Author: Ryan Walsh
Date: 23/06/2025

 

 

What you’ve got to remember is that search engine optimisation (SEO) is an inbound marketing strategy.

This means you are not chasing the customer; they are coming to you because they are actively looking to purchase that product or service.

Now this is worth bearing in mind, because some of the top marketing publications globally have stated that traditional marketing has an average close rate of just 1.7%

Now, compare this to SEO, which is implemented by a highly experienced digital marketing agency like ours. It reported that on average,

SEO has a close rate of 14.6%. Therefore, combine this relatively high close rate with the fact that it’s an inbound marketing strategy, and you can see why so many businesses want to invest in this form of marketing.

 

 

SEO roadmap / SEO strategy

Whether you call it an “SEO roadmap” or an “SEO strategy”, the whole purpose is to help your business generate more sales and more revenue through ranking higher on Google. You achieve this by working out which keywords that you want to optimise, then the hard work starts of getting your business to rank higher on Google for those keywords.

Because Google’s algorithm is so complex, it takes into account well over 200 various factors when calculating how strong or weak a business’s SEO is. Therefore, with most companies, there is often a significant amount of work that needs to be undertaken to achieve a higher Google ranking.

 

It’s hard work because you have to strengthen as many of the ranking factors as you possibly can. This means work on improving a wide set of ranking factors, from backlinks, to reducing the companies bounce rate.

And because there’s so much work, you have to concentrate your efforts and decide where you are going to place your time. This is why many businesses invest significant time in creating a detailed SEO roadmap, ensuring all stakeholders are aligned.

Therefore, the copywriters, link builders, web designers, UX experts, and the on-page SEO team will all be invested in the plan for obtaining more organic traffic from Google.

 

What is an SEO roadmap?

 

How do I go about creating an SEO roadmap?

What you need to understand is that with search engine optimisation, you have to try to improve as many of the ranking factors as possible incrementally and at a slow pace.

However, you must do this slowly and ensure that every aspect focuses on quality, rather than quantity.

Too many businesses go at improving their SEO like a “bull at a gate,” and what ends up happening is either over-optimisation issues or, if the work is carried out incorrectly, such as building many spam links, this can cause a link penalty.

Things that your business should consider when forming an SEO roadmap:

Which products or services does your business want to prioritise selling?

Your business may sell hundreds of different products.

Improving the company’s ranking on Google for such a wide range of goods simultaneously will be very difficult, if not nearly impossible.

Therefore, the SEO roadmap should focus minds on what items, in terms of product ranges, you want to optimise and improve the ranking for. This will allow you to target, say, a set of products, and to make sure that copywriters and link builders, for example, are focused on this set of products first.

 

What SEO techniques will you use?

You may have a large marketing team, all ready to start helping improve your business’s organic search engine optimisation (SEO). However, even if you have a large team, you still have to think about which methods you are going to use and have some idea of the techniques you will employ.

For example, if the product is an automotive product, which businesses would you contact to try to gain backlinks? For instance, motoring journalists? If so, how will you encourage them to discuss your product?

There needs to be a clear, well-defined marketing strategy.

 

Which SEO tools will you need to do the job?

Some SEO consultants like working with different marketing tools. For example, some may enjoy working with Moz Pro, others may have more experience with Ahrefs, or, for instance, using Majestic Backlink Builder. Therefore, ensure that all workers involved in improving the SEO have the necessary tools in place.

Delegation and why you should go overboard

We do live in a world where it’s perceived that more of something is better.
However, when it comes to search engine optimisation, you need to flip the script in terms of that mindset.

It’s far better to have quality than quantity.

So, when delegating tasks, don’t state that you want an incredibly high number of backlinks built that month, because this is likely to damage the SEO, rather than help improve it.

Therefore, it’s all about quality, not quantity. Thus, don’t task link builders with building high numbers of links if the links are not of high quality.

If a link builder is tasked with building a high number of links and they are forced to do so, they may cut corners.

Cutting corners means building spam or low-quality links. These links will then be crawled and indexed by the bot known as “Googlebot”, which means that it will crawl and index the link and notice that the link is spam. Build too many spam links, and then what happens is that the business could obtain a link penalty. This link penalty is known as the Google Penguin penalty, which can be implemented either algorithmically or manually, potentially causing the business to be de-indexed.

 

Milestones

Timeline, and also take into account Google algorithm updates
It’s a good idea to set a timeline, not just so staff know when to do their work, but also to have a milestone to reflect on and understand whether the current SEO strategy is working or not.

So, set milestones.

However, also keep in mind that at the drop of a hat, Google can roll out various algorithm updates. Overnight, they can switch on the start of a Google algorithm rollout, which causes a flux in rankings.

This could persist for many weeks, causing keywords to fluctuate sometimes violently up or down. However, it’s important to remember that the ranking flux will eventually come to an end, and your website could resettle in a different position. Sometimes, you may move up significantly, while some websites move down, and others stay the same. It does depend on the quality of the work that your business has implemented.

 

SEO strategy

Make sure that you pay attention to every aspect of improving your business’s search engine optimisation.
What sometimes happens is that a business or its appointed marketing agency continues to work on the same areas of SEO improvement repeatedly. This means that the company often sees limited results. It would therefore reap the full and maximum benefits that SEO can bring if you were to take a more comprehensive approach.
Therefore, here are just some of the areas that your agency might want to concentrate on improving:

 

Local SEO vs national

First things first, you have to sit down and have a good think about whether you’re going to pursue a local or national SEO strategy. The reason is that national search engine optimisation is much more complex, due to the sharp increase in the amount of competition that you are competing with.

For example, locally, you may have only 10 major competitors; nationally, you could be competing with sometimes in excess of 1,000 businesses. Therefore, the amount of SEO work needed for national SEO is sometimes staggering. Thus, don’t try to compete nationally unless you have the resources to do so. Often, you need a large marketing team behind you for national SEO.

 

Keyword implementation

Your business should include in your SEO roadmap the keywords you want to improve. Many companies focus on improving their ranking for keywords in rotation. Meaning they work on optimising a keyword, then leave for a while, concentrate on other keywords, then return to that keyword.

Most businesses create a content calendar, which basically sets out what they will be writing about and when. This helps copywriters know what to write about, but also enables them to work closely with the on-page SEO team and UX web designers to ensure the content marketing is of high quality.

 

SEO content creation

 

Link building

Ask any top marketing agency under the sun, which is the most crucial SEO ranking factor out there. They will come back with the same answer: that, by an absolute country mile, backlinks are widely regarded as the most essential and critical SEO ranking factor.

When you examine top companies globally, the ones that rank number one on Google often have high-quality backlinks.

 

Mobile-friendly optimisations

Both global brands and small businesses must enhance the design of their mobile websites. The user experience must be good so that it not only helps the shopper find the right product but also provides helpful content marketing to answer any questions they may have.

Part of improving the UX is also to ensure the mobile version of the website is fast, as well as simple to use. Plus, you must also help the customer make purchase decisions, such as informing them about whether stock is in stock or not. Additionally, you must actively work hard to reduce the bounce rate.

If the bounce rate of your company website is high on, say, desktop or mobile, it tells the search engines, such as Google or Microsoft’s Bing, that a shopper didn’t stay on the website for long. Additionally, they didn’t visit another page, indicating that the shopper is disinterested in the business’s page and its products.

This is why businesses should actively work hard to reduce the bounce rate as much as possible.

 

User experience optimisation

When your SEO team has worked day and night, as hard as they can, to get customers on your website through ranking on the first page of

Google, you will want to keep those shoppers on your website for as long as possible.

That’s because you want to keep shoppers there for as long as you can, so that you can increase the possibility of making more sales.

Now, this is where UX, or user experience optimisation, comes in. Often, by using split testing, also known as A/B testing, businesses can start to make gradual improvements to the design, helping to enhance the user experience and simplify the company website.

 

Page speed improvements

You will want to make sure that your company website is as fast as possible. The reason is that when a business has quality links and quality content marketing, what can make the difference between ranking 1st and say 3rd is SEO ranking factors, such as page speed. For example,

How fast is your company website?

If you have super-fast website hosting, this can help improve your business’s search engine optimisation.
And more

Make sure to stay on track.

Search engine optimisation is slow, that’s for sure. However, if you’re not seeing good gains over the long term, then you may have to change your business’s SEO strategy. The reason is simple: some companies continue to use the same SEO methods, yet they are not seeing any results.

If your business is seeing results from your SEO efforts, you do need to evaluate whether you need to change some or all of your marketing strategy.

 

Use good-quality SEO tools.

Google Analytics

We highly recommend that your business use Google Analytics. No matter if you’re a sole trader, say a plumber, or your business turns over billions per year, you should use Google Analytics because it’s simply one of the best SEO tools, which can offer your business the following information:

– Number of organic visitors
– Real-time information on how many shoppers are on your company website
– How do shoppers find your website? Is it via social media, is it via organic, direct or perhaps via Google Adwords?

Google Search Console

Your business should most definitely set up and create a Google Search Console account. You should do this from day one, just when you are starting to improve the business’s search engine optimisation.

The reason is that our SEO agency uses Google Search Console daily, as it provides up-to-date SEO data. Therefore, you can check where your business ranks in Google, you can check your business’s backlinks, and you can also check how many clicks your company has received over the last day, week or month, for example.

 

Who is Ryan Walsh

Ryan Walsh runs and owns Walsh & Partners. We are one of the most experienced SEO agencies operating in Cardiff. Our SEO knowledge is simply second to none.

We can say that with great confidence, as we have been helping Welsh businesses get onto page one of Google for over a decade. We also have a 100% success rate, meaning that every client we have worked with during this time has helped us get many businesses onto page one of Google. We have also worked with a diverse range of companies in Cardiff.

For example, we have worked with well-known local companies, as well as e-commerce businesses that serve the entire U.K.

Our SEO knowledge is simply second to none; therefore, if your business requires help to generate more sales online, don’t hesitate to contact one of the team today.