How To Start an SEO Campaign in 6 Steps

Starting a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign can be tricky for any digital marketer. How do you begin? What is the most important element to implement? How do you know if it’s working?

Don’t be overwhelmed, though. Starting an SEO campaign is much easier than you think. All you have to do is take a methodical, organized approach to increase your organic traffic. Just follow our six-step guide to optimize your website for search engines and, of course, your visitors.

1 – Goals and Strategy

This is the most crucial stage of the process and revolves around three questions:

• Who is my target?
• Why do they need my website?
• How do I measure progress?

Answering these questions will help you create your marketing personas, which are generalized profiles of your customers. You can get ideas about demographic information (such as age, interests, and location) from your website analytics, but if you want be thorough, you can ask them yourself.

Short customer surveys, either on your website or through your customer support team, are great ways to capture this data.

2 – Keywords

Keywords are vital to any SEO campaign, so keyword research should consider the three main search intents:

• Gathering information, to answer a question or find a solution.
• Comparisons to decide which product or solution is best.
• Completing an action; anything from making a purchase to an email subscription.

To find keywords, try WooRank’s Keyword Tool which suggests and tracks keywords, or a site like Ubersuggest.

Another great place to find keyword suggestions is from calls with your customers. Going through data from your customers’ calls is an extra step of qualification. If someone is calling your company for something, whether it’s a question about the product, price, or support, there’s close to a 100% chance they’ve tried searching Google first.

Targeting keywords actually used by your customers when they call your business will help your website attract more qualified users and drive more conversion.

3 – SEO Audits

Technical audits help you check that your website is set up correctly. We recommend you check at least these five technical SEO aspects:

• XML sitemap – Search engines use sitemaps to locate and rank URLs.
• Robots.txt – Control what search engines crawl and avoid crawling duplicate or irrelevant pages.
• Page speed – Imperative to user experience; a slow site won’t rank highly. WooRank’s technical SEO audit highlights slow pages and outlines potential causes.
• URL structure – URLs need to be accurate and concise.
• Meta tags – Titles help rank your site, and meta descriptions help you to sell your site to users.

Use WooRank to create an instant technical audit to see where you stand from an SEO perspective.

4 – Content

It is now time to put your SEO strategy into practice! Focus your content on these four areas:

• Keyword consistency – Use keywords throughout your site, such as in the body copy, headings, and subheadings. Check out this guide to getting the most out of keywords.
• Value – It is hard to measure the value of content, but one way to do this is with search intent. Does your content facilitate one of these intents?
• Links – Relevant, quality internal and outbound links help boost SEO.
• Images – Improves the user experience and alt text can help keyword inclusion, boosting SEO.

You can further qualify and convert your website visitors by digging through your call data. People are using searching engines these days to find very particular pieces of information—answers to questions. Answer the main questions your callers are asking to attract more website visitors.

5 – Links

A strong SEO strategy will entice people to link back to it, increasing your audience.

There are four key areas:

• Value – Offer something unique to encourage links to your site
• Links – Hyperlink text instead of including URLs in speculative emails
• Subject line – Use this to stand out, but don’t give everything away.
• Contact Info – Provide personal contact detail to show you’re serious.

6 – Check, check, and check again!

You’ve started to build the foundations, but you’re not done yet. SEO is an ongoing process,  needing constant refinement.

Digital marketing is all about optimizing, testing, and optimizing again. Don’t be afraid to try new things on your website, as SEO is an ever-evolving concept.

Remember that SEO is about more than on-page elements of your website. While it’s important to make your website technically proficient for search engines, don’t neglect your human users. Your website should be valuable to the user, so make sure your content is unique, engaging, and authoritative.

Search engines are getting smarter each day, and they will recognize if you are trying to practice black-hat SEO and cheat your way to the front page. Maintain a methodical SEO strategy that plays by the rules, and you will be successful.

Categorized in: Featured, Marketing, SEO