Date: 21/01/2024
Author: Ryan Walsh

About the Author: Ryan Walsh is one of the best SEO consultants in Wales. He has over 10 years of experience running his agency. We specialise in organic SEO for companies operating in highly competitive business sectors.

 

Table of contents:

• Why is an SEO strategy needed?
• Which keywords should we be optimising our website for?
• Why you need to look at your direct competitors’ SEO to get ideas and inspiration
• Why you should aim to be 10x better
• Why you need to improve on-page SEO
• Think how your customers think
• Why the content marketing needs to be spot-on
• Why you need to improve your Google E-EAT score
• Why your content needs to be helpful after the Google Helpful Content Update
• Why do the backlinks that you build need to be high-quality
• Why the technical SEO needs to be improved
• Why do you need to ensure no indexation issues and fix 404 pages?
• Why you need to consider your link velocity
• Write quality content, but also keep it updated

 

How to create an SEO strategy:

As with any enormous task and trust, getting most businesses on page one of Google typically involves a lot of effort, so it’s always a good idea to have a master plan.

A plan that guides you and directs your energy into the areas that most need it.

After all, search engine optimisation is about improving many ranking factors—over 200 in total—so you must be disciplined about where

you plan on spending your time.

 

The four main pillars of SEO are:

• On-page SEO, which includes content marketing
• Off-page (link building, etc.)
• Technical SEO
• U.X so this means improving the web design

 

Why a masterplan is needed

A massive amount of work is usually needed, so you must formulate a plan to spend time working on these different areas.

Overall, it’s the Google E-EAT score that Google will assign to your business, ultimately dictating where the company ranks in Google’s SERP’s. If it shines that you’re a leading light in your industry through content marketing and the links you attract, you will sit at the top of

Google’s Christmas tree; that’s the top of the SERP.

 

Don’t come cheap

Before we go any further, a word of warning: SEO prices vary like the weather; however, the top brands, the leading names in any business sector, know that in one area, there are often only a handful of excellent, top-of-the-game SEO experts, so as you can imagine, it’s not a cheap process.

However, the basics can be learnt, and we recommend that if you are a business owner reading this and want to try it yourself, why not purchase a “test domain”? This is a domain name separate from your primary business, where you can learn search engine optimisation before implementing your methods on your domain name.

Whether you’re doing the work yourself or hiring the best SEO agency, follow Google’s E-EAT.

 

Google’s algorithm is like a finely crafted watch.

 

Watch collectors often marvel at the craftsmanship and engineering that go into a fine watch and how it is made.
Google’s algorithm is a bit like this.

It’s truly a masterpiece of engineering, an algorithm, but it has never stayed the same for long.

Google’s engineers have constantly worked to improve the algorithm, which is why top SEO agencies must continuously review and adapt their optimisation methods.

Google Core Updates are being rolled out with greater frequency—pardon the pun—but as regular as clockwork these days. This means it’s more important than ever to do SEO correctly.

 

This means that any business or marketing business needs to follow Google’s advice in regards to the following:

– Google E-EAT advice
– Google Helpful Content Update
– You should also understand the critical algorithm updates, such as Google Hummingbird, Google Panda, and Google Penguin updates, as this will inform you why Google only wants high-quality SEO applied to a company website.

 

Google’s algorithm and how it evolved since the early days of Google’s PageRank

Google’s algorithm has been fine-tuned; it’s been constantly perfected since the early days of Google PageRank.

This complex mathematical formula can now compute the most complicated search strings (questions) and spit out an accurate answer on the other side. It’s a masterpiece of engineering in its own right, as it rewards businesses for their effort in offering a detailed and helpful answer and punishes businesses with lower rankings that don’t follow the Webmaster Guidelines.

 

In short, before you set about writing your marketing plan, we would encourage you to read more about the following first:

– Google E-EAT
– Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
– Why you should only build quality links
– Read about the main Google updates, that’s the Google Penguin and Panda updates
– Read about the Google Helpful Content update

 

Why should a business create an SEO strategy?

In a nutshell, SEO can make or break a business.

It can mean the difference between a business thriving or ceasing to remain in 12 months.

Therefore, deciding which SEO agency to hire can sometimes dictate a business’s success or failure because some companies rely solely on getting new customers online.

Therefore, whichever agency or consultant you hire to advise you and create a strategy for search engine optimisation must be good. Keep in mind the advice offered by Google E-EAT.

This is why an SEO strategy is needed.

So, what should be included in your business’s SEO strategy?

 

Link building strategy

Consider how your business will build links and what link-building tools are needed.

Some agencies say that link building is dead, but it’s not.

The top-leading companies often have dedicated teams to build links, as it’s still a very important factor that Google’s algorithm uses to evaluate a business’s SEO.

Since Google’s PageRank, Google has used the number and quality of links to determine the strength of a business’s search engine optimisation.

 

Google’s algorithm will therefore calculate:

– How many inbound links does the domain name have?
– What percentage are do-follow, and which ones are no-follow?
– What is the quality of the backlinks?
– How has the anchor text been written? In a white hat way?
– Link velocity should be considered.
– Are there any spam links?
– Any negative SEO attacks?

 

Which link-building tool should we use?

If you were to ask us which backlink-building tool to use, we would highly recommend subscribing to Moz Pro. What a fantastic link-building tool it is.

Why is a backlink too even needed?

A back-building tool allows you to look at your direct competitor’s backlinks.

You can then pick out high-quality backlinks and try to build them for your website.

We have been using Moz Pro for many years at this agency.

Moz is not just a great place to obtain advice; it also offers excellent tools. Moz Pro, the “Link Explorer,” is our leading SEO tool to build links.

However, subscribing to a link-building tool will not make you an expert.

To improve your SEO, you will need quality links, relevant backlinks, and links that enhance your company’s Google E-EAT score.

So, while backlink tools such as Moz are excellent, to harness their power as SEO tools, they still need to be used by someone with the right expertise to build links.

Links can affect your business’s search engine optimisation: they can help improve it or cause lasting damage.

This is why you need only to build quality links.

Relevant links, white hat, quality, a mixture of do-follow and no-follow.

 

Content marketing

So, why spend hundreds of hours per year writing numerous blog posts for your company?

What is the benefit of writing and publishing blog posts?

Why would you want to commit your staff to input into content marketing?

For example, why have your company director or staff spend time to have their input and advice written into a blog post?

The simple answer is that Google now uses Google E-EAT.

Therefore, you should aim to show real-world experience regarding what you are writing about. Plus, you need to show expertise in what you are writing about. A copywriter at an SEO agency can draft the article. Yet, input from your staff or company director is often required to reflect their experience and expertise in the article.

 

The content marketing must have the following attributes:

– High Google E-EAT score
– Must be helpful
– White hat

So, you need to develop a marketing strategy for how you will write the content marketing.

 

Technical SEO

It’s also essential to fix all technical SEO issues, such as the 404-page errors and broken internal links; if the page takes too long to load, it must all be fixed.

 

Within your SEO strategy, you should note how the following will be improved:

– Improve page speed
– Reduce bounce rates
– Fix 404-page errors
– How you’re going to fix any pages that can’t be indexed but should be
– Add a sitemap

Design and U.X

 

The design of the website and the U.X needs to be good.

The web design must be perfect for a business to get on page one of Google.

In short, the website must offer a good U.X.
Just as you wouldn’t take an old diesel car to an F1 race, neither should you try to optimise a poorly designed website.

It just won’t work.

So, if you want your business to rank on page one of Google, then first things first, the website design must be good.

So don’t hire the cheapest website designer you can find. Having a good website designed is an investment in your business. Make sure it’s well-designed and lightning-fast.

 

What does good web design look like:

• Well-designed pages
• Supersonic fast
• Helpful advice and product descriptions
• White hat SEO must be applied
• Good on-page SEO

These are the main pillars of search engine optimisation:

• On-page
• Off-page
• Technical SEO
• And the overall UX or design of the website should be good.
• These must be optimised and improved if you want your business to appear on page one.

 

 

Keyword research

Keyword research is key to the success of any business’s SEO.

It helps in two ways:

• It allows you to work out which keywords you should be optimising the SEO for
• It also can then be inputted into SEO tools, such as Moz, so that you can track performance

 

A good keyword research tool can help you identify all the variations and descriptions used to describe your business’s services or products.

For example, a solicitor specialising in employment law often describes their services in over 100 different ways, from unfair dismissal to settlement agreements.

Some keyword research tools can make this process a piece of cake. However, you have to be realistic regarding what your business can achieve.

For hyper-competitive keywords like “car insurance,” you often have to have a multi-million marketing budget to get your company on page one of Google’s organic results.

That’s because your direct competitors will have invested colossal amounts of money into their marketing for car insurance terms.

Therefore, you must evaluate how hard it will be to get your business on a Google page for that keyword.

To do this, to evaluate how hard a task it might be, you have to evaluate your competitors:

• Competitors backlinks
• Competitors on-page SEO
• Competitors’ content marketing and well written it is

What are long tail keywords?

These keywords describe a product service, but the search string is longer.

Long tail keywords are, therefore, keywords which are longer and more descriptive.
So instead of “employment lawyers”, an example of a long tail keyword would be “employment lawyers who specialise in unfair dismissal claims”.

 

Who’s on the first page of Google, and how did they get there?

So, let’s say you have used your keyword research tool, Moz Pro.

You have selected which keywords you want to optimise your company website for.

Now, you should check which businesses rank on page one of Google for that keyword.

Those businesses will be there for a reason. They will occupy the number one spot on Google because they are good. Out of over 100 different businesses, they have proved that their on-page and off-page SEO is better, so they occupy that top position.

So, they have got there because, quite put, they cut the mustard.

So, by “reverse engineering” their work, you can determine how they got there.

Then, you can understand how much work will be needed. For example, how many quality links do your competitors have?

However, some expert advice is here: This is where many businesses make a huge mistake.

That is, they see that their direct competitor has 1,000 quality links plus 100 pieces of content marketing.

Then, they try to catch up as fast as they can.

However, with SEO, you shouldn’t rush the process, and here’s why.

Link velocity: if you build links too fast, it looks spammy.

If you publish too much content marketing in a short space of time, it will often be rushed.

So, it’s better to create high-quality work over a long period.

Too much content marketing or new links indexed by Googlebot in a short time can sometimes look like spam.

So, consider link velocity and publish your content marketing once a week or even leave longer gaps between publications.

 

Aim to be 10x better.

Your direct competitors will often have already had a head start—they may have occupied the number one spot on Google for many years.

They have done this because they have shown that they have good SEO. They may also have a low bounce rate and a good time on the site (dwell time). They may also have accumulated a ton of good-quality backlinks.

 

Therefore, businesses in the number one position in Google or Bings Serp will have the following:

• Low bounce rate
• High dwell time
• A lot of quality backlinks
• Published a lot of content marketing with a high Google E-EAT score.

Therefore, we are pointing out that the benchmark to beat is typically highly high.

Therefore, two things must happen: The customer must set a realistic marketing budget. Then, a detailed SEO strategy needs to be implemented to outline, say, the next 12 months’ worth of work.

So, there’s catching up to do.

But with that said, here’s why it’s hard to catch up: you can’t build links too fast because of link velocity issues. As mentioned earlier, if you make too many links too fast, it looks spammy.

Plus, you can’t prove that your main pages, such as the homepage, have a low bounce rate and high time on site (dwell time) if your business ranks on page 7 of Google!

That’s because you want to attract organic visitors, and a new website will often be ranked, say, between page 7 and page 10 of Google.

So, as we mentioned earlier, it’s only when you aim to be 10x better than the competition and create top-quality SEO work that you move your business onto page one of Google. Often, this is for long-tail keywords.

However, when you start to show Google that you have a low bounce rate and high time on site, Google will start to move your website up for other keywords. Therefore, Google will gain more trust and confidence in your work.

As you show Google’s RankBrain, the machine learning element, that shoppers have been on your company website for a long time and the bounce rate is low, Google will see that you are offering helpful advice.

Because you’re publishing helpful advice and showing Google’s algorithm that the bounce rate is low, you’re likely to start seeing organic SEO improve.

 

 

So, how do you overcome this hurdle?

Well, we think that this agency’s on-page and off-page SEO needs to be 10 times better than some of its direct rivals.

Because otherwise, how will you knock them off, say, the top spot in Google’s SERPs?

Because the businesses that occupy the top positions on Google often will have accumulated a low bounce rate, plus a high dwell time, possibly sustaining this for a long time.

Thus, they have shown Google’s RankBrain that they are very good at answering that question or offering that product.

So, how do you show that you can offer a better answer?

Well, in our view, the work must be 10x better.

So, you must push the boat out, and to knock a direct competitor off that top spot, the work must be much better. The backlinks must be more substantial, the content marketing must be better, and you must have a better website offering a better user experience.

 

 

Links, links and more links

You will have some agencies which say “link building is dead”.
But in reality, it is not.

Since Google’s PageRank, links have been necessary, and they still are. They still are an essential part of how Google’s algorithm works.

Take the world’s top brands and businesses that rank in the top 3 or 4 positions for competitive keywords.

Often, they have quality backlinks; they have a lot of quality do-follow and no-follow backlinks.

 

Are backlinks easy to build?

The short answer is no.

But just like the famous Guinness adverts once said, “Good things come to those who wait.” Well, this is the same with backlinks.

The backlinks that your business builds should be the following:

• Will enhance your Google E-EAT score
• Must be relevant
• High quality
• The anchor text should be well-written
  –
  You should slowly accumulate backlinks so the link velocity is slow. The best way to improve your company’s backlinks is to accumulate top-quality backlinks slowly. The links must be relevant to your business and send link juice.

 

On-page SEO

How can you improve your on-page search engine optimisation?

You need to make Google’s job a bit easier. That’s so when Googlebot crawls and indexes that page, it has a crystal clear idea of what that page is about.

For example, if you optimise the page title, the anchor text, and the internal links for a brand of running trainers, Googlebot will understand what you are selling.

 

Well, it all comes down to optimising:

• Content marketing
• Internal links
• Anchor text
• Page titles
• Meta title and description
• The page layout
• Making sure the site map is kept up to date
  And much more

 

Short, keyword rich URL’s

It’s often better to have a short URL which describes what’s on that page.

However, don’t change existing URLs before you talk to your marketing agency first. If you don’t do it right, changing the URL structure can have a sizeable negative SEO impact. For example, you could sever links and lose DA for that page.
So, consult with an SEO consultant before you change the URL structure.

 

Why is it essential to optimise the URL extension when designing a website?

 

Therefore, the URL extension is another signal to Googlebot, helping to describe what products or services are being sold on that page.
So when Googlebot crawls and indexes that page, it can read the URL extension and determine what is being sold.

However, if your website has been live for some time, don’t change the URL extensions; talk to an excellent SEO expert first.

The reason is that changing the URL extensions can significantly impact the business’s organic SEO.

So, before making any changes to the URL extensions, talk to an agency and get advice.

 

Why your business content marketing must be helpful (Google Helpful Content Update)

So, as part of writing your SEO strategy, a key part will be how to write your business’s content marketing.

So, when planning on writing content marketing for your business, you must think about the following:

• How you plan on writing content marketing that’s better than your direct competitors
• How you will improve your company Google E-EAT.
• How will attract links to that work
• How you will ensure the content marketing has a high dwell time
• How you will reduce the bounce rate for that page
• How will you improve the on-page SEO for that pageTwo crucial Google updates, the “Google Helpful Content Update” and the “Google E-EAT,” now require every business’s content marketing to be high-quality and well-written.

How are you going to measure organic traffic?

We would recommend using Google Analytics.

Attracting organic traffic is key to improving a business’s search engine optimisation.

You must monitor this, perhaps daily, weekly, or monthly, to see how organic search engine optimisation improves.

However, you need to measure this reliably, so we recommend setting up a Google Analytics account.

When you log into your business Google Analytics account, you will be able to monitor the following statistics:
– Bounce rate
– Time on site
– How many organic visitors the page has received

 

Monitoring the health of backlinks

So, when building backlinks, the game’s name should only be used to create high-quality links.
The backlinks that you build will need the following characteristics:

• Built-in a white hat way
• Relevant
• High quality
• A mixture of do-follow and no-follow backlinks

 

So, write about your SEO strategy and how you will check the quality of the links.

Bad links, such as spam, can damage business search engine optimisation. You must write to the marketing plan how often you want to check the quality of the links.

We recommend using a high-quality backlink checker and hiring an SEO expert to do this task.

Knowing whether the backlinks leading to your site are high-quality should be left to an expert link builder.

Spam links can damage your SEO, so you need to take steps to disavow them.

 

How regularly will you check your competitor’s backlinks?

So, you should write how often you will check your direct competitor’s backlinks in your marketing plan.

That’s because they will constantly be building new links.

Suppose your business operates in a major city in a highly competitive business sector.

In that case, businesses that rank on page one of Google SERPs often hire top SEO agencies to work on their websites monthly.

An essential part of this work is that they will be trying to build new backlinks.

This is why you need to check your competitors’ backlinks occasionally: to see if you can build your links from the same source.

Remember, however, that your business only needs quality links.

 

How will you monitor indexing issues?

So, your company website may incur indexing issues.

A rise in 404 pages—pages not found—will damage the SEO.

Also, it could mean frustrated shoppers who buy elsewhere because they cannot get onto the page.

It can mean that you could lose essential links. For example, if a page URL extension gets changed, this will cause an indexation issue.

A link that leads to that page will no longer send link juice.

This means the link juice won’t help the business’s SEO.

 

How often will you revisit old content marketing?

So, you must write how often you will revisit old content marketing in your marketing plan.

That’s so that you can update it and make it more relevant. For example, a shopper will not want to read about the best mountain bikes of 2018 now that we are in 2025.

So, write into your marketing plan how often you will revisit and update the work.