There are many different types of SEO strategies, but one critical mistake that many firms make is having a reactive approach to SEO. This is what happens when a firm scrambles to analyse a new Google update and then puts together a strategy to beat it based on what they learned. This is a classic mistake, as it means you are always behind and have to rebuild your entire SEO strategy after each update.
One of the most critical elements to be successful in business is to lead from the front; in order to do this, you must have a good strategy that is a longer-term approach. You ideally should have a 10-year plan that will take time to execute and also set long-term goals. You can’t do this if you are constantly chasing after the latest trend within a marketplace. Google may update every so often, but certain sites always seem to be gaining ground and visibility, which is a good sign that in the long term they have chosen the best strategy.
As with anything in business, you can’t just leave your strategy and not update it; certain elements come and go, and 10 years is a long time in business, but understanding that for the most part the core elements remain the same allows you to stick to the core building blocks that will get you where you need to go. To do this, you should focus on which skills matter the most; in business, we can see that people who invest in their brand name over the long term tend to win big at the end.
Many SEO companies only plan on beating the next update, which is very frustrating for both the firms and the clients. It is based around short-term thinking and is not very effective, as it can take months to reverse engineer any changes that Google makes, and that means the strategy is essentially out of date the next time an update is launched. It’s a constant cat-and-mouse game of chasing each update and having to essentially edit the website’s tag each and every time. That doesn’t even take into account the backlinks.
A much better method than this is to be proactive in your SEO approach; you should take detailed notes on the entire history of Google updates and figure out what changes took place. Once you write these down and start analysing them, you will begin to spot certain patterns emerging over time; this will give you clues as to what Google is trying to phase out and what it is rewarding. Normally Google will not take things out of the algorithm completely overnight; instead, they prefer to make changes slowly so they know they can test that they have created the best results for the consumer.
Consumer satisfaction and the quality of the search results are paramount for Google and its continuing success. Without the consumer, Google would be nothing; they need people to return each and every day to do a search and find out more information. If they don’t do this, then there will be no ad clicks, which means Google makes no money. The primary business model for Google is as an advertising platform, which means that if they show poor-quality results, no one will use their search engine, which means fewer eyeballs viewing ads.
To be effective at SEO you must understand Google, your client, your own business and the consumer. That is an awful lot of work that is needed to be done, but if you can do it and gain a deeper understanding of search, then you will quickly establish your company as the place to be when it comes to getting forward-thinking SEO strategies.
The best way to do this is from analysis; you should know everything there is to know about Google as a company and its algorithm, you should take hours to take a look at any patents that it files, you should scan any publicly available information you can find, follow the Google employees on LinkedIn and X, gather a tonne of information and try to correlate it all together to give you some valuable insights from people who have seen inside Google’s algorithm.
When it comes to your client, you should be doing the exact same thing. You should know the history of their website and how it fared in previous Google updates. You should know how they compare to the top competitor within the market, and that means measuring every possible metric you can think of to compare. You should also understand the client’s business requirements and how they might be changing in the next 10 years.
Your own business should also get some analysis. The vast majority of business owners or heads of SEO never really do any analysis on how to improve the company they work for. When you perform this level of in-depth analysis, you can see how your company stacks up against your local competition but also how your competition could beat you. Finding and probing for weaknesses in your own business is critical to forming long-lasting strategies because you will then see how you could be beaten by someone else who may move into your market. You need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your business.
The last part to analyse is the consumer, and this one is perhaps one of the most overlooked areas by SEO companies. They may have a great understanding of Google and the updates that take place within search; they can tell you all kinds of technical information about title tags and H1s but still fail to perform the basic market research, which includes understanding the customer and realising that behind every search is a person with a problem they want to solve.
The basics of all advertising and marketing are to build trust in your brand name, and you simply can’t do that unless you have done some analysis on them. Building a profile of who you are selling to should be one of the first things that you do before you even begin to change any of the on-page elements. If you don’t understand your audience, then how are you going to reach them with your website copy, AdWords ads or social media posts?
When it comes to your target audience, you should know things like how old the audience is, what kind of words they use in conversation, who they already do business with, what the primary problem that they are having is, how much they are willing to spend, and so forth. In short, you should have built enough information to put together a detailed profile of your customer, which you will then target with your SEO strategy.
One of the best places to start when it comes to being more proactive in your SEO approach is to read the information that Google publishes regarding how your website should perform from a technical perspective. Things like the page quality rating guidelines are information that should be printed out, analysed and absorbed by your entire SEO team. This is critical information that requires you to have a deep understanding of; this will show you the kind of elements that Google wants to see from your website.
When you read over the documents that Google releases, you may find out that there are certain core elements that Google wants to see, which are things like expertise, authority, and trust. You can establish these by creating great content, keeping your site up to date, having lots of pages on your site, and also having an older site that gets great backlinks from already trusted sources that Google already knows.
Creating content is one of the best SEO strategies since it builds an audience, and you can also get rankings from Google. You want to plan your content in advance, and by doing this, you can take charge and be proactive when it comes to building out a longer-term strategy. To do this, you should do some research on things like forums, social networks and even your own surveys. Make sure you get plenty of information from your potential customers and target audience. You should never turn up and churn out content; instead, plan in advance and get feedback from your target audience on what content they want to see.
A similar strategy can be taken with your existing content. While adding more pages of content to their website is a good strategy, you should also cultivate your old content. Updating it with new insights you found or new market discoveries that would now fit into the page is a great idea. This means you are being proactive and seeking out opportunities to improve your website rather than letting Google algorithms hit some pages and reacting to that.
One of the biggest mistakes that companies make when it comes to SEO is building a valuable website and then not telling bloggers or other influencers within the space. You should be actively cultivating and networking with people in your market before you ever launch your website. This will give you a boost when it comes to launch time, as you may find they help you to market your site to their own audience, which gives you some instant traffic while you work on your long-term strategy.