What is an SEO marketing strategy and why is it important?

 An SEO marketing strategy is a brand’s overarching approach to improving search engine rankings to drive more organic traffic. When most people think of SEO, they think of things like keywords and backlinks, and these things are components of a good SEO strategy. But they aren’t going to be as effective as they could be unless there is a detailed plan behind the way they are implemented. A true SEO marketing strategy goes beyond individual tactics to think holistically about the way your brand is represented online. It puts you in control of what kinds of searches your brand is represented in, which content is shown to users at different stages of the customer journey, and how your value proposition and overall brand stack up to your competition on SERPs.

Technical SEO: Technical SEO is the nuts-and-bolts part of your overall SEO marketing strategy. Defined briefly, it’s the process of keeping your website’s structure and content aligned with technical search engine requirements. Strong technical Seostrategy allows search engines to easily find, crawl, and index the pages on your site — a key part of earning SERP rankings. There’s a lot to know when it comes to technical SEO. (Let us know if we can help – we can include an SEO audit in any client engagement!)

Topic clusters: Keywords are important, but your topic clusters are the foundation of your keyword strategy. When you decide on the high-level topics your brand should have authority and presence for, you can be more intentional about the keywords you target. When you use topic clusters to build your SEO marketing strategy, you can cover a wide range of keywords that fall under one cluster, creating pillar content (more on that later) covering the main topic and linking out to more of your content that covers subtopics within that cluster. This approach enables you to rank for both high-volume short keywords and long-term, niche keyword phrases that fall under it.

There are many reasons old content may drop in rankings or lose traffic over time. Google ranking factors change, content becomes outdated, competitors create new content, and Google prefers fresh content overall. But none of these make your old content unusable — in fact, keeping your existing content updated is a smart way to boost new traffic and create compounding ROI on your content over time. It also ensures your SEO marketing strategy isn’t dragged down by content that’s no longer performing. Backlinks occur when other (preferably high-authority) sites link back to your content, driving more organic traffic. There are a lot of methods you can find out there for intentionally building backlinks, but really, it’s just a long game. The best way to earn backlinks is to create consistently great content over a long period of time.

Keyword targeting: Keywords are words and phrases commonly searched for on Google. They’re one of the main determining factors in your SERP rankings because, when used correctly, they tell search engine crawlers what your content is about. Keyword targeting requires more strategy than it did in the past. Google penalizes brands who simply stuff keywords into content with little meaning, and they use sophisticated AI tools to determine which content under a certain keyword is the most relevant and valuable for users. The best way to ensure your keyword targeting is on the mark is to perform thorough keyword research. Tools like SEMRush and Ahref make this easier than ever. Check out this quick tutorial on SEMRush’s Keyword Magic Tool to see how it works.

Pay attention to search intent: Aligning your content with user search intent increases the likelihood that they’ll engage and ultimately find value from it. The intent is an important part of making sure the right content gets to the right customer at the right time. Ask yourself: what are people looking for when they search for a specific keyword or phrase? Look at the existing SERP to see what’s already ranking high. These processes will tell you, for example, whether to create an in-depth guide or a quick punchy list for a target keyword. Even more importantly, can help you understand where your potential customer is in the buying process when they interact with your content.