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  • First 90 Days SEO Plan: Detailed Breakdown, Goals & Strategies for 2024
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John Harrison
March 8, 2024

“DISCLAIMER: Striding into 2024 with a half-baked SEO plan is the digital equivalent of walking a tightrope without a safety net.”

Welcome, brave pioneers, to the frontier of digital marketing in ’24. We’re breaking down the ‘First 90 days SEO plan’ into digestible chunks, sprinkled with concrete goals, and seasoned with foolproof strategies.

An astonishing 82% of marketers report the effectiveness of SEO is on the rise. That’s like being in a room of 100 marketers and only 18 do not realize the pertinent role SEO still plays.

Watch your brand soar to uncharted SERPs heights, surpass competition, and command a digital presence. All within the exciting first 90 days of employing our explored strategies. Time to amp up your online relevance, shall we?

Crafting Your SEO Strategy for the First 90 Days

  • A 90-day SEO plan is a vital road map to success.
  • Key elements of the plan will form the backbone of your strategy.
  • Realistic goals and objectives yield tangible results.

Understanding the Importance of a 90-Day SEO Plan

The first 90 days of your SEO journey can make or break your online visibility. Why 90 days? Google, the dominant search engine, updates its index every 90 days. During this period, your website’s SEO changes are assessed, rendering it a crucial window to make a solid first impression.

A well-crafted 90-day SEO plan helps focus your efforts. Instead of spreading resources thin with unfocused tactics, you concentrate on key areas. This concentrated approach enhances efficiency and increases chances of significant visibility improvement within this critical period.

Key Elements to Include in Your SEO Plan

A robust 90-day SEO plan is likely to pivot around a few quintessential elements.

Keyword Research

Keyword research forms the foundation of any SEO effort. By understanding what phrases and terms your target customers are inputting in search fields, you can tailor your site’s content to correspond to these searches.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is critical to site visibility. This involves optimizing your website’s meta tags, headers, images, URLs, and internal links, among other elements.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO relates to external ranking factors occurring outside your website. These factors include backlinks from high-authority sites, social signals, and other promotional methods outside your own website.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the structuring of a website in a way that search engines can understand. This includes tactics such as ensuring your site loads quickly and is mobile-friendly.

Setting Realistic Goals and Objectives

Setting realistic and measurable goals are critical to the success of your 90-day SEO plan. Rather than aiming for the moon with unattainable goals, focus on what’s achievable, like a 10% increase in organic traffic.

Objectives create a framework that helps measure whether you’re on course. Remember to align your objectives and KPIs to ensure you’re tracking meaningful indicators of growth and improvement.

Step-by-Step Guide to Developing Your SEO Strategy

The next crucial steps to kickstart SEO for your venture in 2024. You’ll learn:

  • The significant steps of SEO strategy development.
  • The process of efficient keyword identification.
  • The importance and mechanics of website optimization, and the nuances of content strategy.

Step 1: Conducting a Comprehensive SEO Audit

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your online presence is non-negotiable. A comprehensive SEO audit is the first stop on this journey. It unveils hidden opportunities and exposes obstacles on your website.

  • Comprehensive assessment of technical SEO factors, on-page and off-page elements.
  • Identification of key areas of improvement and strengths to capitalize on.
  • Presentation of a detailed report to inform future strategies and priorities.

Step 2: Identifying and Prioritizing Keywords

It’s all about the words. But not just any words; the right words, that resonate with your target audience and align with your products or services.

  • Identification of keyword opportunities via thorough market research.
  • Prioritization of keywords based on volume, competition, and relevance.
  • An exploration into long-tail keywords—low hanging fruits that can elevate your SEO rankings.

Step 3: Optimizing Your Website for SEO

It’s time to apply your keyword research to your website. This is where the cohesiveness of your SEO strategy starts showing its strength.

  • Tools and techniques for optimizing your website pages.
  • The key role of mobile optimization in SEO; ensuring your website is mobile-friendly.
  • Page-load times and their impact on user experience and SEO rankings.

Step 4: Creating a Content Strategy

Behind every successful SEO strategy is a well-thought-out content strategy. Intelligent, original, and engaging content is the magnet that attracts and retains visitors.

  • The importance of writing for humans and not search engines. Crafting engaging content relevant to your reader’s needs.
  • The role of content regularly: planning, scheduling and updating content to keep your audience engaged.
  • The era of multimedia: incorporating videos, infographics, and podcasts into your content strategy.

Step 5: Implementing Link Building Techniques

The final step is about linking up! Building a network of links—both internal and external is a critical factor in SEO success.

  • Understanding the importance of internal linking and how it can improve user experience and site navigation.
  • External link building strategies to improve website authority.
  • The importance of monitoring and disavowal of toxic links that can harm your rankings.

Diving Deeper into Keyword Research and Optimization

  • Unravel the crucial role of keywords in search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Discover sophisticated tools and techniques for efficient keyword discovery
  • Master the best practices for keyword optimization, the crux of SEO success

Importance of Keyword Research in SEO

In the vast landscape of digital marketing, SEO stands like a lighthouse guiding your website to visibility among millions. The navigational beam of this lighthouse? Keywords. But why are keywords of such significance?

Keywords are more than mere terms or phrases. They are threads woven into the virtual tapestry of the web, linking user queries with the most relevant content. When accurately mapped, these threads guide searchers directly to your site, increasing visibility and bolstering organic traffic.

Search engines, with Google at the helm, rely on keywords to understand and categorize your site’s content. They pair these with related search queries to provide users with the most appropriate results. Effective keyword research, thus, is pivotal in helping your site surface when and where it matters most.

Connecting User Intent and Your Keywords

Embarking on keyword research is fundamentally about understanding and predicting user intent. The essence here is strategic selection – streamlining and tailoring your keywords in a way that aligns with your audience’s interests and search habits.

However, uncovering accurate user intent is not a guesswork. It is grounded in data. By using analytical tools to grasp search patterns, keyword research helps in generating content that resonates with your audience, stirring engagement, and ultimately driving conversions.

Tools and Techniques for Effective Keyword Research

The good news is that you don’t navigate the sea of keywords blindly. There are a plethora of tools to assist you in your expedition. Google’s Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Moz’s Keyword Explorer are a few renowned options. These resources serve as guides, providing accurate data on keyword popularity, competitiveness, and relevance.

Keyword research isn’t solely about quantity, though. It’s about quality. This is where long-tail keywords come into play. They consist of three or more words, are specific, and less competitive. While individually they may have less search volume, in aggregation, they can be a powerful lever to pull to improve search visibility.

Best Practices for Keyword Optimization

After arming yourself with a robust keyword list, what’s next? Keyword optimization. It’s about strategically integrating your chosen keywords into your web content. This process involves a balance – aiming for visibility without sacrificing user experience or attracting penalties for ‘keyword stuffing.’

Firstly, ensure the chosen keyword appears in the title of your page. That’s the headline that gets crawled first by search engines, and it’s one of the significant determinants of ranking.

Secondly, utilizing your keyword in the meta-description, alt-tags, and throughout the content can bring you dividends. However, be aware to do so naturally and unforced. Remember, write for your audience first, then for search engines.

By fully comprehending keyword research and optimization, you stand to gain a greater competitive edge in the vast digital marketplace as you tailor your content to meet specific user needs, thus driving quality traffic and encouraging potential conversions. Your transition into the world of SEO has just taken a significant step forward.

Understanding the Role of Content in SEO

Content often beguiles in its simplicity, but its impact on SEO runs deep. This section will untangle:

• The crucial relationship between Content Marketing and SEO
• Tips to generate SEO-optimized articles that rank
• Tricks to garner your content the visibility it deserves

Approach this as your playbook to translate intriguing ideas into engaging, SEO-rich content that grabs eyeballs.

What is Content Marketing and Why is it Important for SEO?

Content Marketing refers to designing and sharing valuable, relevant information to attract a targeted audience. Your website is your stage and the content, the performance. But an audience won’t show up for an act they don’t know exists. That’s where SEO swoops in.

Search engine optimization involves fine-tuning your website and its content to be appealing to search engine algorithms, thereby bringing eyeballs to your site. It means more traffic, engagement, and potentially, conversions. Think of it as a confluence of both art and science; art to conceive engaging content and science to optimize it.

Next up, let’s delve into the method behind the seeming madness of crafting SEO-amiable content.

How to Create SEO-Friendly Content

Pair Keyword Research with Fluid Writing

While you might have a phenomenal idea for content, it needs to be serendipitously found. Begin with sound keyword research; gather phrases and words relevant to your niche that potential customers are searching for. Then, incorporate these keywords organically into your content without compromising the flow or the message.

Prioritize Readability alongside SEO

OIDA. Attention on the Internet is a perishable commodity. Grab eyeballs with a hook, an enticing headline, and easy-to-consume language. Keep your paragraphs short enough to keep the reader engaged but long enough to explain your point.

Now onto a crucial aspect, one often overlooked – promoting the content.

Promoting Your Content for Maximum Visibility

Your content might be a masterpiece, but she can’t dance if no one’s watching. Promotion is not an afterthought; it’s an integral part of the content strategy.

Leverage Social Media for Wider Reach

Sprinkle your content across social media platforms where your target audience hangs out. Tailor the format of your content to suit the platform – while LinkedIn favors long form, Instagram is more visual, and Twitter requires brevity.

Reach out to Influencers in Your Niche

Influencers offer validation and reach. Consider reaching out to niche influencers who might be interested in your content.

Remember, you’re not only creating content – you’re creating experiences.

Exploring Link Building Techniques for SEO

  • Link building, a core aspect of SEO, affects your website’s visibility on search engines.
  • Uncover the effective strategies to enhance your link building efforts.
  • Understand common pitfalls in link building to avoid at all costs.

What is Link Building and Why is it Crucial for SEO?

Link building refers to the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. In the realm of SEO, these hyperlinks, often referred to as “backlinks,” are akin to the votes of confidence for your site.

Search engines like Google utilize these links to crawl between the individual pages on your website and between different websites. A substantial number of high-quality backlinks from reputed sites indicate your website’s relevancy, authority, and credibility, giving you an edge in search engine rankings.

The Importance of Link Building

Link building is indispensable for SEO because it is a critical factor that search engines use to rank websites. Its importance can be attributed to three main aspects:

  1. Visibility – Link building increases the visibility of your blog posts in search engine results.
  2. Referral traffic – Good-quality links from popular websites can lead to increased traffic.
  3. Credibility – Links from authoritative websites enhance the credibility and trustworthiness of your website.

Effective Link Building Strategies for SEO

Link building and maintenance requires a strategic approach. It takes time, patience, and a knack for creating high-quality content that naturally attracts links. Here are a few effective link building strategies that can provide significant results:

  • Guest Posting: Guest blogging on credible platforms can offer you the opportunity to attract quality backlinks.
  • Resource Link Building: This involves creating useful content that serves as a resource for other sites. Your content becomes a reference point, earning your site more backlinks.
  • Broken Link Building: This involves finding broken links on other websites and recommending one of your links as a replacement.

Avoiding Common Link Building Mistakes

While link building is a crucial part of your SEO strategy, common mistakes can negatively impact your site’s ranking. Here are three such pitfalls that you need to avoid:

  1. Low-quality links: Backlinks from low-quality or spammy websites can lead to the decrease in your site’s trust level.
  2. Excessive reciprocal links: While some amount of reciprocal linking is acceptable, excessive link exchanges can be viewed as a manipulative tactic by search engines.
  3. Over-reliance on exact match anchor text: While exact match anchor text can help improve your SEO, overdoing it can hurt your rankings due to Google’s Penguin update.

Effective link building is a science and an art form. While it can be challenging and time-consuming, the benefits it offers, such as improving website’s ranking, driving traffic, and building credibility, make it worth the effort. Remember, the key to link building lies in creating high-quality content which other sites will want to link to. When successful, link building can significantly enhance your SEO strategy by improving your site’s visibility, credibility, and attracting more referral traffic.

Tracking Your SEO Performance and Making Adjustments

  • Boost SEO success with performance tracking
  • Essential KPIs for measuring SEO efforts
  • Refining your strategy using SEO data

Understanding your current SEO performance is essential to continuously improve and drive better results. Much like steering a ship, knowing where you are helps chart the correct course.

Importance of Tracking SEO Performance

SEO isn’t a set-and-forget strategy. It requires constant monitoring and adjustments for optimal outcomes. By tracking your SEO performance, you access invaluable insights that reveal what works, what doesn’t, and where there’s room for improvement. With this data, you can devote your resources to areas with the greatest return on investment.

The importance of tracking lies in its capacity to demonstrate the value of your SEO efforts to stakeholders. It provides tangible metrics that showcase the return on SEO investments, facilitating informed business decisions.

Key SEO Metrics to Monitor

To understand the success of your SEO efforts, you need to monitor the right metrics. Some vital metrics include organic traffic, conversion rate, bounce rate, and dwell time. Keep an eye on keyword rankings too, as they give an indication of how your website ranks for specific search terms.

The beauty of these metrics is that they offer a direct line of sight into your audience’s behavior and preferences. By tracking and analyzing these metrics, you can understand what content engages your audience and leads to conversions.

Using SEO Data to Refine Your Strategy

Data is your compass in the vast digital landscape. Your SEO data isn’t just numbers on a screen; it’s a feedback loop providing actionable insights to refine and optimize your strategy.

Identifying Successful Content

Identify which content types and topics engage your audience by looking at pages with the highest dwell time and lowest bounce rate.

Pinpointing Problem Areas

Poorly performing pages can also offer valuable insights. Identify areas that need improvement by looking at pages with high bounce rates or low conversion rates.

Adjusting Your SEO Tactics

Your SEO tactics should not be static; they need to evolve based on the feedback your data gives you. Adapt your keyword strategy, content creation, and link building techniques based on your performance data.

In conclusion, tracking your performance is more than just a way to justify SEO initiatives to stakeholders. It’s a roadmap for continual improvement, helping you adjust your sails to catch the prevailing winds in the constantly shifting SEO landscape. You’re sure to reap significant benefits once you leverage your SEO data to refine your strategies.

Putting the Finishing Touches on Your SEO Plan

As you step into the first 90 days of your SEO journey, remember the importance of setting achievable goals and employing effective strategies. Keep a sharp eye on your site auditing, keyword research, content optimization, and consistently track your performance.

Don’t overlook the value of this comprehensive SEO approach. It’s your road map for online visibility, cultivating targeted traffic, and fostering a strong digital presence.

Take action. Begin by reassessing your website for any improvements based on what you’ve learned. Identify a set of keywords relevant to your business, and create optimized content that centers around these terms. Consistently gauge your progress, refine your strategies accordingly, and remain adaptive to evolving SEO trends.

Wondering how your business could enhance its SEO efforts further?

Don’t forget, SEO is not a one-off activity but an ongoing process. With persistence and right strategies, you can make sure your website doesn’t get lost in the digital crowd. Remember, the only constant in SEO is change. Adapt, evolve and continue working towards that first page ranking.

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About the Author

With Penfriend, I was able to generate two 3,000+ word articles around niche topics in 10 minutes. AND THEY ARE SO HUMAN. I can easily pass these first drafts to my SMEs to embed with practical examples and customer use cases. I have no doubt these will rank.

I cannot wait to put these articles into action and see what happens.

Jess Cook

Head of Content & Comms
Island