seo plan

Why You Should Have an SEO Plan

Why Does Your Business Need An SEO Plan?

Making an SEO plan might not seem like an important step as long as you’re working on SEO tasks and keep optimization in mind. The problem is that if your SEO efforts aren’t working together, or if you don’t have a concrete goal, it’s hard to see the results from your efforts.

Worse, you might actually have SEO efforts that are working against one another and stopping your business from making progress online.

Here’s what you need to know to design your own SEO strategy, whether you’re designing SEO for a business or working on SEO optimization for a personal blog.

Decide What Your Primary Goal Should Be

The first thing you need to do is know what kind of results you’re looking for. If your business needs to get more customers who are willing to buy your products, you should probably focus on conversion as a primary goal of your SEO efforts.

But if you’re working on a business that’s more interested in getting a larger audience but doesn’t need to improve the conversion rate, your goal might be about getting more clicks on your website or reducing your visitor bounce rate.

There are a lot of different goals are that good when it comes to SEO, but you need to have a clear idea of what you’re working toward.

It’s also okay for your primary SEO goal to change over time. As your website meets one SEO goal it’s a good idea to make a new one so you’re consistently moving forward.

Break Down Your Goal Into Actionable Milestones

Having a goal is only the start of the process. You need to make sure you know what the steps along the way to meeting your SEO goal look like so you can tell if you’re getting closer to your final goal.

For instance, if you’re trying to improve your conversion rate, you might want to increase the amount of time your website visitors spend on the site before they leave. That will tell you that your copy and content are getting more interesting and relevant to your audience, which will help get you closer to that conversion rate goal.

The milestones for any goal are going to be different for different businesses, and that’s okay. Just make sure you have steps that work for your team and your end goals along the way and remember to celebrate hitting those milestones.

Plan Changes And Implement SEO Strategies

Once you have a goal and milestones for your SEO plan, the next step is to figure out what kinds of SEO tasks are most important for reaching those goals.

For instance, if you’re trying to grow your audience online you might want to focus on backlinks and increasing your website’s authority and ranking. But if you want to increase your conversion rate it might be more important to figure out who your ideal audience is instead of just increasing the size of that audience.

Figure Out Which Metrics Measure Your Progress

It might seem like you have a comprehensive SEO plan at this point. You have a goal, milestones that will tell you when you’re getting close to that goal, and an idea of what kinds of SEO is going to be most effective for helping you get there.

But you also need to be able to effectively measure the progress you’re making along the way. Possible metrics could be how long visitors spend on your site, your bounce rate, your conversion rate, or even how many pages an average visitor looks at before leaving your website.

Rank these metrics in order of importance for each part of your SEO goal. Now you know what to watch for, and when you should be concerned by metrics changing – for better or worse.

Congratulations! You have an SEO plan. Is it the right plan for your business? Well, only you and time can tell, but even if your first plan isn’t the plan you need you’ll still be better prepared to make a better SEO plan next time.

Looking For Professional SEO Services?

Not sure you’re up to creating your own SEO plan or want to prioritize your other work to make sure your business is succeeding in person as well as online? Watt Media can help. Contact us to learn more about our SEO services and other online services for businesses.

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