An SEO strategy is essential for building visibility in Google. This is an increasingly demanding and competitive environment. Our SEO experts will tailor a plan of action in the modern spirit of SEO, analyzing the competition and consulting with you at each stage, drawing on their practical experience.
Positioning strategy is the basis
Although the positioning of websites and online stores is based on repeatable elements, there is no universal SEO strategy.
For activities to be truly effective and to maximize the website's potential, it is necessary to take into account the industry, product range, website condition, level of competition, habits of potential customers and even the specifics of a specific brand, as well as skillfully selected keywords.
Positioning a product is different from positioning a service. That's why the best SEO strategy involves activities tailored to each client. This is what you need to outperform your competitors, increase your website's online visibility, and align your keywords with sales performance parameters.
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How do we create SEO strategies?
Creating a website SEO strategy is a multi-step process that involves a thorough analysis of the client's website, industry, and competitor activity. See the steps we take to ensure an effective SEO strategy!
- Conversation with a client
The first step in creating an SEO strategy is always a conversation with the client, during which we learn about your business goals. We treat SEO as a component of your company's marketing strategy, so we want to know which product/service categories are key to you and what SEO activities have previously been performed on your website.
This is also an opportunity for you to explore available opportunities and learn more about our methods. Besides, you're an expert in your industry, so we'd love to hear from you about the characteristics of this market segment and the brands you compete with on a daily basis. This gives us the foundational knowledge to take further steps. A positioning strategy must, above all, support the achievement of your business goals. - Website SEO audit
Next, we conduct a detailed SEO audit of your website. The SEO specialist reviews it from a technical, content, and user experience perspective, as well as examining its external link profile, the keywords it ranks for, and holistic website visibility metrics.
This allows us to pinpoint errors on the page, elements that may slow down its performance, or simply hinder the SEO process. External link analysis helps determine whether the page has a strong link profile and whether yours is linked to by spammy sites that could damage domain authority. Based on this analysis, a link-building strategy is created.
An audit is essential for determining a website's potential and compiling a list of changes that will ensure effective SEO. Another important element of this stage is tracing the domain's history to rule out the possibility that past activities have resulted in penalties from Google or its algorithm classifying it as spam.
In the case of audited websites, it often turns out that the keywords for which the website is displayed are not linked to business goals and do not take into account the needs resulting from the SEO strategy, but focus only on increasing the website's visibility in Google's organic search results at all costs. - Competition analysis
During this stage, the SEO specialist examines your competitors' online activities. They compare the website's visibility parameters with those of other websites in the same industry, check the number of keywords and phrases in the top rankings, common keywords, the number of external links, and so on.
Based on this, it identifies your strongest competitors (these may be different brands online than in brick-and-mortar stores) and gathers benchmarks, or best practices, that should be applied to your website to increase visibility and develop a meaningful keyword list. It gathers information about gaps in their marketing efforts and determines what can be done to outperform your competitors online.
This also allows you to estimate how much budget will be needed for SEO activities to be effective and for the SEO strategy to be feasible at all. - Identifying key actions to be taken
Based on the information obtained in the previous stages, the SEO specialist determines what should be the most emphasized in the SEO process and how to distribute the activities over time to make the SEO strategy as effective as possible and business-wise rational.
For example, some websites have excellent content and links, but are hampered by design flaws, cluttered code, or overly heavy images and videos that negatively impact site visibility. In such cases, thorough technical optimization is the most important and urgent element of SEO. Other websites may require new text, a menu overhaul, or extensive link building.
Defining these key assumptions and issues necessary from a technical SEO perspective shapes the entire SEO strategy. - Creating an SEO strategy
Only after completing this preliminary work can we begin to develop a professional strategy tailored to the client's needs. website positioningArmed with the appropriate knowledge, the SEO specialist compiles a list of keywords for which the website will be positioned, determines the actions to be taken, and schedules them over time, usually broken down into quarters. At this stage, they can also provide a price for the SEO service. - Monitoring the effects and modifying the SEO strategy
The online environment is highly dynamic, so adjustments to your SEO strategy may often be necessary. This may be due to factors such as Google's algorithm updates, which may result in other website elements becoming more important ranking factors, or external factors (e.g., a shift in geopolitical circumstances affecting your industry).
Therefore, an SEO strategy shouldn't be a finite document that must be strictly adhered to, regardless of what's happening around us or the website's visibility results. It requires a degree of flexibility, monitoring trends, and reacting promptly when necessary.
Of course, this does not mean that the SEO strategy will be completely rebuilt every month – an experienced SEO specialist is able to assess the changes taking place and determine when modifications should be considered.
Why is it worth choosing a professional SEO strategy?
- You learn about the strengths and weaknesses of your website – thanks to the audit, you know what the greatest strengths of your website are, but you are also aware of the weak points and gaps that need to be fixed to encourage users to convert.
- You are fully utilizing the website's potential – having an individually developed strategy website positioning, you achieve the greatest business benefits. You optimally distribute your activities over time to prioritize the most urgent SEO tasks.
- You get a plan tailored to your business goals SEO is planned to deliver the tangible benefits you expect. Depending on your needs, it can be targeted at local audiences, the entire country, or even international audiences. It can focus strictly on sales or place a greater emphasis on increasing brand recognition, reaching new audiences, or fulfilling other key functions. Preparing a keyword list will address the specific needs of your business.
- You protect your brand image – An SEO strategy is aligned with your marketing and PR strategy to ensure that your audience receives a consistent brand message. For example, if you want to promote your product range as luxury products, keyword selection will be dominated by those related to high quality and prestige, while ignoring phrases like "cheap" or "cheapest." Similar restrictions can be introduced when selecting pages for sponsored articles. Keywords are therefore crucial not only in the process website positioning, but also building brand perception among potential customers.
- You know from the beginning how the positioning will proceed Right from the start, you learn what needs to be done and in what order for your SEO strategy to work toward increasing your website's visibility. You'll know when each activity is scheduled, which allows you to monitor whether the agency is fulfilling its obligations throughout the contract.
What does an SEO strategy include?
An SEO strategy outlines all the actions that should be taken to ensure a website outperforms its competitors and achieves high rankings in organic search results. These include:
Technical optimization
This type of activity (technical SEO) involves eliminating all errors in the website's structure that may hinder its positioning.
This often involves minifying code, correctly implementing redirects, eliminating errors in implementing language versions, optimizing graphics, introducing friendly URLs, organizing the page structure, changing filter indexing to avoid duplicate content, eliminating unnecessary files and combining smaller ones to reduce the number of server queries, or implementing file caching in the user's browser.
Of course, not every website requires all of these steps. Similarly, other websites may require even more complex technical optimization. The scope of these steps is determined in each case after a thorough review of the client's site.
Optimizing existing content and creating new content
All text on the website must be SEO-friendly. This means implementing appropriate formatting (headings, paragraphs, bullet points, boldface, etc.) and including keywords that will help the website rank higher among potential customers.
In addition, however, the SEO specialist also commissions the creation of additional content to provide space for introducing more keywords and saturate the website with texts so that it can compete with the best.
This often includes category descriptions, product/service descriptions, offer descriptions, and blog articles. Furthermore, if necessary, the specialist can recommend image optimization (reducing the size or changing the format) to ensure they don't slow down the website while aligning their descriptions with the SEO strategy for keywords.
Building a valuable link profile
The SEO strategy also includes the concept of link building, i.e. acquiring external links from websites that can support the website's positioning with their "SEO power".
The SEO specialist's job is to select hyperlink sources that are highly rated by search engine algorithms, thus having a positive impact on the website from an SEO perspective. There are many types of sites from which links can be obtained.
These include internet forums, company directories, local and industry websites, blogs, large websites such as WP or Onet, as well as back-end websites created by SEO agencies – general or dedicated, created for a specific client.
Some of these sites are publicly available and you can link to them for free. Others may be willing to collaborate with you on guest posts, and many sites can be reached by purchasing sponsored content to increase traffic and visibility. The easiest method, of course, is to use agency-managed websites.
Frequently asked questions about SEO strategies
Website positioning is a complex process that should be preceded by a thorough website audit and the development of an SEO strategy based on the business goals you want to achieve. Only armed with this basic knowledge can a specialist begin any work that can improve a website's visibility in search results.
An SEO strategy should encompass all the activities undertaken to rank a website in Google – both on-site and off-site (external linking). Its main elements include:
A list of keywords for which the website will be positioned – this should include all keywords whose positions will be monitored by the SEO specialist. This list is prepared by the agency in collaboration with the client, who can determine which areas of activity are most important to them and which subpages, product categories, or products themselves are crucial from a business perspective.
a website architecture optimization plan – this means building a category tree, planning website navigation, organizing tags, etc.,
A technical website optimization plan – all activities designed to increase page loading speed, improve responsiveness, and improve user experience. Purely technical changes include code minification, image compression, browser caching, structured data insertion, sitemap.xml creation, redirection setup, canonical tag implementation, and much more.
website content expansion strategy – at the planning stage, you need to determine which page tabs should be enriched with new content, whether it is worth introducing space for additional content (e.g. a blog or news), at what stages of work specific content will be added, etc.
the concept of building an external link profile – this means selecting places to link to, determining how many links to acquire and when to publish them,
A plan for building an internal link network – that is, creating links on the page to other subpages of the website being positioned. A well-developed internal linking strategy makes it easier for users to navigate the site and find the information they need.
Changes in SEO strategies are a natural progression. When considering SEO strategy, it's crucial to accept the fact that creating a long-term action plan that will work without adjustments is impossible. Google's environment is highly volatile – new search engine algorithm updates are constantly being released, often significantly changing the rules of the game. Furthermore, what worked on 100 similar sites may not necessarily work on 101. Therefore, changes in strategy are completely natural and even advisable if the chosen path isn't yielding results.
SEO involves constantly monitoring, modifying, improving, and re-measuring results. A well-chosen SEO strategy is therefore flexible and can change over time if changes in the algorithm or simply the specific nature of a given website require it.
Most websites require numerous changes in various areas at the beginning of their SEO process – some are purely technical, others require modifying and expanding content or improving external linking. Such changes can't be fully implemented in a week, a month, or even six months. Therefore, SEO strategies should prioritize tasks, identifying those that are most urgent and those that can be implemented later.
Strategies that are broken down into stages work best, as they help clients understand what to expect from the SEO agency. Not all changes are immediately visible to someone who isn't an expert in a given field. While it may seem like the SEO specialist is doing nothing, they're actually putting in a tremendous amount of work to improve the website's visibility. Such changes take time, especially if the website is complex, has many tabs, and has been frequently modified.
Properly constructed SEO strategies focus solely on best practices for positioning, avoiding any illegal or gray area activities. Attempts to cut corners and cheat the Google algorithm can result in a filter being applied—either automatically or manually by an employee—which causes the website to stop appearing in search results. Of course, you can try to remove the filter, but even if you succeed, the website will drop in search results, and restoring its good standing in the algorithm is extremely difficult.
What activities should you be particularly wary of? Google, for example, discourages automated, mass-generated links to a page on unrelated websites, forums, or blogs. Attempts to deceive search engine robots by presenting a different version of the page than the user sees or by attempting to "hide" text on the page (e.g., creating white text on a white background) are frowned upon. Such activities are called Black Hat SEO and should be avoided entirely.
All changes made by the SEO specialist must be approved by the client, and the sooner approval is granted, the sooner the website begins to achieve results. Additionally, there are activities that the client must perform independently, based on the SEO company's recommendations. For example, website loading speed is crucial for website visibility, yet some clients use slow and unreliable hosting, which limits SEO capabilities. In such cases, the client is responsible for changing service providers, as otherwise other activities become much less effective.
Sometimes, the system on which the website is built can also be a problem. If the client is using a proprietary solution or a less popular CMS, it may lack the features necessary to improve the website's visibility. In such cases, it is necessary to migrate the website to a different system, which the client must also do using their own resources. However, it's worth noting that such a move must be undertaken in collaboration with an SEO specialist, who will prepare recommendations on how to implement the change to ensure the website's strength is not compromised.
Collaboration must be based on trust. Many clients make the mistake of blocking some of the changes recommended by the SEO specialist. This most often involves altering the website's content, adding new content, or changing structured data. Refusing to approve certain actions doesn't completely eliminate efforts to increase website visibility, but it prevents the website from realizing its full potential and achieving optimal results. Therefore, when choosing SEO services, it's worth choosing a proven, trustworthy agency. This ensures that the client knows that all the changes recommended by the SEO specialist are necessary and work to the website's advantage. Accepting only a portion of the actions listed in the SEO strategy generally brings neither satisfaction nor tangible benefits to either party.
However, it's important not only for the client to trust the SEO specialist, but also for the SEO specialist to trust their client. SEO strategies cannot be fully implemented if the client makes changes to the website on their own without informing the SEO company. Such actions can undo months of SEO work and cause an immediate drop in the website's visibility. What actions are we talking about? Most often, these include changing the CMS without prior notice, changing subpage URLs, deleting subpages, or removing content from the website.
A crucial part of an SEO strategy is a plan for off-site SEO, which involves acquiring external links to your website. These types of links can be acquired from various sources, including online forums, product catalogs, support pages, and platforms selling sponsored content. Less common methods of acquiring links are also possible, such as exchanging guest posts with bloggers or linking to your website on social media. It's important to remember, however, that a website's strength comes only from high-quality links—from thematically related sites that receive high algorithmic ratings. Therefore, selecting link sources is one of the most crucial elements of an SEO strategy. Equally important is the timing of link publication—too many links appearing at the same time can alert the algorithm, which will suspect unfair practices.
A link-building strategy must be closely tailored to the industry, and even the specific nature of the website being positioned. It should also be preceded by a thorough analysis of the competitors' link profiles. Based on this information, we can make decisions about what can be done better and how to expand our link base to gain a competitive advantage.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- A tailored SEO strategy is the key to effectively building visibility on Google and outperforming your competition.
- Creating an SEO strategy is a multi-stage process that includes client interviews, technical audits, competitive analysis, and ongoing monitoring and adaptation of activities to changing market requirements.
- A professional SEO strategy allows you to precisely utilize your website's potential, aligning your activities with your company's business and image goals while ensuring full control over the positioning process.
- A comprehensive SEO strategy includes technical website optimization, customizing and creating valuable content, and building a strong external link profile.
