Not seeing your SEO Strategy giving you the right ranking?
Taking all the correct steps but still not seeing people flocking to your website?
Even after doing everything right – choosing the best keywords, adding new content, and having a thorough strategy – if an SEO strategy does not work- it’s enough to make anyone want to pull their own hair out.
However, before throwing your laptop into the pool, you need to understand – something has gone wrong with our SEO strategy – there’s a leak somewhere.
Which is why it impacts your website’s performance across search engines. Comparatively, it could also be Google’s latest updates, poor backlinking, or a competitor outwitting your search.
So, it is important to find these leaks, work on them, seal them and get back to smashing your SEO goals for the year.
But, before you get into identifying and working on the leaks, let’s find out – what is Quarterly SEO Planning (HYPERLINK) and why is it important?
What is SEO Planning?
SEO Planning is the strategy of:
- Analysing previous content
- Checking what the target audience wants,
- Researching competitor trends
- Detailing the Keyword research
Subsequently, all this is done to create content that not only ranks across all search engines but also helps convert potential customers into long-term buyers.
Why is Quarterly SEO Planning important?
The SEO landscape is changing. Quickly!
So, if you’re not monitoring it and evolving rapidly, you are missing out. Look at the latest Google “November 2021 spam update”. The search engine announced on Twitter and linked the generic Google Webmaster Guidelines for more guidance.
So, if your site is not up to date with the latest updates from the search engines – it will fall in the Google search rankings list.
Other than monitoring these risks, SEO quarterly planning also helps to provide an in-depth analysis of your Search Engine Optimization strategy. This works out for the best because you can track and meet all your SEO goals.
How can you maintain your Quarterly SEO Planning?
Now that we know what Quarterly SEO is and how to do it, let’s jump into the steps you can take to assess your SEO performance every quarter.
1) Keep reviewing Goals and Core Metrics:
The first and foremost step in any strategic planning is setting goals.
Without a goal, you will not have a clear understanding of where your brand is going, what it plans to achieve, and how to measure the Return On Investment.
Also, when you know your business goals, you can start working towards them and keeping track of core metrics that support the goal.
Here are some metrics you can use to measure your goals:
- Keyword Ranking
- Backlinks
- Organic Traffic
- Bounce Rate
- Page Speed
- Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
- Conversions
You can get these metrics in Google Analytics or other SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Ubersuggest.
2) Keyword Research Reviews:
Any SEO specialist knows that doing a proper keyword research is the backbone of any SEO strategy.
The research tells you what your potential customers are looking for, what your competitors are working on, and the best opportunities for content creation.
Subsequently, this is why it is important to review your keyword research every quarter.
Because searches are not stagnant. Every day, there are new terms that crop up, and old ones move down the score chart. So, if you want to capitalize on the latest trends and become the expert in your niche, you need to keep up with the latest market trends.
Here are some tools you can use to review the latest keywords:
- Google Trends: The best free tool to look for industry trends and search terms that can be global or specific to a region.
- SEMrush: A paid tool that helps you search for industry trends, competitors keywords and more.
- Ubersuggest: A semi-free tool that helps streamline keywords and monitor the process. The tool comes with a built-in keyword analyzer to track the popularity, ranking difficulty, CTR and other data.
3) Checking Target Audience:
If you have a list of customer journey maps and buyer personas stored in a drive, then part of your SEO strategy is done. But, while these are important aspects, you need to go beyond them.
Understanding your target audience’s search intent is very important. When you know their intentions, then you can find relevant keywords faster, and create content that works best.
Let’s say you own a t-shirt printing business. Now, you may know that your potential target audience is from the age group of 18-30. But, here’s the important part – what is the buying intent of your target audience?
So, when building your SEO strategy, ask yourself the following questions every quarter to make sure that you know what your audience wants:
- Is there a source that the audience trusts to help them make a decision?
- What sites does my target audience use to find answers?
- What questions does the audience have about the industry, my brand, or my products/services?
- Also, what are the biggest pain points of my industry?
When you take the time to understand your audience’s mindset, you will find keywords that connect better with your audience. Subsequently, you will produce content that your audiences are looking for.
4) Keep track of your Rankings:
What do you mean by keyword ranking?
It is where your website is ranking on search engines.
But why is it important?
Because it plays a vital role in any SEO plan. Keyword ranking affects a website’s organic traffic, lead generations and conversions.
So, when checking rankings, here are some questions you should ask yourself:
- Did your website gain or lose a position in the search?
- Who took the position? How is their content better?
- What are your competitors doing differently with their content?
- Which pages are doing better and which are not?
- Do the pages which lost ranking need more backlinks?
- Do you need to update any previous posts to keep them relevant?
When looking into your Quarterly SEO plan, ask these questions to yourself. Also, the answers will help you strengthen your brand’s position in the search engines, help you outrank your competitors, and help avoid any massive changes in the traffic.
5) What are your competitors doing?
The next step in the SEO planning process is evaluating your competitors. Also, take the time to see what your competitors are doing, and to uncover their weaknesses.
But remember, a competitor may not be a direct competitor.
Let’s take the same example of the customized t-shirt business. Your competitors could be other customized businesses such as bags, wallets, or shoes.
When you check up on your competitors, ask these questions:
- What keywords do they rank for and what is the search volume?
- What points does the specific website page focus on?
- Are there any sites linking back to their content?
- What is their top-performing post?
- How does their SEO strategy differ from yours?
- What is their promotional strategy?
- Are there any content gaps in their content plan?
However, to check on your competitors here are some tools you can use – Ubersuggest, Spyfu, and SEMrush.
6) Review your Content:
When you start to plan your quarterly SEO content, you need to schedule a time to review your existing audit.
But why?
The old content you have is ranking and bringing in traffic already. Also, with a new post, it can take up to 6 months before you see any traction to the posts.
It is faster, easier and better for ROI to tweak content that has already been indexed by Google. Also, updating previous content uses fewer resources and costs less than trying to plan and execute new content.
So, when reviewing your old content, here are some tips to help you:
- Check which blogs have outdated information or data and update them
- If your content is duplicated try redirecting posts to a pillar post
- Check your CTR, time-on-page and bounce rate. If your blog has a high bounce rate then it is a possibility that your post is not matching your audience’s search intent.
7) Review your Technical SEO:
You may have the best keywords, or map the best content that fits your customer journey – but not see results.
Why?
Because of technical SEO issues.
These issues can affect your:
- Website speed
- Site performance
- Bounce rate
Here are some things to check when performing your audit:
- Page loading speed
- Duplicate content
- URL structure
- Link health
- Site security
- Mobile optimization
- Schema
- 301 redirects
- Crawl errors
- XML sitemaps
- Image issues
- Canonical tags
- Site architecture
8) Final Planning:
Now that you have everything in place, it is the final stage of the Quarterly SEO planning process.
Subsequently, once you audit your website, review the target audience, evaluate and analyze competitors – you are now ready to put your SEO strategy into action.
But, before you do this, here are some questions you need to ask yourself:
- What are your next quarter goals and metrics?
- How can you achieve the goals set?
- Do you have any content plan in mind to accomplish these goals?
- Does any old content need to be reviewed?
- What content is working for your audience and what is not?
- How can you fix this?
- Do you need to prepare for any new launches or upcoming holidays?
- To achieve these tasks- are there any people you need to connect with and how long will it take them?
Once you have all these details ironed out, you can now connect with your team and assign tasks to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Conclusion
SEO planning and strategizing is not a one-time thing. It is a recurring task that needs constant attention for long-term growth.
So, if you are building new content, updating new blogs, or checking for any technical SEO errors – make sure to evaluate your SEO content constantly.
Otherwise, you may just lose your place in the grand Google ranking and in turn, lose present and potential customers to your competitors. To know about Quarterly SEO planning, contact us at suppport@sunnydayconsulting.com!
