SEO Strategy Plan 2025 Best Practices Guide

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Chapters

Resources

1. How to Become a SEO Reseller

2. Ultimate Guide to Ecommence SEO

3. Why Did My Google Ranking Drop

4. SEO Strategy Plan 2025 Best Practices Guide

5. Blog Post Ideas 2022 Best Practices Guide

6. What Is Google Core Algorithm?

7. What Is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

8. What Is Google Analytics?

9. What Is UX Design?

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Any SEO study guide will tell you SEO is equal parts confusing, complex, and challenging, and any SEO strategy plan example you stumble upon will prove this – which is particularly the case if you’re new to the world of search engine optimisation. However, if you are a newcomer, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You have a clean slate, meaning your strategy and website are not bogged down by outdated SEO strategies. For instance, an SEO strategy 2021 style will not be the same as in 2025. You can thank Google and its ever-changing search algorithm for that.

Whether you are a fresh-faced newbie to the SEO game or have some experience already, this ultimate SEO guide will help you create your ideal SEO plan template.

Overall, Google SEO guidelines and best practices seem to change at a moment’s notice all the time – and for no apparent reason, sometimes. However, our SEO best practice guide comprises some of the most effective elements from various periods. From the SEO best practices 2017 saw and Google’s SEO strategy template 2018 to the ideal SEO strategy 2019 brought and the newer SEO strategy template 2021 provided, here’s how to plan an SEO campaign – the correct way.

Perform a Website Audit

What is an SEO strategy without the right amount of preparation? For any SEO implementation plan, you want to put in the work now, build a strong foundation, and have the best launchpad for your SEO marketing strategy.

Planning an SEO campaign should begin with an audit of your website. Has your website experienced any notable drops in traffic, even though you have ticked everything off your SEO checklist template? A website audit can help you find weak links in your SEO strategy checklist and reveal if your site is being punished by Google for any perceived infringements. Like those imposed when you buy SEO traffic, commit “keyword stuffing” or use shady and illicit “blackhat” techniques, as just a few examples.

As you would expect, certain penalties are more damaging than others. In fact, some are so severe they can place your website into an unrecoverable position, which is why when starting afresh with a new site and clean, untainted launchpad SEO jumping point is advised.

Outline Your Target Audience

When creating a search engine optimization plan, it’s important to outline your target audience. The reason for this is simple: you want to know exactly which customer base to target. This will serve as the basis for the keywords you want to rank for during your SEO strategy planning, along with the type of content you want to produce.

Regarding the latter point, you need to understand your audience. What type of content do they want to consume? The more you listen to your target market, the more ideas and fresh content you can produce to improve your web traffic strategy.

Conduct Keyword Research & Create a Keyword Strategy Template

You know what audience to target. Now it’s about putting together an SEO keyword strategy. Fortunately, keyword research is not a difficult process – any SEO keyword research template will prove this. There are various tools available that allow you to find keywords that are relevant to your niche and can help drive SEO traffic to your site.

Some tools reveal what keywords you’re already ranking for and where your site currently sits in Google search results. With this information, you can further refine the pages these keywords appear on and improve your ranking. This route in your SEO strategy proposal is much faster than targeting a new keyword.

The competition can also play a big part in your keyword research. This can be done by performing a content gap analysis, which must be included in your SEO roadmap strategy – no matter your industry or how big or small your business is.

To complete this, grab a list of your competitors – including indirect ones – and note the keywords they rank for. When doing this, you’ll typically want to eliminate massively competitive keywords from the equation. It can also be wise to target long-tail keywords when forming your keyword gap analysis template.

Once done, you’ll have a large collection of keywords to use for your SEO strategy plan template!

On-Page Content Optimisation

As any SEO marketing strategy example will demonstrate, we’ve reached the central point of the plan. This is where you put your keywords into action on your website, as well as anchor texts, meta tags, meta descriptions, page or post titles, and internal linking (more on these shortly). On-page SEO is an important part of your SEO plan for website optimisation, where you craft the on-page content that will entice customers and appeal to search engines.

Based on recent guidelines set out by Google and the most recent on page SEO report sample findings, the focus should be on producing content that is in-depth, compelling, and answers the questions of your users. For main pages and blog posts, aim for at least 1,000 words of original content that’s valuable to your readers and utilises your relevant keywords.

Plus, while it is vital that you include keywords within the body of content – whether it’s for your basic website copy or part of your blog SEO strategy – you must avoid the dreaded ‘keyword stuffing.’ Prolific keyword use might have been the SEO template a decade ago, but Google will only penalise your site these days for doing this, which means you need to fathom the ideal number of keywords and their placement in your content as part of your web copy and blog strategy template pan.

1. Visual Content

What is SEO strategy without food for the eyes? Although most people will probably think of copy, blog posts, articles, and information pages on a company website, other useful examples of on-page content are more than mere words. Images, informative and interesting videos, and infographics are excellent for enriching your pages and conveying information. What’s more, this kind of content is a great alternative for people who don’t want to or are unable to read long text on your website.

In your on-page SEO brief for visual content, you must also consider the setup of images that might be displayed in Google’s visual searches. First, you should ensure the file’s name uploaded to your page contains the keyword relevant to the image.

You also need to define the alt text, which is the alternative text that will be shown in place of the image if it fails to load on the page. The alt text also tells Google what the image is about while helping index it in Google Images. Also, it allows a more inclusive and accessible experience of your website for visually impaired people since it provides them with an image description.

Ideally, for better SEO rankings, you have to prioritise images that aren’t too large in terms of file size and ones that fit the page. If your website’s images take too long to load, it can harm the user experience – and, as always, under Google’s displeased eyes, it will penalise your rankings for your crimes against human patience. Any search engine marketing plan example will highlight the detrimental effects of poor website loading on your SEO – so don’t let something so simple and avoidable ruin yours.

2. Internal Links

Every SEO proposal example of today includes internal links; they’re crucial to incorporate into your SEO strategy template. These are links inserted into your on-site content that links to your other relevant pages on your website. Including internal links increases the time users spend on your site – and all the best SEO strategies you ever find will vouch for its effectiveness in terms of SEO boosting.

Generally speaking, internal links serve as a starting point for your readers, enabling them to access more of your content, which improves their relationship with your brand. Therefore, if you’re creating a blog post as part of your web content strategy template and you mention a subject that is already the focus of another post or article, put a link to that content. This link will allow readers who are interested in learning more about that content to open the material and continue their experience on your website.

3. Have a Mobile-Friendly Website

This is a crucial, more modern example of SEO and every single one of the best SEO website templates incorporates it. Smartphones and tablets have seemingly taken over the internet space; they’re compact, portable, and highly useful. Today’s mobile phones can handle everything their powerful computer counterparts can, such as online shopping, watching videos, reading blogs, playing video games, etc.

Because smartphone use has skyrocketed in recent years, you need to ensure your website is accessible from a mobile and is optimised for smartphones and tablets. If your site and its content are not suitable for these handheld devices, you’re missing out on opportunities – and people won’t want to visit or stay on your website.

Google is also paying attention to mobile users, which is why its algorithm analyses the performance of web pages on desktop computer screens and tablets and smartphones – and it’s been doing this since 2015. Any SEO strategy plan 2016 and beyond took this into account and plays a prominent role in today’s SEO recommendations template.

Google’s sneaky algorithm monitors how well a site performs on mobile, and if yours isn’t up to scratch, it will penalise it – just as SEO articles 2016 and onwards warned. In fact, Google updated its mobile algorithm even further with its mobile-first index update; the new SEO strategies 2017 saw afterward, thus focused heavily on mobile-friendly content.

As such, you need to check your website’s mobile-friendliness as part of your site audit when crafting your SEO marketing plan – especially accounting for the SEO tips 2017 gave us. Also, Google’s mobile SEO strategy 2017 commanded more trust and authority from mobile sites, punishing those deemed to contain untrue or misleading content – yes, SEO in 2017 and thereafter truly did come down hard on every website.

Given the numerous SEO activities 2017 and beyond brought in terms of mobile websites, it’s important to check yours to ensure it’s ideal in this regard. If you don’t know if your website is mobile-friendly, Google offers a free tool that allows you to check and, upon doing so, provides your site with a rating for mobile friendliness.

To help organise your on-page SEO plan, consider searching online for a free SEO template or create your own website content template excel sheet with all of the previous sections in mind and how you’ll approach each one. Alternatively, you can always leave it to the experts here at Click Intelligence.

4. Web Page Text Optimisation

There are other smaller yet equally important aspects to ponder when maximising the effectiveness of your on-page content – whatever kind of content, whether it’s a blog post, a video, your website’s information pages, or anything else.

Within any SEO strategy template you use, you also have to think about incorporating these factors:

An eye-catching headline and sub-headers
Visual content like infographics and videos
Title tags and meta descriptions with your primary keywords
An optimised URL address

Whatever step you’re at, if you require help with producing on-page content that works or wish to see an on-page strategy sample, it’s recommended to use our content writing services to create a sample SEO article. This SEO sample article will provide a guideline for what is needed, giving you the confidence to move forward with your content strategy.

Feel free to reach out to our friendly team if you’re interested in acquiring an SEO strategy document like this – our SEO strategy document template can be tailored to you and your business to achieve maximum results. Plus, your SEO sample proposal from us will be unique; every piece we create is individual to the next.

You might also need a local content strategy for your business if it’s on a more local level in your area and not necessarily nationwide or global; worldwide and national SEO strategy is different from local SEO. Check out our local content plan template guide for information on this particular avenue of SEO – which we can also assist with.

Off-Page SEO

So, now that the most important parts of on-page SEO have been covered, you can begin to incorporate them into your plan, optimising your on-site content and improving your ranking in SERPs. With a high-quality SEO website strategy that includes your keyword template, SEO-friendly page structure and formatting, internal links, quality content, and mobile friendliness, your website will be looked upon more favourably by users and Google. These are the master keys to an SEO-enriched website plan template.

However, it’s not over – you still have off-page SEO to undertake if you want to boost your SERPs. What is SEO strategy plan in terms of off-page content and techniques? The best SEO sites examples will always have off-page tactics as part of their web traffic plan template since these are the second pillar in the two-part piece that is SEO as a whole. What is off-page SEO?

As discussed in the previous SEO strategy example, on-page SEO comprises all elements of your web page or post to help boost your SERP position. Any on page SEO template excel, Word document, PowerPoint, SEO plan PDF, or blog post you find on this should go through all the areas mentioned above. Conversely, off-page SEO is very different; it refers to the things you do outside your website to help bolster your SERP position. Examples are link building, guest posting, influencer outreach, and content marketing, to name just a few.

Any SEO brief template will include an off-page SEO plan that works hand in hand with on-page SEO. Off-page SEO helps search engines understand what people think about your website, products, or services. Even having just a few backlinks from relevant, trustworthy sites with high authority can increase your chances of ranking higher in internet searches. However, links from any random site won’t cut it in Google’s strict, judgemental eyes – more on that below.

1. Link Building Strategy

While SEO is constantly changing, it’s fair to say the core elements remain the same – and one of those elements will be explained in any link strategy guide you might find when undertaking your SEO planning. We’ve already seen how keywords, SEO content in all its forms, and internal links continue to play an integral role in site strategy. Now we’re onto the other main pillar mentioned above: link building.

A successful SEO linking strategy involves many different factors, and it can depend on which stage you’re at; a link building template to start SEO for new website may be different from one that’s already well established, for example.

Whether you’re conjuring an SEO strategy for new website or an already-high-ranking page, in all cases, one of the main aims is to find high-power links (referred to as “backlinks”) that will accept your links when you plan SEO around this crucial part of online business strategy – but it’s not so simple.

Link building is an unavoidable item on your SEO task list if you want success. It’s all about getting a link to your website from the right domain – and one that’s high quality with a strong, authoritative presence on the internet. You also need to ensure you’re getting link equity from your backlinks (also colloquially referred to as “link juice”), which is a search engine ranking factor based on the idea that certain links pass on more authority and value than others.

It’s also crucial to note that link equity is only passed along via do-follow backlinks – a type of backlink wherein the source site acknowledges and “votes” for the linked post, article, website, or page, thus increasing the link’s authority.

Our expert teams at Click Intelligence work with these high-authority sites to get top-tier backlinks to your website and pages, boosting your search engine rankings as a result – and this works as a new website SEO strategy as well as for sites already in existence. The other type of backlink is a no-follow backlink, which doesn’t pass any measurable authority from the source site to the linked site.

2. Guest Posting

Backlinks to your site from websites with a strong authority will, naturally, give yours a healthy rankings boost – but how can you convince these authoritative platforms to accept your backlink?

One of the most successful ways is using a guest posting strategy – and you need to tick this one off your SEO campaign checklist template if you wish for greater search engine success. This is what we at Click Intelligence offer as a professional service, too, creating your content and getting it guest-posted on strong publishing sites with a high authority level, boosting your search rankings.

You also need to think about what anchor text to use. Any effective link building strategy template you look at will confirm that it’s best advised to go with a mix of anchor texts. Rather than over-optimising with exact match anchors, for example, you should use a combination of natural, naked, branded, etc., anchors.

3. Social Networking

Connecting with your audience via social networking is a bright beacon of any successful content campaign strategy template. Research shows people spend more time surfing social networking sites than ever before. This means a good off-page SEO strategy has to involve leveraging your social network profiles and engaging with the public to increase the reach of your content.

When more users engage with you on social media platforms, and your content receives clicks from numerous IP addresses, Google signals that multiple global visitors are checking out your content, making it appear more authoritative and trustworthy.

In addition, if you offer high-quality content with real-world statistics, your readers may share it across many networks, which puts your content in front of an even wider audience. This helps drive traffic to your website and social media accounts, boosts your authority and trust, and, therefore, helps you rank higher on Google’s search pages. Completing a suitable social network strategy roadmap template must be included as part of your overall SEO roadmap template.

4. Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the best examples of SEO and is thus next up on the SEO action plan agenda. Every social media platform on the web has its own preferred content; for example, Instagram is popular for images and influencer marketing, YouTube is superb for videos (and influencer collaborations, too), while Facebook and Twitter are ideal for expressing thoughts – and businesses can take advantage of each of these.

Employing each platform and posting content on all of them is fantastic for driving internet traffic to your business; however, despite the rewards for using them all, too many companies neglect their potential.

For instance, a company might share content on Facebook and Twitter but doesn’t post videos on YouTube or photos on Instagram. Companies that don’t use all platforms aren’t only missing out on increased visibility on the said platforms, but they’re also missing out on connecting each type of content with one another across all the various social media sites.

For example, say you’ve written a step-by-step guide to creating a WordPress website. You can then create a YouTube tutorial video to complement that guide and add the content URL in the video description box. Plus, you can embed your YouTube video tutorial in the guide, which links to your company’s YouTube channel, too. See the links and connection potential?

All quality SEO templates recommend this approach. By unifying and connecting your content in this way, Google searchers can find your content piece, while YouTube searchers will find your video – and both are connected, thus driving traffic to one another, too. Whichever social media platform you use, always repurpose the content with your audience in mind while taking advantage of the different types of content used by the various social media networks – this is a key part of a traffic template for boosting visitors to your pages.

Also, whatever social media platforms you use in tandem with your on-page and off-page SEO plans, you need to post regularly – but not so much that it becomes annoying and spammy to your audience. Additionally, posting at the right time of the day, week and month is also important.

For instance, if your target audience is in the US, but you’re a global company, you’d need to post your content when most Americans in your target demographic will be online. On the other hand, UK-based businesses will want to post social media content when most UK residents within their target audience are online.

Likewise, don’t post Halloween-themed content in January or Christmas content in June, for example – it’s not as relevant. In all cases, researching when your audience is online the most and deciding when is the best time to release your content is the best practice – creating or downloading a blog schedule template can help you with this. Plenty of SEO template websites have samples available for free – plus, you have a wealth of content marketing software and tools at your disposal.

Measure the Results

When putting together an SEO strategy plan, there’s one facet you have to keep in mind: it’s not a short-term process. An effective SEO plan takes time, so don’t think you’ll suddenly see results after optimising your pages and receiving a few backlinks. Instead, set your expectations and understand it could take a few months before you see any significant results from your SEO campaign plan – but remember, your efforts and patience will be rewarded as long as you stick to it.

When measuring results, you can simply use traffic reports produced by Google Analytics, though there are others out there too. Typically, you can look at on-site traffic and SEO stats pertaining to your website, or there’ll be a handy SEO report template download available that details your web traffic and SEO performance.

These can be complex and confusing, though, so it might be a good idea to look at an example SEO report to familiarise yourself with how these evaluations work first. Even Google’s SEO analysis report template can be confusing for SEO beginners.

Once you understand Google’s SEO analysis template, tools like these are incredibly useful and can usually give you a daily, weekly, or an SEO monthly report sample that measures your progress (normally, businesses tend to use Google’s SEO monthly report template rather than on a day-to-day or weekly basis). Then, if you’re still not receiving the level of success you expected after an extended period, it suggests you’ll have to modify or even completely overhaul your strategy format.

To acquire new ideas for your SEO campaign strategy, you can always look at a basic SEO plan example or even a full-on, intensive SEO strategy guide that someone else has produced. Still, even with how to SEO resources and the latest strategy report template to hand, navigating SEO is difficult at the best of times. Don’t forget, you’ll also need to keep checking what is new in SEO – and that’s constantly changing. Therefore, it might be a better idea to consult experts if your SEO tactics keep underperforming, don’t yield the results you want, or you simply don’t know how to create an SEO strategy.

Consult the Experts – Get in Touch Today

If you need professional assistance with your SEO campaign management and overall website optimisation strategy, Click Intelligence is here to help. We can put together a comprehensive managed SEO campaign and web strategy blueprint – one that can provide your website with a prominent position in Google search rankings.

A basic, simple SEO strategy doesn’t exist; however, using our expert, tried, and tested strategy for SEO, we can craft a tailored, easy-to-understand SEO blueprint and effectuate your ultimate template on your behalf. Our team can compose a unique SEO plan checklist that works for your specific website and business. Even if it’s in a regulated market or challenging niche – getting you catapulted to Google’s high ranks and, therefore, within the clear scope of your audience’s radar.