Develop SEO Plan - How To Do SEO Yourself
Finally, we'll explain how to develop a plan. The scope and approach can differ by situation. We assume the case of an existing website owner with limited SEO knowledge who is planning to do SEO themselves.
Even if you hire a specialist, it is crucial to understand how to develop a plan to work with them effectively.
The four SEO knowledge areas, which are the key framework of this tutorial, can also be utilized for planning. Here are the key steps to develop a plan.
SEO Foundation
SEO knowledge building
If you are new to SEO, it is very important to understand the general outline before you do any activities, as your understanding may need to be corrected.
There are many SEO learning materials, including this tutorial. You should complete at least one tutorial that covers end-to-end SEO topics in a structured manner. If you are new to the topic, finding a relatively short and easy-to-understand tutorial is better.
SEO tool preparation
SEO can only be done with proper tools. While going through the tutorial, prepare essential SEO tools such as Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Ads (for Keyword Planner), and other free SEO tools.
If you plan to do SEO yourself, consider using at least one paid tool to manage your workload effectively.
Website audit
To design a plan, you must first understand the gap between your business goal and the current website situation, and break down the problems you identified.
Many specialists offer free website audits. Even if you are unsure if you need specialist support, talking to them and asking for an initial audit can help identify blind spots in your plan.
Goal and KPI setting
It would be best if you defined your SEO goals with a rough timeline based on your business aspirations and website audit status.
Then, you can reverse-engineer to set KPIs. For example, if traffic is the primary goal, you can try to answer the following questions:
- How much organic traffic do you need from SERPs to achieve the business goal?
- What is the target ranking position for select keywords that would generate enough organic traffic?
- How many pages and keywords need to be ranked on SERPs, and by when?
- How many pages can be indexed considering the current website status, and by when?
As the gaps between the current status and the business goal target are often large, answering the questions above in order to set reasonable KPIs may require several iterations.
The example questions above are only general KPIs. Depending on the situation, you may need to set more detailed KPIs for each SEO approach.
For example, if your website has an issue in Core Web Vitals, you may need to set a specific target depending on the root cause of the Core Web Vitals issue.
KPI monitoring
Once you set KPIs, you need to check the status regularly.
You can monitor essential KPIs on Search Console; however, if you want to monitor them more comprehensively, you may need to consider subscribing to a paid tool.
On-Page SEO
Based on the audit results, you can define potential improvement areas in your existing content.
As On-Page SEO requires continuous efforts, you must set priorities depending on your time and budget.
At the most general level, there are three chunks of work scope in On-Page SEO.
Existing page optimization
Usually, the first step is fixing fundamental issues on existing pages, such as missing tags (title tag, some meta tags, h1, h2, and h3 tags) and an inappropriate character length in the meta title and meta descriptions. If you use paid tools such as Semrush, Ahref, or Moz, you'll quickly get optimization opportunities by keyword and page.
The time-consuming parts of existing page optimization are optimizing keywords, adding appropriate internal and external links, and upgrading content with visual or interactive content.
You can check the following chapters to learn how to optimize existing pages.
Site structure optimization
Website structure is critical to improving usability for human users and crawlability for search engines.
Redesigning and restructuring websites generally requires a lot of time and financial resources. Depending on your goals and resource constraints, you need to decide how much you will improve your website structure.
This tutorial will give you ideas for organizing multiple pages under the same theme. To learn about the technique, refer to Chapter 10. Organizing Multi-Page Content.
New content publishing
Adding more high-quality content on related topics to your website can positively impact the entire website.
The fundamental techniques for publishing new content are the same as those for existing pages. However, when writing content from scratch, you are able to apply proper content writing techniques without constraint.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO approaches can differ depending on your website platform. Required efforts depend on the technical audit results.
If you are not an engineer and are not using CMS, you need to work closely with engineers to address the issues defined in the technical audit.
Typically, there are three chunks of work scope in technical SEO.
Indexing issue resolution
This is the first thing you must address when publishing a new website. As explained earlier, if your pages are not indexed, they cannot be ranked on SERPs.
Several techniques, such as sitemap.xml and URL inspection on the Search Engine Console, can fix indexing issues. To learn about the indexing issues, refer to Chapter 11. Indexing Your Website.
Schema markup (Structured Data)
The power of schema markup is often underestimated. Implementing Schema markup on your website is an effective way to provide search engines with structured information about your content, which can enhance the display of search results and improve overall visibility.
There are various types of schema markups, but you should start with basic ones, such as organization, breadcrumbs, or articles. For a list of schema markups, check Google's guidelines.
For more details, refer to Chapter 12. Implementing Schema Markup.
Site performance improvement
Improving website performance and page experience is a critical part of SEO. There are several subcomponents in this optimization activity.
Once you conduct a technical audit, you will know what you should work on. To get an assessment now, go to the PageSpeed Insight website, type your URL, and check the results.
To learn site performance approaches in more detail, refer to Chapter 13. Optimizing Website Performance.
Off-Page SEO
The most critical part of Off-Page SEO is backlink building. Although Google's ranking algorithms evolve, references from other websites especially reference from high-authority websites, are one way to objectively assess the website's relevance and importance to the searched keywords.
The main objective of Off-Page SEO is to build the website's authority, credibility, awareness, and reputation through activities that take place outside of the website itself.
You can also use other marketing approaches, such as social media marketing, to achieve your objectives; however, considering a long-term effect, you should prioritize backlink building unless you have a clear reason to prioritize other approaches.
Backlink building
As backlink building is one of the most time-consuming activities, many website owners tend to outsource this work.
Generally, you need to allocate a substantial amount of your time or budget to backlink building. We'll later explain how to build backlinks (Chapter 14. Building Backlinks).
Other off-page efforts
While implementing backlink building, you can also launch marketing campaigns. If you have customer email addresses (e.g., from your shop membership registration), an email campaign can be one of the quickest ways to increase your website's visibility.
One of the most frequently used approaches is social media marketing. We'll later explain how social media marketing works for SEO (Chapter 15. Leveraging Social Media for SEO).
You can also learn this topic offline. Click 
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