SEO - or search engine optimization - is an essential part of any marketing campaign. Perhaps youâre exploring SaaS content marketing for your software business? If so, youâll need good SEO so people can find your content. Or maybe youâre trying to implement influencer marketing? The backlinks between you and your influencerâs websites could have huge benefits.
However, there are a lot of different methods for securing better search rankings, so âgood SEOâ can actually be a pretty vague term. This means that making a plan is essential, and the first step should be to set some SEO goals for your business.Â
A lot goes into selecting these: youâll need to define what good SEO means for your business, find out which goals are a priority, and work out how youâre going to achieve them.
With all that in mind, even developing a plan can be a bit intimidating, but weâre here to help. Weâve provided some tips below to help you determine the right SEO goals for your business.
The first step in setting SEO goals is simple: take the time to ask yourself a few questions about your business and your current search engine results page - or SERP - rankings. Itâs these rankings youâre looking to improve via SEO. Thereâs a lot of potential questions you can ask, but weâll provide three good examples here.
First, consider âwhat does good SEO mean for my business?â âGood SEOâ is a vague term, so you need to specify. Does good SEO mean more backlinks? Does it mean restructuring your website? This connects heavily to deciding your methods, which weâll address in more detail below.
Secondly, think about where you are right now with SEO. Are you on top of the SERPs for all the keyword searches you want to be ranking forand looking to maintain your SEO quality or are you just starting out? This question helps identify what youâll need to improve on and by how much.Â
This second question should also encourage you to think about how much time youâre giving yourself to achieve goals. When setting up these timeframes, consider using integrated calendar software to mark down all relevant dates. This will make deadlines visible to employees. A good calendar app can provide periodic reminders so the scheduled meeting doesn't slip your mind.
Thirdly, ask yourself how youâre going to achieve your goals. You should consider this before you even have a concrete goal in mind - itâs important to take stock of your resources before embarking on a project. Consider the skills of your team and what kind of software, hardware, and monetary budget youâre going to allocate to SEO.
Remember, if you work in a team, you should bounce ideas around before finalizing your goals. If youâre still figuring out what questions to ask, discuss the subject with your peers. Remote working can be an obstacle here, but any good video conferencing solution for small business will provide a convenient means of communication.
To define your SEO goals, you need to consider what success is. This means re-examining old goals and the progress youâve made with SEO so far. This stage of the planning process can be done at any point, but we recommend doing it early. Itâs very similar to our first tip - âAsk the right questionsâ - but with a key difference: measuring your previous success will require more analytics.Â
There are two main ways to do this analysis, and the method you pick should be based on how long your business has existed. If you operate a long-running endeavor, analyze your progress and what youâve achieved before now in your SEO journey. Use software tools to gauge your current level of SEO and set a feasible goal for how much youâd like to improve.
If youâre just starting with your online business, you probably donât have much you can look back on. In this instance, try analyzing your competition rather than your own SEO. You may not be able to glean as much in-depth information, but there are many software tools available that can help you work out what works and what doesnât.
If youâre using competitors to measure success, make sure you pick ones that are similar to you. If your company sells phone systems for small businesses, compare your SEO statistics with those of a business that also sells phone systems as opposed to a generic software provider. This will make the comparison more relevant and meaningful.
Once youâve answered your questions, youâll have an idea of the goals you want to achieve. Next, organize these in order of importance. It might be your plan has smaller goals that lead to a bigger goal, so factor this into your priorities.
For instance, say your main goal is becoming the top-ranked result on the SERP for a particular keyword relating to your business. You also want to restructure your website for SEO and complete some keyword research.Â
The priority task should be keyword research. This isnât necessarily because itâs the most important - though it is an essential part of improving SEO - but because it factors heavily into the other two goals. Completing keyword research will help you decide how to improve your website SEO, and improving your website SEO will improve your ranking on the SERP.
Â
You should think of becoming the top search result as a long-term goal, but it should not be prioritized. Not that it isnât pertinent or shouldnât be kept in mind - the issue is the goal is harder to achieve and will take more time.Â
When youâre prioritizing goals, make sure SEO isnât the only thing you focus on. If your company is in dire need of a customer data platform, virtual onboarding plan, or some other technical, high-effort project, you may want to put SEO to one side while the other project is completed.
Also, if you work as part of a department focused on SEO, make sure all relevant employees are aware of which goals youâre prioritizing. This can be tougher in a remote working environment, so you might want to check some tips on how to manage a remote team. Thereâs no point in organizing goals by priority if employees are unaware of this.Â
Once your goals are decided and prioritized, work out how youâre going to achieve them, for example, the tactics youâre going to employ and resources youâre going to allocate to the project.
This may seem like something youâd do after establishing your goals, but in reality, these can change considerably once you start thinking about methods. It may be you donât have the expertise to achieve a particular goal, so you need to set your sights lower and use methods youâre more familiar with.Â
A key aspect to consider at this stage is time. If you donât set a deadline, itâs harder to focus on your SEO goals. However, the amount of time youâve given yourself can change your methods considerably.Â
Furthermore, SEO tactics will differ depending on how youâve built your website. For instance, SEO best practices for Wix sites differ from those of WordPress sites.
Keyword research, which we mentioned previously, should be the first step in a lot of your methods. Remember keywords are all about relevance. When someone searches âwhat is a stand up meetingâ, the search engine will tend to focus on âstand up meetingâ as the relevant term. Therefore, if youâre trying to improve your SERP rank for that search, âstand up meetingâ is the key phrase you should target.
Another core part of SEO tactics is content creation. A good example of this would be creating content that integrates the results of your keyword research. Whatever the methods you end up using, you mustnât skip this planning stage. The more you plan and the more thought you put into SEO, the easier it will be to achieve your goals.
As we mentioned in our previous âWork out your prioritiesâ section, SEO is just one facet of running a successful business. Good SEO is a valuable thing to have, but so is being able to provide exceptional customer service or having a great product or service to sell.
However, SEO is vital because itâs one of the best ways of getting people to come to you. Great customer service and great products are important, but theyâre useless without a strong customer base.Â
SEO generates online customers to your website, which helps to grow your business. So, the next time youâre planning out what youâd like to achieve, donât forget to factor in SEO goals as a driver to help you get there.