What do you need to succeed with SEO?

If you are not found in a search, your competitors are. Succeeding with SEO is crucial if you want to be visible online.  Here we will look at the most important elements you need to focus on when building an SEO strategy that works and that will generate a high degree of search rank and visibility. 

When working with our experts, these are the key elements that we focus on in taking your digital presence to the next level. 

• Keyword and Search Engine Analysis
• Content and Content Production
• Content Strategy and Content Plan
• Link Analysis and Link Building Plan
• Digital Competition Mapping on Google
• Technical SEO Management and Strategic Advice
• Planning and Execution of SEO Sprints

Keyword Analysis or Search Engine Analysis

Search engine analysis (often referred to as search engine performance analysis or SEO audit) is a comprehensive evaluation of a website's visibility and performance in search engines. It often includes several components:

• Keyword Analysis: Identifying relevant keywords that your target audience is using in their search queries. This includes both short-tail and long-tail keywords.
• On-Page SEO Analysis: Evaluating the SEO-friendliness of the website's content and structure, including keyword usage, title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, URL structure, etc.
• Off-Page SEO Analysis: Assessing the website's backlink profile, which includes the number and quality of other websites linking to it.
• Technical SEO Analysis: Checking the technical aspects of the website that impact search engine crawling and indexing, like site speed, mobile-friendliness, XML sitemap, robots.txt file, etc.
• Competitive Analysis: Comparing the website's SEO performance against that of its competitors to identify areas for improvement and potential opportunities.

Content Production for SEO?

Content production in SEO refers to the process of creating high-quality and relevant content that helps to attract, engage, and retain an audience, and ultimately, improves a website's visibility in search engine rankings. This includes creating a variety of content types, such as:

• Blog posts: These are often used to provide valuable information related to your industry or products/services, answer common questions, or explore topics of interest to your audience.
• Landing pages: These are usually optimized for specific keywords to draw in traffic for particular search terms.
• Videos: Video content can be a valuable part of your SEO strategy, as it can improve user engagement and is highly shareable.
• Infographics: These can help to simplify complex information and are highly shareable, which can help to attract backlinks.
• Guides and E-books: In-depth pieces of content that can help to establish your brand as an authority in your industry.

The content should be optimized for relevant keywords and written in a way that is engaging,  useful, and helpful to the readers. It should also be regularly updated to ensure it remains relevant and accurate.

Did you know that we have two TAYA (They Ask You Answer) coaches that can help you leverage your internal content production? 

What is Content Strategy for SEO?

A content strategist should help you build a successful strategy and guidance on planning, creating, and optimizing content for SEO purposes. It is about making strategic decisions on what type of content to create, which topics to cover, how to structure the content, how to promote it, where to promote it, and when to publish it. A key element of building a content strategy is to have performed keyword research/analysis. 

• Content Gap Analysis: Identifying topics that your competitors are covering but you aren't.
• Content Format: Advice on the best format for your content (blog post, pillar pages, product page expansion, video, infographic, etc.) based on your audience's preferences and the type of information you're conveying.
• Content Promotion: Providing strategies for promoting your content to increase its visibility, such as through social media, email marketing, or link building.
• Content Calendar: Helping to plan a schedule for content creation and publication to ensure a consistent flow of fresh content that is helpful and relevant to your audience. 
• SEO Best Practices: Providing strategic guidelines and advice on how to optimize your content for search engines, such as proper use of title tags, meta descriptions, headers, alt text for images, etc.

Strategic content advice helps to ensure that the content you produce aligns with your overall SEO goals and contributes to improving your website's visibility in search engine results.

What is a Content Plan?

A content plan is a roadmap for creating and distributing content to attract, engage, and convert visitors. The content plan is based on the output of the keyword research and strategic content session It results in a deep understanding of the type of content that resonates with the target audience and a plan that aligns with your SEO goals and includes the following components:

• Content Calendar: A schedule of when and what content will be published. It often includes blog posts, social media updates, email newsletters, etc.
• Content Creation: The actual production of the content, ensuring it is high-quality, relevant, and incorporates the targeted keywords naturally.
• Content Promotion: Outline how the content will be promoted, which could include social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, and other promotional methods.

A good content plan should be flexible and iterative, allowing for adjustments based on ongoing performance data and changes in business or marketing strategy.

What is a Link Analysis? 

Link analysis refers to the process of evaluating and examining the links that point to your website. It involves assessing the quality, quantity, and relevance of these links. High-quality, relevant links can significantly improve your site's SEO because search engines like Google consider them as endorsements of your website's content.

During link analysis, an SEO professional will consider several factors, including:

• The total number of backlinks pointing to the site.
• The quality of the sites linking to you (are they reputable and relevant sites?).
• The anchor text is used in the links.
• The distribution of these links (are they spread across your site or focused on one page?).
• The links to your site that are harmful to your rank need to be disavowed (backlinks that are spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site).

What is a Link-building Plan?

A link-building plan, on the other hand, refers to the strategic planning and implementation of creating new backlinks to a website. The goal of link building is to improve the website's visibility in search engine results, as search engines consider backlinks a major indicator of a website's quality and relevance.

Link-building strategies can include:

• Content creation and promotion: Creating unique, high-quality content that naturally earns links because people find it valuable and want to share it.
• Submission to directories and forums: Submitting your website to reputable directories and forums can earn you backlinks.
• Outreach to influencers and bloggers: Contacting influencers in your industry and asking them to share your content or link to your site.
• Guest blogging: Writing posts for other websites in your industry, which include links back to your site.
• Broken link building: Finding broken links on other sites and offering your content as a replacement.

The link-building plan must adhere to SEO best practices and avoid manipulative tactics, as search engines penalize such practices. The links should be from diverse, authoritative sources that are relevant to your website's content.

Digital Competiton Analysis

Understanding your competitors' digital strategies, particularly their SEO strategies, to improve your own performance on Google's search engine results pages (SERPs). In this process, an SEO specialist will identify and analyze your digital competitors. 

This process involves several steps:

• Identifying Competitors: This includes both direct competitors (those who offer similar products or services in the same geographic area) and search competitors (those who rank highly for the keywords relevant to your business, even if they aren't direct competitors).
• Keyword Analysis: Identifying which keywords your competitors are targeting and ranking for. This can help you discover new keyword opportunities and understand how difficult it may be to rank for certain terms.
• Backlink Analysis: Understanding where your competitors are getting their backlinks from can provide insights into their link-building strategies and potentially reveal opportunities for you to gain backlinks from similar sources.
• Content Analysis: Reviewing the type, quality, and structure of the content your competitors are creating can provide insights into what content resonates with your target audience and how to structure your own content for better SEO performance.
• Technical SEO Analysis: This can involve reviewing your competitors' site architecture, site speed, mobile optimization, use of schema markup, and other technical SEO factors.
• Local SEO Analysis: If your business has a local component, analyzing your competitors' local SEO strategies, such as their Google My Business listings and reviews, can be beneficial.

By conducting a thorough competition mapping on Google, you can gain a clear understanding of your competitive landscape, identify gaps or weaknesses in your competitors' strategies that you can exploit, and gain insights that can help you refine your own SEO strategy.

What is a Technical SEO Analysis?

Technical SEO analysis refers to checking the technical aspects of your digital presence, such as websites, e-commerce shops, landing pages, knowledge base content, etc that impact its ability to be crawled and indexed by search engines. It typically involves the review of several elements including:

• Site Speed: How quickly your webpages load. Faster sites are preferred by search engines and users.
• Mobile-Friendliness: How well your website works on mobile devices. Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it predominantly uses the mobile version of a website's content for indexing and ranking.
• XML Sitemap: This helps search engines discover your website's pages more efficiently.
• Robots.txt File: This file instructs search engines on which pages to crawl or not to crawl on your site.
• Site Structure and Navigation: How well your website is organized and how easy it is for users and search engines to navigate.
• URL Structure: Whether your URLs are SEO-friendly and structured in a way that makes sense to users and search engines.
• Security: Whether your website uses HTTPS, a secure version of HTTP, which is a ranking signal for Google.
• Duplicate Content: This can confuse search engines and lead to ranking issues.
• Broken Links: These can lead to a poor user experience and may impact your SEO negatively.
• Structured Data Markup: This helps search engines understand your content better and can enhance your visibility in search results.

What is Technical SEO Strategy Advice?

Technical SEO strategy advice refers to providing recommendations on how to improve the various technical aspects of a website to improve its SEO. This may involve suggesting:

• Ways to improve site speed, such as reducing image sizes or leveraging browser caching.
• Methods to make the website more mobile-friendly.
• Strategies to optimize the website’s structure and navigation for better user experience and the ability to crawl for search robots.
• Techniques to resolve duplicate content issues and fix broken links.
• Implementation of HTTPS for better site security.
• Use of structured data to enhance search result listings.

An effective technical SEO strategy is fundamental to improving a website's organic visibility and performance. It ensures that search engines can access, crawl, interpret, and index all the pages of a site efficiently.