Not only tactics: how to set up a winning SEO strategy
Which are the characteristics of a winning project? Sure, there could be a pinch of luck, but generally there are some peculiarities that we can define fundamental for every kind of activity, online and offline, like the right combination of strategy, planning, intuition and, most of all, work! In the SEO field no one can improvise, because the optimization activity of the different aspects of a website is something to develop over time, closely supported by the development team or whoever is actually working all the needed changes to enhance it. Detta in altri termini, il successo SEO a lungo termine non poggia su un semplice insieme di azioni isolate, ma su una strategia efficace che permetta al brand e al sito di emergere su Google e di imporsi nella mente degli utenti, superando i competitor.
What is an SEO strategy
Let’s start with the basics: an SEO strategy is an action plan aimed at improving the visibility and ranking of a website on search engines, such as Google, with the goal of attracting qualified organic traffic, i.e., users who are genuinely interested in the content and products offered, and thus generate more conversions and revenue.
The ideal partner for your SEO strategy!
It is therefore a detailed plan, a set of goals and methods designed to improve the visibility and ranking of a website in search engine results, fundamental because it acts as a map that guides us through thoughtful choices and targeted actions, all aimed at organically increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to our site. It therefore represents the theoretical scaffolding that must guide practical actions, which are the variety of techniques that serve to improve visibility, such as keyword research, page optimization, technical SEO and link building.
It sounds simple enough on paper, but there is a big problem: search algorithms are constantly changing as Google seeks to improve the quality of its searches and provide users with better answers to queries. At the same time, users’ search intentions and interests are also changing and evolving, and – a not insignificant factor – competitors are certainly not standing still.
In short: SEO is not something you set up once and “goes forever,” but every optimization needs iterations: you need to analyze and course-correct regularly to make sure you’re taking advantage of the latest best practices and strategies.
Staying up-to-date with the latest developments in the world of research can be done by regularly consulting reliable sources, relying on quality information declined in forms such as articles, webinars or podcasts. Or, if we plan to delegate the work, we can refer to established, competent SEO specialists with the right experience.
What we must remember is that SEO is an ever-evolving process, so what works today may not work tomorrow. Therefore, an SEO strategy requires careful planning and constant attention to detail so that the goal of reaching the top of the SERPs and winning over the target audience can be achieved.
Not just tactics, but an overall vision
Talking about SEO strategy means going beyond “spot” interventions, that is, the execution of simple temporary and unconnected activities or the slavish application of a series of “tricks” to try to improve rankings.
In fact, the “real” strategy is holistic and long-term in nature, serving to lead the brand and the site towards defined goals, and starts from the identification of an overall vision that takes into account several aspects, such as:
- What do we want to achieve with our online presence? Increase sales, brand awareness or the number of leads?
- Target audience. Who are we addressing? What are its needs and interests?
- Context analysis. What are the competitors? How do they rank on search engines?
- Keyword research. What keywords do users use to search for information pertaining to our industry?
- On-page and off-page optimization. How to make our website appealing to search engines and users?
So we can say that SEO strategy is the long-term plan, while SEO tactics are the specific actions we take to achieve these goals. Wanting to use a metaphor, if strategy is our travel plan, tactics are the steps we take along the way. A strategy without tactics is like a map without a route, while tactics without a strategy can lead to disorganized efforts that are ineffective in the long run.
Specifically, a spot tactic might be accelerating the load time of a critical page through image compression and CSS code minification, while the strategy would focus on increasing the overall speed of the site to improve user experience and ranking on all devices, especially mobile devices.
The point, in short, is not to reach the top position with a single page, but to put in place a complex and multifaceted set of actions – the SEO strategy – to bring the brand and the site overall to emerge naturally in the search engine results pages and to appear in prestigious positions when the public searches for relevant services/products. This is the key to being found without intermediaries, directly by potential customers who are already interested in what we have to offer.
It’s what SEO expert Jono Alderson also suggested recently, who in a tweet precisely made a heartfelt plea to SEO professionals:
In essence, (even) Alderson reminds us of the importance of the overall strategic vision and urges us to lift our gaze from the operational details and reconsider the fundamental elements that define the long-term success of a company as a whole, because only then can our SEO tactics be truly effective and help build a strong, recognizable brand over the long term.
What are the basics of an SEO strategy
In short: an SEO strategy is the process we should set up and follow when we want to get more organic traffic.
However, to avoid being overwhelmed by the complexity of this set of possible tactics/actions/corrections, we must therefore know and focus on the essential elements, namely the four pillars of SEO
Basically, in fact, there are four key areas of SEO that professionals and site owners must consider, namely:
- Content creation: must be original, relevant and useful to provide added value to users and meet their information needs, but also optimized for the selected keywords.
- On-page SEO: overall interventions related to the optimization of content, HTML and aspects that can influence how it understands and determines the relevance and relevance of each page.
- Technical SEO: the aspects (at least the main ones) that can affect page performance and user experience
- Off-page SEO: the set of actions that can help establish site authority to increase trust and ranking.
In a nutshell, we can say that an effective strategy gets to touch all these areas, which work together to achieve the goals. Investing time and resources in useful content that answers the questions of target audiences and establishes our experience and reliability as authors lays the foundation for ranking; optimizing onpage elements provides useful guidance to search engines regarding the relevance and hierarchy of the content itself, while technical SEO ensures that search engines can properly crawl and index the site. Finally, taking a strategic and informed approach to building external authority consolidates the site’s position as a trusted resource on relevant topics.
Tips for an SEO strategy that makes a difference
According to experts, to formulate an effective SEO strategy, it is essential to start with a thorough context analysis.
That is, we need to understand our target audience, the keywords for which we want to compete and the positioning of our competitors, proceeding with a SWOT analysis, and only after establishing these data can we proceed with the definition of SEO goals, which must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound, as enshrined in the so-called SMART approach.
The acronym SMART stands for:
- Specific. The goal must be clear, concise and well-defined. It must not be vague or ambiguous.
- Measurable. The goal must be quantifiable so that progress and success can be measured.
- Achievable: The goal must be realistic and achievable, taking into account available resources and capabilities.
- Relevant. The goal must be consistent with the organization’s vision, mission, and values.
- Time-bound. The goal must have a specific deadline to motivate action and to measure progress.
With this in mind, “increase sales” is too general and unhelpful a goal, whereas a SMART goal could be “increase sales by 10 percent by December 31, 2024,” which meets all strategic requirements. Of course, setting these SMART goals goes hand in hand with setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to evaluate the effectiveness of our SEO strategy.
Obviously, the achievement of these goals does not depend only on our site and our skills, which is why it is necessary to investigate more specifically the competition with a competitive analysis: if we were alone in the market, after all, there would be no need for SEO or tactics, but the reality is that it will always be necessary to find ways to differentiate ourselves and stand out.
Another crucial aspect is constant performance monitoring: using tools like Google Analytics and SEOZoom, we can track the progress of our keywords, traffic trends, and user behavior on the site. This data allows us to refine our strategy, adapting it to changing market conditions and evolving search engine algorithms, market trends and user interests.
Indeed, in this regard, we must not forget the importance of adaptability: the SEO world is constantly evolving, and a winning strategy today may not be so tomorrow. Optimization is an ongoing process, and it is necessary to maintain a flexible approach that is ready to evolve in order to adapt our strategy and successfully navigate these changing waters.
How to manage an SEO strategy with SEOZoom: it all starts with a plan
How to implement these theoretical directions in practice? One optimal way is (of course!) to take full advantage of SEOZoom’s tools, which are designed precisely to accompany us to a targeted and more specific management of online projects. In fact, our software allows us to enter a domain between projects, a mode that helps us to organize our work in a more orderly and profitable way, also to differentiate at a strategic level the various goals we have set and to be able to define and monitor SEO goals.
Thus we can in fact study and analyze the project from a global point of view and, in a more in-depth way, know every detail and specific point of it to really have the “picture of the situation.”
The project is the heart of our SEO activity and allows us to monitor the client site(s) more closely: as mentioned, we can add a site for each project, and thus have access to the most up-to-date statistics on its traffic and performance. From the projects, we can monitor the keywords we deem most relevant, to track its performance more accurately, analyze technical aspects, study all the pages, but also spy on the competition and get important information about the site’s optimization status.
A more specific focus on the most important keywords
Perhaps it goes without saying for many, but it is good to reiterate that not all keywords have the same weight and value in terms of concrete benefits for the site; therefore, it is important to learn how to effectively choose the keywords to monitor, in order to react to any possible changes and not to be caught completely off guard by sudden collapses.
Keep your site under control
In SEOZoom the possibilities available to users are many, as flexible are the project settings: those who manage very large and voluminous sites will be able, for example, to set up multiple projects for the same site but monitor different keywords, and another viable solution is to use the Sections area of the suite to monitor the progress and performance of each individual part of the site, such as specific categories of an eCommerce or blog.
Be careful to use the tools strategically, however: one temptation one can fall into is to include all (all!) of the keywords for which the site is positioned, a choice that yes allows for safe daily scanning, but at the same time risks complicating study and monitoring, because it also makes one focus on data that are not useful for business.
More fruitful, then, is to start monitoring the keywords that are most relevant to our business, for which we are positioned at a general level, adding them to the list of keywords that we keep an eye on most frequently and most carefully, without clearly neglecting the importance of also taking care of any variations, related or long tail keywords that may prove to be more strategic and useful for our website and the business segment in which we operate.
The advantages of making the best use of SEOZoom’s project management are also practical: project-monitored keywords are scanned strictly every 24 hours, while keywords generically in the database are scanned every 2-3 days (if they have a large volume of traffic) or every 7-15 days if they generate a low volume of traffic. Thus, off-project keyword crawl times are different, and considering that each page is ranked for multiple keywords, the basic analysis that results depends on the status of these scans and is a general and somewhat less accurate snapshot, so to speak, than the project’s point one.
A compass for SEO activities
Effectively placing a site in the project area offers many advantages: the Pages section is an important compass for SEO operations, for deciding what optimizations need to be done and what potential developments for the growth of our site, while with the “Quarterly Plan” function we can draw up priorities for the following months of work thanks to anticipations on seasonal trends; with the “Cannibalization” tool we can identify possible keyword cannibalization problems (and thus avoid competing with ourselves by focusing content on very similar and related keywords according to Google), while URL Inspector helps us take a step forward in optimizing pages and URLs.
Other useful tools should not be underestimated, and in particular “Monitored Pages,” with which to track and follow the performance of specific pages of the site and, at the same time, save a virtual copy of a page before intervening with changes of any kind: by comparing the data before and after changes, we can note whether or not Google already in the short term has rewarded the work done, and possibly recover the previous version in the case of deterioration.
But perhaps the most useful set of tools can be found in “Page Performance,” which is a veritable control room on site performance, where you can get an overview of the performance of all pages on your site, view the share of crawl budget “spent” to reduce waste and improve performance, view the pages on which to take quick action with “easy-to-optimize” content, find out right away what goals you can achieve by optimizing content with potential, and generally retrieve strategic data to improve your pages and make more money.
Analyze competitors and optimize strategy
More than anything, however, the real strength of SEOZoom’s project area is precisely this overview that allows us to get over time, both on our project and – no less decisive for performance – on the front of the analysis of competitors and their performance, to discover placements, improvements and any link building campaigns implemented, understand their strategy and visualize the investments on keywords made by opponents, so that we can roll up our sleeves and put up a valid and performing response.
Thus, thanks to SEOZoom’s tools, it is possible to discover new market opportunities, analyze the websites of any competitor, and find solutions to increase organic traffic, online sales, and revenue of any online business. In addition, you can examine all website shortcomings, from technical SEO problems to deficits in editorial strategy, with numerous tools dedicated to every intervention needed to help you get the results you want.
This is why we say SEOZoom is the ideal SEO strategy partner!
