Where should you use imagery and metaphors in your texts?

If you have a limited marketing budget, SEO may not be the most important thing for your business right now. Maybe your website is so old and slow that it's smarter to throw money at a new website.

Maybe you have a limited-time sale of last year's collection that you need to sell in a hurry - where PPC marketing like Facebook Ads or Google Shopping Ads makes more sense.

Any strategy requires resources to implement. Find out if you have a team in place to execute your SEO, if you need to hire new brains, if you need to get a SEO agency on the job or something else entirely.

Before you get down to the nitty-gritty of SEO, you need to know who your target audiences are. What are they interested in? And what is important to them?

Your audiences will naturally Google different things depending on where they are in the customer journey. It's not the same thing they google when they're just starting to feel their pain point and don't know the solution yet, as when they know what they want to buy, where and why.

Part of your SEO strategy should be to identify which stages of the buying process make sense for you to be visible in.

It's a good idea to be visible and helpful at all stages - from start to finish. But if resources aren't available, prioritise. Read more about how to do a keyword analysis based on the customer journey here.

As part of your keyword analysis, you should brainstorm all the different intentions your target audiences might have when they Google. When a page is ranked on page 1 of Google's search results, 99% of the time it's because Google thinks it solves the searcher's query.

So get to grips with what Googlers are up to when they hit the keys - and surprise them with even better content than they dared hope for.

To understand your market, and your own business to the letter, you need to understand your competitors. It's the same when you're planning your SEO strategy.

Zoom in on what your competitors do well - and what they do less well. This includes everything from their content, the structure of their website, what links they have and what keywords they are targeting. 

By researching which keywords your main competitors are targeting, you can get inspiration for your own keyword analysis.

Do they rank on keywords you should rank on too? And are there gaps in the market?

Link building is one of the most important ranking parameters. A good, well thought out link building strategy can kick the door in well and truly for Google. Right now, in 2019, the most important thing about your link building is that it's relevant, quality links you're throwing at your site.

We're not talking Russian porn links. So think relevance. Think PR. Outreach. Partnerships. Publicity, local newspapers and good stories.

Sit down with your team or agency and map out what to target and who to target. Not just right now - but tomorrow, next month and for the rest of the year.

Remember to research what type of content is often linked to in your industry. And then make even better content than what's available right now. If people love the content you create (landing pages, blog posts or videos) there's a good chance they'll link to it on their own blog or website.

When people link to your content because they think it's awesome - it's called an editorial link. And that's a link Google values very highly.

You can't search engine optimise your website without good content like landing pages, blog posts and videos.

But good content isn't just good content - and you can't be guided by one-size-fits-all rules.

So do your own analysis of what your industry and niche expects and wants.

Do they expect checklists and bullet points? Videos or mostly text?

Each niche is its own. In the fitness industry, the sites with the most videos rank the highest. It fits the industry well.

Where high-ranking pages on divorce rules and legislation often have bullet points and lists. It's a heavy subject that needs to be made easier to digest.

In the furniture business, people like a lot of pictures rather than a lot of text. And so on.

So find out - what's happening in your niche and what does your target audience want?

Next step: make a clear plan for how often you will create new content for your website.

The number of positive Google reviews of your business has an impact on your visibility (and how you are perceived by your potential customers, of course). It pays to have a strategy in place for how you're going to continuously reap positive reviews.

Read also: How do you deal with bad reviews online?

You'll need to factor Google's latest algorithm changes into your SEO strategy. This ensures that you are constantly "aligned" with Google's quality guidelines, and delivering what Google thinks is important to searchers.

But find a good balance between being up to date and chasing the algorithm. By studying and understanding the long-term trends, you have the opportunity to get ahead of your competitors. Not by uncritically following suit every time Google rolls out a new algorithm.

Your users need to know, where they can find what on your website. They should have a great experience and feel guided without having to use a single brain cell.

Like when you go shopping in the supermarket and the cheese is in the cheese section and the toothpaste isn't.

There are also a few things you can do to make it easier for Google's bots to read and understand your page.

You can read much more about good website architecture on Moz's blog.

It's important not to look at numbers like the number of monthly searches for a keyword and top rankings if those aren't searches that are bringing you relevant traffic.

So think - what best "matures" your audiences through the customer journey? What converts them? And what keeps them as loyal customers?

Consider who will be responsible for making sure your website is technically up and running. Who will set up proper tracking, optimise speed, compress images, insert microdata, make sure it's mobile-friendly and that redirects are made?

If you haven't hired someone who knows technical search engine optimisation and you can't afford a SEO agency, consider outsourcing a few small tasks.

Strategy is a process, not an event. That's why you need to continually turn the page and evaluate whether the strategy has gaps and add new actions when it makes sense.

Keep a close eye on the evolution of your rankings and let the results guide you.