April 18, 2021

How to Start an SEO Campaign?

Are you an SEO expert or SEO agency? Do you know how to launch an SEO campaign for maximum benefit? Or Is this your first time starting an SEO campaign?

You should know that an SEO campaign is different than any Facebook ad campaign.

How to Start an SEO Campaign: eAskme
How to Start an SEO Campaign?: eAskme

Other people are at: How to Get High-Quality Backlinks in 2024 – 7 New Strategies

You need to do a lot of things to make your SEO campaign successful. And, the first step is to understand Search Engine Optimization.

Today, I am making things easy for you by displaying how you should start an SEO campaign.

Understand Keyword Ranking and Rankbrain:

Google is using Rankbrain to optimize search results. Rankbrain is a machine learning program (AI).

With the help of Rankbrain, Google understands the user queries to offer better results and improve user experience.

Before Rankbrain, the Google algorithm was human-made. Rankbrain has saved a lot of time and cater to each user differently. This is the evolution of Google algorithms.

Understand Keyword Ranking and Rankbrain: eAskme

There is no black and white in search ranking.

Artificial Intelligence is helping Google to automatically understand and change the value of domain authority, backlinks, mentions, etc., according to the search behavior.

The algorithm also focuses on user intent behind the search query. Understanding how the user interacts with search results helps them develop better algorithms.

For example, if a user likes the new results, the algorithm changes for him; otherwise, it stays the old version.

Keywords and queries are always important for search engine algorithms.

Google is not all about a keyword but about the user intent. It is quite easy for search engine giants to identify the idea or usability behind the keywords.

For example, If I publish the list of "SEO tools," then Rankbrain understands the user intent and ranks the post for other keywords or queries like "Keyword research tools and SEO softwares.

Everyday Rankbrain is evolving and learning more about the concept behind the keywords. It is helping Google to become user-friendly.

As you understand the importance of keywords and how Rankbrain works, it is time to understand how to create an SEO campaign step-by-step.

Understand Your Website:

Before you launch an SEO campaign, it is a must to understand your website setup.

Here is what you must analyze:

Platform:

Find out if your website or blog is on the modern platform or still running on an outdated platform.

Modern platforms like Hubspot are safe, fast, reliable and easily optimizable. You can easily make changes to your whole website or its design on a modern platform.

If you are using an outdated platform, you must think about relocating your website to modern platforms like WordPress.

There must be some cost that you must pay, but you can do it at a cheap price also.

When moving your website from one platform to another, it is important to take backup.

Remember: Moving a website is a crucial process. Taking backup work like movers for you. In case of any error, you can use this backup.

If you cannot move your website on your own, then take the help of some expert or search Google to move your website from one platform to another.

It is like searching for the movers to move to Orange County. You will find many articles helping you with the website relocation. Like you will find this website if you are moving to orange county.

Analyze your design:

Changing a website design is a crucial decision.

You want to use the modern and most up-to-date design, but you also do not want your readers to feel like they are on the wrong website.

If your website design is not responsive or lazy loading, you must move to the fresh design, which is mobile-friendly, fast loading, and according to core web vitals.

You can buy a premium theme for your website and install it.

In both cases, you must optimize your website. Without optimization or with poor optimization, you cannot make your content rank in search results.

It is the area where you need to think beyond keywords.

Topic Selection and Keyword Research:

For best results, you need to understand the user intent.

You can do this by going after topics rather than just blindly filling your site with keywords.

But it does not mean that you should ignore keywords. Keywords still hold importance.

Do keyword research to find the list of keywords and the user intent behind those keywords. Then you can optimize your content with these keywords.

Before you head after keyword research, understand that your topic should be right for the SEO campaign. 

You can do some brainstorming exercise.

Note down all the important topic ideas.

Now answer these questions:

  • Who is your target audience?
  • What are they looking for?
  • What products or services are you offering?
  • What message do you want to deliver?
  • What topics must you write about?
  • What topics have you written or writing about now?

Now narrow down the list. Remove all the unnecessary keywords and get rid of duplicates.

Only choose the most valuable keywords from the list. You can always get back to the list for more ideas.

Once you know the topic, the next step is to do keyword research.

Your research will help you optimize the article or website.

You can use tools like;

Now use an Excel sheet to write down all the keywords according to the topics.

Use the SEMRush keyword magic tool to get more ideas.

After this research, you must narrow down the title to ensure that you can associate 7-10 keywords with each topic.

Choose the keywords with high search volume that you are already ranking for.

In the end, you will have all the important topics and keywords that you must use on your website.

Pillar Content:

I have talked a lot about the "Pillar Content" strategy.

As a webmaster, blogger, or content writer, you must understand that content is the soul of your website.

Without an effective content strategy, you cannot dream of better search rankings.

So, go after long-tail keyword research. Whether you are working for SEO New York, SEO New Delhi, or SEO Mississauga, long-tail keywords research will always help you.

You can use tools like Longtail pro for finding long-tail keywords related to the topic.

Note down all the important long-tail keywords.

It will help you to create pillar content.

Pillar content is usually 10times longer than the traditional posts.

When you create pillar content for each topic, you will have ebook-style content published on your website. This will also work as a series of guides that help the visitor.

Your pillar article should have all the information that the user finds important and attractive.

SEOs also use long-tail keywords for building backlinks. You can also use them for internal linking.

This will help you attract more traffic and gain a better ranking.

SEO Audit:

SEO audit is the first step to create an SEO campaign.

You must understand how to do an SEO audit.

SEP audit will help you identify errors on your website that you must improve for improved SEO ranking.

You will find out the strength and weaknesses of your website, content or off-page SEO.

You can use SEMRush for SEO audit. Ahrefs also help you perform the SEO audit.

Your SEO audit should include technical and on-site analysis of the website.

Here are the steps that you must follow for an effective SEO audit report.

Step 1 – Page Inventory:

Get the list of all the Urls, titles and descriptions. It will help you find out where your website is standing.

You will find out if the pages are crawlable by Google or if they are following the best SEO practices or not.

You will also find out where you need to optimize Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions.

Step 2- Accessibility Issues:

Go to Google search console, and you will learn if there are any accessibility issues or your website or not.

Google Search Console is free for all. It is the best tool to find technical errors on your website or blog.

Robots.txt:

Go to the Robots.txt section.

Make sure that you are using Robots.txt on your website.

Ensure that your Robots.txt is not blocking Google or other search engines from crawling your posts or pages.

Google search Console teaches you how you can fix accessibility issues.

Sitemap:

Now go to the Sitemap. The common sitemap Url looks like easmple.com/sitemap.xml.

Your sitemap work as the roadmap for search engines to crawl your website.

Submit sitemaps to Google Search Console for better crawling.

404 errors:

It is a must to fix 404 errors.

No one wants to visit pages that have nothing but 404 errors.

404 error display to search engines or the users when they visit pages on your website that no longer exist. The other reason is that they are visiting the page from the wrong URL.

You can find the list of these errors in the Google search console. And fix them by redirecting these urls to the most relevant content.

Remember: If you have just added your website to Google Search Console, you have to wait for some time before Search Console started showing data.

When redirecting 404 pages to active pages, use 301 redirects.

Step 3- On-Site Optimization:

To get an on-page optimization report, you must use the tools mentioned above.

With the help of SEO tools, you can find every optimization error on your website.

Make sure that you must fix all the on-site optimization issues.

Goals:

What are your SEO goals? Do you have any?

It is a must to define SEO goals before launching an SEO campaign.

Also, understand how to track your goals.

Without set goals, you cannot track or measure success.

If you think that keyword ranking is your goal, then you are not on the best path. The best way to track your SEO goals is by tracking user behavior on your website.

Check the engagement level, comments, social shares, bounce rate, etc.

Google Analytics is the best tool for this job.

Implement On-Site-Optimization:

If you have completed the five steps I have mentioned, then it is time for this 6th step.

Now you are ready for On-Site-Optimization.

Improve or optimize your Meta keywords and meta descriptions. Make sure they look natural even when you are using keywords.

Fix all the accessibilities issues, such as 404 errors, robots.txt errors, sitemap errors, etc.

Use SEO tools to find out major SEO issues of your website or content. Fix all the technical errors.

Once you fix all the issues on your website and optimize it, you need to focus on optimizing on-site content.

You need to create and optimize new articles and use pillar content strategy in old articles.

You can do this when you follow these steps:

  • Link back to pillar content.
  • Activate a strong internal linking strategy.
  • Optimize content for the topic.

These will help you easily on-page-optimize your content.

Local SEO:

I have already shared the importance of Local SEO.

Local SEO is the best way to target and reach local customers. It is even better as the business display in a search result when the user is looking for it.

Business directories, Bing and Google, are the important factors of Local SEO.

The first step is to list your business on Bing, Google My Business and Local business directories.

You must use the same address that you have on your website.

Then optimize the local listings with title, photo, description and additional images.

Must claim and verify your business listings.

Backlinks:

Backlinks are still important.

A backlink is a link that directs a user from another website to your website. Google still considers backlink as a ranking factor.

When building links, quality comes first.

Where high-quality links can help you rank better, poor-quality links will get your website penalized.

Make sure that your website does not have any toxic links.

Get the backlink report of your website and get the bad links removed or disavow them.

I have written multiple guides on how you can earn natural links in positive ways.

The most common and authentic ways to backlinks are;

Tracking Competitor backlinks profile:

Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc., help you track competitors' backlinks. You can try to build links from the same websites.

Relevant Directory Link Building:

Industry-related link building still works. All you need is to use extremely relevant directories to build links.

Here I have mentioned a lot of ways how you can earn backlinks.

Conclusion:

The most effective SEO campaign is also a completely optimized and carefully managed SEO campaign.

SEO takes time, and this is what you must understand.

Follow these steps to rank better in search results.

If you still have any question, do share via comments.

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