How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy 2021

Set SEO goals

It’s critical to define your goals before you launch a major SEO initiative. After all, without clear goals, your SEO activities won’t have measurable ROI. It’s also important to tie SEO outcomes to top-level metrics such as revenue.

Start by identifying your target marketing results, and then work backward to define your process goals.

Consider SEO scalability

One of the biggest challenges large companies face when developing an SEO website strategy is scalability. Maybe your site has thousands of pages, or you don’t have the bandwidth to meet your SEO content production goals. Or, perhaps you’re struggling with building links.

Do keyword research and topic analysis

Keyword research is at the foundation of any solid SEO strategy. It may seem obvious, but it’s important to create content and web pages that your audience searches for. It’s common for large brands to overproduce content that doesn’t target specific keyword phrases or targets the same term repeatedly.

Align content with search intent

Search intent is one of the most critical aspects of keyword research because it underpins Google’s search objective. In other words, Google aims to provide users with the most relevant content as quickly as possible.

A keyword may have a high search volume. Yet, it may be driven by user intent that’s misaligned with your content, business, products, or services. In that case, the ranking would be nearly impossible, and any traffic will most likely bounce without converting.

Branded vs. non-branded SEO strategy

At the beginning of their journey, customers may not have specific companies in mind. Consequently, they tend to search generic, non-branded keywords to learn more about the topic or product area first.

When someone begins to consider specific companies, they often conduct multiple branded searches. They may search the product name, or company name, or product reviews. They might look for comparison articles between competing solutions. These types of branded searches should deliver the necessary information to answer the searcher’s query. But they also need to build trust with the individual.

Imagine one of your customers is ready to make a purchase when they encounter a slew of 2-star ratings. A mountain of negative feedback will likely cause them to reconsider and go back to reviewing other options. You might as well send a check directly to your competitors. On top of this, negative word of mouth would likely spread (online and offline), hurting future sales.