Unlock Top FREE SEO Strategies You Can Use Today

As everyone clamors to get on the first page of Google, hone your SEO skills to take things to the next level.

There are multiple facets to search engine optimization. This comprehensive guide will help you understand high-level SEO techniques in a simplistic manner that you can implement easily.

SEO Strategy Explained

The overall plan for optimizing your website using various techniques and tactics to make it rank higher in Google and other search engines is called a SEO strategy. Link building, On-Page SEO, and Technical SEO are a few components that form a good strategy.

The goal of any SEO strategy is to increase website rankings for certain keywords. You need to develop a comprehensive SEO plan if you want to optimize your site and rank higher than your competition.

The Only SEO Strategy Blueprint You Need in 2020

You can attain all your goals with this easy to implement, 3-step SEO blueprint.

Step 1: Understanding On-site Technical Aspects

You need to build all your SEO related strategies on a solid technical foundation. Technical SEO, On-site SEO, includes your server, website, and DNS optimization. Search engine crawlers index your site easily with technical optimizations in place.

Page Load Speed

Site speed is now a ranking factor which makes it important to SEO. Slow loading sites are considered to offer poor user experience as per Google’s guidelines.

Tips on improving page load speeds:

Use WPEngine, HubSpot, or another top hosting provider
Invest in quality SSL certificates for HTTPS
Consider using CloudFlare as your DNS server
Optimize images on the page
Optimize site files using CDNs
Make use of server-side caching
Run weekly technical audits

URL Structure for SEO

SEO URL is very important if you want your site to be found. For best results, use target keywords in URLs and try keeping them short.

Some helpful URL tips:

Never use caps
Separate words by using hyphens (dashes)
Max limit is 512 characters if you don’t want Google to truncate
Avoid stop words (a, to, the, etc.) as much as possible

Site Links and Menu – Navigation Best Practices

Search engine crawlers follow links while visiting pages. This allows Google to have an easier time reading text. Therefore, it’s important to improve your site’s ‘crawl-ability’ by using text-based links for site navigation.

Links are all-powerful. They can singularly help the crawler discover new pages and content. Strategic links are helpful to crawlers in determining the relevance of a link. It also helps in establishing a relationship between the current and destination page.

SEO tips for navigation links and anchor text:

1-2 links is enough every few paragraphs. You don’t want to oversaturate your page.
Instead of “click here” as anchor text, use the primary keyword.
The crawl budget can be maxed out by excess links on the page.
Always choose high authority sites when linking to an external source.
Only link externally when it adds context and value to the reader. The same holds true for internal pages as well.
Never use rel=”nofollow” when linking externally.
The destination page should be topically related when linking internally.
The linking page should be part of the content cluster in internal links.
You can use the same page anchor links multiple times.

XML Sitemap

XML sitemaps are simple yet powerful files when it comes to SEO. These live next to your website in the online world and serves as a roadmap. It helps in discovering the most important blog posts, web pages, and other site assets.

XML sitemaps speed up the process of crawling and ensure that Google identifies all-important content pieces. It also allows the crawler to interpret site structure. The most important function of XML sitemaps is to act as a failsafe when site links remain undiscovered by the crawler.

Robots.txt File & SEO Strategy

These are simple text files that live next to your website. The purpose of robots.txt is to instruct search engine crawlers to index specific file paths.

Robots.txt file is essential to prevent the crawler from wasting time indexing directories, files, and web pages that can be best described as non-essential. You can improve the effectiveness and speed of each crawl with robots.txt file.

HTTP 404 (not found error)

HTTP 404 Not Found Errors are quite common and simply mean that a particular page cannot be found because of a broken redirect or link. These links send a valuable visitor to a non-existent resource.

Redirects come in the form of 301 and 302’s and are server instructions when a certain page is requested to load another one in its place. Broken redirects send the visitor to a non-existent resource and hurt your SEO.

Broken links occur when URLs move or change content or rename a page without updating links. It creates a poor user experience on your site. It is also bad in terms of SEO because crawlers cannot index content that is non-existent.

Sometimes your site security and SSL can impact what gets determined as a broken page or not.

You can easily discover these issues through Google’s Search Console or by conducting a simple site audit. Or by looking through our guide of guest posting tools.

Duplicate Content in 2020

This refers to content that is very similar or an exact match to some other content published on other internet locations (unique URLs). The problem with duplicate content is that Google is confused as to which content should be given preference. This means poor ranking for your page.

There are several myths surrounding duplicate content, with one stating that Google penalizes such content. While this has never been provedn, it is important that you aim for unique, high-quality content from a pure SEO point of view. Google will definitely reward you for the same.

It is possible that your content could exist in several locations, especially if you are a guest blogger. You may produce content for your site and then later republish it as a guest blog or vice versa. The point is there is a fix to saving yourself from content duplication.

You just need to make use of HTML rel=“canonical” Tag whenever you republish content. It lets Google know where to look for the original version. Everyone stays happy this way.

SEO Meta Tags

Meta Tags are HTML code bits that exist on every site web page – even if they are blank. They are paramount to SEO since they offer details about your web page to Google and other search engines.

Meta Tags important to SEO:

Meta description tag
Title tag
Viewport tag
Meta content-type tag
Social meta tags
Canonical tag

Structured Data Markup

Schema.org markup or special codes are added to HTML to allow search engines to interpret it better. Google generates rich snippets by making use of this structured data. Featured snippets are excellent for SEO since they outrank organic positions.

Mobile Optimization Best Practices

Mobile optimization is extremely important because you have to make your website adapt to mobiles and tablets. Mobile responsiveness is the next big step in SEO.

Earlier, users had to zoom in to read content on older style websites. This was obviously inconvenient. With the bulk of search traffic shifting to mobile devices, Google made it a priority to rank those websites that were mobile responsive for a better user experience.

Content and website respond to the size of the device, whether it is a tablet, smartphone, or desktop. This mobile-optimized standard makes sure that user experience remains good across devices of all orientations.

Mobile-first indexing is also a ranking signal and impacts SEO in a big way. In March 2018, Google rolled out its first Mobile-first index. This means that the search engine giant uses your site’s mobile version for indexing and ranking.

Step 2: Understanding On-Page Optimization

On-page SEO, as explained earlier, refers to a series of marketing tactics that are performed at the individual site level. This helps add to user experience and improves search positions. Content optimization, mobile optimization, keyword optimization, and snippet optimization are few tactics included in on-page SEO. You don’t need to be a blogger outreach agency to implement the tips below.

It helps to focus on clever keyword research when drafting your on-page strategy. Try basing your keywords around the services you offer, product names, and the type of business you run. This is going to yield a broad-range of terms which may offer low search intent.

In order to find the right keywords, you first need to identify the kind of people you are targeting. This helps with both on page and off page SEO. You need to learn more about your audience and the kind of challenges and problems they face which can be solved by your product or service on offer. This is also called pain point. You need to create a buyer persona when you understand what your target audience needs. The data you collect shall help fuel your keyword research.

What does buyer persona mean?

Buyer persona refers to an honest (yet fictional) representation of your target audience or ideal customer. This should be based on actual market research and real customer data.

Every SEO guide requires a brief introduction to the targeted buyer persona.

Develop a blueprint of the perfect or ideal customer including their gender, age, demographic and economic makeup. You also need to understand the driving factors that would push them towards the final sale.

Ensure that every piece of content on your site directly speaks to this consumer through targeted keywords that are in line with their challenges and needs.

Next, focus on search intent.

What does search intent mean?

Search intent or keyword intent refers to the purpose behind someone searching online or making use of search engines.

There are several different types of keyword intent queries:

Informational – the user has a specific question or is searching for information about a certain topic
Navigational – the user is looking for a specific website and would typically use the brand name as a query
Commercial – these are people that are researching for a future buying decision. For instance, which HVAC system requires the least maintenance? They are looking for more information to complete their transaction intent.
Transactional – the user is navigating various sites with the intention to purchase something.

Understanding search intent is an important part of any SEO strategy including a blogger outreach program.

Intent Keywords Targeted at Buyers

Intent is determined by the terms or keywords people use in their online search. They are generally looking to purchase something when they use terms, like sale, buy, or discount. Terms like DIY indicate that the user is looking for information. Likewise, people using terms like versus or best are fishing for information and comparing products to satisfy a future buying decision.

What is a keyword search analysis?

Keyword research refers to tasks that best define the terms used by your target audience online when searching for the type of products or services you are offering.

Use keyword research as the vehicle to helps you align your content and web pages to search queries.

You can’t simply dream up keywords or use whatever comes your way. This won’t help you rank. Instead, identify a targeted buyer persona and align pain points with search intent.

Keyword research can take anywhere up to a week or two. You can find more about keyword research by using extensive guides and the best research tools.

The ultimate goal for SEO should be to optimize for primary keywords which solves search intent. However, it is very important that you identify the right pain points first. Otherwise, you may end up creating content and optimizing it for questions that nobody is really asking. This would obviously result in little traffic.

Conversely, if you identify the right keywords, but base it on the wrong buyer persona or align it poorly, your site may receive high traffic, but you will end up with fewer conversions.

Optimize Keywords

Once you have the list of keywords, you need to integrate them into your web pages. This should be done in a way that helps establish the purpose of your page to crawlers.

Several tricks can help you here. First, make sure you use the primary keyword at the beginning of the title post (wherever possible). You also want to add it in the first paragraph.

Other placement opportunities are discussed below:

URL – Add keywords to the URL
H1 Title Tag – This refers to the primary heading that is on top of the content body and makes a great place to add primary keywords.
H2-H6 Title Tags – These are the sub-heading titles. You should include LSI or synonyms to primary keywords here.
First Paragraph – It is good practice to add a keyword at the beginning of the first sentence of the first paragraph. Make sure it sounds natural and adds value to your text. Google understands the importance of a keyword when you introduce it right away.
Meta Title – This is the blue link that gets displayed in SERP. You need to make the keyword stand out here while keeping things relevant.
Meta Description – The ad copy that gets displayed in SERPs is called Meta description. Again, the primary keyword should stand out while being relevant and in context.
Image Filenames – Many people skip this step thinking it’s a trivial aspect. Search engines can read the filename even if they cannot interpret images.

It should look something like my-primary-keyword.jpg

Image Alt Tags – This is the text used instead of images for visually impaired readers. It helps them understand the context of images. Remember to use your keywords wherever possible while describing your images in detail.

Purpose of Semantic Keywords

These are words or phrases that are similar to your primary keywords in meaning. Semantic keywords may also be related to your primary keywords if not directly similar. For instance, financial consultant and financial advisor are semantic keywords.

You can improve the relevancy of your content for the particular keyword to Google by adding context to the purpose of your page.

Ideal Content Structure

Content length, diversity, reading level, links, and multimedia are other vital on-page SEO factors that can help you attain a higher ranking for your page.

These are explained in-depth below:

Content Length

Typically, longer content is rewarded by Google with a better ranking position. This is especially true when they are part of content marketing. The length is important because it allows the reader to get in-depth information about their query from one post. A rule of thumb is to follow what the top 3 search competitors are doing. You would not want to write a blog post that is 600 words or 3,000 words if the average word count is 1,200 words.

Diversity

You need to keep your post interesting by using short sentences and lots of white spaces. Don’t forget to add relevant visual graphics, screenshots, images, infographics, and bulleted lists.

Reading Level

Flesch Reading Ease Score measures the difficulty level of reading for your copy. Remarkable web copy would have an easy score between 60 and 70, which is considered good plain English and understood by most 14-year-old students.

Internal Links

These are important to enforce relationships between different pages on your site and make it easier to crawl your site. It also emphasizes the relevance to pillar pages or core topics.

External Links

You can increase Google’s understanding of the topic by linking out to relevant external pages.

Tip – Make sure you always choose an authoritative site to link out to which can add value to the context and visitor.

Multimedia

Content can instantly become interesting with multimedia. Consider using podcasts, videos, and Slideshares to keep visitors engaged in your content longer. A person staying on your page for longer is an excellent search signal.

Step 3: Understanding Off-site SEO

Link building is a major way to improve your search ranking score. It is the biggest ranking signal used by Google to rank individual pages. SEO link building refers to the process of attaining or earning links to your content and site.

Sites that have more backlinks lets Google know that it is a quality resource and people are looking for that information. Google would then rank it higher.

Why Backlinks Are An Important Part Of Your Strategy

Backlinks are hyperlinks from third-party sites to your site. This is something like a citation or an up-vote in favor of the content.

Backlink quality is a major factor in off-site SEO. The confidence vote is more impactful when an authoritative site is doing the linking. Conversely, sites with low authority scores can impact you negatively.

Important Quality Factors in Backlinks

Website Authority

Citation Flow as coined by Majestic tells link popularity
Trust Flow as coined by Majestic determines the trust of a site by measuring quality
URL Rating (UR)
Domain Rating (DR)

Page Relevance

Qualitative Content Check
Topical Trust Flow

Site Credibility

Sites that are HTTPS are considered credible
Moz’s Spam Score determines the risk of penalization

Referring Domains
No organic traffic indicates low quality

Influencer Outreach

This is still the best way to get backlinks from authoritative and credible sites. You can reach out to site owners and show them that your content is relevant to their audience. Other reasons for linking to your content could be:

Informational videos, resource guides, and infographics
Your content is superior to the copy they are currently linking out to
You offer the products or services discussed by them
Your content directly offers solutions to pain points
Your blog post offers a more expansive and unique perspective

Guest Posting

Guest blogging allows you to share your knowledge with others and attain valuable backlinks in the process. Most site owners allow publishing relevant backlinks with appropriate anchor texts.

Local Citation

This is a listing in a local directory that comprises of your business name, number, and address. They can be a great place to acquire backlinks since the listing comprises of a short business profile, social media profiles, and website links.

Backlink Outreach Can Be Helpful

It can be hard work to “earn” links and perform outreach that impacts your SEO positively. Gaining backlinks from authoritative sites is no joke and links from your friend’s websites just won’t cut it. You should consider investing in an extensive backlink outreach program to build links naturally from high authority websites. We also provide SEO content writing services.

OutreachFrog provides competition-beating SEO services in the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, France, China, and beyond!

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