On your to-do list, there's no shortage of SEO chores.
You have a million directions to turn every day between UX enhancements, content optimizations, and fresh content development.
The most effective SEO priorities their SEO duties based on data in order to obtain the best outcomes and maximize their return on investment.
We've defined our plan for monitoring SEO performance and executing key activities on a monthly, and weekly basis to assist you to spend more time on the tasks that matter:
Priorities for SEO that will help you achieve your objectives as quickly as possible.
1. Ensure that your website is searchable.
2. Make a topic strategy to help you focus your efforts.
3. Examine organic traffic and rankings.
4. Optimize existing content.
5. Create new content to fill in the gaps in your topic strategy.
6. Critical Crawler Issues Should Be Monitored and Corrected.
One-Time SEO Tasks (Planning/Strategies)
1. Keyword research:
Use keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Moz to discover existing keyword ranks and fresh chances to figure out which subjects and phrases to target.
Begin with terms that are most directly related to your product or service, as well as the most common pain points your customers face.
To refer to later, compile all of your research into a spreadsheet containing search volume and difficulty statistics.
While some upfront effort is necessary, you'll want to do keyword research on a regular basis to stay on top of new trends and possibilities.
2. Define Achievable Keyword Targets:
It's tempting to go after the most popular keywords. However, starting with highly competitive keywords is like applying for high-ranking employment with little experience.
When you first start out, you must establish yourself as an authority on a topic before search engines would rank you higher than more relevant and reputable websites.
As a result, you should focus on less competitive, longer-tail keywords that you have a chance of ranking for.
You'll have a better chance of attracting organic traffic this way, and you'll be able to start building domain authority and search engine trust. Then you may work your way up to more competitive keywords.
3. Make a strategy for your topic:
Topic modeling is a technique used by search engines to analyze how words are related.
To avoid duplicating content, instead of producing material for particular keywords, each page should reflect a distinct topic and searcher intent.
Consider subjects and subtopics while developing your content strategy. The major term you want to rank for is reflected in the topics.
You can create subtopic pages based on that topic to answer related queries and cover the whole breadth of that topic.
Start with 1-3 topics (or core keywords) and structure your keywords and subtopics around them to address all of the potential queries that a search could have.
Instead of thinking about keywords, consider how effectively you've covered a topic. This can help you create more useful content that offers what consumers truly desire.
Try Blueprint SEO today to get a head start on your subject cluster approach. This content tool aids in the organization of themes and subtopics, providing a clear path to SEO success. All in one spot, create your content plan, detect internal linkages, and measure performance.
4. Install Google Analytics and Search Console on Your Website
You can measure and assess organic traffic with Google Analytics, which is a key indicator for organic SEO. Check out this Google site for further information.
Additional statistics, such as clicks and impressions from specific Google search queries to your website, as well as alternatives like creating a sitemap, are available through Search Console.
5. Track your Keyword
You'll require ranking software to track your SEO success. Upload your keywords, watch the competition, and observe how they evolve over time using tools like Moz or SEMrush.
6. Submit an XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap acts as a directory for your website and makes crawling easier for search engines.
In Search Console, you can easily generate and submit an XML sitemap.
7. Ensure that your website is searchable.
Search engines must be aware of your content before it can rank. Indexing informs search engines that a page exists, allowing it to be included in search results.
In Search Console, you can see which pages Google is indexing.
8. Get an SSL Certificate installed
SSL certificates encrypt your website and offer an extra degree of protection. Your website will switch from HTTP to HTTPS when you install a certificate.
When you add it, a lock icon will appear in the URL bar to indicate to visitors that your site is safe.
9. Crawl Your Website
SEO tools such as Moz will crawl your website and reveal metadata issues such as missing information, 404 errors, and more that could be damaging your SEO potential.
10. Identify and Correct Major Crawler Errors
Hundreds of problems might be discovered in your crawl report. It's pointless to try to repair everything right away. Take care of difficulties with your most essential websites, such as your homepage.
Make a strategy to correct mistakes on a regular basis so that your SEO efforts don't get in the way of your main goals.
11. Optimize Meta Tags to Improve Your Topic Strategy
You need to represent your goal keywords on your website now that you've defined them for your primary website.
Ensure that your target term appears in the following locations on your homepage, services pages, and other relevant pages:
• Page title
• Meta description
• H1, H2, H3.....H6
• Image alt text
• URL
12. Measure the uptime of your website and the speed of your pages.
SEO elements like speed and availability are crucial.
Check your page speed using Google PageSpeed Insights, then make changes with Moz's page speed best practices.
Pingdom and other website performance tools may show your website's uptime and alert you to any major concerns.
13. Check your website mobile-friendliness score
Mobile is prioritized by search engines such as Google. Google's mobile-friendliness tool may assess your site and provide recommendations for improvement.
Monthly SEO Task List
1. Make changes to your topic strategy.
Your SEO efforts will be guided by your topic approach.
Review your most essential subjects and subtopics on a regular basis, and look for fresh content possibilities that address frequently asked questions by your target audience.
Look at what your rivals are writing about and connect with your sales or customer service teams to find out what questions they are commonly asked.
2. Analyse the Featured Snippets and Rankings
Keep an eye on your current keyword ranks on a monthly basis for any significant changes.
Take notice of top keywords that have moved up or down in positions 1-3 or on page 1.
It's also crucial to keep track of any highlighted snippet chances for material that's currently ranking so that you can optimize for them later.
3. Analyze Organic Traffic Trends
Analyze organic traffic statistics from month to month and year to year to discover pages that are losing traffic and should be upgraded.
Examine your most popular pages on a regular basis. If you see a reduction in ranks for your main keywords or a persistent decline in organic traffic week after week, mark those sites for future investigation.
4. Investigate Behavioral Performance
Organic traffic and rankings are obvious indicators of your SEO effectiveness.
Search engines, on the other hand, are continuously gathering fresh information in order to better identify which pages best answer a search query and expose them higher in the SERPs.
Enter your behavioral information. Sort your content by time on page, scroll time, pages per session, and bounce rate, among other behavioral indicators.
These analytics determine how visitors engage with your material and whether changes may be made to encourage readers to click through or stay on the page longer.
5. Analyze your competitors.
Check to see whether your rivals have encroached on your top keywords, as well as their new content, backlinks, and Moz domain authority score, to see how you stack up and where you can improve.
6. Monitor Linking Domains
It's important to consider the amount and quality of websites that connect to yours. Each inbound link is a vote of confidence in your website's authority.
Keep track of the amount and quality of backlinks to you and your rivals' websites, and strive to improve them over time.
7. Make a list of your SEO tasks and prioritize them.
It's time to prioritize your SEO activities now that you've acquired some information.
Your SEO priority will seem substantially different than someone else's based on the criteria above.
Conclusion:
That concludes our discussion. If you work on one or more of these items once a day, you'll be well on your way to maintaining your site's SEO. Also, whenever you have the opportunity, put extra work into your long-term SEO plan for a genuinely sustainable SEO strategy!