What Are the Basics of SEO SWOT Analysis?

A SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) is an essential strategic planning technique. A useful aspect of SWOT Analysis is that it can be applied to virtually anything, even beyond the business setting, and this includes any aspect of SEO.

How does SWOT Analysis help in fine-tuning your SEO strategy?

• Helps you identify areas of priority, whether it be your target keywords, technical SEO, content, off-site SEO, etc.
• Provides you with a clearer roadmap to achieve your SEO goals and overcome challenges.
• Helps you create a more solid action plan that focuses on key elements of your business’ SEO strategy.

If you’re new to SEO, or if you’re finding it a challenge to re-strategize your SEO, you can start with these basic steps in doing an SEO SWOT analysis.

Identifying your SEO Strengths

Strengths are internal factors that are functioning at a high level and may give you an edge over the competition. Doing an SEO audit and keyword research can prove to be quite helpful during your analysis, and simply looking at your current Google Analytics and your performance in Google Search Console can help you identify your SEO strengths.

A few important questions to ask:

• What are your strongest types of content for the past X months—e.g., long-form vs. short-form content, video vs. images?
• What keywords currently rank well?
• What channel drives the most organic traffic?

Identifying your SEO Weaknesses

Weaknesses are also internal factors that could be harmful in achieving your SEO goals. At this stage, a competitor analysis is a helpful complementary step. The main question to ask here is, what areas in your strategy need improvement?

Here are a few other things to consider identifying your SEO weaknesses:

• In what areas do your competition do better than you—both in the SEO and general business context?
• What content or keywords are currently not ranking well or driving traffic?
• Are there any technical SEO areas that may be hindering your performance?
• Business-wise, what resources are you lacking in boosting your SEO—e.g., SEO and context experts, tools, budget, etc.?

Identifying your SEO Opportunities

Opportunities are external factors that you can build upon to improve your SEO strategy. These are drawn from your identified strengths and weaknesses, so the questions you may ask yourself are highly subjective to the first two elements of your analysis. For example:

• What weaknesses can you easily solve?
• What aspects of your website can you optimize?
• In what ways can you improve your content strategy?
• What areas can you do better than your competitors?

Identifying your SEO Threats

Threats are external factors that are a lot more challenging to address. For this, you need to have a sound understanding of your own weaknesses as well as your competitor’s strengths. A few things to consider:

• Which companies are your top competitors and in what aspects are they strong where you are weak?
• Are there updates in search engine algorithms that could impact your SEO?
• Are there any current events that could affect your business as a whole?
• Are there any competitors using black hat SEO against your website? The easiest way you can tell is to periodically check for duplicate content.

Maximize your SEO strategy with experts in the field

These are but the basics of SEO SWOT Analysis to help you get started. If you feel that you need more guidance in identifying each element of your analysis, Ilfusion can help. We have a team of SEO professionals who can help you improve your SEO strategy to fit your unique needs and maximize your digital marketing efforts.

Contact us by calling 888-420-5115, or send us an email at [email protected] to get started!

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