Digital marketers believe that Search Engine Optimization (SEO ) is not what it used to be earlier. But, here’s the accurate declaration of a statement that you often miss out to hear and understand:

YOUR SEO STRATEGY IN 2021 IS NOT JUST ABOUT FOCUSING ON KEYWORDS

Today, most businesses understand the basic concept of SEO and its importance in upholding online business. However, when it comes to curating and executing a sound SEO strategy for your business, focusing on content for your customers is hunting for tedious.

This post will explain what exactly SEO strategy is and why to hire the best SEO agency to build a kickass system to meet your overall content marketing goal.

 So, let’s get started.

What exactly is an SEO strategy?

An SEO strategy (often referred to as an “SEO approach” or “Search engine optimization strategy”) is a comprehensive process of planning, curating, outlining, and implementing needed steps to improvise the search engine rankings.

In simple words, an SEO strategy is a process that businesses need to follow when they desire to get more organic traffic and leads that ultimately boost their business sales.

Having an accurate SEO strategy is essential to keep you on track while creating content for your business. So, instead of just creating content people are “looking” for,hiring an SEO specialist helps curate a strategy that builds content that people are “searching” for.

With this, here are the steps involved to create an effective SEO strategy in 2021

Step #1: Curate a list of Relevant keywords

Search engine optimization revolves around keywords and their density, so keyword research is the first and vital step of any legitimate SEO strategy.

So, if you’re curating an SEO strategy for any business, Google suggests can help you to identify keywords that your targeted customers more search with Google Suggest.

Just start typing a relevant keyword in the search find, and Google will populate you with the list of suggested keywords:

The above results are the bunch of relevant keywords that come straight away from Google. So, now you know what your audience is looking out for. Secondly, long-tail keywords tend to be less competitive as compared to short-tail keywords.

Even though longer keywords have relatively low search volume than shorter keywords, the chances to rank on long-tail keywords are higher.

However, if you wish to check out the search volume and competition level for those keywords, Keyword tools like SEMrush or Ubersuggest will be of great help.

Want to dive deeper into keyword research? Check out the below video:

Step #2: Analyse Google’s first page

So now, you have a list of keywords with you. Next, it’s time to see what’s working for those keywords on Google SERP.

For that, pick any random keyword that you found in Google suggestion.

Now scroll down the top 10 results that you get from Google.

Analyze the results and pen down the pattern that you notice.

The above SEO results show a list of detox drinks

So, if you’re thinking of covering the “detox drink” topic, you have a fair idea that the first page SERP results are filled with a list of detox drinks,and you can publish the list blogs to get in the eyes of Google’s SERP.

Step #3: Build high-quality content

Blogging is one of the most effective ways to rank your long-tail keywords and engage your website users. So, if your business doesn’t have a blog page, consider creating one. After all, each blog post updated on the website is an additional opportunity to rank in SERP.

While building a blog, make sure to keep in mind the below things:

1. Do not include long-tail keywords more than thrice throughout the page, as Google often doesn’t consider exact keyword matches. Too many keywords is a strict “No-No” since it indicates to search engines that you’re stuffing keywords to rank in Google, and they’ll penalize you.
2. Second, always link out to the main pages for which you created content. You can link those pages in the form tags in your CMS.
3. Once you publish your blog post, link it to the parent page that supports the sub-topics. Interlinking the parent page and the cluster will indicate to Google a strong relationship between the focused long-tail keyword and the overarching topic you’re trying to get ranked.

Step #4: Add a Hook to your content

If you’re still looking for ways to improve your search engine rankings in 2021, you need to engage your blog with powerful backlinks.

So, is it still a Google ranking factor? Yes, Backlinks are still an essential factor to rank the content piece on the first page of your search results.

But the question here is: How to do that?

You need to identify why people link to a specific piece of content in your niche and add that “hook” in your content.

Sound’s easy, isn’t it?

Data and statistics are just one type of “Hook” used to build links for your content.

You can even add “hook” in the form of infographics, YouTube videos, Press Releases, and much more.

“Ultimate Guides” is another “Hook” that works excellent these days. When you publish an ultimate guide, your guide itself will act as THE HOOK.

Let me explain you with an example:

Now and then, bloggers will mention “link building” in a post. But they don’t have enough room to cover the entire topic and their key points. In that case, they can link back to your guide to help their readers learn more in-depth.

Sounds Cool!

Step #5 Perform on-page optimization

To rank better, you need to align your content marketing strategy with specific topics, terms, and user context.

Below is the checklist created to help you keep track of your on-page optimization attributes. 

1. Targeted Search Term
2. “Search Engine Result” page analysis to identify the probability of getting ranked.
3. Title Tag
   • Targeted search term 
   • < 60 characters
4. Meta Description
5. H1 Tag & H2 Tag
6. Content Body
   • Does it have a natural keyword density?
   • Does it contain specific keywords in the first 200 words?
   • Does it contain LSI keywords?
7. Does your content length answer the searcher’s query?
8. Is your content structure easily readable and scannable?
9. Content Assets (Does it include rich and interactive media?)
10. Canonical Tag
11. URL structure
12. Internal links and Outbound Links
13. Image and resource optimization
14. Social Metadata optimization

Step #6 Optimize for search intent

Today, search engines have got clever. They’ve shifted their entire focus to user experience than keyword optimization.

Just integrating keywords in your content is not enough. You need to present users with valuable information and facts that match their search query results. Right from backlinks to loading speeds to page domain and trustworthiness, Google will use all these parameters to decide whether your page answers all user queries or not.

Search intent optimization allows you to:

1. Satisfy the need for your targeted audience.
2. Attract qualified leads to your site.
3. Boost your brand awareness.

 So, make sure to optimize your content based on the user experience. You can hire SEO experts who have in-depth experience with SEO practices and content standards to optimize content that matches user’s intent.

Step #7 Compress media files and resources before uploading them to site

It is one of the essential steps in the SEO process and especially for mobile optimization.

As your website grows, so will the images, videos, and related media. Though these visual assets help you to retain your visitor’s attention but simultaneously, it’s essential to take care of the file size you upload to your site.

The bigger file size will make it difficult for an internet browser to render the website. It will even make it difficult for a mobile device to load these images since the bandwidth of these devices is relatively less. So, how can you compress the images and still retain the quality?

You can use compression to reduce the size of resource files like video, images, and gif’s before uploading. Make sure to keep the file size in kilobytes while compressing your media.

So, this is the 7-step SEO strategy to boost your business in 2021. Not sure how to implement them? No worries! You can hire the best SEO servicesthat demonstrate best practices to promote your brand in top SERP results. So, which strategy you’re going to try first today? Are you going to update your older content or try with link building strategy? Do let us know in the comments below.