SEO is a scrupulous work process that is identical with discipline, perseverance, and patience. The implementation of a strategy is therefore essential if we want to have results and thus be visible in the results pages of Google.

Whether it’s a showcase site, an e-commerce site, or a blog, we will give you the steps to follow to succeed in your SEO services strategy effectively.

Step 1: Find Keyword Opportunities

The first step in an SEO strategy is to analyze the type of research your target is doing and what are the best keywords to position your website on.

  • Keyword generators: In order to choose your keywords, you can help yourself to different free and paid generators such as Google Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, etc.
  • Spy on competitors: One of the most effective ways to find out which keywords are getting the most traffic is to analyze your competition. You may be able to get some new ideas and keywords you never thought of.
  • Competition analysis: It is essential to identify the main leaders in your theme and then analyze their SEO performance.
  • Focus on the long tail: A common mistake in many SEO strategies is to settle for generic keywords that are highly sought after by Internet users. However, you should know that high search volume queries are generally the most competitive and the least qualified. They are also the most difficult to reach, especially if you have a site with little notoriety.

    One solution is, therefore, to orient your strategy towards long-tail keywords, which are composed of at least 4 words. It is, therefore, easier to obtain traffic, which will bring a very good conversion rate if the job is well done.

Step 2: Analyze the first page of the keywords you are targeting

After having established the first list of keywords, you must now understand how to position yourself on them. This step has unfortunately been overlooked too often but is nevertheless essential to avoid working for nothing.

First, you have to understand the intention of the Internet user and how Google interprets it. For example, with the request “glasses for the screen,” Google manages to make the connection with the anti-blue light glasses, which is the answer to the problem of the Net surfer. Thus, if we want to hope to position ourselves on this request, we will have to build our page in such a way as to be optimized for both the term “screen glasses” and “anti-blue light glasses,” which are close at the lexical level.

It is often said that a page matches a keyword. In reality, it should be understood that a page is equal to a set of keywords that are semantically similar. Be careful, therefore, not to make several pages that may be redundant.

The other advantage of analyzing our keywords is to study how the competitors manage to position themselves on them. The objective is to understand how the structure of the pages works, what is the ideal number of words, what tags are used, which terms come up most often, etc. All these elements will be useful to us when we are going to make the content of our pages.

Step 3: Establish an action plan.

You can’t expect great results if you don’t plan your strategy and are unwilling to invest the time. It is, therefore, essential that you organize yourself by developing a plan with all the keywords to target with your site and how they will be treated.

For this, the ideal is to start by using a spreadsheet where you include your main keywords. A good rule of thumb to make your job easier is to organize keywords by category and order of importance.

Step 4: Optimize content.

Content is the raw material of SEO. It must be useful and respond as relevant as possible to the Internet user’s request while being well optimized in order to be understood by Google.

Write relevant content: 
Think about how you can help your target audience by writing well-crafted content with tips and examples. Again, take a look at what works on the first page of Google to help you make the perfect plan, even if you delegate your writing. The goal of the game is to do better than existing competitors by inspiring you with good ideas to produce even more relevant content and, above all, by bringing your added value. Several studies show that the most processed articles tend to have better SEO results.

On-page optimizations: All pages on your site must be properly tagged to be understood by Google. This is called “ on-page SEO.” Here are the main optimizations to do:

  • Indicate unique Titles tags based on your keywords
  • Fill in the meta description to attract Internet users.
  • Structure the H1, H2, H3 tags …
  • Add alt tags for images.
  • Have open paragraphs and correctly formatted (lists, tables, etc.)

Step 5: Create a Cohesive Internal Mesh

The more content you have, the more important it will be to build an internal network in order to establish the architecture of your site. The goal is to link your content with other pages and articles on your site that bring real added value to your readers. So you have to think about your site in a global way and anticipate how one page can be complementary to another.

Beyond structural links (menus, breadcrumbs, footer, etc.), the links that offer the most power are contextual links placed inside a text. The deeper the links are, the better the internal mesh. You must therefore make sure to link your pages with other pages of the same level or lower level.

Step 6: Obtain external links

Along with content, the site’s popularity is one of the main criteria for ranking well on Google. Popularity in SEO is simply reflected in terms of the quantity and, above all, the quality of the external links that point to your site.

What criteria to build your link strategy?

Several criteria must be taken into account to evaluate a good link:

  • It must come from a site with a theme similar or related to yours
  • It must be placed in a context (inside a paragraph of content)
  • The page where your link is should not be saturated with too many other outgoing links (links in footer or partner page will have little weight)
  • Have an optimized anchor on a minority of links. Instead, favor a profile of varied links
  • It must be do-follow (which is not always the case, for example, with links in comments on blogs and forums)

How to get links?

Doing link building is a must but is, unfortunately, not easy. There are several techniques to get your valuable links. Here are a few.

  • Directories (use sparingly)
  • Exchanges of articles (make triangular and non-reciprocal exchanges)
  • Go through networking platforms between advertisers and publishers
  • Make a link baiting campaign etc.

Step 7: Analyze and optimize continuously.

To analyze, optimize and check the status of your site in search engines, the first tool to use is Google Search Console, which is free. It shows you all the errors that Google finds on your website in order to resolve them quickly. 

Finally, tracking positions on the main keywords seems essential to me. This helps to track the progress of your pages in search engine results. If some of them stagnate or even regress, it will allow you to make the right decisions.