Companies spend over $65 billion every year on SEO: an effective SEO strategy allows businesses to create fast, user-friendly websites that rank well on search engines.

Companies derive numerous benefits from SEO ranking, such as increased brand awareness, generation of new qualified leads, improved conversions, and enhanced brand credibility. However, many businesses still struggle to create and implement a truly effective action plan.

In this article, we want to tell you how to create an effective SEO strategy in 2021.

0. Premise: The Three Pillars of SEO

When creating an SEO strategy, you should focus on three core aspects:

  • On-page SEO: evaluating your page content and how to optimize it to rank higher in search engines.
  • Off-page SEO: increasing direct links to your website. The number of backlinks helps you build credibility with search engines and thus rank higher.
  • Technical SEO: properly designing your website's architecture, speed, and security.

1. Satisfy User Search Intent

Although Google has more than 200 ranking factors, the most important one is helping users. In SEO terms, this refers to meeting the user's search intent. First, determine what you are offering to your audience: are you selling products, providing entertainment, or publishing news and research? Second, identify your target audience. After answering "why" and "who," you can proceed to the "how."

2. Choose the Keywords that Drive Traffic

Identify the exact phrases users type into search engines when looking for your products or services. When choosing keywords, follow these simple rules:

  • Use keywords that exactly reflect what you offer.
  • Avoid short and vague keywords because they have high competition and risk attracting the wrong audience (e.g., instead of using "buy shoes," use "buy women's summer running shoes").
  • Choose keywords with a high search volume. You can use SEO tools like KWfinder to get this data.
  • Use "longtail" keywords. Research shows that longer, more precise keywords have a 3-5% higher click-through rate than generic ones and face lower competition.

3. Write High-Quality Content

Satisfy your audience with high-quality content on your website by addressing common problems, providing simple solutions, and making the content visually appealing. Quality content not only helps you climb Google's rankings but also keeps your users engaged. Always remember that you are not creating content for search engines, but for your audience!

4. Draft a Link Building Project

If you want to create an effective SEO strategy, you need backlinks. If you are just starting out, you can begin by exchanging links with similar businesses or looking for guest blogging opportunities. By writing content on other people's blogs, you can easily link back to your website. This increases the chances of other bloggers and industry influencers linking to your articles.

5. Compress Media Before Uploading

Google appreciates visual content, but if an image or video is too heavy, page speed is compromised (which is a crucial ranking factor!). Any file heavier than 1 MB is too large and requires compression. It is good practice to keep files in kilobytes (KB) using online compression tools to reduce file size without compromising quality.

6. Build a Technically Correct Website

Bugs and technical errors (broken links, server errors, missing meta tags, crawl issues) can worsen the user experience and are highly damaging. It is good practice to conduct a technical audit of your site to ensure it works optimally, or better yet, build it technically correct from the start!

7. Measure the Results

SEO can take a lot of time and work. After spending effort refining your strategy, you should monitor and measure your progress. You can use metrics like organic traffic and page rankings to determine the performance of your SEO efforts using tools like Google Analytics or Google Search Console.

8. Conclusion

Planning and implementing an SEO strategy is useful for generating leads and sales while building online credibility. It is an organic positioning that can turn a company's business around: it is incredibly important to work on it properly and invest time and money! However, Google is not a static tool; it is constantly evolving, meaning you must update your strategy year by year.

Studio Up Web Agency Milan can help you create and update an effective SEO strategy to grow your business.

Source: DAN NETWORK