Step by Step Guide to SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a need of every small to large scale business enterprise. When it comes to generating organic traffic or the organic lead generation, a top SEO agency in Delhi NCR has to come into the picture and begin the process.
The process that needs to be followed, starts with setting business goals. If we have not defined any business goal we wish to achieve through our SEO services then we won't be able to measure it as a success or failure.
Any business relies on customers. No customer, no business. And, the key responsibility of a professional SEO agency is to bring you more customers over a period of time.
Phases of SEO
As mentioned above, SEO begins with goal setting. After goal setting, there are other activities or stages of SEO. If you are a novice and do not know anything about seo or digital marketing then this Beginner's Guide to SEO is only for you. If you know basics of SEO and want to make a career into it then keep reading with the key steps of SEO:
- Website Audit
- Technical SEO Audit
- Keyword Research
- On-Page Optimization
- Local SEO Review
- SEO and Content Strategy
- Content Writing
- Off-Page Optimization
- Review and Reporting
Let's begin with a brief description of each and every step of SEO.
Website Audit:
Once we are ready with the business goals which could be increasing website traffic, generating more leads or sales in case of ecommerce websites or online services; the next step comes with auditing the existing status of the website. The key elements that needs to be evaluated include the following:
- User experience
- Keyword density
- Mobile responsiveness
- Page speed
- Page load metrics
- Above the fold content
- Page size
- Content to image ratio
- Plagiarism check
- Bounce rate
- Traffic analysis
- Analytics setup check
- Blog section
- Lead funnel
and a few more..
As soon as we're ready with our SEO audit report, the next step is technical SEO.
Technical SEO:
An SEO expert performs the following checks during his/her technical SEO auditing:
- Broken links
- Redirection
- Indexing status
- Crawl errors and status
- Internal links
- Quality of existing Backlinks
- DA/PA of guest posting websites
- Https errors
- SSL integration
- Sitemaps and robots.txt
- Canonical tags
- Code related errors
- Lead Generation forms
After analyzing all these aspects of technical SEO, necessary fixing is required. Sometimes, a lack of experienced SEO team makes changes on only few elements while it doesn't work this way. A professional SEO agency works on each and every aspect and takes it as a holistic approach to achieve the true business goals.
By end of this step, we are ready with the auditing reports and can move forward to the next step of keyword research.
Keyword Research:
Keyword research is a very crucial step of SEO. In this, alignment of business goals with marketing strategy needs to be done. This is the backbone of entire SEO. A correct keyword research can be done only if the SEO team has understood your business needs and behavior of your prospective customers.
One should have clarity how your prospective customers or website users are going to find your website. Here, user mindset needs to be thought hypothetically and some based on competitive analysis. Once done, you'll get a list of possible keywords, your users might search to reach you.
To know more about how to do keyword research and what are the tools used in keyword research, read the blog.
The next step in SEO is to bring our keyword research and auditing into action.
On-Page SEO Optimization:
The first and foremost step after our auditing and keyword research is to make changes in our website and enhance user experience. Following are some of the activities needs to be done in regards to on-page SEO:
- Fix broken links
- Add sitemap.xml and fix robots.txt
- Integrate SSL and redirect http URLs to their https counterparts
- Add blog section
- Add internal links
- Create lead generation forms
- Improve user experience with easy navigation and clear workflow
- Add footer links
- Amend the plagiarized content and make it unique
- SEO friendly URLs
- Mobile responsive and cross-browser compatibility
and many more..
Local SEO:
Local SEO helps businesses in having a presence in their niche and most relevant market. If you are into a garment manufacturing industry based out of India and exports to some other country, you need to ensure your online presence in your region. Here, we expect that the client might search for garment manufacturers in India. A local SEO services agency in India considers this as a keyword and does the necessary local search engine optimization activities to bring your website on top for this keyword search.
This way, the probability of your website coming on the first page increases. That's why, a good local SEO expert doesn't ignore local search engine optimization strategies while formulating the content strategy and keyword research planning.
SEO and Content Strategy:
The next step in the process is preparing the SEO strategy and content marketing plan. As part of content marketing, we already have a keywords list available to us so new content with the right keyword density needs to be written. And, once we have it, and the frequency at which these need to be published is to be planned.
One crucial point to remember here is not to overdo it. Overdoing of keyword stuffing and posting content everywhere can lead to disaster. So, one should take it very seriously on where to post and what. High quality DA websites are good for getting backlinks.
Off-Page SEO Optimization:
It's time to implement the planned strategy and bring it into action. Off-page SEO does all that. However, it won't do it by itself; only an SEO expert works. But, the key thing is it needs to be done right.
Some of the known activities for off-page SEO includes the following:
- Forum Submission
- Article Submission
- Blog Commenting
- Guest Posting
- Directory Submission
- Social Bookmarking
and a few others..
Review, Analytics and Reporting:
Search Engine Optimization is not a one time activity. It is an ongoing process, iterating over cycle. Each cycle ends with reporting and analyzing the analytics. This helps in refining the overall SEO strategy further to achieve better results. During this process, existing keywords can be dropped or new keywords may be picked depending on various factors.
During the initial phase of on-page SEO optimization, analytics setup is being done that helps us in getting the SEO analytics report.
These analytics are meant for seeing the progress in numbers and charts. Not only this but it also tells about the actual conversions and user behaviors that ultimately leads to intelligent decision making.
Conclusion
We've reviewed all the steps of SEO and how following each brings value to the website. As we said, search engine optimization is not a one-time activity. It needs to be done again and again, by improvising the overall marketing strategy as per results and user behaviors and interests. Some activities need to be modified based on environmental factors.
Any SEO agency has to keep themselves updated with the latest search algorithms and must understand how crawlers work at backend. This helps in achieving better results, bringing the website on top.
If you are looking for a professional SEO services agency in Noida, Adeeshi Solutions is just a call away.