Only 30% of businesses have an SEO strategy in place.

Business owners know that search engines are effective in generating new business. They just don’t know how to make it happen.

That’s why building an SEO plan is so important. An SEO plan helps you rank higher and get more traffic from search engines. You can then convert that traffic into leads and sales.

Do you want to know how you can leverage the benefits of SEO? Keep reading to learn the five steps to build an SEO plan.

1. Set Goals

What do you want SEO to do for your business? Your answer determines the rest of your digital marketing strategy.

For instance, if you want SEO to drive sales, you’ll focus on search terms that people use when they’re ready to buy. If you want to build awareness, you can focus on search terms that people use to research a product or service.

2. Research Keywords

Keywords still matter in SEO. The way they’re used has changed over the years. User intent has to be a part of your SEO plan.

User intent is the reason why people search. In some cases, people are trying to answer a question. In other cases, they want to make a purchase and want to know the closest place to them.

Make a list of the search terms that people use related to your business, then note the search intent. It becomes much easier to align the keywords with your goals.

3. Focus On the Technical Side

SEO is so much more than choosing the right keywords. Your website has to be set up for success as well. Google and other search engines won’t send traffic to sites that deliver a poor user experience.

You need to make sure that your site loads quickly. This is so important that Google is rolling out a page experience update to its algorithm.

4. Implement With the Right Tools

SEO is complicated because there are so many aspects to it. You have to manage your entire online presence and your website to be effective.

Plus, you’re already juggling dozens of other things in your work as a business owner. These digital tools will help you manage SEO and other aspects of your business.

They’ll give you more time and energy to handle the demands of your business.

5. Analyze and Adjust

SEO isn’t something that you just set up once and forget about it. It takes consistent work over a long period of time.

Look at your results once a month and notice the trends. You should see steady increases in the number of keywords you rank for and search traffic.

If you don’t, revisit your keyword list and make any adjustments to your strategy.

Building an SEO Plan That Meets Your Goals

Building an SEO plan always starts with your goals. You can then reverse engineer your digital marketing strategy.

You’ll be able to attract the right audience through the best keywords and generating useful content to help them solve a problem. SEO isn’t always easy to manage, so you need to utilize the right tools to help you.

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