If you are looking for a tried and tested approach to Search Engine Optimisation that will not only build authority on Google, but also drive traffic to your website and improve your rankings, consider breaking down your strategy into the four following elements:
- On-Page Content, META and Usability
- Off-Page Content and Outreach
- Traditional Activities
- SkyScraper Technique and Link Building
So, let’s go through each section of the strategy:
1) On-Page Content, META and Usability
It is important to ensure that the META DATA such as Page Titles, Descriptions, Headers, ALT Tags and Slugs etc that run behind the web pages is fully optimised to ensure Google crawls the page with maximum effect. META TAGS are snippets of data inserted into the web pages HTML.
It is important that your Robots.txt is functional which ensures information is correctly presented to web robots.
Completing a full usability assessment will ensure that the site has excellent user experience through the web pages. Navigation is very important for successful search.
There are several things to consider:
- Page structuring; consider the readability and structure of your web pages. Are the pages content rich? Is your content keyword rich? Are you linking to valuable third party locations? Is the content relevant to the keyword target and page title?
- Silo Structuring; Google wants to see users offered easy navigation to relevant and key content through the website. Implementing a Silo Structure through your site will enhance navigation and internal linking. Link content to relevant pages within your site and link inside pages to the most relevant top level menu page.
- Menu Structuring; It is important that your site structure is solid which will ensure the base SEO foundations are in place. Structure starts with your main menu. Create your hierarchy within your site ensuring you have between 2 and 7 main menu options. If possible balance the number of sub categories across the main menu and avoid using second tier menu dropdowns.
And remember, “good site structure means great user experience”
It is important to consider Information Architecture as part of On-Page Content Structure.
At this stage you should create a content schedule to include topics to write about and index through your blog. Submitting a 350–400 word blog post each week, using the techniques detailed in this first phase will ensure that fresh keyword rich, relevant content is indexed on Google enhancing your brand reach, link structure and authority.
2) Off-Page Content and Outreach
Although Off-Page Content does tie into the Skyscraper segment to a degree, it also differs in some key points.
The activity here requires relevant branded content to be created and offered to bloggers, journalists and influencers in the hope that they either push the content out to their network, publish the content with links back to your site or offer a Guest Post opportunity (which sometimes incurs additional charges).
Create a list of relevant search terms and using Google Search, source bloggers, journalists and champions within the field and create a prospect list. Once you have created content within their specialist fields, offer the content to your prospect list.
Analyse your core competition, produce detailed backlinks reports of your competition and attempt to link to all the locations that your competition link too, ensuring you have the same exposure as each individual competition and far more exposure collectively.
3) Traditional Activities The SEO activities you have probably heard of such as Directories, Bookmarking and Web2.0 listings play a much lesser role in effective SEO nowadays.
However, Citations are important for your local SEO, so producing certain directories and Web2.0 Citations will enhance your Google My Business reach and Map Authority. It can also be effective to push content to major bookmarking sites allowing direct access to their large communities.
Bookmarking sites also offer low quality links.
4) Skyscraper
Here is how it works:
a) Source existing content on Google that is relevant to your brand. For example if your business is to sell Super Hero Merchandise you could look for;
“10 Most Popular Super Heroes”
“The Top 5 Marvel Movies”
b) Once you have found some content, complete a backlink analysis of that content and assess which location is link worthy to you (which piece of content has the best and most backlinks to it), create a report of the 3 most relevant locations and options. Download the entire backlink network of your 3 chosen locations feeding to the piece of content you have found.
c) Now you have sourced the content and created the backlink report, you now need to create better content. So, instead of producing “10 Most Popular Super Heroes”, produce “20 Most Popular Super Heroes”, ensuring that your content has more information and is more up to date.
The content must be highly factual and relevant.
d) Create a prospect list of all the locations that link to the existing content and upload your list to BuzzStream. Using an outreach technique offer your new content to all prospects for free. You can use a simple outreach email like below:
It is important to mention that this new content is more detailed, more up to date and more resource rich.
The idea here is to replace existing content with fresher, more up to date content in the hope that these third party locations replace the old content with our new content meaning that you secure that link. But also reach out to ALL of the prospects that were feeding into the original content and offer the same fresh content. It can be used to create a LOT of links which ultimately will drive traffic.
And it does work!
Formulate these 4 key elements into a month to month schedule and you have a highly effective SEO strategy, designed to generate traffic, secure links and build authority on Google.
Written by Anthony Godley of Synergy Media
Originally published at wearesynergy.co.uk on February 3, 2017.
Originally published at medium.com