Preparing for your SEO strategy  

Whether you have a small business or are part of a bigger corporate, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a must for your website to help you rank higher on Google and other search engines.

Building your SEO strategy sounds complicated and may make you want to immediately zone out and not read more – but trust me, I’m going to try and keep it simple! It’s really just a plan!

Your SEO strategy is simply the process of organising your website’s content to improve your chances of appearing in search results – a way of maximising your opportunities to get organic traffic from search engine results pages, (SERPs).

Having a strategy or plan, helps you keep on track when you create your content. It helps you see that you need to create content that people are looking for and searching for, rather than creating content you think they’re looking for, or posting what you want to post.

When you just react and post without a plan, your content will appear unorganised and scattered – this is when search engine bots have a problem indexing your site, understanding exactly what you do and therefore, have a problem ranking your pages.

BUT WE CAN FIX THIS! However, as it’s such a big subject, I’m going to do this over a few blog posts, so you don’t feel too overwhelmed!

Steps to helping create an SEO strategy.

Here are few simple steps to follow:

Make a list of keywords.

This is always the first step to take. Use Google search to help you with this. OK, let’s go with an example…

You make candles – you sell them at markets and on your website – and you also use social media. You make all sorts of candles for all sorts of occasions, some standard that people can buy and some bespoke.

Your keyword search starts with Google – type in candles or put the word twice (as I did – candles candles).

Google will then suggest loads of options, such as:

• Beeswax candles.
• Votive candles
• Scented candles
• Four candles (!!! This made me smile – if you know the Two Ronnies sketch)
• Birthday candles
• Cake candles
• Soy candles
• Specialist candles
• Candles near me

You’ll know that these are good keywords to use for SEO as they come straight from Google and so you know this is what people are already searching for.

You will find that short-tail keywords (search words using just one word – such as ‘candle’) are more popular as most people will start with just one word when looking for something specific.

Long-tail keywords (such as ‘candles for special occasions), won’t be as popular in the volume of people looking for them, but they tend to be generally easier to rank for and obviously attract people who are searching for something more specific. 

I’d say type in several different words and short phrases into Google and see what comes up – try and have a list of at least 10 keywords.

You can then check them in a keyword checker (there are some free sites out there, such as  https://www.wordstream.com/keywords or Ubersuggest) which will give you the number of people searching that keyword and whether they’re low, medium or high volume.  

Look at Google’s first page.

Once you’ve got your list of keywords, type them one at a time into Google search and look at the first 10 entries that come up.  This shows you the businesses that currently rank for that keyword, and the kind of thing (maybe a list or a business itself) that people are looking for when using that keyword. Make a note of what comes up in the search and what kind of things, such as lists or blog posts that come up.

Analyse your competitors. 

Most of us will know who our main competitors are, but to find out who Google thinks your competitors are, you can use a free tool, such as Semrush, to help you. You simply type the URL of your website into their search, then click on ‘Domain overview’ and scroll down where you’ll find a further search called ‘Main organic competitors.’ If you click on this and then click on ‘view all,’ you will get loads of information about keywords. It will show a list of all your competitors, plus the most common keywords that you share, as well as telling you how much traffic those keywords pull in.

Where you see a lot of common keywords, you’ll have your list of at least 4-5 competitors.

Keyword gap

You can now use the Semrush ‘Keyword Gap Tool.’

The ‘gap’ refers to the keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but that you’re NOT ranking for.

This tool will help you identify those gaps, so you can then use them on your website or blog, therefore optimising your existing content with those keywords – or creating new pages to use them.

To use this tool, you simply put the URL of your website and then the URLs of four of your competitors and press ‘compare’ and scroll down to ‘all keywords details for…’ and click on the ‘missing’ tab. You’ll get a huge list and then it’s up to you to sort through which of those missing keywords would be relevant to your business and to your website. 

There are lots of other uses that Semrush can help you with in analysing your competitors and your website, so it’s worth going on and having a play – and it’s really interesting!

These are the first few steps for SEO and will help get you prepared to look at your SEO strategy. Next time we’ll look at how to use this new-found knowledge to help you rank on Google.

If this all feels a bit too overwhelming, I can help you with your SEO strategy through 1:1 coaching. Just contact me to find out more.