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How to Build a Successful SEO Campaign?

Seo campaign

Introduction:

Business owners who have gone through the initial steps of building a good online presence for their brands, products or services have undoubtedly heard about SEO or Search Engine Optimization. For many, SEO means having your site ranked at the top three search engines whenever people look for information related to your business. SEO means gaining more exposure to your business, opening its doors to a larger number of targeted customers. Undoubtedly, running a well-structured SEO Campaign is of paramount importance in making your website more successful.

What is SEO Campaign?

A lot of people have doubts: What is SEO Campaign? Read on:

Seo campaign
Seo campaign

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website on organic (“natural” and “unpaid”) search engine result pages (SERPs), by incorporating search engine friendly elements into a website. A successful search engine optimization campaign will have, as part of the improvements, carefully select, relevant, keywords which the on-page optimization will be designed to make prominent for search engine algorithms. Search engine optimization is broken down into two basic areas: on-page, and off-page optimization. On-page optimization refers to website elements which comprise a web page, such as HTML code, textual content, and images. Off-page optimization refers, predominantly, to backlinks (links pointing to the site which is being optimized, from other relevant websites).

What are the basic SEO terms?

Here are a few SEO terms that you should familiarize yourself with:

  1. SERP:

    SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. It is the main reason why SEO marketing campaigns are conducted. SERP is where every query on a search engine takes you. It can also be called the results page. The objective of an SEO campaign is to secure a spot on the SERPs of all major search engines. Having your web pages ranked high on a SERP is done through the use of a particular set of keywords. Ultimately, all SEO marketing campaigns target the first few SERPs of a search engine, which is all that matters.

    Seo campaign
    Serp
  2. On-page SEO:

    On-page SEO, or as some people call it, on-site SEO refers to the processes that are designed to make web pages more search engine friendly. This is done by optimizing the internal elements of a web page. It is to be kept in mind that SEO is all about relevance. Thus, on site SEO is all about making web pages more relevant, simple to navigate and use, etc. The main aim of on-site SEO is to signal the search engines to rank your web page better. SEO is all about giving the user a quality experience, therefore increasing the stickiness of the website. A few on-page SEO elements are: keyword density, meta description, h1 tags, title tags, etc.

  3. Off-page SEO:

    Off page SEO is also referred to as off-site SEO. It is the process of optimizing web pages, to make them rank better in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This is done by improving the popularity of the links that these web pages have. Links are optimized to contain certain keyword phrases. However, generating a huge amount of backlinks should not be the only focus of an effective off-site SEO campaign. One should focus on generating quality back links, from relevant websites that are trusted by the search engines.

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  4. Link Building:

    Link building is an essential part of SEO Marketing Campaign. Link building is the process of link generation, that points back to the primary URL of the website, or specific posts or landing pages within the website. External links act like “validation votes” that will help your website get better ranks on SERPs by telling the search engines the relevance of the web pages regarding certain keywords.

  5. Title Tag:

    The title tag is an HTML element which contains the title of a web page. This is the title that will be displayed on a web browser’s title bar when that particular page is being displayed. This is a very important tool for SEO, as it contains the keywords that come up on SERPs as links. Only one title tag per document or web page is permitted, therefore it is very important to create title tags that have keywords relevant to the contents of the web page.

  6. Meta Description:

    Have you ever observed a summary below the title tags in SERPs? That summary is called meta description. Meta Descriptions are basically HTML attributes that describe what the web page may contain. The main intention of a meta description should be to let the users decide whether or not the information on the web page is relevant to what they are searching for. A good meta description should be about 150-160 words long.

  7. Keyword Research:

    Keyword research refers to the process of identifying the actual words that users enter as a query in the search engines. Keywords form the basis for any search engine optimization campaign. They can be identified either by using paid services (better results) or even free research tools available in the market.

    Seo campaign
    Keyword research
  8. Target keywords:

    After you’ve researched the relevant keywords for your product, service, or simply website by using a keyword research tool of your choice, it is time to create target keywords, that will be the central focus points of the whole process of SEO.

  9. Rankings:

    Ranking refers to the precise location of a web page in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This is done on the basis of primary and secondary keywords. The higher the ranking, more traffic will the page generate. Most of the white hat SEO techniques, when applied properly will help in better ranking of the web page.

What are various aspects of SEO Campaign?

Search engine optimization continues to evolve as search engines streamline their criteria and algorithms in an attempt to provide online users with relevant information that proves to be very important for them. Understanding the basics of a good SEO Campaign management system that delivers results, particularly the ultimate goal of ranking at the top of search engine queries, is an important first step in improving and optimizing your websites – and provide you a strong online presence that matters not only to your visitors but to search engines as well. Here are the various aspects involved in an SEO Campaign management:

  1. Web Content:

    There are a lot of changes happening in the algorithms that power various search engines today. While the exact stuff is not known, it is imminent that various factors are taken into consideration. However, one thing has remained constant, which is in your own hands – original, premium content. A website with good content will not only have more, but will also have increased credibility as a reliable source for information. Being credible in the eyes of search engines is of paramount importance for a successful SEO campaign. Here’s a few tips when it comes to content creation for your web page(s):

  • The content should be original and new: Unique, original, and regularly updated content is of quintessential importance if you want your web pages to be ranked higher on SERPs. Search engine bots are throughout the web, searching for new and original content that is related to a set of particular keywords. These bots will attach importance to your web page when someone searches for particular keywords, thereby generating more traffic on your page.
  • The content should be relevant: Always create content that is relevant to your industry niche, brand, service, or product. Regularly publishing new, original and relevant content on your website will establish the web page as an authority for a particular topic or a set of keywords, allowing search engines to rank your pages higher in SERPs.

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  • The content should be shareable: While we do have a separate mention of social media strategy, you need to keep shareability in your mind when creating the content. Social media sharing of the web pages ultimately draws more traffic to your web page, because people will share an interesting post they come across on various social media websites. The more social activity that search engines can detect for your website, better will be your authority in the niche that you are operating in.
  1. Backlinks:

    Seo campaign
    Backlink builder

    Earlier, we spoke about backlinks, and why they are as important in an SEO campaign. However, it is to be noted that link building is not all about creating as many backlinks as possible. While the quantity does matter to an extent, it is the quality of backlinks which takes your SEO campaign to new heights of success. It is better if these links come from relevant websites, that are an authority in that particular niche, which also rank higher on SERPs.There are a lot of techniques for link building. Without going into detail, they are mentioned below:

  • Content marketing
  • Guest Blogging
  • Quality Blog Comments
  • Infographic marketing
  • Video marketing
  1. Social Media Strategy:

Seo campaignSocial Media Strategy

Social media has a stronghold over Internet marketing trends. It has become a very important tool in Search Engine Optimization, and plays roles in generating links, improving online reputation, engage an audience on social media website, among other things. A lot of search engines attach a lot of importance to social media presence in their algorithms, thereby making social media strategy something every web page should have.Quality content that is coming from your web pages, which gets shared on social media sites is given greater authority by search engine bots, thereby helping you rank your web page higher in SERPs for a set of particular keywords and topics. As you must already know, social media is all about engagement, and engaging an audience proves to be a very significant factor that is detrimental to an SEO campaign.

Steps to create an effective SEO Campaign strategy:

Most webpreneurs are confused as to where to start an SEO Campaign? Don’t fret. Here are the five basic steps you should take when designing an effective and simple Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign strategy:

  1. Make a list of keywords:

    Here’s something we truly believe in: Keywords are the heart of a good SEO Campaign strategy. SEO Campaigns should revolve completely around keywords. For a good SEO Campaign, shortlist 10 keywords that are associated with your website/business. Then, add these keywords into Google’s keyword tool, and find variations and combinations of keywords, and choose the ones that make sense for your niche and business too.Search volume and Competition should be the deciding factors when it comes to determining the keywords, and then cut the list down to 10-15 keywords, that you would like to see your web page ranked for. Remember that keywords are like the bread and butter of an SEO strategy, so make sure to update the list at least once a month in order to stay relevant, and not miss out on any recent trends happening. Being stuck with one list of keywords forever won’t take you anywhere.

  2. Build keyword focused pages:

    Website or web page ranking depends on keywords, to a great extent. One method of increasing your visibility would be to create keyword specific web pages. To rank better on SERPs, it is always better to have web pages that are tailored to a specific set of keywords or phrases.Use your list of keywords to determine how many keyword specific pages you need to build. Ideally, your pages should coincide with the number of services/products that you are offering. This makes it simpler for prospective clients to go through everything. Each web page must contain pictures and links, as they increase the engagement of the audience, thereby increase website stickiness.Use your list of keywords, and rank them in order of importance and relevance. Now, go in that order when creating web pages. You should also update your keyword list fortnightly, or in the worst case scenario, at least once a month. Updating keywords and building web pages based on the updated list will help you stay relevant in your niche, thereby increasing chances of a high ranking on SERPs

  3. Set up a blog:

    Blogs help you in realizing how a particular set of keywords is helping you rank. Blogs also get higher ranks in SERPs. If you don’t already have one, create a blog for your business. Also, do remember that you create blogs for the audience, and not search engines. Ensure that your blogs have high-quality content, too.

  4. Create a link building plan:

    One of the most important off-page SEO tools is link building. Good quality links help in ranking your web pages higher on SERPs. There are a lot of link building strategies out there. The first step in this process would be to brainstorm all the methods that you would like to use. Here are a few methods of link building, that we mentioned earlier, too:

  • Content marketing
  • Guest Blogging
  • Quality Blog Comments
  • Infographic marketing
  • Video marketing
  1. Be updated on SEO practices, and track the success of your SEO Campaign:

    Stay on the top of your game by updating yourself with new SEO practices. Who knows what might work for you? Also, track the success of your SEO Campaign by getting a good analytics tool to track organic activity on your web pages.

Here’s a good SEO Campaign example:

Here is a good case study on a successful SEO Campaign of the company called Canva. This company with their SEO efforts were able to increase their Design School blog traffic by 226% in just a span of 2 months. Read below to know more:

About Canva:

Canva offers a free online graphic designing tool. You can create stellar visuals, social media posts, presentations, info-graphics with tons of free resources and fonts. It can be easily used by the non-designers as well.

Seo campaign
Canva

Business Objectives of Canva:

Canva wanted to increase the traffic to their blog and were struggling to that. They found that the main reason for insufficient traffic to their website was the strategy for their design school blog. Hence, they decided to totally revamp their strategy and in just 60 days, they could see incredible results. 

Strategy adopted by Canva:

The Canva had to take multiple steps to attract the vistors to their blog and make the content that is appreciated by the visitors.

#1 Keeping a check on competitor’s activity 

Canva did a close monitoring on the competitor’s activity and kept the track of what they are posting on their blogs. They knew that higher number of pages and content helps in improving SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) but they also knew that quality matters over quantity. So, they decided to focus on quality and post content that gives more value to the readers.

They took help of the tool called Buzzsumo that helped them to find out about the latest trending content over the internet. Even, they used Quora to find about the trending content. They also started focusing on the best performing keywords and used Google Keyword Planner for that purpose.

#2 Finding out what information the visitors are seeking

They also started figuring out what content is required by the visitors as this can help in driving more traffic. For that purpose, they started sending out newsletter about their latest blogs and news which helped them in know which topics were catching audience’s attention.

Also, they decided to put up a questionnaire along with the newsletter asking the readers about their biggest challenges.  This was their indirect way for asking users about what they need help with. This helped them finding content ideas based on the audience’s need. 

#3 Prepare a quality checklist

They started observing the visitors experience on the blog and started preparing the list of items that impacted their behavior on the blog. If the blog was around 2000 to 2500 words long, they saw a huge drop in the numbers of visitors. Similarly, they noticed that the people were more interested in reading case studies than just a long piece of advice. Hence, they started focusing on case studies.

Canva made sure to make a checklist of all the observations they were making on the blog and this checklist was being used to check the quality of future blogs.

#4 Emphasis on title tags:

Title tags are very important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is the title tags that helps the Google spider in indexing your page in the database. Canva could see a huge difference in the number of visitors for the same content with different title tags since it’s the title tags that matches the visitor’s query on Google search engine.

#5 Posting only quality content

Once the Google Panda update was released, all the blogs with low quality content were pushed to lower ranks in SERP. Hence, Canva decided to post only quality content that gave tips and how-to tutorials on designing in the case study formats.

#6 Using more visuals

There is no denial in the fact that people love visual content. They color and images just attract the people and help in sending across the message easily. So, Canva made sure to use lot of visual content too in the blog and also made sure to post images that were relevant to the content being posted.

Results Achieved:

In a span of just 2 months, Canva saw very good results of their SEO efforts. The traffic on their blog increased by 226% and traffic from theit social media increased by 500%. This was much more than their expectations.

Learning:

The best thing you can learn from their efforts is that quality always matters over quantity. Google Panda is making sure that only the quality content is ranked top of the SERP. Hence, if you want to see good results, you need to focus just on posting the credible and quality content for the audience. 

However, to build an effective SEO Campaign, in-depth understanding of Search Engine Optimization is a pre-requisite. This will help you in better ranking of your website as well as to develop an effective online presence.

Photo credits: Commonquestions, Coolerinsights, Lfkd, Scriptalicious, Pinterest, Canva

Avatar of anika j
Anika J
Owner of Anika J Virtual Assistant services | Social Media Marketing Specialist | Content Writer Anika is a post graduate in finance but her love for social media turned her into a marketing professional and she began her journey as a social media marketer and content writer. She started Anika J Virtual Assistant services to help the women entrepreneurs and mumpreneurs in making an engaging online presence through creating an effective social media strategy and content.

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