February 21, 2025
A strong SEO strategy is the key to online success. Without a well-thought-out plan, you risk missing opportunities and falling behind the competition. SEO is not just about technical optimization; it also includes content and link building. With a well-structured approach, you not only improve your search engine visibility but also ensure sustainable growth. In this article, we’ll guide you step by step through creating an effective SEO strategy, helping you increase your online presence and achieve your goals.
Table of Contents
- What is a SEO strategy
- Step 1: Set your SEO goals
- Step 2: Do a keyword research
- Step 3: Optimize your content
- Step 4: Improve the technical SEO of your website
- Step 5: Build your authority with linkbuilding
- Step 6: Make a SEO plan
- Step 7: Monitor en analyze your SEO-results
- Frequently asked questions about a SEO-strategy
What is a SEO strategy?
An SEO strategy is a well-thought-out plan to make your website more visible in the search engines. Instead of isolated optimizations, you look at the bigger picture: which keywords are relevant, how to structure your content and how can you improve technically. With a good worked-out strategy do you not only attracts more visitors but specially the right ones. This increases the chances of valuable interactions and conversions.
Why is a SEO strategy important?
Without a clear SEO strategy, you stay dependent on loose actions that have little effect in the long-term. With a well-thought-out plan, you attract constantly relevant visitors to your website without relying on advertisements. Websites that are on the first place in Google’s get about 90% of all clicks, meaning a strong ranking leads to greater visibility and opportunities. Additionally, a smart approach to SEO helps to stay ahead of competitors and achieve sustainable growth.
The three pillars of SEO: technique, content and authority.
SEO is build out of three main pillars that together ensure strong online visibility. A good strategy focuses on all aspects. Only working on the technical aspect or the content is (usually) not enough. It is about the balance of these three elements:
Technical SEO: Think of Fast loading times, a mobile-friendly website, and a well-structured site architecture.
Content: Relevant and optimized texts that address search intents, blogs, product pages, and landing pages.
Authority: Earning high-quality backlinks, positive online mentions, and a strong domain authority.
Step 1: Choose your SEO goals
Before getting into SEO, is it important to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve. Do you want to bring more visitors, increase conversion rates, or just increase brand awareness? Without clear objectives, it is difficult to measure whether your efforts are making an any effects. By in advance setting clear goals, you can develop an SEO strategy that truly aligns with your business and is focused on results.
How to set measurable SEO KPIs?
To know if your SEO strategy is working, you clearly need to have measurable KPIs. These give insights into your performance and help you adjust where necessary. Important SEO KPIs include:
- Organic traffic: How many visitors come to your site through search engines?
- Click-through rate (CTR): How often do users click on your search result?
- Bounce rate: How many visitors leave your site without taking further action?
- Conversion rate: How many visitors complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or submitting a request?
A concrete SEO goal could be: 20% more organic traffic within six months or increasing CTR to 5% by improving meta titles and descriptions. By choosing your KPIs wisely, you make SEO measurable and results-driven.
SEO goals for different types of bbusinesses
SEO goals vary by business, so choose KPIs that align with your situation. A good strategy focuses on measurable results, such as:
- E-commerce: Ranking more product pages and increasing conversion rates. Example: 15% more organic traffic to product pages within six months.
- Local businesses: Improving rankings in local search results. A painter in Amsterdam doesn’t benefit from visibility in Maastricht. However he want to have a more local discoverability.
- B2B companies: Generating more leads through content marketing. Example: 30% more contact inquiries via the website through targeted blog content.
Step 2: Do a Keyword Research
A keyword research is the foundation of every good SEO strategy. It helps you understand which words and phrases your target audience uses when searching for the products or services you offer. By optimizing for these keywords, you increase your chances of being found in search engines.
Use usefull tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and SEMrush to find the most relevant keywords for your website. These tools provide insights into search volume, competition, and related search terms.
Short tail vs. long tail keywords
In search engine optimization , can you choose between short-tail and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are short and general, such as "shoes" or "buy laptop". They have high search volume but also high competition, making it difficult to rank well. Long-tail keywords are more specific, such as "white running shoes for women" or "best laptop for working from home". They are searched less, but they better match what users are actually searching for. This makes the chances of conversion much bigger.
A smart SEO strategy combines both types of keywords. In the table you can see a couple of exmaples of short tail as well as long tail keywords.
| Short tail | Long tail |
| Search engine optimization | How to write an engaging meta description? |
| Link building | How to get high-quality backlinks? |
| SEO tips | How to improve Core Web Vitals for faster loading times? |
| Google Ads | How to reduce CPC in Google Ads? |
Keep in mind the search intent
Search intent is the goal behind a search query:does someone want to find information, buy a product, or compare? It’s essential to align your content with this intent.For example, if someone searches for “buy laptop”, they expect to see a selection of laptops to choose from, not a blog post. If you write a blog on this topic, it’s unlikely to end up high in the search results. Other websites provide more relevant content, such as product or category pages showcasing different laptops, including prices and specifications.So make sure that the content and the search intent hace a good match: does someone wants to buy somthing? Offer then clearly what they are looking for.
Step 3: Optimize Your Content
Optimize your content by using keywords effectively, providing valuable information, and maintaining a clear structure. Visual elements such as images and videos enhance the user experience and support SEO when properly optimized (e.g., alt texts). Quality and user-friendliness are essential for higher rankings. More information about content optimization below.
E-E-A-T en Helpful Content: the key to success
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) are the factors Google uses to evaluate content quality. To play with this, it’s important to demonstrate your experience and expertise, for example, by using personal case studies or reliable sources. Ensure your content is well-researched, valuable, and make clear who the author is and why he an expert is. Be transparent about your services and prioritize quality over quantity. This not only helps build trust with your audience but also increases the likelihood that Google will rank your content higher.
On-Page optimizations for better visibility
Here below are some key elements to optimize:
- Titels and meta-descriptions: Make sure to have engaging and informative titles and meta descriptions that align with search intent and attract users to click through.
- Headers (H1, H2, etc.): Use clear and structured headers, preferably incorporating keywords. This helps to users as well as search engines to undestand your content.
- Internal links: Connect relevent pages in your webiste with internal links to improve the user experience as well as to give your page authority
- Images: Optimize pictures and images by including relevant alt-texts , so that it can be found easier in the search query and help your SEO.
By improving these elements, you increase the chance of ending up higher in the rankings.
Step 4: Improve the technical SEO of your website
Technical SEO is the spine of a proper made website. It makes that the search engines can find you site, undestand it and go through it smoothly. The key points to improve are:
- Website speed: A fast loading time creates a better user-experience and is important for ranking element for the search engines.
- Mobile friendliness: More and more people use their phones to search, so your site needs to be good on mobile devices.
- Clear structure and internal links: A logical navigation and a clear URL structure helps the search engines to undestand your content more and index.
- XML-sitemap and robots.txt: These files help to make the search engines clear which pages to crawl and which not to.
Technically improving your webiste can be difficult, specially is you dont have any experience. However is it still a crucial part of SEO.
Invisible for Google? Time to shine!
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Step 5: Build your authority with linkbuilding
Linkbuilding is very important for your seo performance. The amount and the quality of those backlinks going to your site show for a big amount how authoritary your site is in eyes of the search engines. Qualitative links give Google the signal that your content is helpfull and relevent, somehting that translates into a higher postions in the search engines.
How to get high quality links?
Guest blogging is an excellent way: write valuable articles for other websites in your industry and include a link to your site. PR is also an effective way to earn links—by publishing interesting research, newsworthy content, or case studies, you increase the chances of other sites linking to your content. Another technique is broken link building: find dead links on relevant websites and offer your own high-quality content as a replacement.
Need help acquiring high-quality backlinks? We’re happy to assist you in building a strong link profile that aligns with your website and target audience.
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Step 6: Make a SEO plan
A clear SEO planning is key for constant success. It is important to not only focus on the short term but just to make a strategy focused on the long run. Make sure that in your planning you write down exactly when you do what. This helps to keep a good overview and make you systematically work on your search results. Think about creating periodically landingspages for specific keywords or optimizing internal links.
Which tools help you making a good strategy?
There are different tools that can help you managing your SEO strategy. Google analytics gives you insights into website trafic and user behaviour, while SEMrush help you with keywords and competitor analysis. Ahrefs focuses on backlinks and keyword data and Screaming frog is perfect for Technical SEO-audits.
Google analytics
SEMrush
Ahrefs
ScreamingFrog
Step 7: Monitor en analyze your SEO-results
Monitoring and analyzing SEO/results help you undestand what works ad where changes need to be made. SEO is a long term process, and it ccan even tage months before you see the first results. It is important to evaluate regularly and change your SEO strategy to the new market changes. search engines and competitors so that with your actions you keep improving en reaching your goals.
When do you see the efects of your SEO strategy?
SEO es a long/term investment en something that takes time to see results, it is co-dependent on several factors. Think about the current state of your website, competitors in your niche, the keywords you choose, and the quality of your SEO actions. Dont expect big changes, specially if you are aiming to very competitive keywords.
| Period | What you can expect |
| 0-3 months | You start by seing improvement in technical aspects, such as loading speed and mobile usability. There is little improvement in organical search, but big changes in the search results is unlikely. |
| 3-6 months | Improvement in the rankings for less competitive keywords. The user interactions will have some improvement translating into a higher CTR. |
| 6-9 months | Linkbuilding and content omptimization will have its effects. You will see grow in trafic and rankings for a bigger amount of keywords. |
| 9-12 months | After 9 to 12 months your consistent SEO actions will translate into a solid increase in your organical trafic. Now you probably have a competitor advantage and have good results for your most important keywords. |
SEO is a constant process. Achieving good results take constant monitoring and actions. Competitors, search engines and market changes can influence on your results, so it is very important to constantly update your strategy.
Frequently asked questions about a SEO-strategy
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