As a new year begins, many business owners and leaders set new goals and prepare themselves to take on new challenges. One technology hurdle that everyone should address at the start of a new year is their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Once you get your SEO off to a good start, it can set your website, social media, and overall marketing plans on a solid footing for the rest of the year. Let's take a look at some of the key considerations.

Connect & Configure

Initially, you need to teach search engines about your website. Thankfully, Google and others make that possible by offering their own SEO tools which you can connect to your site. Your search engine strategy process begins by making sure that all of the right connections are made and the right information has been provided so that Google can understand your website and you can begin monitoring data from tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

Competition Research

Using Google Search Console, you can see how your website performs for a variety of criteria, and where it ranks for certain keywords and phrases. Using more advanced SEO tools, you can compare your results against competitors to look for opportunities to outrank them for keywords that matter to your business. The more you know about your industry and its players, the better you can tune your content to speak to the audience. With a solid search engine strategy, over time you will find yourself rising up and improving your average search engine rank.

Ongoing Analysis

Your website is a living document that should always be growing and changing. Make sure to conduct a monthly check-in to review the data provided by Google Analytics and Google Search Console. There is a wealth of information there which your team will be able to dive into and pull terrific business insights from. For example:
  • One month you might find higher than normal traffic flowing into one of your product pages, with a significant portion coming from social media. Your marketing team can use that insight to develop a new push to increase the visibility of that specific product on social channels.
  • You see that a blog post from last year keeps showing up in your top 5 most visited pages even though you haven't been promoting it recently. Your team can develop a webinar around the subject matter and attract a big audience, further cementing your brand as a leader and expert on the topic.
  • Perhaps you've published 4 straight months of blog posts on a single topic and notice very little traffic or engagement. The data gives your team the reality check needed before too much time is wasted on a tactic that isn't providing results.
Decisions regarding your website should be driven by data whenever possible. These tools help leaders make informed, reasoned choices which can always be evaluated later. If you want to start the year on the right foot, get your search engine strategy set up properly in January and conduct monthly evaluations each month. By the end of the year your digital presence will be in a much stronger position than it was when you started.