SEO used to be a fairly simple exercise 15 years ago. You create a site, stuff in the keywords, build links and bingo, your site ranks.
It is not the same anymore. Search engines have become complex, and they are using highly dependable algorithms that get the best content on the first page. Well, at least try to.
You need to have a great understanding of search rankings and modern SEO best practices to actually bring results to a website. And the process may be daunting.
In case, you wish to do SEO for your own website or are a beginner SEO who wishes to know exactly how to get started with doing SEO for a client, I am here to help.
In this post, I will create a monthly SEO Plan for 12 months that will help any website rank for terms either directly related to the business or the niche, or somewhat related to the niche if the arena of operation is uber-competitive.
Let’s get started.
Pay Attention to Your SEO Planning
Before you do any actual SEO, give all your brains and focus on planning your monthly SEO activities. Have a broad picture, but narrow it down in months.
Say you want to get 10K visitors per month in a year, drill down to the activities you need to partake in every month to reach that golden number.
Many newbies just getting started with doing some content creation and a few optimizations here and there. They not only don’t reach their goal but also waste a lot of money. So, it is wise to get into planning before anything else.
Creating the perfect SEO Plan makes many resources come together in an ideal fashion so that each would complement the other which in turn brings about success.
1. Create a 12 Month SEO Plan
In my opinion, and experience of over 12 years, I say that it is important to explore SEO for at least 12 months before discarding it as a Marketing Channel. Generally, it takes about 9 months to get any sustainable results from any online Content Marketing Strategy or activity.
Acting for a time period less than that is the wrong way to go about things. You are more likely to make the wrong decision, both in terms of investment and tactics.
While each website will be different and creating a plan for each has to be vividly distinct, my SEO plan template should be a good starting point regardless. The plan you create doesn’t need to be followed to the tee, and you will always have to tamper and tweak it. But without a plan, you are likely to fail.
2. Pre-Launch Phase of Setting an SEO Action Plan
Before anything, you need to have the website and other tools right in order. This means that you have got your website ready to Market. Depending on the philosophy you believe in, you have to get the MVP ready for launch.
I am a firm believer in CRO before marketing. Do everything that you need to have your website up for conversions. This means that you need to have a well-designed, fast-loading website that is mobile responsive.
With time, your site will slow down, so have all your image compressions and codes on point. That will be a great thing to start. You can also tell your developer to create schema markups that can be used and reused.
3. First Month is Only for Keyword Research
Before anything, you need to have a large chunk of keywords to pick from. This means that you need a keyword tool. These keywords can be divided into buckets which can be further divided into head terms and long-tail variations.
Another way of maintaining keywords is segregating them on the basis of commercials. You can have money keywords and informational keywords.
While doing your keyword research, you have to do a thorough competitor analysis. Without a competitor analysis, your complete keyword strategy will be flawed.
Another important reason to start with keyword research is that it helps you to set up your information architecture. You cannot have good SEO when your website is not well architected.
In case you are working on an old website, you will also need to do a thorough keyword mapping.
4. Months 2 to 3 are for Launching Your Landing Pages
Depending on your website, or your business, your website will have a number of landing pages. You have to put them all up and running. This is foundational work and has to be on point.
Getting this step perfect is important because these pages are foundational for your business for internal and external incoming links. But make sure that you have been thorough with your planning in step 1.
Your landing pages directly come as a result of your planned infrastructure. Be sure to have them well thought out. You can use a silo, or a hub and spoke structure for the best results.
Having a good content structure helps you draw links and thus flow page rank to the main page, and also is a big barrier to keyword cannibalization.
5. Focus on Content Marketing Campaigns in Month 4, 5 and 6
By the end of the 3rd month, some pages of your website would be ranking. If you have done the citations well and have worked on your Social Media marketing as well, your brand name must be ranking by now.
And while I have worked on client websites, I used to have a few landing pages on the first page already. Because some keywords are easy to rank for if perfect on-page SEO is implemented. You will have a good solid website now.
Go hard on link building and blogging. Pick up a link-building technique such as guest posting, skyscraper technique, or whatever you are comfortable with, and get started.
The more you guest post, the greater your visibility will be in the markets. You can therefore be aggressive with it. Make sure that you are doing very well in terms of content promotions.
I would also recommend you to go blogging on your own website. That will be a great thing to do. It will not only improve your internal linking structure but also help to get more people to your website who can then enter into your marketing funnel.
In the 6th month, you need to reassess everything you have done and go for a full-scale website audit. From rankings to technical SEO, check everything that has happened to your website. This will help you get a clear picture of everything that your website has absorbed.
This whole month can be given to correcting issues on the site along with building more backlinks.
6. Become a Content Machine in Months 7, 8 and 9
By now, you have a firm grip on producing content, promoting it, and building links to it. Links are by far the most important ways to gain authority, rank on search engines, and increase organic traffic by generating more leads. So, even when they are hard to get, you have to work on getting more of them.
You also need to go to places where you can get newer eyeballs. By now, a lot of people would know you on social media, but they are not enough. You need to make more people learn about you.
In comes forum participation. You now need to be omnipresent on industry forums. You need to actively answer queries on Quora, other industry forums, review sites, and gel up with bloggers and influencers in the industry.
All this will help you get traction, and make your brand seem like an authority in the industry. This is a great thing for your brand perception. Trust leads to more accepting audiences who are ready to become your clients whenever there is a need.
7. Improve and Correct from Month 10 – 12
You have got everything rolling in the 9 months. Now, it’s time to improve on what you’ve done right, and correct what you’ve done wrong. So, start with a Content Audit.
This may lead to rewriting some pages or blogs, or sections of them, passing link juice to some corners of the website that have none. And, this may even mean that you actively go on promoting some sections of the website that were not well promoted till now.
While doing audits and correcting messaging, you would also need to put serious effort into creating content and links. By now, you know what types of content on your website are seen favorably by Google, and which ones are not.
Repeat creating winning posts, and pages. Make similar posts in style and matter. This will 2x your growth if done right.
Getting Started with your Monthly SEO Plan
While planning your SEO efforts is essential, overplanning is a crime. You will not do anything and be stuck if you think too much. Even if you follow the SEO roadmap or planning template that we have suggested, you are good. Even if the framework is skeletal.
The idea is to get ready with your website, add content to get set and produce lots of content to get going. In the final step, you actively need to improve website rankings. And for that, you actively need to study the data in your search console and make things better.
