Search strategy. Make it your No1 priority

WHY IS SEARCH IMPORTANT?

81% of all internet journeys start with search. Organic search drives over 50 percent of all visitors to B2B and B2C websites according to a report from Search Engine Land. 

Without a search strategy in place marketers are missing out on a huge opportunity to drive additional quality traffic to their website leaving competitors capitalising on those ‘juicy’ high-volume search terms and reaping the benefits. So where do we start? 

1. MAKE A LIST OF IMPORTANT TOPICS

Make a list of important and relevant topics based on what you know about your business. 

Insurance company example

• Car insurance
• Multi car insurance
• Home insurance
• Etc.

2. FILL THOSE TOPIC BUCKETS

Fill in those topic buckets with keywords that you feel are relevant.

Car insurance

• Car insurance
• vehicle insurance
• cheap car insurance
• single car insurance...

Multi car insurance

• multicar insurance
• second car insurance
• multi car is it cheaper...

Home insurance

• home insurance offers
• cheap home insurance
• home content insurance...

3. RESEARCH RELATED KEYWORDS

Check for a mix of head terms and long-tail keywords in each bucket.There are plenty of tools out there freely available to help you with this task, don’t forget to check your competitors too. Typically the keyword tool will show you three useful information for every specified keyword: 

• Volume (monthly average for your country) e.g. 1,000/mon
• Competition on websites (0.00 = low competition to 1.00 = high competition)
• Related keywords

My personal preference is Keywords Everywhere. It's a free browser add-on that shows search volume, CPC & competition on websites.

4. CUT DOWN YOUR KEYWORD LIST

Still using the keywords tool cut down your keyword list. Focus on the most relevant keywords with a good volume of traffic. 

car insurance = Volume: 673,000/mo | Competition: 0.95

Vs

single car insurance = Volume: 20/mo | Competition: 0.98 

5. SO HOW DO YOU RANK FOR THOSE KEYWORDS?

I have not come across yet a free tool which allows you to upload/generate your keywords list and shows you how your website and competitors rank against those keywords (feel free to comment if you know one). However there are plenty of affordable solutions to do the job. 

Alternatively, it's a bit laborious but if you are curious you can use https://duckduckgo.com/, because this search engine doesn’t store your data, history and preferences you can check and see which website ranks high for your specified keyword. If you can’t see your website on top it’s time to work hard on your SEO.

6. CONTENT CREATION 

Create content based around your keywords list. If you need inspiration for your content creation give this website a go answerthepublic.com

7. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

Use the periodic table of SEO from Search Marketing Land. The table is designed to help publishers focus on the fundamentals needed to achieve success with SEO.

The table covers On-the-page SEO and Off-the-page SEO and look at Content, Architecture, HTML, Trust, Links, Personal and Social

Use a SEO tool or google sheet to keep track of your changes and monitor the impact those changes are having on your website ranking. You don’t have to check your reports every day or week, leave it one month or two and then review your changes.