These days it’s impossible to think about the Internet without thinking about SEO. Internet users are searching… but what are they finding? SEO makes sure that they find your company, and the answers they need in the products and services which you have to offer. Richard Fenning, former SEO Team Leader at Mercado Libre, tells you how.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is vitally important for making your website more visible and improving its authority on Google, the search engine which accounts for more than 92% of searches worldwide.
But what exactly is SEO for? Its goal is to make your company’s website appear in the top positions on the first page of Google searches, as well as results from other search engines, contributing to your businesses growth. Below we will review seven key steps for developing a strong SEO strategy and making that happen.
The 7 SEO Steps to Increase Your Visibility on Google
1. Define your goals
SEO should be understood as an acquisition channel for directing traffic to your website. Although objectives and metrics will vary in each case, a good positioning strategy should focus on boosting visits, and generating more sales and leads.
First of all, define what it is you want to achieve. Be realistic about this, and remember that organic positioning is neither magic nor instantaneous. The resources which you can use to set these goals include professionals who are specialized in SEO, marketing activities (such as developing content marketing, or a blog) or designating an appropriate budget, among others.
Another factor to keep in mind is that Google is a stickler for detail-and the success of your SEO strategy may be in their hands. To develop a strong SEO strategy, certain settings require particularly close attention: meta description, internal linking, document outline, URL structure, and more.
2. Create a buyer persona that matches your company
Try to identify, as fully as possible, the kind of user who seeks out your company’s products or services. Developing a buyer persona can be very useful here: a fictional representation of your ideal client, which allows you to get to grips with their tastes, profile and behavior.
In addition, it pays to combine, for example, keyword searches to position your company with regards to the buyer persona, and develop a better lead nurturing. In both B2C and B2B, different buyers may searching for different keywords. This exercise in Content Mapping attributes each keyword to its own buyer persona.
Finally, when analyzing keywords, consider which searches are carried out with the greatest frequency, and use this data to narrow down the best keywords for positioning your company’s site.
3. Run an SEO audit
An SEO audit is one of the key starting points for any positioning strategy. A successful one can be summed up as follows:
The first step is to run an analysis on the exact starting point of your specific SEO development project. Whether you work for an agency, for a company, or as a freelancer, this “discovery” phase should always come first, to assess what needs to be done and establish priorities.
A “Tech SEO backlog” can be useful here. Ideally, it will list all the issues that need to be improved the metrics that will be affected as a result, and an impact and effort matrix, as seen in the image below.
A proper SEO audit should assess the following elements, among others:
- Technical elements;
- Accessibility;
- Ranking of On-Page and Off-Page factors;
- Keyword search;
- Skill index;
- Competitive analysis;
- Information on the architecture of the website;
- Internal links;
- Outreach and link building;
- Website conversion.
4. Chart a short-term and long-term path
SEO is a long-term strategy, and not for the impatient. It is also complex, and nothing is ever 100% accurate. It’s a constant process of trial and error, which means that getting the desired results can take considerable time – typically between six to twelve months.
If impatience strikes, I recommend charting both a short-term and long-term path. The former consists of manageable tasks that will yield solid results over a short period of time. The latter, on the other hand, will lead to more structural SEO results over time.
Short-term actions, which yield results in six months at most, include Off-Page SEO, optimization of your site’s web presence, and ASO (App Store Optimization). Meanwhile, long-term actions, whose results can take a year or more, include technical SEO, internal linking of the entire site, optimizing the tracking budget, and sitemaps or projects related to crawling and indexing.
5. Set a strong benchmark
This is a great way to learn about what your competition is up to – what works for them may work for you too. It is interesting to see which companies have good authority when it comes to searches in which you want your company to appear.
Screaming Frog is a useful tool for understanding the structure of your competitors’ sites, and finding out what words they use and how they structure their content. Semrush is another good option, since in addition to ranking keywords, it analyses your competitor’s SEM campaigns, providing detailed reports.
6. Check your speed (Core Web Vitals)
Core Web Vitals are a system of metrics that provide data on user experience (UX).
They help to pinpoint what needs to be done to meet the demands imposed by Google’s algorithm, and make your website more effective as a result. They can also have an effect on positioning.
Keeping an eye on your loading time is key to a good SEO strategy. The faster your website, the easier it will be to visit. Factors such as image size and multimedia content will influence loading speed.
7. SEO culture and the importance of measuring your strategy
Every member of the modern-day SEO team should be thinking about data. It should be a part of your business culture.
Google Search Console, previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, is one of many excellent tools that can analyze and optimize your SEO positioning, by essentially flagging each error that Google finds when scanning your website.
Another essential tool is Google Analytics. This platform allows you to measure online traffic, evaluate your strategies and properly define your marketing metrics. These can include: traffic per channel, number of sessions, new and recurring users and total number of conversions… among others, of course.
Follow these steps to developing a strong SEO strategy and your website should make it to the top positions in Google searches. Doing so can be a one-way trip for your company’s growth, since greater visibility and reputation typically leads to increased leads, customers and sales.
About Me:
Digital marketing is my passion. For the last 10 years, I have worked in the digital sphere with an emphasis on marketing and customer acquisition. Driving traffic through the sales funnel, and converting strangers into customers and then into brand advocates, is what motivates me. I am the former SEO Team Leader of Mercado Libre, and current SEO Manager at B2W (Lojas Americanas), the largest e-commerce platform in Brazil.