Here‘s a true statement you don’t hear as often: Your SEO strategy shouldn’t focus on keywords.
These days, most businesses understand the basic concepts of SEO and why it’s important.
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However, when developing and executing a sound SEO strategy for your business, just creating content for the keywords your customers are searching for is both arduous and wrong.
In this post, we’ll explain an SEO strategy and how you can create your own to help you meet your content marketing goals.
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What is an SEO strategy?
An SEO strategy is a process of organizing a website’s content by topic to improve the likelihood of appearing in search results. Essentially, it is the process you follow to maximize the opportunity to gain organic traffic from search engines.
An SEO strategy is essential because it helps you stay on track when creating content. Instead of just making what you think people are looking for, your plan will ensure you create content people search for.
For content marketing, an SEO strategy is a critical piece of the puzzle because it is how your content will be seen in the first place, especially in search engine result pages (SERPs). If your content is scattered and unorganized, search engine bots will have more difficulty indexing your site, identifying your area of authority, and ranking your site pages.
Mobile SEO Strategy
Keeping mobile SEO in mind when creating your overall strategy is crucial. Mobile optimization ensures your site and content are available and accessible to visitors on mobile devices. (That means they can have the same experience and receive the same value as desktop browsers.)
Mobile optimization is also essential because Google practices mobile-first indexing. Instead of crawling a desktop site, the algorithm will use the mobile version of your site when indexing and ranking pages for SERPs.
Aside from mobile-first indexing, mobile SEO strategy also matters to consumers. According to HubSpot Blog’s 2023 Web Traffic & Analytics Report:
“54% of consumers use their phones most often when looking up a question on a search engine.”
Over half of online shoppers pick up their phones to ask questions that may lead to purchases. Optimizing your site to reach and capture that market share makes sense when all’s said and done.
While it’s not an entirely separate process, there are distinct considerations for mobile SEO, like monitoring page speed, responsive site design, local SEO, and creating high-quality content, regardless of the device it’s viewed on.
Expert Insight
I spoke with Mersudin Forbes, a portfolio SEO director and agency advisor with 15 years of experience in SEO.
“When it comes to thinking about a mobile strategy for SEO, it is important to think about how a user is seeking to complete their desired transaction and ensuring that this matches their expectations on mobile,” says Forbes.
Forbes explains that it’s not only Google that practices a mobile-first indexing system but most search engines. So, ensuring that relevant content and functionality is surfaced on mobile remains essential.
Pro tip: “You may also want to test your website speed by throttling page speed tests to 3/4G to ensure that user experience and page responsiveness don’t decline with less bandwidth,” says Forbes.
What is a search engine optimizer (SEO)?
Search engine optimizers (SEOs) optimize websites to help them rank higher on SERPs and gain more organic traffic. A search engine optimizer is a highly specialized content strategist who helps a business discover opportunities to answer people’s questions about their respective industries.
There are three types of SEO that an SEO strategist can focus on:
- On-page SEO. This SEO focuses on the content on site pages and how to optimize it to boost the website’s ranking for specific keywords.
- Off-page SEO. This SEO focuses on links directed to the website from elsewhere. The number of backlinks a site has from reputable sources helps you build trust with search algorithms.
- Technical SEO. This SEO focuses on a website’s backend architecture, like site code. Google cares just as much about technical set-up as it does content, so this position is essential for rankings.
Bear in mind that every business has different objectives, so it’s an SEO’s job to examine their industry, determine what their audiences care about, and develop a strategy that gives them what they’re looking for.
Below, I’ll go over some steps you can take to ensure your SEO strategy sets you up for success.