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SEO strategies are necessary for keeping your website discoverable and ranked via search engines. Here are the SEO strategies you need to know for 2019.

As you map out your content marketing strategy for the remainder of the year, search engine optimization (SEO) should remain top of mind. Ranking high with SEO takes both time and effort, but there are some awesome SEO techniques out there that are simple and easy to implement into your overall plan that will help reel in real results. The best part? Your team can start making the necessary changes and implement these strategies right away.

For advanced marketers, SEO strategy looks something like this: you have a plan and best practices in place, you have your list of optimal keywords, you’re actively blogging and your website is optimized. Your monitors are covered with dashboards from Google Analytics and other rank-trackers. So, what’s next? Let’s take a look.

What is an SEO Strategy? 
In 2019, an SEO strategy is the process of organizing a website’s content by topic groups, which helps search engines understand a user’s intent when searching. By optimizing a web page around topics first, you can rank well for long-tail keywords related to that topic.

Here are some steps you can take to make sure your SEO bases are covered this year.

Important SEO Strategies for 2019

Make a List of Significant Topics
Keywords are at the heart of your SEO strategy, but they’re (surprisingly) not your first step to organic site growth anymore. Your first step is to make a list of topics pertinent to your company, product, etc.

To start, compile a list of about 10 short words and terms associated with your product or service. There are several keyword generator tools to take advantage of on the internet, such as:

• Google’s Keyword Tool
• Keyword Tool
• Soovle Keyword Comparer

Use these to identify certain keyword’s search volume and come up with variations that make sense for you and your business.

Determine Your Long-Tail Keywords
The tools mentioned above should help you determine a list of short-form keywords. From those, come up with longer, more specific keywords that dig deeper into the short, more precise keyword.

For example, we often write content on or related to the topic of “SEO,” but it’s very difficult to rank well on Google for such a popular topic on this acronym alone. We also risk competing with our own content by creating multiple pages that are all targeting the exact same keyword — and potentially the same search engine results page (SERP). Therefore, we also create content on conducting keyword research, optimizing images for search engines, creating an SEO strategy (which you’re reading right now), and other subtopics within SEO.

Use your long-tail keyword subtopics to come up with blog post or webpage ideas that explain a specific concept within each larger topic you identified.

Prioritize Your Website Navigation
Navigation is the most important data structure element on your entire website. Why? Well, because it’s the first thing linking to your ‘other’ pages and it’s usually at the very top of the page, giving those links a lot of weight.

Use simple, straightforward, and strong keywords in your navigation options, and place the appropriate content in each of these navigation buckets.

Optimize Your Titles and Headings
Make sure your website’s pages are targeting the proper keywords. The title tag has the most weight in search engine optimization, so make sure your keyword is there. And the closer the most important keyword is to the beginning, the better. After that, add the keyword to your headings as well. The H1 is the most important heading so it should be the first thing on a page. In many cases, it’s the same as the title, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.

Keep your site pages from appearing too keyword-spammy by sprinkling alternative keywords throughout the body of your website copy. Alternative keywords could be direct synonyms of your main keyword, or even antonyms.

Same goes for the meta description of your website page. Optimize the meta descriptions to convince people to click your link. Make sure you have your keywords there as well, otherwise the chances of it showing up at the top of search engine pages are much lower.

Link, link, link!
Interlinking article text with other webpages is one of the most effective SEO techniques out there. You can use hyperlinks to link to important pages using specific anchor texts. This has a lower risk than building backlinks on keyword rich anchor texts and, more importantly, you have absolute control over it.

Whenever you add new content, make sure you link to other relevant pages within your website. While you’re at it, go edit some old pages from your site and add links to your new content, if relevant.

Implement Tracking
If you don’t track your website’s rankings and traffic, you can’t spot the issues or figure out what is/isn’t working.

Also, if you don’t monitor your organic search traffic you can’t know if you’re making any progress and, worse, you won’t know if the search engines penalized you or your rankings have dropped.

You can use Google Search Console and Google Analytics to monitor your organic search traffic and issues with your pages. They’re easy to install, and you might even be able to install them via a plugin for your content. We recommend using Google Tag Manager to implement all tracking codes. They will be easier to manage afterwards.

There’s More
When it comes to SEO strategies and solutions, we’re only just getting started. Want to know how you can drive more traffic to your site and attract new customers? Reach out to 24 Communications today.

Your website is the foundation of your online brand, and we work with you to create strong designs, compelling copy, effective navigation, and usability that will bring your online ranking, presence, and impact to a new level.