SEO STRATEGY: TOP 9 KEYS TO YOUR POSITIONING STRATEGY

Anyone who has a web or blog project would love to have a magic wand to obtain the best SEO positioning . A legitimate desire, knowing that a better positioning provides greater visibility and, therefore, greater possibilities of attracting potential customers. However, getting to the top of Google results takes time, resources and above all perseverance. Of course, you have a series of tools and practices that can help you: we reveal the Top 9 keys for your positioning strategy for your SEO strategy . We started!

How to create an effective SEO strategy in 2020

First of all, consider the SEO strategy as a whole, as a set of actions to be carried out and do not limit yourself to carrying out only some of the search engine positioning keys that we suggest. If your goal is to improve the ranking of your website in search results, you should focus on each of the aspects that we will detail throughout this article. Only then will your positioning strategy be effective and you will achieve your goal.

What is an SEO strategy?

The SEO (optimization for search engines) is a miscellany of practices and techniques to optimize a website an online store or blog.

Optimizing SEO is intended to generate more traffic to the site, giving it greater authority and improving the positioning in search results. We are talking about clicks and visits that come for free, which make it even more sweet.

SEO helps to:

• Generate more sales (the main objective of an ecommerce)
• Get more leads (such as more subscribers)
• Give more authority to your page
• Get organic (free) traffic to your website
• Lower the cost of acquiring a customer (CAC)
• Makes you stand out from your competition
• It helps the user to make better decisions (we would be educating him in a way)

SEO is a whole, a chain of actions that only brings benefits for your web project, Although it may seem impossible, taking into account the innumerable number of existing web pages, we have gathered in this article the most effective ones: 9 SEO positioning keys .

Key 1: Select the main keywords from your Keyword Research

Selecting the keywords that generate traffic to your website has to be a well measured and weighed process because right there lies the key, worth the redundancy, that more clicks and visits to your site are generated.

But before getting down to it, with seo tools like SemRush or Google’s keyword planner, which we’ll detail a little below, you have to perform 2 steps:

• Define the target, the target audience you want to address.
• Create a buyer persona: this will allow you to know how to communicate with that semi-fictional and potential client so that your content is interesting to them.

After the two previous steps, it is time to focus on choosing the main keywords so that more traffic is generated to your website or content. First of all, we are going to summarize what a keyword is: it is what a user types when making a query in a search engine, waiting for a question or concern to be resolved.

The phrases “which jeans to wear in autumn 2020”, “eat cheaply in Italy”, “the best hydroalcoholic gel” are key words. They are the step that links a user to the content of our website. Hence its great importance in an SEO positioning strategy.

Let’s do a brief review of the different types of keywords:

• Search intention keywords : these can be navigational (the user enters the name of a company or brand directly in the search engine), informative (the user consults a question, for example “number of inhabitants of the Community of Madrid) or commercial (They imply the intention to purchase a certain item, for example “buy a second-hand motorcycle”).
• Keywords according to their composition : generic (the user enters his search in a generic way, a first step towards the purchase, for example “Italian restaurant”; semi-generic (the user limits his search by entering some characteristic, for example “Italian restaurant of luxury); long tail (they tend to have a lower level of competition but are of vital importance since they are aimed at an audience more prone to hiring or buying. For example “luxury Italian restaurant in the center of Toledo”.).

And now is the time to develop your SEO positioning strategy, taking the search for keywords as the first step:

• Define an idea on a hot topic that can drive traffic to your content.
• Use the tools that we are going to detail below.
• Specify whether the search volume for the keywords you have chosen is relevant.
• Determine how difficult it is to rank for that keyword.
• If your market is international, do the process for each country in which you want to position yourself.
• Include in a list all the keywords that have passed the previous filters to include them in your content naturally.

As we have already mentioned, there are certain tools that can help you in selecting the most interesting keywords for your ecommerce, website or blog. We detail some:

• SemRush : it is one of the most complete tools that you can use and that also offers an advantage over others. SemRush analyzes the positioning of your website, which will help you understand where your efforts should be directed. As for the keywords themselves, with this tool you can easily identify the most relevant to your niche and how difficult it is to position them. Also, a plus: SemRush analyzes your competition, with which you can find out what their strengths are and act accordingly.
• If you have a Google Ads account (and if you don’t create it, it’s free), you can use their keyword planner , Google’s Keyword Planner. Create a campaign (even if you don’t launch it later) and enter the keywords you have chosen. The tool will help you identify them and propose other related ones.
• Other tools that can be of great help to you are Ahrefs (in the SemRush style) or Answer The Public (it gives us results of the searches carried out with a “how”, for example if we enter “SEO positioning” and include the country, it will offer us the searches made referring to that term: “how to improve my SEO positioning”, “how to establish an SEO strategy”, etc.).

Finally, do not forget to include the keywords meta tags such as titles, H1, H2, tags, content and meta descriptions: yes, the result should be natural, with a fluent reading and not seem forced.

Key 2: Analyze the first page of Google’s SERPS

This key within your SEO positioning strategy includes a lot of research, research that will be very useful to later take action, that is, implement the resources to optimize that strategy.

It is essential to analyze the first page of the SERPS’s (Search Engine Results Page, that is, the Google results page) to know what (content) and who (company) is in the first positions and what positions our site occupies in front of the competence. Although it is very interesting for all web projects, in the case of ecommerce it becomes essential. Most of the traffic to your online store will come from searches made by users by consulting a product by keyword on Google.

Knowing where we are will help to understand where we should improve and where to direct our efforts and resources in the SEO strategy .

A very useful tool that you can use and that has a free version as well as a paid plan, is SerpLab . Easy to use, you can include the domain of your website (without www or https), up to 5 keywords in its free version and 3 competing domains to see if they are in the top 10 of the results.

Once the first query has been made and the optimizations you think necessary have been applied, re-analyze the positions of your site. If the result has improved, you are on the right track. If you have not managed to climb, review again the keys that we provide in this article to achieve it.

Key 3: Make content better than your competitors, be creative.

You’ve probably read the “content is king” premise in SEO more than once. Well, this premise is still valid: a lot of content is still being consumed on the internet and, for a few months, much more.

Now … we assure you that not all content is valid for an SEO positioning strategy. And even more: your content must be better than that of your competitors to gain positions in the search results. Always offer the best and you will be rewarded.

You have to be creative. You have to write consistently. You have to offer relevant and coherent seo content , which solves the user’s search intention. You have to work on that content. Do not copy and paste, develop your own content unless you want to be penalized by Google (just the opposite of what you want when you want to develop a good SEO strategy).

Choose the appropriate tone for your publications, thinking about who you are addressing. Includes tips, examples, references, internal links, images, graphics. Make the consumption of your content can be done in a fluid, agile, entertaining way.

Offering quality content is not an easy task but it is of vital importance. Internet users will like it. Search engines will like it. That is why you must dedicate time and effort, because the results, over time, will come. Once the keywords have been determined, include them in the content (titles, H2, meta descriptions, etc.), always keeping in mind the search intention of the users. Do not force anything, write naturally, just as you would like to receive information. Think first of all about who reads you and then about the search engines.

Go for long articles and posts (but without too much “straw”), complete and that revolve around the most important topics of your website, with which you can generate sales and leads. And, once you have published several, gather them in Topic Clusters, including the various posts in a main article, thus relating them to each other. Topic Clusters will help you a lot: Google will consider your content as the most complete on the web, better and more relevant than what your competition is offering.

Google happy = better SEO positioning.

Key 4: Trust the Power of CTR

Before explaining what CTR is and its power, we are going to make one thing clear: in marketing and SEO positioning, everything is a wheel. A technique improves an action which in turn improves positioning. We will explain ourselves shortly.

The CTR (Click Through Rate in English) counts the number of clicks received in proportion to the number of times a content, a product or a link has been shown to the user (impressions). It is a metric that is calculated in percentages (the higher it is, the better) and it is important to take it into account both when we launch a digital campaign (in Google ads, for example) and just to determine if the link is attractive enough for a consumer click on it.

To know the CTR of a website we have great support: Google Search Console, a complete and free tool. You can analyze the entire web page or a specific url. Google Search Console will indicate the CTR percentage, in addition to providing you with other analytics by search, countries, devices, etc.

But focusing on the power of CTR and going back to the first idea that we indicated at the beginning of this SEO positioning key , one thing is clear. If the CTR is high, it will improve the positioning. Search engines will take into account that higher number of clicks compared to competitors. And if the positioning is improved, the CTR will increase, the clicks on the links that can lead to a conversion or a sale. It is therefore a wheel in which you must do everything possible to improve search results.

If you wonder how we can improve, increase CTR , here are some clues:

• The Title tag ; It is the one that is usually displayed at the top of a search result. It should include the main keywords (better if they are located to the left, where the user’s view is directed before), not exceed 45/50 characters (otherwise it could be cut off and not be attractive) and include a CTA (call to the action) that arouses interest.
• Take care of the meta descriptions . They are not a ranking factor per sebut they are important since they are one more option to convince the user to click on your link instead of the competition’s. Sometimes Google does its thing and does not show them or chooses to show a fragment of your website, but the best thing is to always have the meta description tag optimized for your interests. They must not exceed 155 characters, must include relevant keywords for your site and, in the case of an ecommerce, take advantage of the meta description to include an attractive CTA; free shipping, a one-off discount campaign, etc. Also keep in mind that the goal descriptions do not have to be static: you can vary them depending on changes in the market or on key times such as Christmas, Black Friday, etc.
• The URL: don’t forget to include breadcrumbs on your website, since through your data bookmarks, you could show the hierarchy instead of the URL itself. Breadcrumbs help Google understand web architecture , displaying a more accurate search result. And of course, include the keyword for which you want to rank in the URL.
• Data markers: these are small pieces of HTML that can be added to the code of your web page so that the search engines (hopefully) will show them as added information in the search results. To do so, go to Google Search Console and follow the instructions that this tool offers us for free.

Key 5: A proper SEO On page is essential

Turning to SEO On page is something that is within your reach; in fact within the positioning strategies, this is under “your responsibility.” Optimizing your website is in your hand to achieve 2 fundamental aspects:

• Offer a good experience to the user who visits your site.
• Make it easier for search engines to read your website so that they understand what you offer and that they index it properly.

What variables are those that you can control and that can improve the SEO On Page of your page and therefore improve its visibility and positioning? Here you are (some as you will see we have already talked about in this article):

• Title length.
• Optimized meta descriptions.
• Friendly URL (and as far as possible easy for the user to remember).
• Content: quantity and quality.
• Proper use of keywords.
• Optimized images.
• Web loading speed .
• Internal and external links.

In the following SEO positioning keys we are going to delve into some of these variables.

Key 6: Take into account the search intention.

Google (and the rest of search engines) strive to offer in their results links and content that adequately respond to the queries made by users. If your links “advertise” certain content that is neither good nor appropriate, the user will leave the page, increasing the bounce rate (and this is certainly not good for your positioning).

Therefore, if search engines focus on understanding user requests, what they need, you should do the same. Know the search intent and offer content accordingly. This content must be adapted to the user, to what he wants to find.

If you make an informative query, offer a complete post where all your doubts are clarified or your desire for information is expanded. But if the query is about a product, for example a slim jean, what the user expects is an image of that jean. And here you have one of the variables that we talked about in the previous key. It offers good images, with good resolution, that visually “explain” the product, but always optimized (that they look good on all devices, that they are not pixelated, that they do not “weigh” too much so as not to reduce the loading speed of the page…).

Another example: if someone asks a question about how to make pancakes, it is very possible that the content they expect to consume is a video with the process step by step; that you can stop, “rewind”, view in whole or in parts. Think about the user and offer them the content they expect to receive, also taking into account the most appropriate format.

Key 7: A good layout for a better retention rate.

How can web layout influence an SEO positioning strategy? Obviously, a well structured, clear page that does not involve tedious processes for the user, will make them stay longer on the site. Aspects such as colors, titles, readability of the site and of course, that it is a responsive design will also help. But also internally, with a code that is as clean as possible, which makes loading time to a minimum, will make it easier for search engine robots to better understand what you offer on your website.

If they are clear about it, your site will be indexed properly and will show it more assiduously in the search results.

To help Google understand our site, it is essential to take into account the web architecture: the better it is structured, the more understandable it will be and the better it will be indexed, showing the user the most important, most relevant parts of the site.

Factors to take into account:

• Use web structures no more than 3 levels deep (Google bots have a limited crawl time and it is possible that in that time they will not reach the most hidden pages). A horizontal structure versus a vertical one makes the content more accessible.
• Easy to “move” between categories and subcategories: to do this, try to offer a good navigation menu and allow “breadcrumbs” on your site. Links, as we will see in the next key to take into account in an SEO strategy, are essential.
• Make it a priority to offer the most important content on your website as accessible as possible to both users and search engines; try that from the same home, that relevant content is not more than 3 clicks away.
• SILO structure: it is a SEO on Page technique / tactic, hierarchically structuring the keywords you have chosen to position your website. In this way, those keywords will gain greater relevance and search engines will clearly know what content / product you want to position.

Key 8: Without links there is no paradise.

A web page that has good links has better positioning options compared to others and therefore you must take them into account in the positioning strategy of your page. We influence: quality links. That your site (your content, your product) is linked will indicate to Google that your website is relevant, that it is “worth” showing it to users in their search results.

With that said, it’s important to go over all the aspects of links that can improve SEO ranking or completely screw it up.

Broken links

Imagine that you have managed to capture the attention of a user who has made a query, clicks on your link and when he accesses a 404 error page appears. Or that, after accessing, he wants to search for other content on your page and again has before yes resulting in a “page not found”. Obviously you will not want to stay on it, or continue browsing, so the rate of permanence on your website will decrease. The only possible solution, in addition to “working” this 404 error page, is to fix those broken links, redirecting them, either temporarily or permanently.

Internal links

Links are hyperlinks that establish relationships between two (or more resources). In the case of internal links, we are talking about linking various parts of your website to each other. What is the purpose? Improve SEO positioning. And what and how is it achieved?

• They improve the user experience, the usability of the page. Through the links we can achieve a better rate of stay on the site. The user comes to the page attracted by a certain post or product and, through internal links, we propose content or related products. In this way, you will visit more pages within our site, increase the average time spent on it and decrease the bounce rate.
• We make things easy for Google. Search engine spiders will navigate our page better, crawling the site more easily and better understanding its web architecture.
• Internal links help distribute traffic. Suppose that a post receives many visits, but we are interested in a user visiting another post that we want to give relevance to. By including an internal link to it from the most visited post, we can redirect the user. The process is the same in the case of a well positioned product; we can take advantage of that product to offer another through an internal link.

Inbound links

Having links that go to your website are a great SEO positioning factor. The reason is easy: search engines understand that if a page is linked it is because it has a higher quality content, more relevant. In fact, it is said that search engines give more importance to incoming links (backlinks, hyperlinks that reach our website from another domain) than to internal ones since -in theory- they are less manipulable.

Of course, not all inbound links are worth it. These have to be natural and of quality. It is preferable to have 3 quality inbound links from three different domains (this will give relevance to your page) than three links from the same domain with little notoriety.

How does Google know that the links are of quality? To determine it, it takes into account several factors:

• The relevance of the page that links us.
• The concordance and relevance of the content between the page that links us and ours.
• The number of links that come from the same domain.
• The number of domains that link us.
• The anchor text used in the external link and its variety.
• Whether or not there is a property relationship between the domains that link us and ours.

external links

External links are hyperlinks that start from our website and point to another domain. Although it should not be abused since it would “divide” the notoriety of our site, it can have beneficial effects for SEO positioning:

• If it is a link that we make in a natural way, it is most likely that the domain we are pointing to will link us in turn, improving the relations between both sites.
• External links are trackable links. This means that if our external link brings a lot of traffic to the other domain, it can be tracked.

Key 9: Evergreen content as the key to your seo strategy.

There is a lot of talk lately about how evergreen content can help us improve our rankings. We are going to see how you can achieve this SEO improvement, but above all we are going to reel off what evergreen content consists of.

Evergreen content is content that does not have an expiration date, it is timeless. It is never obsolete since it does not respond to current news but continues to be valid over time, getting traffic, visits and giving visibility to that content and therefore, to the page.

Evergreen content may be a resource guide for the use of a particular Nintendo model, but the launch of a new model would not be. We can create this type of content based on tutorials, step-by-step guides, informative articles like this one you are reading (yes, in this case it should be reviewed and updated from time to time), glossaries or even product reviews.

Content that responds informatively to user inquiries and to which they frequently go: each visit you make to our evergreen content gives it greater notoriety. The positive consequence is that Google will take it as relevant content and will throw it in search results more and more frequently, improving the SEO positioning of the website against the content of the competition.

To create good evergreen content, do not forget to include keywords and internal links that direct the user to other relevant content on your page or products that may be related.

So far our Top9 keys for your positioning strategy

Carrying them out correctly and adapting them to the characteristics of our site is a must if you want your website or ecommerce to reach the top positions in search results. Remember that it is a whole set of tactics that can lead to success. It is in your hand.