CHAPTER FIVE

SEO Planning

Before you dig into the gritty details of your SEO campaigns, you first need to work through the overall goals and determine the best approach for your business to use. This will include understanding available resources, budgets, limitations, history, and more. While this may not feel like an SEO activity, your campaigns will not succeed if you don’t provide the right foundation.

Strategy Before Tactics

Planning your SEO strategy in advance is the most important step toward effective and successful SEO implementation. Things rarely go perfectly according to expectations, but if you are thorough in your process—if you put an appropriate level of effort into planning without relying too heavily on the accuracy of the plan—you’ll be prepared to adapt to unanticipated obstacles.

Your SEO strategy should generally address the following components:

  1. Understanding the business you’re working with and its objectives

  2. Assessing web development, content, analytics, and management resources:

    1. Identifying critical technical SEO issues

    2. Identifying the most efficient and highest-impact improvements

    3. Prioritizing tactics and the phasing of implementation

  3. Developing a content strategy to efficiently and effectively address the needs of users related to your products/services and the value that they provide

  4. Tracking, measuring, and refining on a timeline that is supported by resources and overall business objectives

Developing an effective SEO strategy ...

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