If you are a business owner or a marketing manager of a company, you would probably be busy planning and executing marketing strategies for the coming quarter that will help you be discovered and connect with your customers better. When you are planning a marketing strategy for your business, one of the well known techniques you would probably be using is the SWOT Analysis. A SWOT analysis (alternatively SWOT matrix) is a structured planning method used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in a project or in a business venture. (source: Wikipedia). Did you know that SEO is an extension of your marketing strategy? The exact same principles that you would use for your marketing strategy will be used to devise an effective SEO strategy. A good SEO strategy will start off with a SWOT analysis too.
SWOT analysis for SEO
Strength
What is unique about your website? How strong is your website’s Trust Score? How old is your website? How many high quality backlinks are pointing to it? Is it heavy on content? Does it enjoy lot of visitors already? SEO strategy will start from identifying the strength of your website.
Weaknesses
What are the weaknesses with your website? Are you a niche website or a generic website competing with big players? Is your website low on trust score with respect to your competitors? Is your website thin on content? Is it loading too slowly? Are you targeting keywords which are already being dominated by bigger players?
Opportunities
This is the critical bit for any SEO strategy. Once you have identified the strengths and weaknesses of your website, the next task is to find the gaps in the market where you can score. Are your competitors not targeting a very relevant keyword which can bring in lot of targeted visitors to your site? Can you think local and dominate search engines where your customers are not optimising? Are your competitors missing out on long tail keywords because they do not blog enough? Do you see a shift in search trends which your competitors are unaware of? All this will present opportunities for you to capitalize on for success in the mid-term.
Threats
How quickly can bigger players catch up to you? If a big player takes you head on for one of your most important keywords, you might lose the battle because bigger trusted players have a lot of advantage in search results. Will the next Google Panda update hit your site’s ranking? Are you putting all your eggs in one basket (depending on search only) or diversifying traffic sources? A thorough website audit and keyword research will help you do SWOT analysis for SEO. This will help you prepare a game plan that you can execute for the next 6 months and see the impact.
Conclusion
A good SEO strategy is rooted in solid marketing principles. Effective industry and competitor analysis is a must to create a successful SEO campaign. Build your strengths, work on your weaknesses, capitalise on opportunities and be careful of impending threats and you are sure to get more business from Google search. What are your thoughts on SEO as a marketing strategy? Do share your comments below
