I had the privilege of learning the intricacies of SEO from Luc Levesque, one of the top search experts in the world, and Sander Daniels, co-founder at Thumbtack. During that time, I discovered that the bleeding edge SEO needed to capture and maintain top search ranks requires an enormous amount of effort and creativity, but building the foundation for strong SEO is fairly straightforward. There are 3 foundational pillars for any great organic search strategy. I consider these table stakes for SEO — they won’t get you to the top of the search results, but without them additional SEO efforts are futile.
I. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is necessary to ensure search engines properly index and display your site. It includes creating a logical site hierarchy, good HTML hygiene, using appropriate search engine directives, optimizing page performance, and more. There are dozens of technical SEO guides and checklists available online, but for beginners, I recommend working your way through Google’s SEO Starter Guide. Take the time to understand every point and read the linked documentation. At this early stage, you should also stick to getting comfortable with Google Webmaster Tools and Search Console rather than signing up for expensive 3rd party tools.
II. Content
Every site that wants to capture organic search needs an SEO-optimized content strategy. Start by identifying the set of keywords you want to target and establishing the appropriate page templates. Here’s how to do it:
1. Use a keyword planning tool to identify high search volume keywords that are relevant to your site. Early on, when you don’t have much domain or page authority, you’ll want to target less competitive words even though they don’t have as much search volume. A good trick is to go after specific queries like “five-minute vegetarian pizza recipes” instead of “pizza recipes.” This also makes it easier to create targeted content since the user’s search intent is less ambiguous.
2. Once you have a set of target keywords, run a full content analysis on the top 10-20 sites that rank for those queries. Make note of everything — search result titles, page design, page content, calls to action, etc. Google considers these the best pages for addressing these queries, and your goal is to identify all of the common elements among them[1]. This will give you the basic requirements for any competing pages that you create.
3. Define your special sauce. This should be something unique to your product or service that directly addresses the query and isn’t offered by competing pages. To continue with the pizza recipe example, you could feature a high-quality video showing a chef demonstrating the recipe or a call to action letting users order all of the necessary ingredients.
Use these steps to create baseline page template for each keyword. By following your template your landing pages content should already be as good or better than the competition.
III. Backlinks
Google’s search algorithm started with backlinks as the sole measure for determining Page Rank. Nowadays there are hundreds of ranking factors, but, in my experience, links are still necessary for getting enough domain and page authority to have a shot at top search ranks[2]. Unfortunately, links are a rampant source of abuse and blackhat SEO, so Google sets a high bar for good links and actively ignores (or even penalizes) bad links. Generating high-quality backlinks from scratch requires significant active outreach. The following are two strategies that I’ve seen work. Choose the one that best fits your product or service:
Solicit advice or feedback
Let’s say you want to get links to your tutorial for learning how to write object-oriented JavaScript. First, write a polished, informative tutorial (contract with a professional writer if you don’t have one in-house). Next, send your tutorial to every well-regarded JavaScript expert you can find and ask them for feedback. Prioritize people with a strong web presence since they’re more likely to be considered domain authorities by search engines. Keep reaching out until you get multiple responses, then rewrite your article with their feedback incorporated. When your revisions are complete, post the tutorial online and send everyone a link to the finished article thanking them for their input. With a bit of luck, some of the experts will link to your tutorial from their website, blog, or social media accounts. By prioritizing experts with a large web presence you increase your chances of having their followers link to your content as well. With continued effort, you’ll end up with a small set of high-quality, high-authority backlinks.
Surface and share unique insights
Dig into your internal content and data and look for interesting information that isn’t available elsewhere. When you find something unique, craft a comprehensive article around it. Make the article as easily digestible as possible by including stats, rich infographics, and key takeaways. The Priceonomics blog is a classic example of this kind of content. When your article is ready, send a custom message that includes a summary and a link to the full article to everyone with an online presence that might find it relevant. For example, the Priceonomics team might send their “Where is Pizza the Most Expensive in America?” article to every Pizza shop in America, every major food delivery company, local news stations, etc. This is a numbers game — the bigger your list of targets the better chance you have of getting links. Keep in mind that you must earnestly offer up the data to all of your targets with no expectation of receiving a backlink in return — explicitly asking for backlinks is frowned upon by Google.
Looking ahead
Nailing technical SEO, creating engaging keyword-targeted content, and securing high-quality links is just the first step. With a strong foundation in place you’re ready to start competing for the top of the search results page. Be prepared for a long road to success. Constantly changing ranking factors and a zero-sum landscape make SEO a continuous process, and SEO work often takes a long time to bear fruit (experiments can take months to yield significant results). That said, organic search remains one of the most potent sources of online traffic, and as your site gains authority it becomes easier to capture search rankings. Stay tuned for future posts on tactics and strategies for boosting search traffic and building an SEO-focused growth team. If you’re eager to get started on further SEO work immediately, I recommend checking out the Whiteboard Friday posts on Moz.com.
Notes
[1] I exclusively refer to Google search in this post. Google is still the dominant online search engine, and most other search engine rankings mirror them. Focusing your efforts optimizing for Google yields the best ROI.
[2] For more on the importance of links see The Two-Part SEO Ranking Model.
Thanks to Sander Daniels and Luc Levesque for reading drafts of this post.