Building an Effective SEO Plan
It’s all about goals, strategies, and tactics
Many “professionals” say they are Search Engine Optimization experts, but how do you know? Are they asking the right questions? Do they have insight and information they need to get you what you are looking for? Results!
The most important part of your SEO plan is having clearly defined goals. What do you want out of your site besides just “more traffic”? More visitors are great, but if you only serve “local”, then someone across the country looking at your site doesn’t help your bottom line. Are you looking for a certain dollar or percentage increase in sales? Percentage increase in traffic from a specific city or region? “X” number of additional contact forms filled out online? “X” number of additional sign-ups for your e-newsletter? Be specific so you can measure the success of your efforts and investment.
Once you define these specific goals, figure out what your strategies will be for achieving them. SEO experts and marketing professionals overall should be able to come up with a variety of strategies for each of your goals. And be careful not to confuse strategy with tactics.
Tactics are the actions you will take to execute your strategies. As with strategies, there should be a variety of tactics used to achieve your desired results. Some simple tactics for SEO would include daily updates to your social media pages balanced with product promotion and information your fans will find helpful, creating city-specific landing pages with contact forms embedded to strengthen your position within that area, and/or updating “local” search engine pages with updated information about your company…and making sure you have one.
Overall it may look something like this:
Goal – Increase e-newsletter subscriptions by 50% over the next 3 months (e-newsletters are a great way to provide deals, information, and links back to your website)
Strategy – (only one provided for time’s sake) – Leverage existing customer/fan base
Recommended Tactics – Post current e-newsletter on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Add sign-up form to home page of website and add to Facebook. Add paper sign-up form at check-out. Incite employees to see who can get the most sign-ups. Use blog to post additional information referenced in the e-newsletter (blogs are great for SEO). Run a contest/promotion that can only be entered by signing up for the e-newsletter (promote on-site and in-store). Ask current subscribers to forward it to their friends and family. And more….
We have only begun to scratch the surface of developing a long-term, effective SEO plan, but it’s a great place to begin. And don’t forget to start with a baseline so be sure to gather all the statistics you can in regards to website traffic, visitor information, page views, most popular days/hours, keywords being used to find your site, referring domains, and the list goes on and on.
Need help developing an SEO plan that gets positive results and is rooted in sound strategies built around your goals? Give us a call at 608.519.3070 or shoot us an e-mail (info@theblugroup.com) today.
