What is a winning SEO strategy?
Essentially, the core objective of your SEO Strategy is to position your services/products at the top of the SERP’s for the exact audience looking for it.
Strategy drives the process…strategically understanding where you are, and where your competition are gives clarity around the “Competitive Gap”.
When you understand the competitive gap, you know how to bridge it. You see, SEO isn’t a checklist you complete exactly the same for every campaign. Rather, SEO is about creation of a high quality result for the consumer, largely based on strong relevance and authority. Google rewards websites with a strong SERP result when your web pages are aligned with the needs of your audience.
Traffic is not the goal with SEO…
targeted traffic is the goal and conversions are the prize.
A winning SEO Strategy gives clarity on HOW to bridge the competitive gap between your NOW state, and your COMPETITORS current state.
The SCOOTER Framework
SCOOTER is an acronym that relates to how we at DEI deliver success with our SEO campaigns. We’ll look deeper into the complete framework in later podcasts…but for now, here’s what it stands for.
- Strategy
- Content
- On-page
- Off-page
- Technical
- Excellence
- Results
Today we are going to delve into how we build a winning SEO strategy – part 1 of the SCOOTER framework.
Before we start, let’s discuss the 2 most important driving factors in SEO – Relevance and Authority.
Ok, now back to Strategy…
Understand your primary goal.
Lots of questions but here’s the most important.
What are you selling? You need to be clear about what you want to achieve with your SEO campaign. Go narrow, don’t try to deliver EVERYTHING and don’t try to deliver too much.
Product/Service margins. You need to understand margins to determine if the campaign delivers viable outcomes. This information helps us understand the number of sales required to deliver a satisfactory outcome and how much money can be allocated to a marketing campaign.
Due Diligence
Here’s the basic research you’ll need to consider in order understand the best strategic approach to deliver your goals.
Keyword Research: The Starting Point
Keyword research isn’t just about finding terms with high search volumes; it’s about understanding the intent behind those searches. This means identifying keywords that not only attract a large number of searches but also have strong relevance to the content you’re offering. This dual focus ensures that the traffic coming to your site is both substantial and highly targeted, increasing the likelihood of conversions.
Competition: Who’s vying for the same keyword(s)?
Where do you currently rank for the keyword? Who are the competitors? What is their relative DA/PA. Understanding this is key to developing a strategy.
Is the content poor? Are the keywords clearly defined on separate pages? How does the site structure and content volume compare? Is authority an issue?
At this stage, you should have a solid understanding of the competitive gap and be able to clearly articulate what needs to be done.
You’ll know if the website needs updating or restructuring.
You’ll know if the content needs updating or expanding (usually always does).
You’ll see the competitors and understand the authority gap (and how much of your budget you need to allocate to link building).
Most importantly, you’ll be able to quantify the workload required. You’ll also have a strong advantage as you’ll know who the client competitors are, what the best keywords are and you’ll be able to explain why they are beating you!
Being able to clearly articulate what you are chasing, what you’ll do to improve position and how long and how much it will cost is your winning SEO strategy.
