SEO Strategy: 6 Steps to Increased Visibility on Google

1. What is an SEO strategy?
2. Create a successful and sustainable SEO strategy in 6 steps
3. Checklist: SEO strategy and measures

If you want to be at the top of the search results for your topic on Google, you need a well-thought-out SEO strategy. And not just when the digital content plan is already set in stone. A successful SEO strategy should be integrated into every digital marketing concept from the start. And not only that: In line with the motto “Bake SEO into the product”, strategic Search engine optimization (SEO) should be thought about during product development and strategy.

That now sounds like a lot of work and it is! But where should you start? In the following, we will show you based on 6 steps and several examples how you can set up a sustainable and long-term effective SEO strategy for your online marketing. 

What is an SEO strategy?

Simply put, an SEO strategy consists of three key elements:

1. The analysis, elaboration and prioritization of SEO goals
2. The planning and implementation of suitable SEO measures (Onpage and Offpage) and
3. Continuous performance monitoring and reporting.

You should always keep in mind that an SEO strategy is never completely finished or even definitively defined. Google (and thus also search engine optimization) is constantly evolving. Therefore, a successful SEO action plan must be consistently questioned and adjusted.

SEO classification into Onpage, Offpage and Technology

Create a successful and sustainable SEO strategy in 6 steps

An SEO concept consists not only of a Keyword research and corresponding blog articles or landing pages. Rather, one starts from the very beginning: Understanding what the search intention of the target group is. This helps in the long run to not only increase organic traffic, but to sustainably win new users for yourself.

The first six steps to set up a successful and sustainable SEO strategy for your website are:

1. Knowing the goals and search intention of the target group
2. Competitor analysis
3. Content and keyword strategy
4. Analysis & SEO audit
5. SEO measures
6. Monitoring, Reporting and Adjustment

Six steps to a successful and sustainable SEO strategy

SEO strategy step 1: Knowing the goals and search intention of the target group

First of all, you should lay the foundation for all further actions and classify SEO in the marketing mix: What is the goal of your website? Do you primarily want to inform users, strengthen your brand or sell something? These SEO goals must be specific, measurable, attractive, realistic and timed (short: SMART). And for a very simple reason: You should regularly measure the success of your SEO strategy and adjust the individual measures accordingly.

However, it is also important to understand the contribution of SEO to the overall success of the company. If the SEO goals match those of the company, implementing the measures later will be easier.

However, just focusing on the maximum number of clicks is not enough. What also matters is the quality of the generated traffic: What percentage leads to the desired conversion (purchase, registration, etc.)? What percentage bounce right away (bounce rate)?

The second part of the SEO strategy foundation is therefore understanding the target groups themselves. The search intention (Eng.: Search Intent) is the intention with which users enter a search query in Google. And a website that does not meet the search intention of its target group, according to the current state of search engine optimization, has little chance of good rankings or even satisfied users from the outset. For your strategy this means specifically: What is the search intention of your target group when they search for your relevant topics or terms?

Google distinguishes four fixed defined search intents: Know, Go, Do, Buy. Understanding which of these four you need to serve with what content is the basic prerequisite for a successful SEO strategy.

SEO strategy step 2: Competitor analysis

As with all online marketing measures, you should also know your competition well when creating an SEO strategy. However, competition is not always the same as competition. Firstly, always check which pages are already ranking in the top 3 for your important topics and terms. It doesn't always have to be the direct and already known competitor. Sometimes it is just a well-written blog article optimized for the search intention of the search term or a newcomer to the industry that you hadn't even had on your radar yet.

And what do you have to do to catch up with your competitors or even outdo them? Whether in competitive sports, on the job or even in search engine optimization - almost always the same applies: Find out what makes the competition so successful and then do it even better.

And this is now very easy, you just need the right SEO tools. Semrush for example, offers a whole range of possibilities to identify, analyze and compare competitors. For example, you can compare your domain with one or more competitors using the “Keyword Gap” function and find new Keyword ideas or fields that you haven't yet covered in terms of content. But you can also use tools like Sistrix and Ahrefs to analyze a competitor's URL with one click (or rather copy-paste) and thus, among other things, take a close look at their rankings and visibility.

Competitor analysis with Semrush

SEO strategy step 3: Content and keyword strategy

You have smart SEO goals, know the search intention and your competition. You can now build on this. With a keyword strategy, you define the focus of your content, which should become visible for the right users at the right time and at the right place (= search query in Google). To develop a keyword strategy, you first need to conduct a Keyword research. The aim here is to find the most relevant search terms for you with the highest search volume. The higher the search volume of a keyword, the more often it is searched on average per month. Therefore, it is the most important indicator, which terms your target group uses and which keywords your content should be optimized for.

Example: You write an article about the steps of an SEO strategy. Before doing this, check all possible spellings and sub-topics that your target group might be searching for in Google (“SEO strategy, SEO concept, SEO plan” etc.). Their search volume gives you an idea of which terms and topics you should focus on. You can find the search volume with various Keyword research tools.

Since the topic of keyword strategy would have deserved its own article to cover it sufficiently, we have summarized the two most important prerequisites for your sustainable content and SEO strategy:

1. The Main Keyword:Each URL of your domain should be optimized for a unique main keyword. This is the main topic of the page and usually has the most search volume. It signals to Google what you primarily want to rank with the page and should therefore be included in all important content parts. It is important that not several pages are optimized for the same main keyword, as these would then compete for the best ranking (=keyword cannibalization).
2. The Search Intention: Just because a keyword has a high search volume, it does not yet have to fit the search intent of the page. One should not lose the focus of one's content on the essentials, in the hope of generating more traffic through the high search volume of the keyword.

Example: This article is optimized for the main keyword “SEO strategy”. A related keyword (“SEO analysis”) also has a high search volume, so it could be mentioned as often as possible in the content. However, the chances of actually ranking for this term in Google are relatively slim. Why? Users who search for “SEO analysis” do not have the search intention to first read a long article on “SEO strategy”, but want to dive directly into the topic searched for - and vice versa.

The easiest way to find the right keywords is SEO tools like e.g. Keywordtool, Moz, Semrush, Ahrefs or Sistrix. Here you get suitable keyword recommendations based on their search volumes, the most common user questions around the topic and information about which search intention Google assumes with the respective keyword.

But also with Google's in-house tools like Google Search Console, Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends or Google Suggest (also: Google Autocomplete) you can research relevant keywords for your content.

SEO strategy - keyword research and search interest determination using Google Trends

SEO strategy step 4: Analysis and SEO audit

To complete your strategic SEO planning, you still need an inventory of your current website and SEO performance. This opens up many optimization potentials that should be included and prioritized in the action plan. In addition, you define the starting situation against which you can later measure your SEO goals.

Since one could also quickly fill several articles on this topic, you first get an overview of the most important SEO analyses:

1. Performance Check: Get an idea of how your website is currently performing in organic search. How have your clicks, impressions and ranking positions changed over the last year? What are your best and worst performing URLs? Which keywords are you already covering with which URLs? The simplest way to do this is in the Google Search Console, which prepares all this information for you first hand.
2. SEO Audit: With professional SEO Onpage Tools, such as Ryte, you analyze not only your rankings but also the existing content, the technical basis of your website and which goals have been achieved so far. It allows you to identify specific weaknesses of the current SEO status quo, from which in turn specific instructions for the next step arise.

SEO audit and performance analysis in Ryte

SEO Strategy Step 5: SEO measures

A long way to the goal, but it pays off. SEO success only works data-driven. All SEO measures, which you define and prioritize based on the analyses carried out, bring you more visibility, better rankings and thus also more users or customers in the long term.

The SEO measures within the SEO strategy development include among others:

• Onpage SEO
• Technical SEO
• Offpage SEO

Onpage SEO refers to all optimizing measures undertaken directly on a website. On the one hand, this includes the keyword optimization of all SEO-relevant contents: Title tag and meta description, text, headings, alternative texts of images, URL, etc. But here, too, it is important to consider the search intention of the users and prepare your contents accordingly. This not only increases rankings and traffic, but ultimately also clicks and conversions.

In addition to direct content optimization, internal linking also counts as one of the onpage SEO measures. The internal linking is not only essential to make content accessible to Google and users. The degree and number of internal links to a page is also an important indicator for the search engine whether and how relevant the content is in the overall context. Example: If a page is linked very often and in prominent places (e.g. navigation, homepage), Google also recognizes the importance of this content. If a page, on the other hand, only has one internal and rather less prominent link (e.g. text link from a single URL), its weighting is correspondingly lower than other contents.

In summary, you should integrate the following Onpage SEO measures into your SEO strategy:

• Keyword and content optimization: Meta data (title tag and meta description), headings, text, images (file size, alternative texts), URL, etc.
• Optimization of internal linking: Accessibility of all content, linking of all relevant pages in the navigation, keyword optimization of link or anchor texts, linking to further content, etc.

The second important building block of a successful SEO strategy implementation is technical SEO. As the name suggests, this is mainly about search engine optimization of the technical foundation of a website. This is the prerequisite for all further SEO measures, as this ensures the crawlability and indexability of your content.

You should address these optimizations in technical SEO first:

• URL structure (hierarchically arranged, meaningful and readable)
• Robots.txt (Definition for the search engine which URLs of the website should be crawled)
• XML sitemap (Listing of all available pages for the search engine)
• Website structure (User experience, comprehensible navigation, etc.)
• Structured data (standardized format to make content more understandable for the search engine)
• Canonicals (each URL should have a canonical URL that either refers to itself or in the case of a duplicate to the original URL)
• Page speed (the loading speed is an important ranking signal and should therefore be accelerated)
• Mobile first (Google indexes and ranks websites based on Mobile, not Desktop)
• Core Web Vitals (important Google ranking factor that measures the user experience of your website using three metrics)

You can analyze the status of the listed points with SEO tools like for example ScreamingFrog. The ScreamingFrog SEO Spider is a website crawler that can represent the relevant technical factors clearly. Among other things, this can be used to identify broken links, redirect chains, canonicals, and the response time. Also useful is the visualization of the crawled website structure and its quality in the “force-based crawl diagram”.

Visualization of the website structure and internal linking with Screaming Frog

In addition to content and technical search engine optimization, you should also think about Offpage SEO in parallel. This includes all SEO measures which can take influence on the ranking and visibility of your own website on other websites. The most important levers include backlinks (linking from other websites to your website), good brand marketing and social signs (external links from social media platforms through e.g. shared links on Twitter).

SEO Strategy Step 6: Monitoring, Reporting and Adjustment

As mentioned several times at the beginning: SEO is never final or even finished. Rather, it is a constant cycle of action planning, monitoring and action adjustment. It is extremely helpful if you have your most important SEO metrics in view at all times. On the one hand, you can measure your SEO success, on the other hand, it also facilitates your analysis in the event of SEO problems. A successful and sustainable SEO strategy should thus always plan monitoring right from the start.

In order to get a comprehensive picture of your organic success, you should initially focus on the most important SEO metrics.

• Visibility: Visibility indexes, impressions, ranking position, number of keywords in the top 10 and top 100, number of ranking URLs, Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
• Keyword monitoring: Ranking position of individual keywords, development of keyword segments, lost and won rankings, number of keyword cannibalizations
• Traffic monitoring: Organic traffic in general and of individual content clusters, impressions, clicks, conversions (goal completions) through organic traffic
• Technical monitoring: Core Web Vitals, Page speed, Mobile-Experience, Status Codes, Canonicals, Meta Tags, Hreflang

Sistrix visibility index as a possibility for monitoring

The individual SEO KPIs are very different and have a different meaning and relevance depending on the goal setting. Therefore, you should ideally define them in advance with all stakeholders (especially the C-level).

A coordinated and goal-based SEO monitoring and reporting helps you to continuously improve your data-driven SEO strategy and thus also your website.

Checklist: SEO strategy and measures

1. Knowing the goals and the search intention of the target group:
   • Integration of SEO in the marketing mix and in the general corporate strategy
   • Formulation of SMART SEO goals
   • Understanding the target group and their search intention
2. Competitor analysis:
   • Top-3 rankings for the most important terms
   • Analysis and comparison of competitor domains
3. Content and keyword strategy:
   • Keyword research and identification of the most important terms and their search volumes
   • Definition of a unique main keyword per content (URL)
   • Analysis of the search intention
4. Analysis & SEO audit:
   • Analysis of the previous organic website performance
   • SEO audit and identification of the SEO status quo
5. SEO measures:
   • On-Page SEO
   • Technical SEO
   • Off-Page SEO
6. Monitoring, reporting and adjustment:
   • Goal-based definition of the relevant SEO metrics with all stakeholders
   • Continuous reporting and data-driven SEO measure adjustment.