Decoding the SEO game is hard, and there are so many variables. It involves many trials and errors.
So, you may be one of those who is looking for a nonlinear path and might think that there is a simple way to get the results they want.
Though there are many widely accepted SEO practices that can help you reach your goals, SEO is often more than a checklist of things.
It is a marketing channel that can take a lot of time to see results.
Here are a few things that will help you avoid checklists so that you can wisely spend your time and efforts.
Set realistic SEO goals:
At times, it may seem tempting to just jump into SEO.
It requires short-term investments of time, focus, and resources to get long-term payoffs and goals.
Goals are important even if you are doing SEO for a quite a long time and even do not remember when you started.
It is vital to revisit your goals when you are first starting. Find out the opportunities that help you reach your target audience and what investments might take you there.
Without goals, you will solely rely on SEO activities and not measure the results.
Start with a baseline and do not get the desired outcome, and find that you did not have accountability in the process.
Most of the times people find SEO not working is because that there are misaligned expectations driven inconsistencies due to lack of proper inconsistencies and set objectives.
Create strategy: A clear strategy goes hand in hand with clearly defined goals. It is often a challenge to put tactics ahead of the strategy.
It is clear that a strategy cannot be a checklist, and a checklist is not a strategy.
The most common approach of working with range of activities involves technical, on page, off page are expected.
However, how we handle website technology, shape content, and establish authority and trust is more comprehensive.
The initial research and making informed investments with clear ROI expectations will allow you to reach your goals.
If you cannot articulate your strategy, then it is most likely complicated and poorly defined.
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Get the resources you want:
Whether you are a individual or have an in-house team dedicated to SEO, or outsource to freelancers or agencies, it is essential to have clearly defined roles for the resources required to execute your strategy and achieve your goals.
It covers all aspects of SEO, such as technical SEO, content-related activities, links and reporting, etc.
Apart from that, unless you’re extremely unique or have someone exceptional on your team, you’ll need expertise from various disciplines to assist you. The team may include UX designers, web developers, product managers, and team members, etc.
Aligning all resources with your goals, ensuring everyone is aware of your strategy, and working together to implement the SEO plan is crucial.
To avoid delays in achieving your desired ROI, it is important to ensure that others involved in the project prioritize their tasks and have a clear understanding of their responsibilities. This will prevent unnecessary iterations and waiting times.
Create your document: Your digital market efforts should be well-defined with a clearly documented plan.
People often get distracted with shiny object syndrome and quite often changes in the search engine algorithms. It is also become obvious with the emergence of AI.
We cannot ignore these things and need to test to leverage them. A defined plan will help you stay ahead, and you cannot ignore them. Your plan needs to
The plan needs to explain the strategy and outline tactics along with a way to measure progress.
Another big area where SEO often gets off the track is when they have not defined goals or objectives.
When SEO is not documented, it can be easy to postpone it when things get busy. Alternatively, it can become too focused on the checklist and disconnected from strategy. It can even become too rigid without built-in agility and room for testing.
5. Measure SEO Results
Measuring your goals and ROI is a critical part of the SEO. Even your goal setting with clear goals can impact the overall business.
The common metrics of SEO are defined by rankings, impressions, and website visits, and in some cases, the metric is important. KPI is conversions.
Whether a conversion involves generating leads, making ecommerce sales, or any other valuable action for your business, it often requires a deeper level of understanding than some SEO professionals think.
Being clear about what you are measuring and how it relates to your goals and knowing your performance indicators in real-time will guide effective SEO and the necessary level of agility and optimization.
Conclusion:
If you feel that your performance is not meeting your expectations, then you should consider whether any of the aspects is misaligned with your current investment.
It is important that you have a process and plan to avoid an inconsistent or chaotic approach. However, it is equally important to focus on strategy rather than just tactics.
Though a checklist a key part of the SEO best practices but it is not the necessarily what get you desired results.
Author name: Ben Miller
Bio: Ben Miller has had a long and varied career across a variety of sectors including, Banking/Finance, oil and gas, Media, construction, IT and Public sector. This gives him a unique insight into the inner workings of these industries, their pain points and the areas in which they excel. Having spent the majority of his career in senior IT management positions he became interested in the marketing aspects of businesses and was naturally drawn to digital marketing given the trend moving ever more towards this mode of marketing and his background in IT, culminating in the formation of Focus on Digital three years ago.