Great SEO can be broken down into two parts. Keyword research for credibility and backlinks for visibility.
Ultimately, this conforms to a very solid principle in digital marketing. As it’s known, the VCP principle or to give you its full title, the visibility plus credibility is your path to profitability.
Using your credible knowledge in a post to represent what you’re talking about is where the keywords and the phrases are embedded. This is exactly in line with the requirements that Google wants you to adhere to.
But once you have these keywords within your content, you need to be found.
The only way to do that is by having backlinks to other search engines or platforms, forums or directories so they can steer more organic traffic back to your chosen web page.
In this article we will look at the four steps to achieve that; from the planning to the research, and implementation to the review.
Step 1: The Planning.
Without knowing what you want to achieve, it’s all pointless. In this particular article, the goal is to demonstrate how easy it is to achieve ‘The creation of 9 pieces of content across several platforms in under 30 minutes?’
The topic we’re going to use in order to reinforce that and demonstrate this principle is ‘What are the foundations of great SEO?’ That’s our planning done.
Step 2 – The Research.
First and foremost, gaining keywords or phrases from competitors and market analysis will help you gauge what has value and what does not. This is also known as gap analysis.
Understanding your macro environment will give you a better idea of how your current brand position alongside that of your competitors and the marketplace.
The next part is user intent, which is very important and is based on Google’s EAT policy. Expertise, authority, and trust. Knowing what the end-user wants is vital in order for your content to connect with your target audience.
Whether this is informational intent or commercial intent, makes a big difference in the tone and style of the content.
Another element is content creation. Now there are many aspects here, but as I always say to any of my learners or businesses I work with is to stick to what you know.
Taking this holistic approach based on your knowledge will take into account the following, Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Processing it ensures that Google knows your tone of voice is consistent throughout your body of content.
Content also relies on entities. These are connections between keywords that define the topic and reinforce the relevancy of your content. This is often referred to as LSI. Latent Semantic Indexing.
Step 3 – Implementation
Now, this can be broken down into three main parts.
Firstly, the on-page SEO. The practice of populating your metadata, editing content and optimizing that content.
The second part is the technical SEO. Which concentrates on the health and speed of the website.
The third and final part is off-page SEO which increases your visibility on the internet, so you can be found easier.
So let’s look at some of the elements that make up on-page and technical SEO and this is by no means an exhaustive list. It is just some of those main points to cover.
First off you need to embed the content you have created with your CMS – Content Management System. Examples include WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magenta and a whole host of many more.
Optimising becomes the next stage of on-page SEO. Embedding metadata such as your page titles, meta descriptions, permalinks, alt tags, etc. will help search engines understand what you wish to rank for.
Building internal links is also part of the undertaking here too. Creating links between web pages, use of anchor text similar to Wikipedia pages and effective navigation menus.
Each link should build credibility to the related article and thereby increasing reader relevancy to the content.
Creating sitemaps allows the search engines to understand what you are offering and wish to be indexed for. Search Console allows you to undertake this required practice and check for indexation best practice too.
After this, you need to be consistent with your marketing message across the internet. The best way to achieve this is by following best practices by using NAPw – Name, Address, Phone Number and Website URL.
This has been around for years. The right message at the right time to the right people.
Utilising a NAPw can be used within your posts, GMB, citations, social media and other forms of link building.
GMB – Google My Business is the next step after your website in building out your local SEO.
Contained within your GMB are many elements to bolster your rankings. Everything from a description of your brand, categories, business hours, website URL, services, photos, posts, reviews and even placement on Google Maps.
Link-building is the practice of connecting to other sites with value to establish more credibility which can raise the profile of your web assets online.
Making videos and posting to YouTube or creating posts and sharing on social media are all forms of link-building.
Step 4: Review
And the last part within the research element is looking at the analytics and reporting. So once we’ve done it once we’ve created the content, we need to make sure it’s refined and starts improving over time.
We always need to review what we doing by looking at your analytics and metrics to gain an idea of what’s working and what’s not.
Once you have a better picture of how your brand is or isn’t performing, then you can make insightful actions to obtain better results over time.
Using free tools such as Google Analytics and Search Console can give you this essential insight.
Final Thoughts.
What are the foundations of Great SEO? Well, it’s the same as it’s always been. It’s about the relevance. The relevance of the content to connect with your target audience, to engage with them, and if they find favour with your content, they become advocates or subscribers.
Ultimately, though, knowing that we have two masters here to serve. The first one is the search engines who are the gate-keepers to your audience. And the second one is the reader.
Whilst quality is always a concern, we should not forget that volume plays a key role too. After all, the more places you are found the more chance you have of connecting with a new user.
Being able to spread your content consistently across multiple platforms to increase its chances of visibility will guarantee your organic growth.
