A Killer SEO Game Plan For Any Website
When it comes to the SEO game, there are myriad tactics you can use to succeed – so many, in fact, that it can be quite overwhelming.
It can be easy to go into option overload, give up, and do nothing at all if you feel like it’s all just too much. But don’t quit the SEO game! You can definitely win it if you have a solid game plan.
Today we’re sharing with you an easy-to-grasp overview of what your SEO process should look like (don’t worry too much about the nitty gritty just yet!).
Keyword Brainstorming
First thing’s first: which keywords do you want your website to rank for?
You should be able to think of several straight away. To expand your list further, add their variations to your list: for example, both singular and plural forms (e.g. Melbourne SEO Agency, Melbourne SEO Agencies), and rewordings (e.g. Melbourne SEO, SEO Melbourne). You might be surprised at how often one version is searched compared to another very similar keyword!
For more tips on coming up with keywords for your website, read our other articles: How To Determine SEO Keywords For Your Site, How To Think Of New SEO Keywords For Your Site
Keyword Research
Once you’ve established your list of desired keywords, it’s time to check to see where you and your competitors currently rank for them, what the competition for each keyword is like, and how frequently searched they are.
Google’s Keyword Planner tool is excellent for both building your list of keywords and unearthing data on your desired keywords. It will tell you whether competition for ranking for the keyword is high/medium/low, and how often the keyword is searched for within your specified region. Ideally, you should try to rank for keywords that are frequently searched, but less competitive. If you see that a keyword is hardly searched at all, you should consider cutting it from your list – because what’s the point in putting effort into optimising for a keyword no one is searching for anyway?
For more tips on SEO keyword research, read our other articles: SEO Competitor Analysis, How To Determine SEO Keywords For Your Site
Conduct A Site Audit
Next, it’s time to evaluate your website and fix any errors or issues with it that may be negatively impacting your search performance.
Our Melbourne SEO specialists prefer using the Site Audit tool on SEMrush to conduct site audits. This tool is invaluable for uncovering issues you may not have been aware of, such as broken links, crawl errors, and duplicate content issues – all of which Google frowns upon. Google is much less likely to rank a site higher for a given keyword if that site is offering a lacklustre user experience, therefore it behooves you to take care of any problems the audit tool turns up before continuing with the optimisation process.
For more tips on conducting a site audit, read our other article: Common Issues Found During A Site Audit
Optimise Your Site
Now it’s time to start optimising your website for your chosen keywords!
To be honest, SEO is a never-ending process, and you should be constantly monitoring your keywords and optimising accordingly. Your SEO work is never really done. If you don’t have time to keep up the optimisation yourself, consider hiring SEO services in Melbourne.
For more tips on optimising your website, read our other articles: Things You Should Be Doing To Optimise Your WordPress Site, SEO To-Do List: A Recipe For SEO Success
Collect Quality Backlinks
Last but certainly not least important, you must monitor your backlinks: that is, links back to your site found on other websites.
Use a tool such as Moz’s Open Site Explorer or SEMrush to check your site’s backlinks. If there are any fishy-looking links, i.e. from websites that look spammy or bot-like, these can have a negative impact on your SEO. You can compile these into a ‘Disavow List’ and upload to the Disavow Tool within Google Search Console to let Google know it should ignore them.
You should be constantly working to get your website link added to other sites, preferably those that are similar to yours and of higher domain authority. Accumulating backlinks should result in your site becoming more authoritative and higher-ranking on Google.
For more tips on backlinks, read our other article: The Importance Of Backlinks In SEO
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