SEO is a long – term strategy in which meaningful results can be achieved in six to 12 months. Algorithmic search engine updates and technological innovations constantly reshape the search landscape. SEO professionals therefore need to balance continuous learning and testing with practical implementation in order to be efficient and efficient. Prioritization is therefore critical. You will never get the buy-in necessary to maintain an effective SEO campaign without proper prioritization.
Why SEO priority issues is a new marketing practice that creates unique challenges and additional scrutiny.
Limited Budget & Resources
You are often the only resource you have as an internal SEO. You may not have a full team to rely on, so it is important to prioritize when and how the work will be done. Collaboration is a must you typically have to work with another department to implement your SEO plans in full.
Prioritizing work with the most responsive departments (or with those with whom you have the best relationships) will help you to get the ball rolling and give your campaign a boost as you deal with more difficult collaborations later.
Efficiency and proof of ROI
Obtaining buy-in— and budget — is difficult to start with. If you do not show results quickly, keeping this budget can be even more challenging. Prioritizing SEO projects that require the least resources and have the greatest impact during the early stages of the campaign is critical.
SEO is a long – term strategy that requires time and continuous efforts to realize the benefits of the work. However, prioritizing the path of least resistance will help you to show early returns and enable you to achieve your broader goals during a campaign.
There are three areas in which priority is key:
- on-site and technical improvement.
- Creation of content and re-purpose.
- Building a link.
By appropriately prioritizing these three areas, your SEO campaign will be set for success. Prioritizing on-site & technical optimization it is no accident that the first item we cover is prioritizing on-site SEO. Optimization on the page can have an immediate effect on your website and your business. These tweaks, which are sometimes super simple, can drastically improve the understanding of your site by search engines, resulting in considerable gains in search results. However, not all technical fixes will have the same impact. You need to give priority. The greater and wider the problem, the greater the impact when you fix it.
While each site is different and has different problems, you can generally prioritize technical fixes in the following order:
• Crawlability: Can search engines find your site and pages (e.g. problems with robots.txt, XML sitemap, noindex tags, redirect links)?
• URLs of low value: do search engines find such pages (e.g. duplicate content issues, soft 404s, hacked pages, faceted navigation)?
• User experience: Can and do users find and like your pages (e.g. internal links, alt text image, page speed, quality of content)?
This is a general order to give guidance when you check your site. However, you have to evaluate issues on a case – by – case basis.
Again, the potential benefit of a fix depends more on the severity of the problem than on the type of problem.
Duplicate content issues are less of a priority if you talk about a few pages, but when this problem spreads over hundreds of pages, it becomes much higher.
While specific on-site optimizations should be prioritized over other optimizations, on-page SEO overall should be your priority when you launch a campaign.
Prioritizing content creation & re-purposing
Content plays an important role in achieving the visibility of organic searches. Google emphasized repeatedly the importance of content. However, significant investment is made in the type of content that gains visibility and links.
Prioritization is key to maximizing your investment. You want to concentrate on creating content that has the greatest impact on the visibility of your search and that means finding content gaps and opportunities.
The best way to find content is through keyword research.
- Building a seed keyword list is one common process for efficient keyword research.
- Expand your list of keywords to include the keywords for body and long tail.
- Intention-based analysis of keywords, search volumes, competition, etc.
- Chance-based grouping and prioritizing of keywords.
Once you have a handful of high-opportunity keywords, you can start to create content on these topics to target the associated search results.The content that responds directly to the intention behind these questions will have a strong chance to rank quickly, especially if the other results do not match very well.
Another way of optimizing the content is to repurpose old content. Repurposing existing content often requires less investment than producing content from scratch and prioritizing these opportunities can lead to more rapid results in SEOs. But how do you identify content worthwhile? After researching your keyword, you should first look at your site for high-opportunity terms.
Do you already have pages that match the purpose of these terms with minor adjustments? If so, concentrate on repurpose and optimize these pages instead of creating new content. Existing content has the advantage that it already exists. These pages have already links, are indexed and have some online authority.
Other candidates worthy of re purpose include:
- Timeless and high quality content.
- Pages which gained considerable social attention but lack links and visibility to search.
- Popular pages that could be expanded to cover a subject more or deeper.
For more information on content re-purposing, I suggest reading the comprehensive guide of Buffer.
The creation of content can be an important investment in time and resources, so make sure that you first prioritize the best opportunities.
Prioritizing Link Building Opportunities
Link building typically comes last in a SEO campaign, but prioritizing link opportunities is still important.
If you have any experience in connection building, you know that it’s the longest practice in SEO.
Effective acquisition of links requires manual prospecting
Tools can speed up these processes slightly, but you still contact another person manually and try to link them.
Due to the difficulty and resource – intensive nature of the building of links, it is important to prioritize ” low hanging fruit ” at the beginning of an early project campaign.
- Ensure that your brand is listed in the correct free quotes (Wikipedia, Google Maps / My Business, Bing Places for Business, etc.)
- Find niche-specific directories.
- Contact websites with which you have relationships in the real world.
- Websites that already mention and talk about your brand (i.e. Mentions unlinked).
- Finding similar 404 pages and reaching sites linked to them. These are examples of the kinds of links that can lead to faster results and should be prioritized at the start of a campaign.
- Recap these are the areas in which priority is most important:
• On-site and technical optimisation: crawling, low – value URLs and user experience.
• Content creation and repurpose: use keyword research to identify the best evergreen content opportunities for extra search value.
- Recap these are the areas in which priority is most important:
- Building links: prioritize ” low fruit, ” such as unlinked mentions and partner companies.
The ability to prioritize is often an overlooked ability in SEO, but priority is the secret to achieving rapid results and gaining the confidence and budget needed for long – term success.