A 10 Step SEO strategy for achieving maximum visibility and success for your site

Been speaking to a young blogger who asked me, “Isn’t all blogspot blogs owned by Google, so why don’t they promote it up the SERPs?”

We’ll I’d be running out of job in that case, and I’m glad it’s not. But the answer is that Google wants an accurately indexed data that’s completely based on relevancy. It does want to show up the most relevant site/sites based on a keyword, be it on Google or Yahoo network. So it’s the accuracy and relevance that takes the front seat (and all the rest of them too), well nothing else matters to be honest. And Google has an algorithm that’s always updating to flush out irrelevant results while updating with the most precise and accurate information.

So, in the flurry of blogs, how can one make sure that his website meets the right criteria for relevancy that it gets the right visibility on the search engines including Google?

Clearly, the answer has to break out of H1 tags, and Keyword densities to more complex SEO and SM strategies.

So imagine you have a very young blog or a pretty old blog with great content. Somehow, you’ve not been able to get the right kind of visibility and movement.

You are there on the Google index but not at the first page.
You have great content but does not get lot of comments for it.

Let me suggest you a simple ten step strategy that will catapult your site to getting the right traffic and the right search engine love. I’ll make sure I don’t use any jargons, if at all something in comprehensible creeps in, feel free to comment for all your doubts.

Step 1 – Get a clean, error free, SE optimised backend
This is the foundation of your entire empire. So take lot of time analyzing and tweaking it. Whatever you do today is an investment for the future and if you are not doing it right today, you can never do it. Get a complete search engine friendly and optimised theme/design/platform. Once you set it right, make sure you forget about it and you’re not going to waste time on it anymore. So do it once and for all.

Step 2 – Find out how strong your competition is
Next, find out with whom you are sharing the same domain with. I don’t want to call this competition, because who knows, at one point of time they simply won’t be. So find out who are the big players already there in your domain, if they are too big, find out a niche, or else study your competition thoroughly. Find out what they are doing, how good and how bad. Many a times, when you are clueless about where to start, just take advantage of your competition and take inspiration from them. Do what they are doing – but in a better way, don’t ape them. The goal is to cover whatever they’ve done in a better and fresh way. Don’t rush with it, but plan accordingly. For example, say you have a big blog in the same domain with 360 articles to their credit. Plan on writing 4 posts per day and in three months you’ll be better than him.

Step 3 – Find out where and how big your market is
Also, find out who else are you competing with, and how big the audience is for all of them collectively. If there are five great blogs in the same domain that you wanted to start, remember that all the subscribers to all the five blogs is what you want. And it doesn’t mean that you have five guys to fight with, the audience on all the blogs would be the same, and you just need to beat one guy and you’re up there. Finding out how big your market is really important as you don’t want to spent your time and energy on something that isn’t there at all.

Step 4 – Understand your market and audience
Next up, find out what your audience behavior is. What type of content do they like, and what do they hate. What would they buy and what would they deny? Carefully analyzing your competition will answer many of those doubts. Pick up clues from it and mark them down as your core values. You will only leverage on those kind of topics and products. This ensures zero wastage of resources and maximum returns from your efforts.

Step 5 – Find out where the demand is, and make it your core competency
Now, that you know whom you are catering to and whom you are competing with, find out where the demand lies. This is all about finding new opportunities. Your competition might not have been doing this, but while you do your homework, you can easily find out what’s missing in the market. Once you find this out, plan ahead on how and what tool you are going to use to deliver, to it precisely. Now, this would’ve given you a clear idea on what you need to do when you start and what your core competencies should be.

Step 6 – Discover what you can deliver – Stretch
Now that you know what your product is and what your core competency is, find out ways to deliver it. Your competition churns out 5 articles daily? Then you got to do 10 posts a day and that too with all the targeted data we found from the above points. This initial stretch work you do will give you a great push that will out you in top gear.

Step 7 – Raise your quality bar, Increase your time spent
Now, while you do the stretch work, it is quite possible that you lose focus or face lethargy. For this raise your quality scores. Try to exceptionally well, churn out exclusive stories that none has done before. And people will instantly recognize you.

Step 8 – Indulge in networking, utilize it
You cannot win alone. All the big guys are already up there, and have a huge fan following. If you have to do something similar, with less time in hand, the only thing you can do is contribute to others, as many as possible, and try to network with more. Write down somewhere in your mind that you are not here to benefit from others but to help them win. But as you try and help others more, your network will grow without your knowledge. The only way to succeed in social networks is by contributing more to it. It is directly proportional.

Step 9 – Listen to feedbacks and tweak yourself
Now while you are at it going full throttle, spare some time for feedback. Feedback helps you to check if you are in the right path or not. Listen to criticisms and suggestions, share it with others and filter out the weeds. If a particular element in your template code is creating problems with the user, tweak it. Do this constantly over a period of time and at one point of time you’ll get only the weeds you filtered out earlier. You know what to do with it.

Step 10 – Remain consistent at whatever you are today
That brings us to a full circle. Now go to step 1 and check if you are in the same domain or nearing it to the competition. If you notice any remarkable changes, like in SERPs that means you are doing things right. The only thing that you have to keep doing is be consistent on your model. Keep researching on niches and keep delivering articles that are better i quality to your competition.

Well, the above said points are strategies that will help you catapult your product/service/blog to the major leagues if you are starting new within a smaller time period. I haven’t mentioned the technical side here, because it will differ on a case to case basis and cannot be generalized. What strategy you pick depends largely on what domain you are in and what competition you are facing, so that’s up to you.

If you are looking for examples on how this 10 step model works, here’s a client of mine called Great Wraps. They are one of the first sandwich franchise chain in America. Based in Atlanta, Greatwraps had a pretty cool website(beware of the flash stuff, it’ll start making funny sounds), but they somehow couldn’t make it to the top of SERPs, which even some late comers made it to. I had worked on this site for a while now, and we are only about quarter past the total efforts and we are making good progress. For keywords that we weren’t ranking at all for, we are now on the first page or the second page. That’s a good start according to me. Apart from the keywords, it’s the quality of content and the clarity in what you want that will make your path to success clear. With a good vision and planned strategies like the 10 step one above, you can hit the sweet spots wasting zero energy and time. So, start with the low lying fruits today.

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