As an SEO agency we’ve worked with a lot of clients. Many of our clients and potential clients always ask us what should be the first step of a structured SEO plan?
We like to break down our first step into 2 critical phases and 3 key performance indicators (KPI’s). As always if you have any questions about SEO, or want a 2nd pair of eyes on an SEO proposal that you’ve received please reach out to Mark from Make Your Mark Today Inc. and we’d be happy to review anything with you free of charge.
We want you to be in control of your website, business and SEO.
Step 1 A. Of A Structured SEO Plan
The first step of a structured SEO plan is to get a list of target keywords, aka Google searches that your business wants to rank for. This can be done in tandem with an SEO company, or by yourself, or you can hire us to do it on your behalf.
Your keyword list should look something like this:
What Should You Care About With Keywords?
As a business owner we should care about 2 important metrics from our target keyword list.
- KD – Keyword difficulty
- Volume – Approximate monthly search volume
The volume gives you an idea on how much potential website traffic you could get to your website from a well structured SEO plan. More traffic usually equals more business. But not always 😉
The keyword difficulty is a rough estimate on how much SEO work you’ll have to do to rank on page 1. Usually this equates to how much you’ll spend on SEO work. However the amount you spend on SEO also depends on your current website strength.
Step 1 B. Of A Structured SEO Plan
Step 1B of a structured SEO plan is a site plan. A well designed site plan (aka site map, structure etc.) should lay out all the planned pages that are designed to rank for organic searches. Each page should also outline what searches that page is targeting.
For example if you want to rank for “vintage roller skates” and “old school roller skates” you should not create 2 pages for each of these searches, but instead they should be targeted on the same page. Here’s what one of our basic SEO site structures looks like:
KPI’S For An SEO Plan
Now that you have both a list of target keywords and a organic site plan. You now know what you want to rank for and what pages will be ranking. Going forward there’s a few key performance indicators (KPI’s) that will help you evaluate how successful your structured SEO plan is.
- Number of target searches on page 1. If you’re on page 2 or below you’re basically dead in traffic. I can’t stress this enough you need to be on page 1 to get any meaningful traffic.
- Number of target searches in top 3. The first organic website gets 30% of all clicks. The 8th organic website gets ~3% of all clicks. So while being on page 1 is good, being in the top 3 search results is exponentially better.
- Number of new customers. Why do we even CARE about SEO if it does not translate to MORE BUSINESS!? I can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen SEO’s brag about getting 10k or even 100k in organic traffic every month. I always put up my hand and say “SO WHAT” listen it’s cute to brag about the amount of traffic you can get but I’m an entrepreneur. Cash and customers is the lifeblood of any business so it’s ultimately the main goal that you need to track against your SEO efforts.
Next Steps
Congrats! If you’ve made it through this article you’re well on your way to having an effective first step for a structured SEO plan. You know what you need, and how to measure your results. So get to it! Or contact us if you have any question or want a second set of eyes on your SEO plan.