What Is an SEO Campaign? – Technologist
If your business lands on the second search engine results page, it might as well be invisible, as only 1% of internet users bother to look that far. Fortunately, search engine optimization can boost your position. Of course, effective SEO requires a well-planned and -executed campaign. What is an SEO campaign, and why do you need one?
What Is an SEO Campaign?
SEO campaigns are plans to optimize your website content for search engines. Doing so requires appealing to your target audience.
Wait a minute — don’t algorithms decide who ranks high on SERPs? Why not appeal to them? Yes, search algorithms assign SERP rankings. However, their objective is to present internet users with the most helpful results.
Google has explicitly stated that its algorithms prioritize content with the following qualities:
- People-first
- Reliable
- Knowledgeable
By aligning your content with these qualities, you appeal to both the audience and search engine algorithms.
What do these traits mean in a living web page? Reliable and knowledgable are pretty straightforward: The content should contain accurate information that answers the user’s question.
However, “people-first” is a bit more esoteric. Results vary, but they all start with putting yourself in the shoes of average consumers, asking: What information do potential customers need during their purchasing journeys? What provides a satisfying experience to website visitors? These questions should guide your campaign.
What Does Creating an SEO Campaign Entail?
What are the components of an SEO campaign at their most basic? There are three important aspects:
- On-Page SEO: This type of SEO optimizes your website through content marketing, keyword usage and branding.
- Off-Page SEO: Optimization that occurs on third-party websites is off-page SEO.
- Technical SEO: User experience impacts whether consumers remain on your website; technical SEO optimizes your website’s design and development to improve navigation.
What your SEO campaign accomplishes will depend on your areas of focus. To plan the perfect SEO campaign, you must know where to improve. This is where website audits come in.
Website Audit
A website audit reviews your website and identifies low-ranking pages. It also pinpoints specific items that require adjustments:
- Keyword choice, frequency and usage
- Site content structure
- HTML sitemap and internal linking
- Metadata
Audits also delve into the backend of your website, determining technical SEO elements you can work on:
- Crawlability and indexation
- Duplication
- URL structure
- Page load speed
- Redirects
A comprehensive audit shows the big picture, allowing you to allocate resources appropriately. While there are plenty of SEO auditing tools on the market, they offer limited analysis. Our SEO experts can extrapolate data and tailor solutions to your goals.
Keyword Research
What is an SEO campaign without keywords? Keywords play a crucial role SEO by impacting which SERPs your web pages appear on. Algorithms crawl pages for relevant keywords and then connect them to searches. For instance, “plumber” may show up in the following queries:
- What does a plumber do?
- Plumber near me
- Signs I need a plumber
Which of these searches will bring potential customers to your website? Keyword research can help you figure it out.
A good starting point is to analyze your competition, looking at what keywords similar, high-ranking businesses use. Once you have a general idea, develop your own keywords and phrases. These should be slightly different to avoid too much direct competition but similar enough to rank in common searches.
Again, you can utilize tools and third-party expertise to streamline this process. SEO professionals can also provide insight into which long-tail keywords best match your target audience.