Want to learn how to plan a successful SEO campaign? Read on.
When it comes to planning and executing a successful SEO campaign, there are many moving pieces – from site audits and keyword research to content creation and link building.
But with so many potential things to look at and limited resources (time, money, and team members) to work with, it’s hard to know where to start.
In this post, we’re going to walk through a sequential series of steps you can use to plan and manage SEO campaigns that consistently drive more organic traffic and conversions in any niche or industry.
These are the exact steps my agency, Virayo, has used to scale (a) organic traffic and (b) conversions for a range of clients, from local businesses to well-funded SaaS businesses:
By the end of this post, you’ll have a repeatable series of steps you can run through for your business and/or clients to achieve both short and long-term organic growth.
Plus, you’ll also get access to automation templates and video walk-throughs, so you can implement this training immediately in your business.
Before we jump into the tactics, let’s define exactly what we mean when referring to an SEO campaign.
Disclaimer: This article does contain affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of my links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Affiliate links are followed by (aff) in this article. Thanks for the support!
What is an SEO Campaign?
An SEO campaign is a long-term strategy designed to grow your website’s organic traffic and conversions from search engines.
Typically, it’s a data-driven project that involves many different components, such as competitor and keyword research, traffic analysis, content creation, site audits, link building, local SEO, rank tracking, and more.
Any size business, in any niche or industry, can benefit from a well-executed SEO campaign to fix technical issues and optimize their content, so it ranks higher in the SERPs and ultimately drives more targeted traffic.
8 Steps to Plan and Execute a Successful SEO Campaign
With that definition covered, let’s dive into the first of the eight steps.
Step #1. Align your SEO and site monetization strategies
Ultimately, your SEO campaign should drive better rankings, organic traffic, and conversion growth.
But, it’s your business model and overarching site monetization strategy that should drive how you plan and prioritize each of the steps in your SEO campaign.
For example:
- Local business – the campaign will center on securing greater visibility in Google Map Packs and improving review velocity and quality.
- AdSense site – scale huge amounts of traffic to content so that you generate more ad impressions and clicks.
- Review site – drive traffic to mid-funnel content so that you are the final touchpoint before conversion.
- SaaS business – drive qualified traffic that generates free trial signups or demo requests.
- Ecommerce business – drive mid to bottom-funnel traffic that results in a higher number of direct purchases and revenue.
While there are always a series of micro-goals, it’s the macro-goals that should be the primary driver of any SEO campaign. And, that almost always comes down to improving rankings, and ultimately driving more traffic to the content that makes your business money, faster.
Step #2. Identify the quick-wins
One of the most important things when launching an SEO campaign is to demonstrate quick results, especially when you’re trying to win the trust of a new client.
It’s easier to get those quick wins if you’re starting with a site that has some kind of content footprint, so you can drive more organic traffic into the existing assets.
While there are a lot of ways to do this, here are some of the most actionable tactics you can use to find quick-win organic growth opportunities.
Editor’s note: I’ll be using Semrush for most of the processes in this guide. If you’re interested in the platform, use this link (aff) to get a free 14-day trial.
Identify (and fix) indexation issues
You can have the best content in the world, but if no one can find it, it’s all for nothing.
Here’s how to run some quick checks on the issues that can cripple traffic.
Crawl errors can be caused by several things, such as no-index tags and robots.txt errors. These errors often occur when you migrate or redesign your website.
Running the Crawlability report in Semrush (aff) will give you a quick overview of the pages that have been blocked from crawling:
You can click the graphs on the front page to identify and fix the specific crawl errors on each page:
For instance, you might need to update a disallow rule in your robots.txt or remove a no-index tag to unblock a page and get it indexed.
Identify page speed issues
Page load speed impacts user experience, rankings, and conversion rate.
Research by Portent found that website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time between seconds 0-5.
And, a Google study found that 53% of mobile visitors will leave a webpage that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
These stats, in combination with Google’s move to mobile-first indexing and the introduction of its Core Web Vitals, reinforce the fact that page load speed should be a factor for consideration in any well-rounded SEO campaign.
You can use a free tool like GTmetrix to check page speed, and the YSlow report to drill into what is causing issues. But, you’ll need to enter pages one-by-one, which can be extremely tedious and time-consuming if you’re analyzing more than a small handful of pages.
The Semrush Site Audit tool enables you to scan an entire website and quickly surface pages with potential load speed issues.
In Semrush:
- Enter your domain into the Site Audit tool and configure the settings.
- Click through to the Site Performance report.
- Check the HTML load speed for the site, and click through to the pages that are returning an error or warning message.
This report will help you quickly identify which pages need to be worked on. Be sure to prioritize the URLs that are most valuable to your business.
While there are a lot of different factors that impact page speed, here are a few things that almost always help improve it:
#1. Choose good hosting. Not all hosting providers are created equal. You can quickly outgrow the host you started with. I recommend investing in a reliable, secure, and fast web host such as WPX Hosting (aff). They provide free hosting migrations and have the best customer support. I use WPX for personal sites and recommend them to clients.
#2. Reduce image size. Large images can slow down page speed. Make sure the image width and height are only as large the content container on your site. Eg: I typically reduce image width to 700px on the blog.
#3. Compress images. Image compression is another way to reduce file size and improve load speed. You can use a tool like TinyPNG or ShortPixel to reduce image size by up to 70%.
#4. Use browser caching. Use a plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket (aff) to store the static elements of a page in your visitors browser. Next time the reader visits your site, the page will load faster as most of it is already saved locally.
#5. Set up lazy loading. This improves page speed because instead of loading and rendering an entire web page in bulk, lazy loading works to only load the required section of content and delays the remaining elements, until they are needed by the user.
Google says, “Lazy loading can significantly speed up loading on long pages that include many images below the fold by loading them either as needed or when the primary content has finished loading and rendering.”
Editor’s note: If this sounds too technical or time-consuming, consider investing in a plugin like WP Rocket (aff). It will automatically handle all the items mentioned above, and a lot more. It’s one of the first plugins I install on a site and only takes a couple minutes to set up.
WP Rocket was voted the #1 speed optimization plugin in this post.
Identify existing keyword opportunities
Here’s the 3-step process to identify existing keywords that are not reaching their full potential.
Editor’s Note: In the video below, I’ll walk you through a Google Sheets template that will automate the most tedious aspects of the existing keyword research process.
1: Identify low-hanging fruit
In Semrush (aff):
- Enter your domain – e.g. beardbrand.com – into the Organic Research tool and select the “Positions” tab.
- Set a “Custom range” (Pos: #6–20) in the “Positions” filter to find the “low-hanging” keywords to optimize.
- Set an optional filter to target high-intent keywords – e.g. Include > URL > Containing > “/collections/”. (Collections is the product-related keywords subfolder on a Shopify ecommerce site).
- Export the results as a CSV file:
2: Export the data into the Existing Keyword Research template
Copy/paste the exported data (including headings) as Values Only into the sheet labeled “1. Semrush KW Opp”. Then, check the DONE tab, and you should see something like this:
The rows with the most GREEN in them signify the MOST ATTRACTIVE opportunities – i.e. the keywords with the highest existing rankings and search volume, plus the lowest competition level.
3: Optimize your content
Now it’s time to optimize your content and improve the rankings. For example, you could:
- Improve the quality, format, and readability.
- Add new subtopics into your content to make it more comprehensive.
- Add 3-5 internal links from relevant posts with high URL ratings.
- Re-promote on social media and mention any cited sources.
- Use the strategies in this guide to secure relevant backlinks.
- Update the timestamp and submit the URL to Search Console.
Remove keyword cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization, sometimes called topic duplication, happens when you have multiple pages on your site competing for the same keywords. Google doesn’t know which page to reference in its index, and as a result, these pages struggle to rank.
Here’s my 3-step process to check for keyword cannibalization on your site using my free cannibalization checker. (Note: It’s a Semrush template but also works with Ahrefs data.)
1: Export rankings data from the Semrush Organic Positions Report
In Semrush (aff):
- Enter your domain – e.g. www.robbierichards.com – into the Organic Research tool and select the “Positions” report.
- You’ll see every keyword your website ranks for, alongside its ranking position and page (URL).
- Export this entire report to a CSV file.
2: Paste the data into the Keyword Cannibalization template
Next, paste the exported data (including headings) as Values Only into the sheet named “1. Semrush KW Export” – it should look something like this:
3: View potential cannibalization issues
Now, check the “Results” sheet for all the potential keyword cannibalization issues on your website. All the URLs ranking for the same keywords will be automatically grouped together, like this:
Editor’s Note:
Not all grouped pages will actually represent a keyword cannibalization issue. Use your discretion when reviewing and assigning action items.
Here are three ways to fix your keyword cannibalization issues:
Option #1: If the duplicate pages competing for the same keyword are similar and offer unique value, then merge the content from those assets into the canonical (higher ranking) page. Add a 301 redirect from each of the merged assets into the new canonical page.
Option #2: If the competing page(s) offers no unique value (i.e. content, traffic, links and/or conversions), then remove it from your site and let it return a 404 or 410 response.
Option #3: If the lower ranking competing page offers no unique value, but does have quality links pointing to it, add a 301 redirect pointing it to the higher ranking page to consolidate link equity.
Steal featured snippets
According to Moz, 24% of search results display a featured snippet. And because the featured snippet is so prominent at the top of the page, they typically get more clicks.
A 2018 study by Ahrefs found that 8.6% of all clicks go to the featured snippet.
And initial data from SEOClarity suggests no significant change in featured snippet clicks following updates by Google.
So, grabbing a featured snippet across a bunch of content can give you some significant gains.
Your best shot at winning a featured snippet is to target the keywords with featured snippets that are already ranking in the top 3 positions.
In Semrush (aff):
- Enter your domain – e.g. www.robbierichards.com – into the Organic Research tool and select the “Positions” tab.
- Set the “Positions” filter to “Pos: Top 3” so it only shows keywords where your site is ranking in the top 3 positions.
- Click the “SERP Features” dropdown, and select “Domain doesn’t rank” >> “Featured Snippet”:
You’ll see a list of all the keywords with featured snippets that your site ranks for in the top 3 positions but doesn’t yet have the featured snippet. These are your “quick-win” opportunities to target.
Step #3. Identify new organic growth opportunities
Once you’ve fixed any major technical issues holding the site back and extracted as much value as possible from existing assets, it’s time to scale things up by looking for NEW organic traffic opportunities.
The first step is to find new keyword targets that directly align with your site monetization strategy that you outlined in Step #1.
Not all keywords are created equally, so we need to use a tool like Semrush (aff) to drill down into the most valuable targets for your business.
There are a few ways to do this. So, we’ll go through each one step-by-step and illustrate with some working examples.
Subfolder analysis
In Semrush, you can use the Organic Research report to drill into the subfolders and find high-intent terms, or even layer on keyword modifiers in the advanced filters.
Here’s a couple of examples for an ecommerce site and affiliate site.
1: Ecommerce site
Most ecommerce sites house their products under some type of top-level URL subfolder. In the case of Beardbrand, they use the “/collections/” subfolder.
In Semrush (aff):
- Enter the subfolder – e.g. “beardbrand.com/collections/” – into the Organic Research tool and select the “Positions” tab.
- Set the “Positions” filter to “Pos: Top 20” so that it only shows the top-ranking keywords.
Now, you’ll have a list of all the commercial intent keywords that Beardbrand is currently ranking for in the Top 20.
These would be the most valuable quick-win keyword opportunities for an ecommerce site like Beardbrand.
Repeat this process for 5-10 of your top direct competitors. I.e. sites selling the same products and/or services as your business.
2: Affiliate site
You can also use the subfolder analysis technique to mine your competitor’s affiliate review directory and find high-value, investigational intent keywords.
For instance, say you have an affiliate site about coffee products. You could check the “/reviews/” subfolder of a top review site like the Wirecutter to find their high-value keywords.
In Semrush (aff):
- Enter the subfolder – e.g. www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/ – into the Organic Research tool and select the “Positions” tab.
- Set the “Positions” filter to “Pos: Top 10” so that it only shows the top-ranking keywords.
- Add advanced filters using keyword modifiers such as “best” and “coffee” and exclude the brand “wirecutter”:
Now, you have a list of hundreds of coffee-related, review-based keywords, such as “best coffee grinder” and “best drip coffee maker”, that you can use for your affiliate site.
Note: Sometimes your competitors won’t organize content into logical subfolders like in the examples above. In this situation, you can just use Keyword or URL “contains” filters at the domain level to surface opportunities.
For example, instead of entering the Subfolder URL path into the Semrush Organic Research report, you would enter the domain and apply the same filters.
Here are some of the keyword and URL filters you can run to surface high-value keyword opportunities for different site monetization models:
Ad revenue:
- Keyword contains: what, how, tips, benefits, best, for,
- URL contains: /blog, /category*
Affiliate:
- Keyword contains: best, top, tool, vs, versus, alternative, competitor, review
- URL contains: /review, /category*
SaaS:
- Keyword contains: best, top, tool, vs, versus, alternative, competitor, review, for
- URL contains: /product, /platform, /solution, /features, /industries
Ecommerce:
- Keyword contains: buy, best, product*
- URL contains: /product, /shop, .shop, /product-category
Local:
- Keyword contains: service, location
- URL contains: /service, /location
A quick way to identify URL paths to reverse-engineer is to hover over links in the main navigation and footer sections of competitor websites.
Keyword gap analysis
Another option is to perform either domain or subfolder keyword gap analysis to quickly find where you have gaps.
In this example, Dolman Law Group is a competitor of Fellerman Law (no affiliation with either site) who lists all their services in the “/legal-services/” subfolder. So, to see what keywords Fellerman Law is missing out on, they can check in the Semrush Keyword Gap analysis tool.
In the Keyword Gap tool:
- Enter your root domain – e.g. https://www.fellermanlaw.com/
- Enter the competitor subfolder – e.g. https://www.dolmanlaw.com/legal-services/
- Click the green “Compare” button
- Scroll down and select “Competitors in the Top 20” so that you only get the top-ranking service keywords.
- Click the Missing tab to highlight all the keywords your competitor is ranking for, but you are not:
Now, if you were Fellerman Law Group, you’d have a list of top-ranking, service-based keywords from the Dolman Law firm that you could target for your site.
Topical keyword research
Seed keywords are excellent for finding investigational mid-funnel keywords to use in your content.
You can enter seed keywords related to your product, service, or affiliate topic into the Keyword Magic Tool and layer on keyword modifiers to surface new high-value opportunities.
Let’s take a look at a couple of tactics.
1: Investigational keyword modifiers
In Semrush:
- Select the Keyword Magic Tool
- Enter a seed term – e.g. “ecommerce”
- Use the Include Keywords filter, select “Any”, and add 5 keyword modifiers – “best, top, software, tools, platform”:
Now you have a list of investigational keywords related to the seed keyword “ecommerce” based on the modifiers you entered:
In this example, you can see keywords like “ecommerce platforms”, “best ecommerce platform”, “ecommerce software”, and “top ecommerce companies”.
2: Comparative keyword modifiers
You can use comparative keyword modifiers like “alternatives, competitors, versus, vs” to find comparison topics to write about. For example, a Semrush affiliate may want to search for comparative keywords around SimilarWeb, as it’s a competitor of the Traffic Analysis tool.
In Semrush:
- Select the Keyword Magic Tool
- Enter a seed term – e.g. “similarweb”
- Use the Include Keywords filter, select “Any”, and add 3 comparative keyword modifiers – “vs, alternatives, competitors”:
Now you have a list of comparative keywords related to the seed keyword “similarweb” based on the modifiers you entered:
In this example, you can see modified keywords like “similarweb competitors”, “similarweb alternative”, “similarweb vs semrush”, and “comscore vs similarweb”.
Editor’s note: this is the exact strategy I used to identify the opportunity to rank for “similarweb alternatives”:
Step #4. Qualify opportunities
Once you’ve uncovered a list of new high-intent keyword targets to go after, the next step is to qualify which terms you can realistically rank on the first page (I like to think of it in terms of the next 3-6 months) and what it will take to do so.
The SERP report is like playing poker, except you can see your competitor’s hand. Google is telling you the exact type and format of content required – i.e. the intent – to rank. And tools like Semrush provide the signals (links and traffic) required to gauge competition and traffic potential.
Here’s how you can qualify keywords quickly with SERP analysis…
Assess traffic potential
While search volume provides a good directional queue, it’s better to look at the organic traffic estimates. This tells you the TOPICAL traffic potential based on the primary and secondary keywords that you could rank for.
This number will usually get lower as you move further down the funnel. Set a minimum traffic threshold that you are willing to target.
- Go to the Semrush Keyword Overview report
- Enter your keyword – e.g. Semrush review
- Scroll down to the SERP Analysis at the bottom of the report
- Click Get Metrics to reveal the number of Referring Domains, Backlinks, and volume of Search Traffic for the Top 10 posts:
Now, from the list of pages, you can also determine what type of content is ranking on the first page of the SERPs. In this example, you can see by looking at the title tags and URLs that they are all blog post reviews.
Parent topic
Often, you want to rank for many subtopics with a similar piece of content. I see many businesses write several articles on a similar topic, and they just end up cannibalizing themselves and wasting resources.
You can look at the URL strings of the top-ranking assets and get a feel for whether or not a dedicated article targeting that exact topic is needed to rank.
For example:
- Go to the Semrush Keyword Overview report
- Enter your keyword – e.g. “hubspot alternatives”
- Scroll down to the SERP Analysis at the bottom of the report
- Check the URL strings for the Top 10 pages
You can see the Top 10 pages are all dedicated articles directly targeting that primary keyword:
- https://sprout24.com/hubspot-alternatives/
- https://www.engagebay.com/blog/hubspot-alternatives/
Analyze page-level link metrics
As a general rule of thumb, you want to look for at least 3-5 sites in the Top 10 with single-digit or low-teen referring domain counts when you’re gauging the competition for your keywords.
For example, a keyword like “beard growth oil” shows the top-ranking pages have a relatively low number of referring domains:
So this keyword would be easier to target as the competition level is low.
But, on the other hand, a keyword like “best sales crm” shows the top-ranking pages have a high number of referring domains:
So this keyword would be much harder to target as the competition is fierce.
Confirm content type/format
What content type and format should you produce? For instance, do you need a product page or a blog post? And if it’s a blog post, is it a how-to guide or a listicle?
Again, you can tell by looking at the URL strings in the SERP overview report.
For example:
- Go to the Semrush Keyword Overview report
- Enter your seed keyword – e.g. “interactive infographic”
- Scroll down to the SERP Analysis at the bottom of the report
- Check the URL strings for the Top 10 pages
In this example, the top-ranking content for the search term “interactive infographic” is list-type blog posts:
- https://www.columnfivemedia.com/101-fantastic-interactive-infographics-youll-love
- https://medium.com/visual-stories/16-stunning-examples-of-interactive-infographics-fa7203845cb1
- https://www.creativebloq.com/infographic/8-pro-tips-creating-interactive-infographics-11133560
Step #5. Use briefs to drive strategic content creation
Once you have a set of target keywords and have qualified the most valuable and realistic targets, you now need to create a strategic brief. This should give writers all the direction needed to not only rank but also monetize your content, whether that is through ads, affiliate offers, or promotion of certain products, features, or services.
Again, Google is telling you what it wants to rank. So, model the general framework and layout of top 3 ranking assets, but layer on some additional value by making it easier to read, more visual, or comprehensive.
Here is a high-level overview of the process I use to help companies scale content that ranks.
- Enter the primary keyword.
- Look at the keywords that the top 3 ranking URLs also rank for, and list any additional terms ranking in the top 10. Anything outside the top 10 will likely require a dedicated article.
- Use a webpage word counter to get an estimated target word count. Surfer also provides this.
- Click through the top 10-15 ranking URLs from the SERP report in Semrush and build your skeleton based on the key sections that are covered.
- For each section, add a comment with a reference link, and any specific details about what should be covered in the section, or how you’d like a product or service highlighted. Also, mention any UI shots, stats, or graphs that should be used to support a point.
Editor’s Note:
That was a high-level overview of the process for creating strategic content briefs.
If you want to dive deeper, check out my training course, The SEO Playbook.
Step #6. Build internal links
Once you’ve created the content briefs, and published the content, the next step is to begin content promotion.
The most significant action you can take is building quality relevant links. Starting with your own site.
Adding internal links to an existing, related piece of content that already has a high number of internal links is an often overlooked step. But it can give new content a major boost right out of the gates, especially for low competition keywords.
In Semrush (aff):
- Enter your domain – e.g. www.robbierichards.com – into the Backlink Analytics tool and select the “Indexed Pages” report.
- Check the number of Referring Domains for each page to identify those with the highest number.
The pages with the most referring domains are typically the most authoritative pages on your site.
You can also use Google search operators to find relevant internal link sources for your new content, like this:
site:yourdomain.com + “keyword”
site:yourdomain.com + intitle:keyword
For example, if I’d published a post on increasing traffic, I’d use – site:www.robbierichards.com + increase traffic – to show me the pages on my website that are most relevant to increasing traffic:
Then, you can check the Indexed Pages report (as above) to make sure the links come from high-authority pages.
Finally, look where there are opportunities in your new content to place an internal link with exact or partially-matched anchor text. And, if required, add or edit a couple of sentences to make the anchor fit naturally.
Step #7. Build backlinks
In almost all cases, you need quality relevant backlinks to rank.
There are countless ways to build links to your website, and I cover 21 of them here.
The strategies and tactics you use to build links will be dictated by several different variables, including resources, site maturity, industry, content type, and more.
In this section, I’ll cover a few immediately actionable tactics that any type of business can use to boost domain and page-level authority metrics, plus ranking potential.
Use Barnacle SEO
Barnacle SEO is a tactic from Will Scott of Search Influence.
Basically, instead of trying to rank on page one yourself, you piggyback on an existing high-authority site.
For example, if you were a lawyer, you could search for high-ranking forum threads about attorneys on sites like Quora.
In Semrush:
- Enter “quora.com” in Organic Research.
- Select the “Positions” tab.
- Filter by the Top 5 positions for the top-ranking terms.
- Use the “Advanced Filters” to find threads containing the word “attorney”:
Now you can find relevant threads in the results and make a reply on Quora, including a link back to a “value-add” resource on your site.
You might also find niche directories or third-party review sites dominate the first page of the SERP for your most valuable search terms.
For example, many legal practices find that service terms are often gobbled by sites such as Avvo, Yelp and Justia in their local market:
Similarly, G2 and capterra own many of the high-value software terms:
In these situations, it makes more sense to attach your business to these sites (like a barnacle) rather than compete with them head-to-head, at least in the short term.
This is a simple, yet powerful, off-page SEO strategy you can do yourself. Simply create a profile, optimize it, and source reviews. And, if budget permits, sponsor profile listings on the sites that are ranking in the top 3 organic positions for your most valuable keywords.
Convert unlinked brand mentions
Sometimes other websites mention your brand but don’t add a link.
In Semrush:
- Set up the Brand Monitoring tool to track all forms of your business name, including common misspellings.
- In the Mentions tab, use the filters to exclude mentions with backlinks. (If required, you can also filter sentiment, traffic, or estimated reach.)
Now, you can contact the website owner of the unlinked brand mention, and ask them to add the link.
This is a simple script you can use to convert mentions into high-authority links:
Hey FIRST NAME,
Your Name here, from Your Company.
Thanks for mentioning us in your article here: URL
Here’s an excerpt from that section:
“EXCERPT”
I was wondering if it might be possible to link the word “Your Brand” in that sentence to Destination URL?
I think this would help your visitors learn more about our Products/Services/Programs, if they desire.
Let me know if this is possible.
Cheers,
Your Name
Editor’s note: this is one of the most effective link building strategies for our more established SaaS clients. We consistently build dozens of DR 60/70+ links with a single campaign.
Reclaim lost link equity
As websites change over time with updates, redesigns, new products, etc. links get broken.
But one of the easiest ways to build backlinks is to reclaim the lost link equity from those broken links.
In Semrush:
- Enter your domain – e.g. www.robbierichards.com – into the Backlink Analytics (aff) tool and select the “Indexed Pages” report.
- Select the “Target URL Error” checkbox to display the broken backlinks (Error 404) pointing to your domain:
Now, for each broken link, you can add a 301 redirect from the broken page to a relevant replacement page on your site and reclaim the lost link equity.
Reverse-engineer competitors
Your competitors can guide your link building strategy.
Start off by finding where they get links, but you don’t.
Then, find where they get links consistently. These are higher-probability targets that are more likely to link to you.
Backlink gaps
Ever wondered where your competitors are getting backlinks from, but you aren’t? Well, here’s how to find them.
In Semrush:
- Select the Backlink Gap tool
- Enter your domain and up to five competitors – e.g. Adidas, Nike, Puma, and Reebok.
- Click “Find Prospects”
- Select your domain in the drop-down above the results table:
The results show you the backlink opportunities that you’re missing – i.e. the domains that your competitors have links from, but you don’t.
The next step is to analyze the source of the links and determine what you need to do in order to replicate them (eg. guest posts, directory submissions, tool list posts, roundup contributions etc).
Recurring sources
You can also use the Backlink Gap tool to highlight the referring domains that send recurring links to your competitors.
Sort the “Matches” column in descending order to display how many of your competitors have a backlink from the same referring domain:
The more competitors who get a backlink from a referring domain are also more likely to link to your site when you approach them.
Clicks the links for each competitor to see how they are getting the links, and formulate a plan to replicate as many of them as possible for your site.
Page-level targets
One way to promote new content as soon as it goes live is to identify all the sites linking to the URLs ranking for a keyword you are trying to rank for.
For example, in the SERP Analysis report we checked above for the “beard growth oil”, you have a list of URLs, each with a count of referring domains.
Click that figure, to take you to the Referring Domains report when you can see all the details:
If you have a genuinely better piece of content, reach out and pitch the author for inclusion.
Guest post
Guest posting remains a powerful vehicle for building high-power TRUST links on authority sites and also piggybacking off that same domain authority to rank for ultra-competitive topics.
This tactic is super helpful if you have a newer site, or operate in a competitive niche.
You can check out all the details on guest posting here.
Step #8. Track performance
Having implemented all these tactics in your SEO campaign, it’s important to track performance.
You’ll want to look at the relationship between what you are doing month to month, and the impact rankings are having on organic traffic and conversion numbers.
We also like to break this down by subfolder for our clients, so they can get a granular view of this performance across the blog vs feature or product pages, for example.
Image: Databox dashboard showing the month-over-month relationship between rankings, organic traffic and the number of leads/ MQLs across different sections – blog posts and product pages – of the site.
Rinse and Repeat (or Outsource)
OK, so there you have a simple series of steps that you can use to consistently plan and run successful SEO campaigns that drive more organic traffic and conversions for websites in any niche or industry.
It’s important to remember that SEO campaigns are a long-term strategy. So the real value comes from consistent execution of the technical, on-page and off-site processes mentioned above.
If you don’t have the resources to plan and execute an SEO campaign for your business, then you can hire my agency, Virayo, to do it all for you.
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