. While having the buttons alone doesn’t necessary help with search rank, it helps readers share and find your content. The more they can share, the more people who will see your content and brand, and the more likely you’ll drive more business to your site.

• Links

If you’re citing a source in your content, link to it – no matter if it’s an internal or external reference. Don’t be afraid to link to other websites, articles and pages, because it helps search engines rank and understand the relevancy of your content. However, if you do link to outside sources, be sure the source is relevant, authoritative and trustworthy.

You can also link internally to other key pages on your site. This can help your readers native through your content, as well as increase the importance of other pages.

Add links in your content where it makes sense, and when you do it, link using anchor text. Instead of linking a “click here,” link words that are actually relevant to the article. Make it natural.

• Mobile

Your entire website should be mobile-optimized, and much of your advertising and marketing should be developed as mobile-first. This means that you’re prioritizing what the content looks like on mobile vs. a desktop or tablet.

Be sure your content and articles, including images and other features on the page, display well on mobile devices.

• Titles, Tags and Meta Descriptions

When developing your title tag (aka the title/headline of your article), try to keep it around 60 characters. Include your main keyword in the title, and keep it short, sweet and to the point.

Then, optimize your H1, H2, H3, etc. tags throughout the article. Try to include target keywords and other important modifiers that make it easier for the search engines to crawl the page and know what the piece is about.

Additionally, think about the meta descriptions you have for the page. This is the visible description that’s shown on search engine when someone enters a search. Typically it’s around 160 characters or less, and gives the audience a glance at what the article/topic is about. Include your target keyword and use a call to action.

While your article isn’t necessarily ranked by the meta description, it can help with click through rate. The more enticing, informational or entertaining the meta description is, the more likely someone will click on it. Plus, the higher your site’s click through rate, the better you’ll rank. It all comes full circle.

Finally, be sure you add page tags to your content. These should be the keywords you’ve researched, as well as other words or phrases that accurately explain what the content is.

• Images

Including images and/or video in your articles can help with ranking. Particularly, it keeps people on the page, increasing your time on site and helping to improve your rank.

Use images, infographics, and videos to supplement your content. They can make the content easier to read and consume, as well as more entertaining and appealing. Images can help break up blocks of text, encouraging readers to read further down the page.

The further they scroll, and the longer they are on the site, the more useful your site is (according to search engines).

Click here to view our SEO checklist.

how to measure SEO efforts

Once you’ve developed and begin implementing your SEO strategy, it’s important to measure your efforts to understand whether or not the work you’re doing is working. Using these metrics and KPIs, you’ll have a better understanding of the ROI on your content and strategy.

A few key KPIs to consider measuring include (but are not limited to):

• Organic sessions: visits to your website from search engines. Sessions include the visit itself, any action the user takes during that visit, and then their exit of the site. One user can account for multiple sessions.

• Leads/conversions: Is your content driving a blog sign up? A seminar registration? Are visitors completing a purchase? Or, submitting a contact form? You can set up goals in Google Analytics and track leads and conversion rates on your content. You can also see site funnels to understand where visitors are dropping off or leaving your site, aka places you can improve.

• Bounce rate: Typically, a high bounce rate is indicative of content or a site that isn’t providing your audience what they need. Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions where someone loads the page and then exits without performing any action. While many site bounce rates range from 40-60%, it will vary based on your industry.

• Pages per session: Similarly, you’ll want your visitors to visit multiple pages per session. Pages per session can help show the value and quality of your site and content depending on how users navigate through it.

• Session duration: The more in-depth your content, the more time someone will spend on your site. Ideally, you want visitors to remain on your site longer because it indicates that your content is quality and informative, and provides the user what they are looking for.

• Page load time: The longer it takes for your web pages to load, the more likely the user is to leave your site without viewing the page content. This is not only bad for your conversion rates, but also for your search rankings.

why SEO is important for your marketing strategy

Billions of Google searches are made every day. Billions. Often, people search to find information about a product, service or brand. With so many searches and so much competition, it’s harder than ever to ensure people find and can make it to your website to view your content.

That being said, search is often the primary source of digital traffic for brands, and is a great complement to other marketing channels and tactics. By implementing an SEO strategy and optimizing your website and content, you’re giving your pages a greater chance for higher ranking and visibility, leading to increased traffic and lead generation, ultimately impacting your bottom line.

SEO not only helps users find you, it helps them get to know your brand and products/services. It gives them the information they need to make purchasing or other decisions, and by optimizing your site, you’re increasing your chances to be seen and help your customers and prospects.