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You’ve set your content marketing goals. You’ve outlined your strategies. You’re ready to create some inspiring content.

When you spend this much energy on content, you want to squeeze out every last drop of value. That’s why your shiny new content plan includes a whole section on SEO strategy. Keyword research, backlink strategies, you’re here for it all.

But… does your plan include technical SEO? Or have you shied away from the technical side of things, assuming the web team has it covered?

As Rand Fishkin, co-founder of SEO software Moz, described: “Technical SEO is like the plumbing of a website - it’s not always visible, but it’s crucial for ensuring everything runs smoothly and efficiently.” And as a marketer, it should be on your radar.

What is technical SEO and how can you get started on optimizations? Here’s the inside scoop on technical SEO for beginners or seasoned marketers refreshing their SEO strategy.

What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the optimization of your website’s infrastructure to improve its rankings in search engine results. It’s one of the four types of SEO and it’s the most - well, technical.

If your hands get a bit clammy at the mention of “technical” anything, you’re not alone. But to build a well-rounded SEO strategy, marketers should be just as familiar with technical SEO techniques as with more content-centric tactics.

As algorithms have gotten better at recognizing truly valuable content, the field of SEO has sharpened its focus on user experience. Today, Google is so sophisticated that it can usually tell when content is using less-savory SEO tactics and demote it accordingly.

Technical SEO is important because it improves your content for both people and Google:

What is the difference between technical SEO and SEO?

The difference between technical SEO and SEO is that technical SEO is only one of the four main categories of SEO. The other three categories are on-page, off-page, and local SEO. These four categories all work in tandem to improve your content’s visibility and appearance on the search engine results page.

What is technical SEO and on-page SEO?

Technical and on-page SEO are often discussed together because they’re the two types of SEO that marketers have nearly complete control over. They take place mainly on your owned web properties.

While these two types of SEO are closely related, there are different tactics for technical SEO vs. on-page SEO. In terms of process, many marketers approach these optimizations as a sandwich: technical, on-page, technical.

First, the foundation of SEO is built on the technical. Before you create any content, your website should have basic technical optimizations in place. It should be mobile-friendly, have a clear site structure, and a decent load speed.

Next, it’s content creation time. On-page SEO begins with thorough keyword research. Determine which keywords your target audience is likely to search, and plan your content around them. Here are a few simple tactics to research keywords:

When you’ve chosen your keyword, use it to create high-quality content that educates and entertains. Keep the structure of your content scannable and easy to read. Weave your keyword and related keywords into your content.

Finally, when you’re ready to finish up your content, shift your focus back to technical SEO. Check that your keyword appears in the following areas:

When you publish new content, you should also make sure it’s on par with the sitewide technical optimizations you have in place. Use appropriately-sized images, SEO-friendly URLs, and accessible design. It’s helpful to use a checklist for new content so you don’t miss any opportunities - we like the Search Engine Journal’s SEO checklist.

What is off-page SEO?

Once you’ve finalized your content with technical and on-page optimizations, you can move on to off-page SEO tactics. The goal of off-page SEO is to earn links to your content from external sites. When your content has lots of backlinks, it’s a sign to Google that others find it helpful.

Your content will likely earn some backlinks on its own, but you should also have a backlink strategy to get as many as possible. To earn backlinks, identify trusted websites that appeal to your audience. Reach out to the person or team responsible for digital content, and craft your ask. Be sure to spell out where the link fits, your preferred anchor text, and how your content will benefit their readers.

For examples of on-page and off-page SEO, check out our post What are examples of SEO marketing?

How to do technical SEO

Technical SEO can include hundreds of optimizations, so systems are your best friend in this arena. Once you get the hang of technical SEO, you can build checklists and processes that are repeatable.

There are many technical SEO tools that are free or inexpensive to use. In fact, as the world’s largest search engine, Google offers a variety of free tools such as Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, and Keyword Planner.

google search console example

Is technical SEO difficult?

Technical SEO isn’t brain surgery, but it does involve attention to detail and many moving parts. For this reason, you can make your life easier by planning your technical SEO roadmap before getting started. Here are the most important technical SEO factors to include on your roadmap.

What are technical SEO ranking factors?

Now that you understand what technical SEO is and how it works with the other types of SEO, let’s get into some actionable steps. Here are four of the most important factors for technical SEO.

1. Website speed optimization

Your content might be insightful, actionable… incredible, really. But if it takes too long to load, no one will stick around to read it. That’s why increasing your site speed is so important.

There are many factors that impact site speed. To get a sense of where your biggest opportunities are, run your site through Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. You’ll get reports on core web vitals such as largest and first contentful paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift. (Don’t worry, Google will also tell you what all these metrics are.)

Some common page speed issues are:

It’s important to note that your website will probably never score a perfect 100 in all categories. The goal of evaluating page speed is to identify the issues causing the most heartache and quick wins that can improve your technical SEO.

2. Improving usability with structure and navigation

Optimizing the technical infrastructure of your website makes it easier to navigate for both human users and search engine spiders. This pleases the algorithm.

How can you improve your site structure? Two words: simplify and clarify. If your navigation has dropdowns in its dropdowns, it might be time to consider restructuring for a more straightforward user experience. Users should be able to get to any given piece of content with a few clicks.

When it comes to URLs, keep them clear, descriptive, and short.

One of the best ways to assess the clarity of your site’s structure is to have someone new try to navigate it. Enlist a friend, family member, or - let’s be honest - you have colleagues who don’t spend that much time on your website. Send them on a scavenger hunt to find and use your more popular features. Listen very carefully to their feedback.

You can also mine customer feedback for this information. Every marketer hasHave you ever read a suggestion or complaint from a customer survey and thought, “That’s ridiculous, we do have that. It’s on the website.” Well, the respondent didn’t find it. Time to start investigating why.

3. Mobile-friendly design

In 2017, the digital world experienced a shift. For the first time, more than half of all traffic on the internet was on mobile devices. Since then, many forward-thinking brands have moved to mobile-first design.

Do you know whether your audience primarily uses desktop or mobile? You can find out in Google Analytics under Audience > Mobile > Overview. Use this data to inform your web design decisions. In a perfect world, your website would be seamless on every device. But in reality, we have to prioritize.

Google Analytics Mobile Device Overview

Here are a few tips to help you ensure your website is mobile-friendly:

It might go without saying, but be sure to test your website on your own mobile device. Extensively. Go through processes like completing the contact form or using the search bar. If you run into unexpected frustrations, know that your users are doubly frustrated. And even worse - your competitors might have a better user experience.

4. Optimizing accessibility

For technical SEO, your website must be accessible to both people and search engine crawlers. People accessibility starts with considering that your users are different types of people on different types of devices. They might be using a screen reader. They might be asking their question to a smart device rather than typing it out. Their connection might be too slow to load images. To ensure accessibility:

Of course, search engines must also be able to easily understand your content in order to rank it. To optimize your site’s accessibility for search engines:

Technical SEO is the key to a great user experience

The bottom line of any type of SEO is: Users having a great experience on your site will probably hang around longer. Or they’ll find the answer they needed quickly and end their search. Google recognizes both behaviors and tosses that information into its swirling cauldron of algorithmic judgment.

As one of the four types of SEO, technical SEO is indispensable to your marketing strategy. To make sure your technical ducks are in a row, simplify your site structure, optimize speed and accessibility, and prioritize mobile design.

What’s the very first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?

Oh, deep breathing and yoga? Well, aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?

We were expecting you to say “look at my phone,” which is what most Americans do. We spend a lot of time online. In our fast-paced world, we’re always looking for the quickest way to get where we want to go.

For most people, the quickest way to get where they’re going online is a search engine. And, well, we wouldn’t be marketers if we didn’t find a way to influence those online experiences.

Thus, search engine optimization (SEO) marketing was born. Today, marketers use SEO strategy to achieve a variety of goals from increased organic traffic to higher conversion rates. And since 68% of online experiences begin with search it’s vital to have a strong strategy.

What is SEO marketing for beginners?

To newer marketers, SEO might seem like a labyrinth of tags, keywords and coding. But search engine marketing is less mysterious than you think, and it can help you achieve your business goals. If you’re just starting out, here are a few SEO marketing tips for beginners .

What is SEO in marketing?

SEO refers to improving your website’s rank and appearance on the search engine results page (SERP). The benefits of SEO reach far and wide.

From a marketing standpoint, SEO is a cost-effective way to bring more organic traffic to your website. Since the average working-age internet user now spends 6 hours and 37 minutes online each day, you can’t afford to skip SEO.

SEO’s meaning in business

SEO also has business benefits outside of marketing:

You can also use SEO to grow your business. An increase organic traffic to your site can result in more sales and increase your conversion rate by improving the customer experience.

How is SEO used in digital marketing?

These days, most marketers define digital marketing as… well, marketing. We live in a digital world, and your website is often your first impression to potential buyers. For this reason, it’s hard to overstate the importance of SEO in digital marketing .

Your marketing plan probably involves many channels, like advertising, social media, email marketing, and public relations. SEO is part of your content marketing strategy , which you must have if you’re creating content. After all, you can create the best content in the universe (big ups if you’ve done this), but if the right people don’t see it, it hasn’t accomplished anything for your business.

Organic search is the main source of traffic for many websites, so an investment in SEO is a gift to your brand that keeps giving. By spending resources up-front on creating optimized content, you can generate organic search traffic for months and years to come.

What are the 4 types of SEO?

Once you master the basics and start digging deeper into SEO, you’ll learn there are four types of SEO : on-page, off-page, technical, and local. The best SEO strategies integrate all four.

 

5 steps for a great SEO STRATEGY

On-page SEO

On-page SEO includes the activities you probably think of first when you hear “SEO.” Because search engine algorithms are more sophisticated than ever, today’s on-page SEO strategies start with truly valuable content. You can’t trick, automate, or keyword-stuff your way to the top of the SERP.

Instead, focus on understanding your audience and the keywords that are relevant to them. If they were looking for your content or product, what types of keywords would they use – informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional?

Once you’ve done your keyword research, create high-quality content focused on the relevant keywords you’ve identified. Your content should:

Off-page SEO

Alexander the Great, notorious narcissist, said, “Even when I am gone, I shall remain in people’s minds the star of their rights.” But it was only after his death that he earned his Great title. If he’d spent his life talking about how great he was rather than doing “great” things, no one would’ve remembered him despite his self-aggrandizing speeches.

Similarly (but way less dramatic), promoting your own content can only get you so far in the SEO game. Why? Credibility. Of course you think your content is great. What do others think? Search engines look for backlinks as a sign that other users have found your content helpful.

Off-page SEO involves making sure your content is linkable, and then building a strategy to get backlinks. Linkable content has been crafted with backlinks in mind. Some common hooks are data (the more surprising the better), quotes from industry leaders, and engaging media like podcasts and videos.

To get the most out of your linkable content, identify trustworthy, popular sites within your space and track down a contact. Ask them to link to your content. Include a summary and how it benefits their readers.

Technical SEO

For some marketers, the word “technical” might kick your heart rate up a notch. But don’t be intimidated by technical SEO. Just like the rest of your SEO strategy, it centers on user experience.

Your first step for technical optimization should be ensuring that you’re following web design best practices. Do a website audit with these questions in mind:

If you come up with underwhelming answers for any of these, you’ve found your starting point for improvement. And remember, as Churchill said, “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Your site doesn’t have to be 100% optimized to be an effective business asset.

Make improvements as you go, starting with the simplest work and tackling more complex technical SEO later. Before you know it, the organic traffic will be flowing.

Local SEO

If you offer products or services to a particular geographic region, you don’t want to skip local SEO . Generally, any optimizations you do on-page or off-page will boost your local listing. But if local SEO is a priority for your business, there are a few areas you should focus on.

One of the big benefits of local SEO is lower marketing costs, since it helps you focus on targeted geographic areas instead of the antiquated “spray and pray” approach.

What are examples of SEO marketing?

If you’ve made it this far, SEO might make sense in theory… but what does it look like in practice? Let’s look at some examples of SEO marketing .

For these examples, we’ll consider an auto shop that also sells car accessories, Amazing Auto Accessories & More.

Step 1: On-page and technical SEO

Let’s say AAA&M wants to use on-page SEO to organically capture more traffic looking to buy windshield wipers. They publish a blog post focused on the keyword “new windshield wipers.” They include the keyword in the post’s title, slug, meta description, headers, and body.

SEO marketing on-page and technical seoimage

From a technical SEO perspective, AAA&M digs deeper. They:

Step 2: Off-page SEO

The post is optimized and gaining organic traction, but AAA&M isn’t done yet. They know to get the most out of the article, they need to deploy a backlink strategy for off-page SEO. They regularly share the post on their social channels with engaging calls to action and target external sites publishing content related to vehicle maintenance and ask for backlinks.

Example social post: Ever been caught in a rainstorm on the highway? Driving in a downpour can be tense… and you DON’T need the added stress of limited visibility. If it’s time for new windshield wipers, we’ve got you covered with this guide. Do you have a go-to wiper brand? Let us know in the comments!

Example backlink email: Hi [name], your piece “7 things you didn’t know your car needed for routine maintenance” is killer. (Have I ever replaced my brake pads??) Anyway, we just published a guide to buying new windshield wipers, and I think it would be a great addition to your article in the “replace your windshield wipers” section. What do you think?

Step 3: Local SEO

Of course, providing a thorough guide to buying new windshield wipers is great for AAA&M’s brand trust and authority. But we’d be lying if we said they don’t want to sell new wipers to every single person who Google's the keyword. Windshield wipers are a $4.7 billion industry, after all.

For that reason, they target the “new windshield wipers” keyword with their local SEO strategy by making sure it’s included in their Google Business description and product catalog.

How do I SEO my website to Google?

After digesting everything we’ve discussed, you might be wondering: How do I use all this info to optimize my website for Google and other search engines?

Here’s a tip for how to do SEO well: Start where you are. If you’re already creating content but have never considered keywords, do some keyword research. Google Trends is a great SEO tool. Check out the keywords your competitors are using.

If you’ve been optimizing your content to keywords for a while, but have no idea how your website performs technically – start there. Run your site through Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool and share your findings with your tech colleagues. Find out what high-impact, quick-win opportunities there are. Google search console is another SEO tool to learn more about your search performance. 

The most important thing is to start making progress. At the end of the day, SEO is about user experience. Anything you can do to better understand users’ expectations and improve your content’s ability to meet them is a win for SEO.

How much does SEO marketing cost?

The beauty of search engine optimization is that it brings in more organic search traffic – meaning you didn’t pay for the traffic with advertising. However, like everything good in life, SEO is not free.

Creating and executing a comprehensive and effective SEO strategy is a big undertaking. Enterprise companies often have a whole team of full-time marketers dedicated to SEO services. That’s how valuable it is.

The cost of excellent SEO is in the time it takes to create high-quality content and optimize your website. If you’re ready to take your strategy to the next level, there are SEO-specific tools available that can cost as much as $500 per month.

Launch your SEO marketing strategy today

Fortunately, you don’t have to spend $500 a month on software to put your SEO marketing plan into place today. There’s constant innovation in search engine optimization , and tomorrow you could discover a brand new tactic that’s perfect for your business.

But don’t get distracted by shiny, new tactics without mastering the basics first. Getting a handle on how the four types of SEO fit into your marketing strategy will put you miles above your competitor who’s ignoring SEO.

And when your potential buyers wake up in the morning and grab their phones, your content will be there waiting.

 

Invisibility is poison for a brand struggling to grow and earn market share. If your target audience doesn't see you at critical moments in their buyer's journey, it's like you don't even exist. Without online credibility, authority, and visibility earned through SEO strategy, it’s difficult to convert or close a deal. Everything you do in marketing is more complicated and exhausting.

SEO strategy remedies invisibility, and it's critical for brands investing in growth marketing.

What is an SEO strategy?

A search engine optimization strategy is the practice of improving your website’s ranking and appearance on the search engine results page. It’s all about aligning the content you create with your ideal customers.

An SEO strategy will help you clarify and act on the following information:

Search engine optimization techniques

SEO revolves around user experience. It’s about creating people-first content. But it still requires research, testing, technical optimizations, and content marketing expertise.

No matter what you may have heard, keywords still matter. You can’t create people-first content without knowing what people search for and how they use the info. Keyword research answers these questions.

On top of that, your website must deliver an amazing user experience that people remember and want to come back for. When your SEO strategies keep that focus, everyone wins.

What’s the role of SEO in marketing?

SEO strategy helps you meet the marketing goals that impact your company’s bottom line, like:

The benefits of SEO strategy start with more website traffic. In today’s digital world, no marketer will say no to more traffic.

But all traffic isn’t created equal. The source of your website traffic impacts its quality. And when higher quality traffic comes in, that quality cascades down your whole funnel to increase conversion rates and retention.

When you do SEO right, the organic traffic it brings in is higher quality than, say, advertising traffic. Why? Think of it this way. Every time someone clicks an ad, you're trying to build credibility from scratch. When was the last time you built a meaningful relationship with someone in a few minutes?

Advertising is also an expensive way to get traffic. And when you stop your campaign, the traffic stops flowing in. By contrast, using SEO as an evergreen marketing tactic is a gift that keeps giving long-term.

Here’s how to design an SEO marketing strategy.

SEO marketing strategy

Nearly 70% of online experiences begin with search. And as technologies like voice search become more ubiquitous, that will increase.

What’s more, 91% of websites get no search traffic because they’re not ranking for any relevant keywords. As a marketer, you must have a strategy to insert yourself into your audience’s online experiences. Because it’s not going to happen on its own.

That’s where your SEO plan comes in. Having a solid plan in place will improve three crucial areas for your brand:

These three together make you hyper-relevant in the eyes of your potential customers. They generate the benefits of SEO.

What are the types of SEO in digital marketing?

There are four categories of SEO strategy in digital marketing. 

1. Technical SEO

When launching a new SEO strategy or auditing previous efforts, we often start with technical optimization. That’s because a solid technical foundation is table stakes to play the SEO game.

Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin said, “Technical SEO is like the plumbing of a website… it’s crucial to ensuring everything runs smoothly and efficiently.” Creating content and building backlinks are essential strategies, but they’re only as strong as the tech they run on.

If your website has technical issues, it’s a big red flag to search engine algorithms. And that means the content you worked so hard on has a slim chance of ranking.

Here are the most important technical SEO aspects to include in your strategy.

Technical SEO is important because user experience is important. It’s one of Google’s top priorities when deciding which content to show searchers.

2. On-page SEO

Content is the backbone of on-page SEO. But by itself, great content isn’t enough to get you all the benefits of a comprehensive SEO strategy. You need a keyword-driven content strategy focused on quality.

Which, of course, starts with research.

The key to keyword research

There are many keyword research tools out there. Google’s free keyword planner is a great place to start. Competitor research is another way to contextualize your own content strategy. What kinds of keywords are in your competitors’ ad copy and SERP headlines?

keyword research example of google keyword plannerUse your keyword tool of choice to answer these three key questions:

  1. What looks achievable based on keyword difficulty? Often, the highest volume keyword or most relevant to your business isn't the best place to start. The competition for it may be through the roof. You won’t rank well for very difficult keywords if your website has a lower domain authority. Instead, start gaining traction with long-tail, niche keywords that have lower difficulty and lower volume. Then, leverage your newfound authority to pursue the tougher keywords.
  2. What has a decent search volume? With the above in mind, you don't want to target keywords that have no volume at all. No one would see it! You're looking for a sweet spot for your keyword strategy - achievable keyword difficulty with at least some volume.
  3. What aligns with your content strategy? Finally, look for keywords that align with the topics you want to be an authority on. You should never target a keyword if it doesn't relate to your brand. This would lead to the creation of irrelevant content that doesn't align with the search intent. And SEO strategy is all about aligning your goals with your target audience's goals to maximize your visibility and relevance.

Once you have enough info to select some target keywords, it’s time to get down to business and start creating high-quality content.

Pulling off high-quality, helpful content

What, exactly, is high-quality content? This isn’t a nebulous concept that marketers have to guess at and hope for the best. As the world’s largest search engine, Google has put out extensive information on what it considers when judging content quality.

In late 2022, Google’s “helpful content update” confirmed its intention to focus on people-first content. It’s becoming impossible to trick search engines with the black hat SEO techniques of yesteryear as the algorithms learn what’s truly helpful for users.

In the helpful content update, Google suggests creating content for people, not search engines. It also reminds marketers to rely on the E-E-A-T framework to ensure their content shows:

One effective content strategy is the pillar (or cornerstone) method. To start, create one substantial post for a keyword you'd really like to rank. Then create several related sub-topic posts. Link these other posts to your pillar.

This method maximizes your ROI because the supporting posts are faster and easier. But they increase the authority of the pillar they link to.

Of course, your content will be the most “helpful” if it shows up to the people who will benefit from it most: your ideal customers. And since you know exactly what keywords they’re using, you’re ready to optimize.

Be sure your focus keyword is naturally woven into these areas of your content:

3. Off-page SEO

Now the fun part: off-page. What is off-page SEO? In a nutshell, backlinks.

You can spend all day talking about how great your own content is. But there’s a reason why 82% of consumers trust reviews, and only 4% trust ads - credibility.

When ranking your content, search engines look for signs that other users have found it helpful. Lots of relevant links from high-authority websites are a big green flag.

To be clear: backlinks aren’t just a ranking factor. They’re critical. Inbound links show you're connected to a community. Your content has authority with the people who matter.

Links also show who you're associating with. Links from spammy, untrustworthy sites may hurt your ranking more than help. You want links from relevant web pages on mid- to high-authority websites.

How to get backlinks

Backlinks come from other websites you do not own.

Of course, Google wasn’t born yesterday. Backlinks you can easily build yourself (social media, Quora, ads) don’t carry the same weight as a link created by others because they appreciate your website. Still, they don’t hurt.

Backlinks can be tough to get, but the payoff is worth it. You can earn them through link-building strategies like:

The last one is a more invested strategy. But it's also the most effective. It's often employed by SEO agencies supporting many clients.

4. Local SEO

Any business operating locally can’t afford to skip local SEO. By targeting users searching for location-specific keywords, you can lower your marketing expenses and make sure your brand shows up in the right place at the right time.

How? For starters, claim your Google Business Profile and complete the information. This will ensure your business listing shows up by the map when users search for local keywords.

local seo google exampleIf there are particular keywords you know you want to rank for, be sure to include them in the services or description of your listing.

Focusing on these areas will also boost your rankings in local SEO results.

How do I create an SEO strategy?

To create an SEO strategy, start by identifying your goals and ideal customer profile. Then, invest some resources into researching your ideal customer. This investment is either your own time, money on SEO tools, or outsourcing the work to an agency.

Your research will provide context to help you determine which elements of your SEO strategy are the most important. From there, you can prioritize the four types of SEO we’ve discussed.

How do beginners do SEO?

For SEO beginners, all the strategies and tactics can be a bit overwhelming. The good news is that you don’t have to come up with your process from scratch. There are many checklists and frameworks out there for beginners.

Here are the basic steps to follow when you’re starting out.

  1. Set your goals
  2. Audit your site for technical issues
  3. Do keyword research
  4. Build a content strategy
  5. Develop a plan for backlinks
  6. Track progress and optimize

What is an example of SEO strategy?

Researching keywords and creating a content plan is a fundamental example of SEO strategy. Let’s say your gym offers exercise classes for night owls. Your approach might look something like this.

  1. Through keyword research, you learn that your ideal customer is searching for “is it okay to work out at night?”
  2. You develop a piece of content that answers this question. To optimize your content to the target keyword, you incorporate it in the post’s title, URL, meta description, headers, and body.What is an example of SEO strategy (2) - correct
  3. As you create your content, you focus on linkability. It’s not enough to simply answer the question - hundreds of pieces of content already answer it. Go the extra mile by citing original research, creating engaging assets like videos or infographics, and interviewing a credentialed expert.
  4. Once you publish your content, you reach out to publishers and influencers in the exercise space to build backlinks.
  5. Since your gym serves a specific geographic area, you claim your Google Business Profile and include keywords like “evening exercise class.” This will help the right audience find out about your offering.
  6. You plan to do a quarterly technical SEO audit to make sure there are no performance issues with your website.

What is the best SEO strategy in 2023?

The most effective SEO strategy in 2023 and beyond will focus on content quality. As search engines become more sophisticated and the digital world gets more flooded with content, the very best content will rise to the top.

The brands that win will be the ones that have an SEO strategy rooted in understanding their customer and content niche. Then, on that foundation, they’re willing to test new tactics and keep up with trends.

Tracking progress is critical to meeting goals with SEO. You'll have trouble influencing a metric if you can't measure it. And you certainly won't be able to test or optimize.

There are advanced tools available, but for starters, you need to make sure these free analytics tools are set up on your website.

Think about what KPIs you want to track. For SEO, track conversions, ranking, organic traffic, and new subscribers to your blog or email list.

SEO tools

Research is at the heart of a thoughtful SEO strategy. To some extent, you can do SEO research and optimizations on your own if you have the time to invest.

Eventually, you’ll need SEO tools to boost your efforts. There are free and paid tools available. The cost and functionality vary, but most fall into one of these categories: 

Many of the household names in SEO offer all-in-one solutions to help with all these phases of the process. Should you invest in one of these platforms? Perhaps, if you have the budget and the internal resources to use it.

Alternatively, you can put together an efficient plan by paying for specialized tools where you need them most. If you have a larger budget but no internal SEO professional, you might choose to hire an agency.

What are common SEO mistakes?

Nobody’s perfect. But when it comes to SEO strategy, mistakes can be costly. Here are some common SEO mistakes to avoid.

  1. Targeting the wrong keywords. Companies often target the keywords with the highest volume. Unfortunately, high-ranking results for these keywords can be almost impossible to topple. Instead, narrow down your target keywords to long-tail and zero volume keywords at first if you are starting from scratch. If you're already ranking for a decent amount, evaluate search volume and keyword difficulty to find the sweet spot for keywords to target.
  2. Not Matching content to keyword intent. Optimizing your content by inserting your target keyword in the right spots isn’t good enough for today’s sophisticated algorithms. Your content might get a user to click through, but if it doesn’t meet expectations once they get there, Google will know.
  3. Throwing resources at backlinks without focusing on content quality too. The most costly mistakes happen when you start investing in promotion tactics but don’t focus on quality onsite content to support it. Whether it’s buying low-quality backlinks or churning out content that’s just plain bad, this is a real waste of money. Focusing on quality first and foremost will make earning backlinks much smoother.

How SEO will change in 2023

The field of SEO moves fast. If you want your SEO strategy to keep performing and remain relevant, you must stay on top of changes and trends. Here are a few of our predictions for 2023 and beyond.

  1. Algorithms will get even better at identifying and prioritizing helpful content.
  2. Marketers will explore how to incorporate AI and automation into their content creation process while still putting people first.
  3. A strong technical foundation will continue to be crucial.

SEO strategy is the heart of growth marketing

An effective growth strategy includes visibility, authority, and credibility. Growth-minded businesses focus on reducing customer acquisition costs to maximize ROI. They do this by investing in sustainable, long-term branding strategies - like SEO.

An effective SEO strategy emphasizes manageable growth through fantastic customer experience.

It builds your brand on a firm foundation and creates a brand that attracts trust and loyalty through your authentic desire to help customers. It focuses on creating a welcoming and relevant user experience for your target audience.

Without these features, it’s just not SEO. And without SEO, your brand is invisible.

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