SEO Strategy

There’s one big mistake that will cripple your SEO efforts:
Not managing the expectations of clients/leadership.
Most non-SEOs don’t understand how SEO works.
They expect instant results – and get frustrated when that doesn’t happen.
If you want proper internal buy-in, make sure you explain to other stakeholders:

1. That SEO is a long-term digital investment – it’s NOT like ad spend.
2. That timeframes for initial results are typically six to 12 months.
3. That ‘organic’ is not ‘free search coverage’ – SEO is expensive, but worth it in the long term.

Focus on one thing for successful SEO: relevance.

Keyword research, site speed, crawlability, and backlinks contribute to good search rankings. But, without relevant content, those tactics are pointless.

Instead, start by giving your audience the information they need. Here’s how:

1. Know who you’re targeting. The more specific your audience, the more relevant your content will be for them.
2. Create comprehensive content. Google likes comprehensive content because it’s more likely to give people what they’re looking for. ‘Comprehensive’ does NOT mean ‘long’ – it means covering a topic fully.
3. Use keyword data to find out what people are looking for rather than for ‘optimisation’. Good content will have a natural abundance of keywords.
4. Use research from real-life customers to create valuable content. High-value queries won’t always show up in keyword research.

When you’re writing content for search, don’t try to ‘reverse engineer’ SEO.

Effective SEO needs to be built in from the planning phase.

If a manager or colleague gives you final-draft content and asks you to quickly optimise it, push back.

You’ll save yourself time – and help them understand that SEO is integral, not an five-minute add-on.