In an ever-changing landscape of best practices, tools, and marketing services, Google algorithm updates can quickly become overwhelming to marketers to choose where to begin SEO and what areas to focus on for the best ROI.

Before embarking on any SEO tactics, having a sound strategy can help define a path and expected outcomes. A comprehensive SEO strategy should include the following items. 

SEO Strategy & Planning

  • Audience Definition – Who is coming to your website? More importantly, who do you want to come to your website?
  • Website, Rankings & Google Tools Audit – Part of a sensible SEO strategy will be a firm understanding on your current state of affairs.
  • Goals & Objectives – Having defined goals and objectives can help keep you focused on the right path along your optimization journey.
  • Competitor Landscape – Having an eye on competitors also allows you to benchmark your SEO performance, plan content effectively and discover new challengers.
  • The Keyword Universe – The universe in which we draw our target terms can be very large. Choosing the appropriate terms is essential.
  • Content Marketing Plan – SEO only exists in what search engines can read from your website. To rank a webpage for a keyword, you have to have content published around that term.
  • Local SEO (if applicable) – If your business has one or more physical locations where customers would visit to engage with you, then local SEO is another layer of needed optimization. 

After the Strategy & Planning portion of a program, you naturally dive into tactical execution:

SEO Execution

  • Technical SEO – Website and server optimizations that can be executed to improve your results within search engines. 
  • Offsite SEO – Offsite SEO or off-page SEO refers to listings and linkbacks outside of your website that will still impact your search engine results.
  • Local SEO (if applicable)
  • Content Development
  • Measurement
  • Refinement

What isn’t SEO Strategy?

Many other disciplines are sometimes lumped in with SEO. Digital marketing is a large umbrella, and while SEO falls under that, it is easy to confuse related subjects.

Here are things that fall under digital marketing that are not SEO:

  • Conversion Rate Optimization
  • Social Media Strategy
  • PPC Advertising
  • Marketing Automation

Risdall’s guide to an Effective SEO Strategy will explain the main concepts everyone should understand about SEO and the essential components that should be in every SEO plan.

Click here to download the eBook and talk with our team about optimizing your SEO efforts!