The most common pain point with SEO for businesses is the substantial amount of time any campaign takes to kick in without guarantees from the SEO Agency on meeting traffic, authority, and goal targets.
Add to that the stress of paying a monthly retainer fee for all the activities and you have a recipe of anxiety for a good portion of businesses looking to scale their organic search footprint.
That’s where a solid waterproof 6 month SEO Plan is needed and would facilitate clients to understand the activities and how all of this ties up with the broader SEO Campaign goals.
ConvertBunny has worked with 25 clients across different sectors and regions over the past 18 months so you can be sure that they deeply understand the goals of clients and how a 6 Month SEO Plan can help align the strategy with the major goals of the campaigns.
Clients Need Visibility on How SEO Targets are being met
Whenever a prospective client of ConvertBunny reaches out to us for a formal proposal we do a deep dive into their business, value proposition, differentiators, and major competition in their target market.
This helps us an agency better understand the challenge at hand and the solutions we can implement subsequently to ensure we have a satisfied client. 🙂
There are multiple aspects any top-performing SEO Agency needs to consider before proposing a 6 Month SEO Plan to a client.
Look at the product or service you’re creating the SEO Plan for and think deeply around what are the quick wins that you can achieve for the prospective client within a 6-month campaign window.
Is it a competitive niche with many high DA websites offering similar solutions?
Are there independent blogs writing in this niche in addition to the main product-led competitors?
Is the competition focusing on a combination of long-form, short-form content, gated eGuides, white papers, and product-led landing pages as a holistic SEO and Content Strategy or is it primarily a tilt towards less spread and more focus on particular content types?
Real SEO Example: You have a prospective client in the project and time management space.
The client has seen a stagnant trajectory in organic search traffic and product signups over the past 1 year.
They are expecting you to double their organic search traffic and associated signup goals as part of 6 Month SEO Plan.
Well, that’s a common theme for clients locally, regionally, and at a global level even.
So how do you figure out whether you can achieve the SEO metrics and ROI numbers that the client is expecting?
Even if you can’t promise numbers but it would still be great for any agency or in-house head of organic search to understand whether they will be there or thereabouts within the 6 month SEO Campaign or not.
A quick way of identifying whether this would be possible or not is to assess the TOP 10 product competitors in your target market.
Do a teardown of these 10 players that are already driving more relevant traffic to their websites, assess their SEO Strategy, Content Scope, and Velocity that they are following, and how they are funneling users toward their Product LED pages. It’s the
Another cheat sheet would be to asses their content team and exact members just to understand whether they are utilizing content writers that are specialized in the niche or more generalist writers who are basing their content on research and paraphrasing existing content.
LinkedIn would be ideal to do some competitor intelligence in this regard.
Post this activity you will clearly have visibility of whether the keyword universe you cherry-picked based on volumes, search intent, and Top 10 Ranking SERPs and whether you stand a chance to align your SEO Campaign with the client’s goals within a 6-month SEO campaign.
This initial assessment will take 1-2 weeks on average for any prospective client but will save you the hassle of overpromising and under-delivering to a client or as a head of an organic search even if you’re an in-house team lead.
What are the critical components of an effective 6 Month SEO Plan?
SEO and Content Marketing need to go hand in hand in most cases.
SEO covers a wide range of levers including Technical SEO, On-Site SEO, and Off-Site SEO.
For relative newbies, I’ll quickly explain what each component entails.
Technical SEO: Website and Server Optimizations that facilitate search engine bots like Google’s to better understand your site structure and pages & crawl/index them accordingly.
On-Site SEO: It’s the practice of optimizing web page content for users and search engines. This is really essential because it helps search engines analyze your website and the content on it so that the bots can identify whether your pages can be aligned with any specific search query people are making on search engines.
Off-Site SEO: Links on different directories, citation websites, webpages, blogs, and news websites referring back to your domain.
In this article, we’ll focus on a website that already has been live for a year or more, has some Domain Authority, product-related landing pages are set up, and has at least some sort of content marketing activities going on.
The first couple of things that need to be done at the onset of a 6 month SEO plan is to run a detailed SEO Audit (SEMRush/Ahrefs/Screaming Frog) and a Content Audit for all the content published on Landing Pages/Articles/Glossary Items.
The SEO Audit will help you understand your crawl ability, internal linking, page speed score issues, etc, which will be critical in fixing within the first month to ensure your foundation is strong.
Quick SEO Tip: Go to Google and search “site:yourdomain.com” and see how many URLs is it showing.
If you can see within your WordPress/Webflow or any other Content Management System that you have more pages/posts published versus the URLs being reported post doing this search; that’s a clear sign that there is money left on the table & you’re not fully utilizing past work done as a good portion of the content is not even crawled by Google while the content exists online.
So a quick recap – ensure you make all SEO Audit fixes in the first month to streamline your crawl ability and improve your page speed insights score.
And one more thing; all your pages need to have internal linking done. There are multiple kinds of research showing different recommendations but the one I recommend is to maintain at least 15 internal links pointing to each page at the bare minimum.
Secondly, research shows that the first internal link on your webpage/post provides the highest link juice to the linked page. To ensure the most relevant and important internal link opportunity goes to the target URL.
Content Audit in Month 1 to capitalize on quick win areas for your 6 Month SEO Plan
Go through all content on your website and identify which pages need to be revised and which need to be discontinued.
There are multiple things you need to focus on as part of the Content Audit.
Look at whether the content on the website is aligned with your product offering.
Is there redundant content on your website in the form of landing pages or content articles that need to be removed from the sitemap?
Are their pages that can be potentially realigned from a content perspective to ensure the page or post is aligned with the search intent for the TOP 10 SERPs?
Lastly, is the page aligned with the existing SERP results but is not ranking well?
Quick Content Tip: If your page is ranking 11-20 position for the primary focus keyword that’s a sign that the page and search intent are most probably aligned. But the position is not good as the Click Through Rates (CTR) is really low with an average position between 11-20.
So what should you do to ensure you rank better for the focus keyword?
Go to Google Search Console + Performance Report + Pages Report + Filter & add the URL that you are assessing as part of the content audit.
Once you have all clicks/impressions/position reports available for this URL move to the Queries Report for this page.
This will give you clear evidence of which keywords that specific page is currently ranking for across different related queries and their average positions.
You should create a cluster of keywords from this list and add relevant content blocks based on this keyword cluster.
Implement this strategy and see how quickly you’ll gain traction in the form of a multiplier on impressions and clicks.
We’ve used this strategy dozens of times and it works like a charm every time.
Month 2 is all about a calendar with a focus on Landing Pages and Content Articles
Now you’ve fixed all the major SEO & Content Audit recommendations that would have been identified for the website.
The next step is to move forward with new landing pages and content marketing articles.
Landing Pages in Month 2: Crucial Portion of making the 6-month SEO plan a success
I’ll give you a fresh scenario to open your mind further to scale your organic growth.
Let’s suppose you have well-optimized feature pages for your project management app.
But is that enough as an SEO Strategy if you’re aiming to drive conversions?
Yes and No!
Yes that you might begin to rank for bottom-of-funnel keywords related to your product and features salient points and might be winning you potential signups and leads.
But you as a business owner or decision maker know that you can’t afford to leave money on the table.
So you might be thinking; ConvertBunny guide me on how I can drive more bottom-of-funnel traffic to my website.
Hold on peeps we’re getting there! 😀
Do you have more established brands in your niche that have high branded search traffic?
Do you have competitors whose SEO is amazing, they drive conversion-oriented traffic and win actual revenue?
But hey – that doesn’t mean those users are satisfied with those competitors’ app offerings.
So what would these disgruntled users be searching for on search engines?
{Product Name} Alternatives?
Yes.
Examples would be Clickup Alternatives, Friday Alternatives, or Wrike Alternatives just to give you a feeler if you were a project management app.
What’s the catch?
None really!
These keywords have relatively low keyword difficulty, fewer websites competing for such URLs in multiple niches, and best of all have a high purchase intent.
Content Marketing Articles in Month 2: Your Gateway to build relevant top and middle funnel Traffic and solidify your topical authority
Decide your content types.
Options include long-form content marketing articles, glossary items, eGuides, White Papers, etc.
Narrow down the focus keywords that you’ve researched and want to align with your product offering.
Go through each focus keyword on Google SERPs and assess what is the search intent for that phrase & which websites are winning in the SERP battle.
Confirm the calendar post this process and allocate each keyword with a title, proposed word count based on how much competitors have written, develop outlines that are more informative versus Top Ranking SERPs and write content that is engaging, unique and tag these pages with an author profile to align with E-E-A-T from Google.
Ensure the content velocity is manageable at one end as you don’t want to be churning out redundant content but at the same time strike a balance to ensure you publish regularly and consistently to give the right signals to Google.
PRO Conversion and Retention Tip: Your articles need to align with your product or service offering. There are multiple ways of doing this but the best example would be to align the content copy with your brand in a subtle yet crucial part of the page where it makes sense and would have a higher propensity for a lead/conversion.
Secondly, have some good lead magnets on your pages and articles.
This could include company announcements through strapline tickers above the navigation bar, in-article conversion snippets, video content to educate people about your product while they are on your website, and social handle links to give other branded and owned platforms can gain visibility in case the user is not planning on signing up as of right now.
At least this will ensure the potential subscriber will stick to one of your owned platforms.
Month 3 is all about optimizing the Landing Pages and Articles you wrote in Month 2
Go through your Google Search Console data for the next round of SEO Implementation.
Look at each page and article in detail.
Mark the queries each page is getting impressions for but not a good CTR.
Add content blocks related to the ones with lower CTR but higher relevance to your brand and website.
Test + Publish + Repeat + Publish until you see an obvious increase in traffic increase during this month.
The second major activity that needs to be ongoing in Month 3 as part of the 6 Month SEO Plan is to ensure internal linking and indexing is continuing as part of the SEO Framework developed in Month 1.
Remember we don’t want or need any orphan pages.
If you’ve spent time writing and developing pages at least they need to be indexed and relevant pages on your website need to be linked to each to ensure we pass Link Juice internally.
The third major activity for month 3 is that you develop URL-level backlinks from relevant blogs, citation websites, and directories.
This will ensure all pages’ individual Page Authority improves and your relevant backlink profile for specific URLs is better versus competing domains.
Off-Site SEO Expert Tip: Don’t build spammy links – during the 6-month SEO plan has a monthly off-site link building sponsored budget and build relevant quality links.
Second Off-Site SEO Tip 😀 – if you are working with a SaaS app then definitely set up a directory listing on the more established brands like capterra, g2, and softwareadvice.com.
Do this and you’ll see multiple benefits in the shape of high DA link juice, referral traffic, and potential leads for your platform.
Month 4 till 6 – Action/Assess Hypothesis versus expectations/Repeat/Master the process for your niche to ensure you hit it big with the 6-month SEO Plan
Repeat all activities from Month 1 till 3 and through continuous hypothesis testing you’ll be able to understand your niche and outrank them in a quicker time.
Quick SEO Tip: Don’t forget to set up the Backlinks Audit report and assess if they are any spam links pointing to your website. Collect the spreadsheet and related fields and upload them on the disavow tool on Google Search Console on a regular monthly basis to ensure you don’t get a manual penalty and nose-dive your website with something that you don’t deserve.
Concluding Remarks
Whether you’re a SaaS platform, Healthtech, Edtech, or services firm the SEO Framework to make the 6-month SEO Plan is by and large the same.
If you are a startup, an established brand, or an MNC looking to scale their SEO performance within a short period of time then you need to hire an SEO Agency which understands, implements, and achieves success day in and day out for the 6-month SEO Plan.
Reach out to ConvertBunny at [email protected] to learn more about our SEO and Content Marketing services.
