Creating your SEO plan for a website or a blog is one of the first things you need to do before you start SEO implementation. In fact this is one of the most common mistakes web owners tend to make, they don’t have an SEO plan. I haven’t really dedicated myself to explaining this part to you; in fact it was my mistake of skipping it and explaining the SEO techniques first. For those that are just starting out this is the first thing they should read; how to create an SEO plan and why, it is building the foundation for your ongoing SEO work and SEO implementation.
Before you start with thinking up an SEO plan and the implementation method you have to understand one thing, your blog or website is a living organism. Yes, that is one thing you need to take as a fact. Websites and blogs change, they keep evolving all the time, so there is no such thing as complete SEO project. Sure once you make your SEO plan and put it to work everything will be much easier and after that you will just have to update a few things now and then and work on some quality backlinks, but it is never actually over.
So where to start, how to create your SEO plan? Your blog or website is your business, that is fact one. So what is your business, what is your business goal, that is where you start. You need to have a goal, you need to know what you want to achieve with your blog. Based on your business goals you will also set your SEO goals as well. I mean we all want traffic, but setting something like getting more traffic as your SEO goal is too broad and it will not help you maximize your efforts. You need to have an actual goal for your business, so if you are promoting a web hosting service as an affiliate your goal should be something like getting 5 commissions a month worth at least $50.
Of course for each business this will be different, but having an actual goal with some numbers will get you started on your SEO plan and SEO implementation. I have seen plenty of blog owners implementing SEO for months or even years without an actual goal and what happens, they run around in circles, doing SEO for a long time but not actually achieving anything. Having a goal will help you make your SEO plan; you will know what to focus on, and from where to get your traffic. Just getting traffic is not hard, what you need for a blog or website to succeed is targeted traffic, and you can get that if you know what you need, what your goal is.
Ok, I know this was a bit too long but knowing your business goal for the blog or website is the most important part of creating your SEO plan. Once you know your goal you need to go deeper, you have a goal, now how will you approach it. Break it down into pieces. If you are covering one global topic break it down into 3 or 4 or 5 smaller pieces, whatever works for you and concentrate on each of those pieces individually. Just going for the overall success of the website is very hard, so you need to create a page or category for each of those pieces and focus on them.
You have seen that WordPress blogs rely on categories, this is for a reason. Focus on your pages and try to get traffic to them, if all you do is go for your homepage you may not succeed as the homepage may include too many topics for you to rank well for each one, but if you go for each of the pages you have far greater chance of success. Know your priorities, focus on the pages that you want to convert, build around them by creating quality content and finding relevant links. Prioritize the pages that you want to rank high; they will eventually boost your homepage and the entire site. All you need is to get a few main pages to rank well and SEO will become much easier, that is why you need an SEO plan.
You can never try and get each post to rank, that will take too much time and effort and it is impossible for one person to do that, it will be too slow. That is why you need main pages or categories that cover a specific topic and the post just build up on that. Once you have created your content, optimized your site and found some links you need to maintain the site and build more links. One of the most important things that most blog owners tend to forget or skip is to update their old posts or change them. After a while you will see that some pages are better optimized than others. Your SEO plan needs to have a period when you go back over your old posts and pages and try to improve them if they need improving, revisit your old posts and make them better. Most bloggers never update their old posts and that can be a great mistake. It’s not a fact that every blog has to deal with, but most bloggers suffer from this and don’t even realize it.
Website, blog, these are all business models. It’s not a brick and mortar business, but it is business nevertheless. And any business needs to have a goal, and to achieve your goal you need to have a plan, in this case you need an SEO plan that will help you achieve your goal. Don’t skip this step or you will wander in the dark for a long time until you realize that you have to go back to the beginning and create your SEO plan, your business plan for success. To repeat again, creating an SEO plan is the most important step in SEO implementation.
Before you start with thinking up an SEO plan and the implementation method you have to understand one thing, your blog or website is a living organism. Yes, that is one thing you need to take as a fact. Websites and blogs change, they keep evolving all the time, so there is no such thing as complete SEO project. Sure once you make your SEO plan and put it to work everything will be much easier and after that you will just have to update a few things now and then and work on some quality backlinks, but it is never actually over.So where to start, how to create your SEO plan? Your blog or website is your business, that is fact one. So what is your business, what is your business goal, that is where you start. You need to have a goal, you need to know what you want to achieve with your blog. Based on your business goals you will also set your SEO goals as well. I mean we all want traffic, but setting something like getting more traffic as your SEO goal is too broad and it will not help you maximize your efforts. You need to have an actual goal for your business, so if you are promoting a web hosting service as an affiliate your goal should be something like getting 5 commissions a month worth at least $50.
Of course for each business this will be different, but having an actual goal with some numbers will get you started on your SEO plan and SEO implementation. I have seen plenty of blog owners implementing SEO for months or even years without an actual goal and what happens, they run around in circles, doing SEO for a long time but not actually achieving anything. Having a goal will help you make your SEO plan; you will know what to focus on, and from where to get your traffic. Just getting traffic is not hard, what you need for a blog or website to succeed is targeted traffic, and you can get that if you know what you need, what your goal is.
Ok, I know this was a bit too long but knowing your business goal for the blog or website is the most important part of creating your SEO plan. Once you know your goal you need to go deeper, you have a goal, now how will you approach it. Break it down into pieces. If you are covering one global topic break it down into 3 or 4 or 5 smaller pieces, whatever works for you and concentrate on each of those pieces individually. Just going for the overall success of the website is very hard, so you need to create a page or category for each of those pieces and focus on them.
You have seen that WordPress blogs rely on categories, this is for a reason. Focus on your pages and try to get traffic to them, if all you do is go for your homepage you may not succeed as the homepage may include too many topics for you to rank well for each one, but if you go for each of the pages you have far greater chance of success. Know your priorities, focus on the pages that you want to convert, build around them by creating quality content and finding relevant links. Prioritize the pages that you want to rank high; they will eventually boost your homepage and the entire site. All you need is to get a few main pages to rank well and SEO will become much easier, that is why you need an SEO plan.
You can never try and get each post to rank, that will take too much time and effort and it is impossible for one person to do that, it will be too slow. That is why you need main pages or categories that cover a specific topic and the post just build up on that. Once you have created your content, optimized your site and found some links you need to maintain the site and build more links. One of the most important things that most blog owners tend to forget or skip is to update their old posts or change them. After a while you will see that some pages are better optimized than others. Your SEO plan needs to have a period when you go back over your old posts and pages and try to improve them if they need improving, revisit your old posts and make them better. Most bloggers never update their old posts and that can be a great mistake. It’s not a fact that every blog has to deal with, but most bloggers suffer from this and don’t even realize it.
Website, blog, these are all business models. It’s not a brick and mortar business, but it is business nevertheless. And any business needs to have a goal, and to achieve your goal you need to have a plan, in this case you need an SEO plan that will help you achieve your goal. Don’t skip this step or you will wander in the dark for a long time until you realize that you have to go back to the beginning and create your SEO plan, your business plan for success. To repeat again, creating an SEO plan is the most important step in SEO implementation.
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