Looking for a succinct take home strategy that you can implement today? Look no further

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Although just a simple 7 point list - the below points outline the core of every good SEO strategy; Creating great content, optimising your site, and gaining some authoritative backlinks. This can be used on a small scale with a local small business, or at scale with a larger organisation. The principles are the same. The amount of investment you’re willing to make, either in yours or your teams time, or when working with an SEO AGENCY will ultimately mean all the difference. Let’s jump in. 

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1. List out topics relevant to your brand or audience
2. Create lists of long-tail keywords based on these topics
3. Build a central page for each topic
4. Blog, consistently
5. Draft a link building strategy
6. Focus on site speed
7. Measure, report on, and improve your site’s rank continually

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1. List out topics relevant to your brand or audience

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We’ll borrow from design thinking philosophy for this one - first we’ll explore, then we’ll refine. 

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Though keywords (or search terms) still form the core of any SEO strategy, before we get down to the level of individual keywords we need to take a step back and think about actual topics the people in our audience might care about.

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To start, write a short list of words (Less than 10) that relate in some way to what your brand, company or service offers. 

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In this example we’ll use the first example from this short list developed with a furniture company client.

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First on the list is one of the types of furniture they specialise in, and something their target customer is interested in: Teak Furniture.

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“Teak Furniture” is a short tail keyword with good monthly volume. It’s a great overarching topic that this brand would love to rank for - it describes exactly what they sell and where their own expertise lies. 

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2. Create lists of long-tail keywords based on these topics

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We can’t expect to rank for top level topics like “Teak Furniture” immediately - first we’ll have to show Google that we’re a trusted source on the topic. We could set about creating lots of content related to the term (and we will) but we want to be deliberate in how we structure it. Using the term “Teak Furniture” alone will be difficult, instead we’ll create a host of pages that centre around this central topic, supporting it and referencing it. For this we’ll take a look at some short to mid tail keywords:

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We’ll also dive in to long tail keywords such as

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This can be a really fun part of the process. Not just because you’re discovering terms that will ultimately lead to increase traffic but also because you’re discovering the size of the market for these terms, the number of people actually searching for what you offer. 

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It’s also a great chance to showcase & leverage your own expertise, as well connect with your audience on a topic they care about. This smaller pieces of content can also form great Microcontent -smaller snippets that can be shared elsewhere. 

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Thinking about content in this way, investing in long form content first then cutting it up for use on various social media or marketing channels can actually reduce the overall amount of time you or your team spends on social content creation, improving workflows across the business. 

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3. Build a central page for each topic

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As we discussed, trying to rank a single page for Teak Furniture will be difficult. But each of the above terms we’ve discovered represents an opportunity to rank for all the variations, which in turn goes towards increasing the rank for the short tail keyword: Teak Furniture. Here we’re catering to the interest surrounding the central topic - by creating individual pieces of content centred around the mid & long tail keywords. 

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While each piece of content usually features much lower search volume than the short tail keyword, we’re actually in a better position to cater to the exact need of the searcher and meet the customer where they are in their buying journey - the person looking for ‘Teak Garden Furniture Restoration” may be in the market for an accompanying ‘teak furniture oil’ while the person searching ‘Why is teak good for outdoor furniture’ is most likely still in their research phase, and potentially a customer. 

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The end result is that you build rank on all the available traffic surrounding the topic, while building credibility for the main keyword. Gains in these long tail keywords go to support the short tail. When your long tail keywords receive a boost, so does the short tail keyword, lifting your ranking for the whole set.

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4. Blog, consistently

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Blogging is like jogging

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As we all know too well -the only way to see realise gains when exercising is to stay consistent. Whether building muscle or endurance - gains don’t come at once, but rather over the long term. From Google’s perspective, blogging is the same. The task at hand in SEO is not to dump a load of content on your site and forget about it. Google wants to see that you’re engaging your audience over the long term, that you’re not going to disappear tomorrow and you’re regularly updating your website to provide the experience to people searching the web. 

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5. Draft a link building strategy

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So far we’ve covered On-Page SEO - but we can’t forget about Off-Page SEO - of which link-building is the most important aspect. Gaining backlinks to your website from other authoritative websites across the internet. Akin to a popularity contest amongst your competitors, getting links from sites with more authority will generally have a much greater impact. 

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For this we’ll follow a similar strategy to the above: Explore & Refine. 

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• Gaining backlinks from business partners within your niche can be a great place to start. 
• Next are those businesses with which you share an audience but don’t compete directly. 
• Creating microcontent as mentioned above, and sharing on social media
• You can also approach other websites for guest blogging opportunities where you can link back to your own website. 

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6. Focus on site speed

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Google is known to prioritise site speed when it comes to ranking, giving fast sites an advantage over sites that are slower and take longer to load. Because of this, it’s crucial that when it comes to Technical SEO phase - your focus should be on improving your page load speed. 

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Thankfully there’s a host of tools to help with this. Use Google’s own PageSpeedInsights tool to deliver a report to your developer - entering your websites URL will generate an instant report full of fixed, from reducing the amount of code to compressing images. Following these recommendations from Google directly will greatly improve how likely you are to rank. 

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7. Measure, report on, and improve your site’s rank continually

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To return to the adage from earlier, Blogging is like jogging, so to should be your obsession with continual reporting, to improve on your results month after month.Here there’s a few forms, but our favourites include: 

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Weekly SEO Audit - When you first launch your site or first engage in SEO work - you’ll want to make sure your site has a perfect health score and everything is in perfect order from a technical perspective. But things can change, new products or pages get added or deleted and this can result in some unwanted errors that might get missed. A 404 page for example would negatively impact your ranking, so it’s best to catch these early. This does exactly what you’d expect - it shows Google that you’re keeping on top of your content, managing your site effectively and looking after your users. 

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Monthly Backlink Profile

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Keep track of the success of your outreach efforts by reporting how many backlinks you’ve received, and who from - what domain authority those sites have and any new opportunities for further outreach

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Organic Search

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Here you should track the performance of your chosen keywords over time. How has the investment you’ve been making in SEO & Content been impacting your rank, and ultimately traffic from these keywords? 

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Page Report

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Report on the topic pages going after short tail keywords, and the individual blog posts going after long tail keywords. How much traffic are you receiving? Are there patterns to that traffic? (Does it differ by day of week, is it increasing, is it seasonal?) This can also help you plan other campaigns 

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A Starting Point

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The above outline offers a starting point. Embed this kind of work into your internal operations and watch your ranking grow. Improve your internal marketing ops by starting at the top of the funnel and working your way down, producing content that is not just one-and-done but rather can be re-used in many different ways, across different channels. Stay consistent. Measure & improve. 

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We're sure you've seen the ads. "#1 seo ranker agency". If you’re looking for an SEO agency or web design agency to actually help you along, get in touch with us today. If you’ve made it this far through the article it shows you’re serious about improving your position Google - so we’ll be more than happy to give you a FREE website audit, with a free report on where your website currently sits. Just email us directly with the subject line ‘Website Audit’ and we’ll get to work - no obligation free of charge. It’s fair to say we’re a little obsessed with SEO - and we don’t charge for our SEO audits because we believe once you’ve seen the opportunity, you’ll be just as excited to bring us on board. 

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