At this point, you might have gone over an in-depth analysis of your website. At the end of our last article, we gave a brief overview of a website strategy after analyzing our website. This series is mainly for existing sites that are aiming for improvement. However, we are adding a section to help you develop your new website’s strategy. That way, shortly after you launch, you may have a head start on your marketing strategy for your website.
For existing sites that have gone through this analysis, it is now time to lay down an execution plan. When you put together a plan or strategy for your Website’s success, it can seem overwhelming at first, but when you piece it together in steps, it makes it more accessible. Taking it down from one domino effect in each segment to the next, it moves things into action and thus delivers results on your website’s performance.
A successful website strategy for SEO not only delivers more traffic to your website but also brings more customers to your doorstep. When more customers are on your doorstep, the more you can grow your business. So why not create a fresh plan today and reach a successful website and, most importantly, a successful business?
Let’s get to it and have some fun.
For New Websites, After Thorough Research
For a new website, the first thing you need to do is to research your website and niche. How long does it take to make a website? What makes a successful one? There are a lot of questions on what to do and how to do it. First, you need to begin a website research report to calibrate a successful strategy for your new website. You need to review a massive amount of information before assembling a Design and building your website. A website research report is a key website strategy for new websites to establish goals and standards for your new website.
Before you start your website research report, you need at least an idea of a brand for your business. What is your business name, do you have a logo, color scheme, typography and mission statement around your business? Is the domain that you want for your business available? Do you have a business plan? At a minimum, having these is a prerequisite to a website research strategy. Once you have these critical items, you can carefully research your niche and competitors.
Studying Your Industry
Your website research report should start with the introduction of your business: your plan, mission statement, and all things related to your branding. Once you have a compelling idea on how your business is going to operate, then you will be in a good place to research the industry on the digital side. Research should already be done in your niche during your business planning, but you can do it here too.
Look to see how your industry is doing. Is it struggling or is it thriving? Are there missing pieces of the puzzle? What will make your products or services different in the industry? How is your industry doing in the digital scape? What does the average website look like, and what do they do on Search Engines? Answering these few questions can open up many doors and hours of notetaking. When putting this together, take note on the answers to these few questions and calibrate an analysis of what needs to be done at the industry level with your new website.
Studying Your Competitors
Depending on your current industry, competitors vary at different levels. We recommend looking at the very bare bones when studying your competitors at the local levels and select the top 3 local competitors in your niche and study them carefully. Next, you need to grab the regional leaders in your region. Grab the top three competitors at this level and take more notes. Following this, you go on to the highest performers at the State or Province level and, lastly, throughout your country. Grab 12 competitors and go from top to bottom of the best performers.
However, how do you find this information? We recommend looking into a Website Auditing software to conduct such research. You will know your local and maybe even your regional competition. However, you may now know who the State or Province level competitors and top-tier competitors are. This website auditing software is available all over the web. Once you grasp how your competitors are doing, you can benchmark not from top to bottom. Right then and there, you can consider a short-term and long-term website strategy.
Analyze their performance. Look into how Google and other search engines view their Website Health. Look into their website, is it easy to navigate? Does it look good? How can your website do better than their website? Look into this in three different standpoints: web Design, Key Features, and SEO. When you combine the strategy, you should know how to do better than your competitor.
Putting The Strategy Together
Now that you have established who you are and analyzed your industries and competitors, it’s time to draft this plan. In each section of your report, detail how your website will do better than what you discovered in each vital piece. After reporting your findings in your Industry Research, write down what you found and how you can make yourself stand out in the industry-specific research. When you have finished looking into your competitors, write down your findings and follow up with the three different standpoints about how you can do better than them.
When You Build Your Website & Launch Your Website
Building out based on your strategy simplifies your website’s Design and Development processes. If you follow the proper procedures on your Website based on your findings and it adheres to how SEO works and, of course, human psychology, you will get live before you know it! When you are live, you need to get right on to the process of Website Analysis so you can get started. Go through the process of getting a Technical Review of your website using auditing software.
For Current Websites After Careful Analysis
If you have followed the Website Analysis article we wrote earlier, it is a great time to assemble a website strategy. In our previous article, we briefly reviewed what would look like a good website strategy known as a “blueprint” for your success. The blueprint will help you get more traffic and paying customers if you follow it step by step.
In it, we recommend going through a Website SEO Audit and getting a report back with a Grade on your website. We think that 92% or above keeps you in the company of the top 10% of websites concerning the best technical websites on the internet. To set yourself up for success, instead of jumping into your organic search and implementing more content, it is recommended to address Website Health problems immediately. Make sure your systems are consistent, of course, but also that you are presenting your website well to Google and other search engines.
No More Technicalities, Just Basic Marketing!
Once you finish this, use an Organic Search and Content Marketing strategy. That way, you are now talking about the topics to help your customers solve the problems they are looking to solve. You get their trust, and with the right Website Health and targets, you get the rank you need to get more customers. It is essential to spread the word. Ensure your internet listings and social media are connected to your website and post updates based on your Content Marketing Strategy. Once this is done, contact other website owners, publications, and news outlets to spread the word about your business.
Following this, keep maintaining what it is that you have accomplished. You will find that doing all of this can be a big chore, but a job that many can do for you. That is assembling the team for your Website’s success.
Getting the Team Together
Know that you cannot do all of this alone unless you want your time to be consumed. It will consume your time and be very hard to maintain once properly done correctly. Finding the right team can be challenging if you do not have one. A reputable web design company with great reviews can be the right choice, but a good web design company will want to establish a relationship with you. Be sure to have someone in your corner who will work with you and has a positive attitude and a means of getting things done. It may not even be a company but also someone you know.
Having a team or at least a support circle will put you in a much better position than having you do it all on your own. You have so many marbles in the day, and it is much worth it to get all of the help you can get. If website design, development, and SEO are not in your skillset, it takes time and effort to master. Now, if this happens to be your only choice, there is no shame as we believe it is one of the highest skill sets to have. It is a choice to pick up the phone and talk to that particular person or company today. You would be delighted to see how far you get with helping hands. Otherwise, take one thing at a time. Starting with your site health.
On-Page Website SEO: Site Health Improvements
Website Health is a massive prerequisite for ranking your website on search engines. Let’s say you are training for a bodybuilding competition; you might want all of your attributes to stand out for the judges. Getting this piece of your website strategy done does you a massive service over time. The same thing can be applied to your website, and Google and other search engines are the judge. Website Health goes through many facets of what makes a successful website.
The most common tasks of Website Health fixes go from Website Speed issues, no Meta Data being reported to Google, no Sitemap, Duplicate Content, and Websites not resolving to HTTPS. I would say if these issues are common for you, fix them immediately! These issues are massive decision-makers for search engines to derail websites from their positions. It is essential to get these fixes done at your earliest convenience. When it comes to your Site Health report, you want to go into the order of Severity of Problems from the most significant problems to the smallest of them.
Website Health needs to be a top priority at all times in your website success strategy!
Severity Levels
Let’s go over the three severity levels of your Website Health:
- Errors: Having errors is a severe thing to resolve as it gives search engines a reason for your website not to rank. The most common errors are not having a Sitemap, a slow website, Duplicate Content, Mixed Content, Error Pages, and a Website Not Resolving to HTTPS. Website Site Error tasks should be an all-hands-on-deck motion.
- Warnings: Having warnings is basically an important task for you to fix on your website, but it not serious enough to cause widespread mania-like Errors. Fix these of course, as they may prevent you from ranking higher. Most common Warnings might be a Meta Description or Title being too long or not having enough content on your page.
- Notices: These are more minor but essential issues around your website. The most common we see are that it takes more than two clicks to get to a particular page or some pages are not being linked to from any page on the website. It would be a massive plus to get these issues resolved on your website, too.
Note that we mentioned widespread mania on Errors, we mean urgency, but to not panic. Just take it at one problem at a time; before you know it, you will not have Errors, and you will be working on Warnings. And then Notices. Do not sweat, solve one problem at a time, and your Website Health Score will go up.
Get a Site Health Score Strategy for 92% As The Light At The End of the Tunnel.
We believe having a 92% or above Site Health Score on multiple Website Auditing Software on the internet is the right spot you want to be at. Anything higher is more gold for you to rank higher. Now that we have addressed Website Health, let’s briefly jump into the next Website Strategy for success: Keyword Research and Content Marketing! We hope you are getting excited because we are!
On-Page Website SEO: Keyword Research & Targeting
This portion of this article will be short and sweet! Before jumping into Content Marketing, you might want to look into what your viewers want. Customers want to do business with you because they have a problem, and your products and services offer them a solution to their problem. You can only be transactional when you are less commercial in your approach and try to contact people and get them involved about why buying such goods and services is in their best interest. Being informative to them validates them instead of screaming pick me; I’m the best solution!
Doing keyword research will help you create a Content Marketing strategy for your customer to help solve their problem. Therefore, we will review the best volume keywords in our Website Analysis article. Pick some that have a low difficulty surrounding a topic you are confident in discussing and helping your customer solve their problem. In a later article, we will discuss the Anatomy of a Keyword. But for right now, you need a healthy mix of Informative, Transactional, Commercial, and Navigational keywords on your target strategy. The more volume and less difficulty, the sooner you will rank.
To implement this properly, ensure the focus keyword you want to rank for is in your Meta Title and Description. Ensure your focus keyword is in your article, page, or product and mentioned at a proportionate amount of time. Ensure the keyword is used in the right area. If it is a keyword meant for a landing page rather than a Product, don’t target it on a Product. Ensure your keyword is in your page’s <h1></h1> Tag. Ensure you also add relative keywords around that keyword and link to pages close to the topic at hand. Let’s dive deeper into this in Content Marketing.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is king and will go nowhere other than to remain at the top of any form of marketing. It is essential to have a Content Marketing Strategy on your Website Strategy. Now that you have a Keyword list that you want to rank for, make sure they are going on the proportionate areas of your website.
We recommend targeting your difficult, high-volume keywords on your website’s Main Pages, Categories, and Products. These pages are not changing and remain on the top priority of your navigation system; thus, over time, the pages will be recognized well if they are in good proportions and you are helping your customers. We recommend all of the tier difficulty Keywords no matter the volume on Blog Posts as you might be surprised how much you will rank when writing a terrific “how-to” article or something similar for your customer.
Don’t Be a “Pick Me”, Establish a Meaningful Connection!
Make sure all of your pages are connecting to your customers. Ensure your products are convincing enough to buy while solving your customers’ problems as the friendly, informative friend they seek. Watch for Navigation on your website and ensure you can implement navigational keywords for anyone looking in a particular area. Get an Article Writing Campaign going, at least 3 times a week to establish a good rapport with Google and your customers. When updating your content, share it with your family, friends, social media, and all other links.
Post frequently on your social media profiles, and ensure all messaging is similar to the mission you are putting on with your home base in the website. If you can, film videos, take photos organically, and never use stock. Make sure you are as original as possible and engage with your customers. If you get your customer’s trust from a successful content marketing campaign, you can’t accomplish nothing on your sales sheet! Speaking of Listings and Social Media. Now that we have Constant Fixes being done on your Site Health. You are also actively putting up content to help your customers more. Let’s jump into additional ways to get your message out there.
Off-Page Website SEO: Listing Management & Social Media
It’s time to get some AUTHORITY on your website. Let’s get Search Engine and Human Trust! Everyone forgets to have their listings and Social Media updated with their website link these days. It is very common for us to go in and fix for our website clients. You are crossing into the more difficult side of the success of your website. That is because the work you are doing is off of the website and on other platforms. When your site health and content marketing are on point, and you get the keywords coming in, it is time to go on an off-page website strategy. Off-Page Strategy or Off-Page SEO are digital marketing implementations done off your website.
In this portion, you need to ensure your listings are pointing to your website and all information is consistent and accurate across the board for your business. On your listings, if possible, post your updates and make sure you connect with customers who may discover you on Google/Bing search or on other Listing websites. You need to ensure that social media is consistently flowing with content to get your customers to the website or your location to get them to the Website that works and is fast with content that connects to the customer.
See how all of this is connected in each step. Well, on the next one, you will put in a lot more effort, which will help you big time over time.
Off-Page Website SEO: Outreach Strategy & Link Building
The last portion, before maintaining all of the work you have done and continuing the work, is Link Building. At this point, your Website is fast, efficient, great looking, speaks to your customers in a way your competitors can’t, and you have all your additional listings properly implemented. You have come so far each step of the way that I cannot comprehend how much more you can accomplish. Getting to this step is a marathon to run, just as long as the marathon you were just running.
In this step, you will reach out to Publications, News Media, and additional niche websites in your industry to get referral traffic. This is link-building. Link building is a science and needs to be done in consistent moderation over time. You need to understand Backlinks, Referring Domains, and Domain Authority.
Backlinks are links made from other websites that link back to your website. Referring Domains are the websites that are linking to your website. Domain Authority is a key metric in SEO that dictates the likelihood that a website will rank organically well or not.
Backlink Profile
When building a great backlink profile, you must understand the key metrics. You can have all of the backlinks, but if you do not have quality domains linking to your website, The higher the Authority, the more chance you will rank for more keywords and organic traffic. Please consider this process as getting people to refer you for a job; the higher their merit, the higher the chance you get the job or result you want.
Great referring domains have a lot of traffic coming to them, which gives you a lot of referral traffic. They also have an Authority score of their own, and the higher their Authority and how many backlinks they give to your website, the higher your authority gets. It is essential to reach out to publications with higher authority and good traffic to increase your Authority score. To do this, you must do it the old-fashioned way: get a hold of that website owner or person responsible for the content and establish a relationship. Let them know how your content helps customers and why it should be linked on their website as a citation of merit.
Most of the time, as long as you have followed the preceding procedures, you will get the site owner’s trust and earn the backlink. Keep building your network digitally; soon, you will find more Authority on your website and, eventually, more traffic. And with more traffic, you know what follows next!
How Far We Have Come With This Strategy
At this point, we have done everything besides adding a feature or two; you have put together a website strategy from top to bottom to get you thriving. We added a lot of pointers to each facility of website strategy for SEO Results to help you get in the right direction. The key here is to take this and go through each step with your plan to get your Site Health score high and earn keywords and backlinks. We have now put together a successful website strategy that will get you optimal results, and trust us, with this strategy, we have seen many results!
The Seduction of Cheating
This is far from over. In this section, we want to go over a couple of things. Do not just skip a section just because things get complicated. Please go through it and solve the problem one at a time. Don’t cheat! Never cheat because you will only be cheating yourself. If you have a hard time with a problem with your Site Health, a website development team that does not want to see any cheating is there for you or a knowledgeable friend can help, and there is always YouTube! Don’t skip a Site Health fix because it is hard! find the means to fix it, even if it is not you who does it.
Don’t just use ChatGPT to write your articles and copy for you, do it organically and be original. Don’t use stock images because you are afraid of a camera or not confident in your drawings. Make meaningful content that will connect to your customer and help them solve their problem so well that they trust you in your niche above anyone else. Make yourself stand out properly.
Don’t just buy your backlinks, and don’t go through the fruits of the hard labor of having your listings and social media on point. Share your content, and be passionate about it! It is your passion and what you love to do here; don’t let something faceless take it from you. Most importantly, don’t cheat yourself. It’s like cheating on a diet; you are only hurting yourself in the long haul. Even if you succeed, the eventual fate of punishments, such as being flagged by Google, can result from cheating.
So take it one step at a time with your Website Strategy for success!
Maintaining Your Strategy Over Time
The marathon of your Site Health, Content Marketing, and Off-Page Networking is over. Now, the time for you to maintain your status on the web begins. At this point, you should have some traffic if your website strategy is done in the correct order. You will need to keep going at it with your Site Health. We recommend making one day a week to fix any Site Health problem so you can focus on the time-consuming tasks other than this and running your business.
Keep posting content! Post everywhere from your website to all corners of Social Media! This is about getting your ideas and your concept out there; do not stop doing it now that you have succeeded. There are infinite questions and needs from your customers, and it is essential to keep the connection fresh. Do not stop reaching out to others in your network and off of your network to share your content to.
The idea here is to maintain but also watch for more growth. We introduced a Website Research idea of 12 competitors in your niche. Try to see where you are by getting to this step of your website strategy to know where you fit in the niche. You might be competing with much bigger fish, and it is time to establish new benchmarks. Beautiful things start to happen when you have new benchmarks and goals, like in any business or life. Pursue that goal to no end and do it at your best with an effective website strategy.
Putting It All Together
We mentioned a lot of how-tos in an article dedicated just to drafting a Website Strategy. This is done this way because we want to provide real examples of what you will run into instead of being broad about it. We prefer to be straightforward than just having you leave with many questions. Our team hopes you follow each step in each order, whether you are just starting up or want to improve your existing website. We hope that some pointers and small advice, like getting a team and not cheating yourself, will help you on your journey.
If you like this article or feel it is valuable, please feel free to share it with your friends, family, and colleagues anywhere and everywhere. We are a passionate web development team keen on getting results for our customers and our community. If you need any help or have suggestions, please contact me on (440) 571-1011 or contact us today. We hope this Website Strategy article helps you accelerate your business digitally!
