45: "From Scratch" One-Year SEO Plan

Summary

In this episode, Meredith’s husband outlines a practical, year-long SEO plan to help website owners build sustainable SEO habits. He breaks the process into seasons, offering step-by-step guidance on setting up essential tools, analyzing competitors, optimizing content, and building links. This seasonal approach helps website owners manage SEO gradually, making it a habit rather than a daunting task. Following these steps can lead to long-term SEO success.

Blog Post: A Year-Long SEO Plan for Lasting Success

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can feel overwhelming, especially if you're unsure where to start. Rather than trying to tackle everything at once, Meredith’s husband shares a practical, year-long plan for building solid SEO habits over time. By breaking the process into manageable chunks, you can improve your website’s visibility and performance gradually, leading to sustainable long-term growth.

Winter: Set Up Your Foundation

The first step in your SEO journey is setting up the essential tools. This ensures that you’re tracking your performance from day one. Here’s what to do:

1. Set up Google Analytics and Search Console: These tools are crucial for monitoring traffic, search queries, and how Google views your site. Without them, you’re flying blind.

2. Create or optimize your Google Business Profile: Especially important for local businesses, this will help you get more visibility in local searches. Start by getting into the habit of requesting one Google review per month. Slow, steady accumulation of reviews looks more organic and trustworthy to Google.

3. Analyze Competitors: Pretend you’re a potential client and search for businesses similar to yours. Identify the top-ranking competitors and take note of their websites, especially their blog topics and calls to action (CTAs). This will help inform your own strategy later.

   
   

Spring: Optimize Your Website

Once you’ve got the foundational tools in place, it’s time to get into the technical aspects of SEO. This is where tools like SEMrush come into play.

1. Perform a Site Audit: Use SEMrush or a similar tool to conduct a comprehensive audit of your website. This will identify issues such as broken links, slow page speed, and missing metadata.

2. Optimize for Keywords: Research and identify the most relevant keywords for your business, then optimize your website’s content, titles, and meta descriptions with those keywords.

3. Ensure a High SEMrush Score: After fixing any issues flagged in the audit, aim for a high site health score, ensuring that your website is running efficiently.

   
   

Summer: Start Link Building

Now that your website is technically optimized, it’s time to build authority through links.

1. Focus on Local Links: Start by reaching out to local directories and other local businesses for backlinks. These are essential for improving your local search rankings.

2. Leverage Vendor Relationships: If you have partners or vendors, ask them to link to your site. For instance, if you’re a photographer, your album supplier or event venues could provide valuable backlinks to your website.

   
   

Fall: Advanced Link Building and Content Creation

As you move into the later months, it’s time to ramp up your efforts with more advanced strategies.

1. Analyze Competitors' Backlinks: Use SEMrush’s backlink gap tool to see where your competitors are getting their backlinks. This will give you valuable insight into link-building opportunities that you might be missing.

2. Start Blogging: Blogging is a great way to continually add fresh, keyword-rich content to your site. Look at what your competitors are blogging about and create helpful, resource-based blogs that provide value to your audience.

   
   

Winter: Outreach and Final Steps

As you approach the end of your SEO year, it’s time to start reaching out to external websites for backlinks.

1. Outreach for Links: Reach out to websites that link to your competitors and offer them valuable content on your own site. This could be in the form of guest blog posts or resource pages. The goal is to gradually build high-quality backlinks that improve your site’s authority.

2. Monitor and Maintain: By the end of the year, your SEO will be in great shape. However, SEO is an ongoing process, so regularly monitor your traffic and rankings, and keep refining your strategy.

   
   

Conclusion

SEO is not a one-time task—it’s a process. By spreading out your efforts across a full year, you can make SEO a sustainable habit rather than an overwhelming chore. From setting up foundational tools to advanced link-building techniques, following this plan will help you stay consistent and see long-term results.

Resources

Meredith’s husband references using SEMrush for site audits and backlink analysis.