How to Create an SEO Strategy for 2024 [Template Included]

Here‘s a cliche among digital marketers: Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t what it used to be.

Here‘s a true statement you don’t hear as often: Your SEO strategy shouldn’t focus on keywords.

These days, most businesses understand the basic concepts of SEO and why it’s important.

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SEO Strategy for Beginners

I’ve been an SEO for the more significant part of the past decade, and I can tell you that our industry has never seen anything like this before.

The search landscape is no longer the same in 2024. With the advent of search AI and AI-generated content, we must implement new approaches to keep our sites ahead of unprecedented competitive challenges.

The good news is that the basics of SEO remain the same. Focus on the user first, always. Focus on helping them, always, and not just gaming the algorithm. Your goal isn’t just to rank highly — it’s to get the right content in front of the right people.

I will walk you through a basic SEO strategy I would use to start a site in 2024 for the first time. Later, below, I’ll cover a more sophisticated SEO content strategy that has generated millions of organic traffic visits for the HubSpot blog.

Let’s get started.

1. Search for your company’s head term on Google.

If I were trying to start an SEO strategy in 2024, my first step would be to look for my company’s head term on Google.

“Head term” refers to the general word or phrase you’d use to describe your product, service, or even the topic you’d like to write about. If I were trying to launch HubSpot for the first time, I would look up “marketing software,” our product’s head term.

And if I were trying to start a blog about publishing, I’d look up “publishing blog.”

Head terms are usually high-volume, meaning many people search for the terms every month. That makes them more challenging to rank for.

What we’re trying to do with this step is not find keywords but rather build our awareness of the search landscape. Take note of everything you see, including the terms suggested after you type in your head term.

We don’t need to use any fancy tools yet, though you’re welcome to use them if you’re familiar with SEO tools. With Semrush, for instance, you can look at the exact number of searches a term receives and an estimation of how difficult it’d be to rank on the first page.

But I’d caution against using tools just yet. Looking directly at the SERPs as you create an SEO strategy is crucial because Google comes up with new SERP features daily.

I’m not just talking about AI-generated results. Featured snippets, local packs, image packs, knowledge packs, and “People Also Ask” boxes can be valuable sources of information that can help you optimize your website later.

2. Look at Google’s suggested searches and filters.

After looking up your head term, the most critical step is to look at Google’s generated filters, highlighted below.

Don’t look at the standard filters, such as “Images, “Shopping,” “Maps,” and so on. You’re looking for the unique filters Google generated for your head term.

These filters are invaluable for answering several questions:

• What are people looking for that’s related to your head term?
• What would they find most useful?
• Does your service or product match what people are looking for?
• Can you offer a product page or article that people would find helpful?

If I were building a product page for Marketing Hub, I would be able to answer these questions favorably. Marketing Hub is free, small businesses can use it, and it’s useful for digital marketing.

That means I could probably address a person’s goal when they’re looking for this term. This is good strategic information to have. I wouldn’t execute it just yet because I haven’t considered how difficult it is to rank for this term.

Remember: Head terms are more difficult to rank for, so you’ll want to aim for longer keywords (also called “long-tail keywords”) in your SEO strategy. You can begin getting ideas on long-tail terms by clicking on the filters below your head term.

Now, for my publishing blog, I see that I could focus on the publishing industry or self-publishing, as seen by the filters below.

That’s good news — but later down below, I see that Google has included a “What to read” search feature.

That tells me that a blog could be a good fit for this term but that people are also looking for books on publishing. I would then revise my initial head term or revise my blog strategy to slant toward thought leadership.

3. Examine the SERPs.

Once you’ve found a good head term and perused the filters, take a look at the SERPs. I’d recommend going several filters deep so you can get an approximation of a long-tail keyword.

We’re looking for several pieces of information here:

• How many people are trying to rank for this term?
• What kinds of publishers and companies are ranking? Well-known publishers like the New York Times or Nerdwallet, or niche publishers and companies?
• What is located “above the fold” (the area in the upper part of the page before the user scrolls)?
• What SERP features is Google including?
• What kinds of pages and articles are ranking?

For “marketing software for small business,” a relatively long-tail keyword, I saw that Google delivered 850M+ results.

Yikes. That’s a lot of competition.

But the truth is Google has excellent crawlers. It will find just about any website related to a term and rank it to answer a searcher’s query. Don’t be discouraged by large search results.

You should pay close attention to what’s happening in the results themselves. For instance, “marketing software for small business” has multiple SERP features:

• Sponsored ads.
• “From sources across the web” product panels.
• A “People also ask” box.

Yikes again. All of these conspire to give us fewer chances for ranking for this keyword because the SERP features push us down, and we’re already competing against publishers like G2.

Even if we managed to rank on the first page, our click-through rates would probably be lower because this is such a competitive term. Click-through rate refers to the number of people who see your search result compared to the number of people who actually click on it.

I would do one of the two things below:

• Search for an even longer long-tail keyword to try to rank for.
• Continue examining the SERPs for opportunities related to the same search intent, like related searches and FAQs.

Search intent refers to what the user wants to do when they input a keyword in Google.

If I search “how to bake kale chips,” then I intend to not only bake kale chips but also stay “healthy.” As smart as it is, Google would deliver both recipes and related questions about kale chips’ “health value.”

The SERP features for “marketing software for small business” are all supposed to serve a single intent: A searcher who wants to market their small business using software.

Therefore, every SERP feature you see is an additional opportunity to serve content to the same searcher.

The “People also ask” box is a gold mine for finding related questions that the same user probably has, giving us an opportunity to answer those questions.

With SEO, what matters most is not just that your page ranks — but that the right user finds you and ends up becoming a customer (or signing up for your newsletter, subscribing to your YouTube channel, etc).

If I were creating an SEO strategy for Marketing Hub in today’s search landscape, the “People also ask” box is probably where I’d start for keyword and content ideas, and not the head term itself.

The questions, after all, serve the same user and are much less competitive.

You could also use a tool such as Answer the Public to find questions and related terms.

Of course, don’t forget a classic: Looking at suggested searches at the bottom of the SERPs. These will give you alternative terms you could try to rank for and additional long-tails and hints about your top competition.

4. Analyze your competition.

When you find a keyword you’re happy with, it’s time to start looking at your competition.

I would say that with SEO, it’s less about what we do and more about what they do than beating them. The thing is, though, that how we beat competitors has changed. It’s no longer about who has the longest blog post or the most backlinks (although these are still important).

The Google search algorithm has gotten more complicated than ever. It’s important to take into account a wide variety of factors like website age, authority, user experience, and even website structure.

Looking at these elements can help you decide what you should put on your website and learn what Google is currently favoring.

When trying to rank for the term “publishing blog,” I found three top competitors: Selfpublishing.com, thatpublishingblog.wordpress.com, and janefriedman.com.

I would look at several things when trying to beat these competitors.

• What kind of content do they publish?
• What kinds of categories do they address?
• What’s the publishers’ or owners’ personal and professional history? Jane Friedman, for instance, is a known industry veteran.

The first question, in particular, is essential for mapping out my SEO content strategy.

For instance, selfpublishing.com has the following categories:

If you’d asked me years ago how I would approach beating this publisher, I would say that I would copy all of their categories and add three more just for kicks.

But Google is no longer the same. It values authority and expertise. It wants to know that you know what you’re talking about and that you’re not just gaming the system.

Therefore, based on my personal expertise, which is in children’s fiction, I’d probably choose two to three categories where I feel I could create a wealth of content: Writing, Children’s Fiction, and Publishing.

If I were trying to rank for “marketing software for small business,” I would ask:

• What kinds of articles or pages are ranking?
• Because this is such a competitive term, what kind of authority or history do I need to rank?
• Could I create something similar?

Look at your competitors’ pages, and keep their qualitative attributes, such as their history in the industry, in mind. But don’t be discouraged by long-time industry players.

When I was an SEO at a transportation startup, we were competing against transportation companies that had been in the industry for 30+ years.

But with a strong content SEO and backlink-building strategy, we managed to get one of our transportation partners to the top of the SERPs.

Once you’ve scanned your competitors, it’s time to dive into a simple three-pronged strategy:

Authority, content, and backlinks.

Complete SEO Starter Pack

An introductory kit to optimize your website for search.

• Increase your organic traffic.
• Plan your keyword strategy.
• Debunk SEO myths.
• Build a blog strategy.

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7. Build backlinks.

Content is still queen — but she has to be accompanied by her king: Backlinks.

You could have the most beautiful, SEO-optimized website, but Google won’t rank it unless you receive “votes” from other sites.

We’ll cover backlinks again for your SEO content strategy below. However, I can’t underemphasize how important they are, so I’m going to repeat it again.

Backlinks are the most quantitative way to build authority in your industry. The more backlinks you have, the more authoritative you seem to the Google algorithm.

Why? Because a site wouldn’t link to you unless you were a legitimate, trustworthy source of information.

Here’s a selection of my favorite backlink strategies:

• Publish guest blog posts on other publishers’ websites and link back to your site.
• Write helpful content that other sites will want to link to.
• Publish original research that other publishers will want to link to.
• Partner with companies on co-marketing campaigns.
• Join industry membership organizations with public profiles.
• Sponsor events and conferences.

Here’s an example of some original research by Design Bundles that generated backlinks.

What we like: The research isn’t just compelling but highly tailored to the company’s niche. That means it likely generated relevant backlinks, and thus relevant viewers, to the website. The research methodology is also sound. Plus, we love that Design Bundles repurposed the research and press coverage across its social channels. Here’s how The Calvert Journal featured the research.

Next up, I’m going to dive a little more deeply into the SEO content strategy that’s driven millions of visits to the HubSpot blog.

SEO Content Strategy

1. Make a list of topics.
2. Make a list of long-tail keywords based on these topics.
3. Build pages for each topic.
4. Set up a blog.
5. Create a consistent blogging schedule.
6. Create a link-building plan.
7. Compress media files before uploading them to your site.
8. Stay up-to-date on SEO news and best practices.
9. Measure and track your content’s success.

1. Make a list of topics.

To get your SEO content strategy off the ground, make a list of topics you’d like your content to address.

To start, compile a list of about 10 words and terms associated with your product or service. Use an SEO tool (Google’s Keyword Tool, SE Ranking, Ahrefs, SEMRush, or GrowthBar, just to name a few) to research these words, identify their search volume, and come up with variations that make sense for your business.

You can also speed up the process with HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator. You can type in your main keyword or a brief description of your blog’s contents, and the platform will generate topics, sub-headings, and even drafts based on your input.

The tool also integrates with SEMRush to help you fine-tune the generated output with relevant high-performing keywords.

By doing this, you are associating these topics with popular head terms (or short-tail keywords, if you’d prefer), but you’re not dedicating individual blog posts to these keywords. Let’s go over an example of this process using the image below.

Let’s say a swimming pool business is trying to rank for “fiberglass pools,” which receives 110,000 monthly searches. This short-tail keyword can represent the overarching topic for creating their content, but the business will also need to identify a series of related keywords to include in their content. For example, they could opt to use the “fiberglass pool prices” or “fiberglass pool cost” to achieve additional rankings for the overall keyword of fiberglass pools.

Using search volume and competition as your measurement, you can create a list of 10-15 short-tail keywords that are relevant to your business and are being searched for by your target audiences. Then, rank this list based on monthly search volume.

Each of the keywords that you’ve identified are called pillars, and they serve as the primary support for a larger cluster of long-tail keywords, which we’ll discuss below.

2. Make a list of long-tail keywords based on these topics.

During this step, you’ll begin optimizing your pages for specific keywords. For each pillar you’ve identified, use your keyword tool to identify five to 10 long-tail keywords that dig deeper into the original topic keyword.

For example, we regularly create content about SEO, but it’s difficult to rank well on Google for such a popular topic with this acronym alone. We also risk competing with our own content by creating multiple pages that are all targeting the exact same keyword — and potentially the same SERPs.

Therefore, we also create content on conducting keyword research, optimizing images for search engines, creating an SEO strategy (which you’re reading right now), and other subtopics within the SEO umbrella.

This helps businesses attract people who have varying interests and concerns, and ultimately creates more entry points for people interested in what you have to offer.

Use your long-tail keywords to create blog posts or web pages that explain the specific topics within the pillars you’ve selected. Together, all of your long-tail keywords create a cluster around a pillar topic. Search engine algorithms depend on the relationships between clusters to connect users with the information they’re looking for.

Here’s a short video on this concept:

Think of it this way: The more specific your content, the more specific the needs of your audience can be, and the more likely you‘ll convert this traffic into leads. This is how Google finds value in the websites it crawls — the pages that dig into the inner workings of a general topic are seen as the best answer to a person’s query and will rank higher.

3. Build pages for each topic.

When it comes to websites and ranking in search engines, trying to get one page to rank for a handful of keywords can be next to impossible. But here’s where the rubber meets the road.

Use the pillar topics you came up with to create a page or post that gives a high-level overview of the topic using the long-tail keywords you came up with for each cluster in step two. These pillar pages can essentially be a table of contents, where you’re giving a description of the main topic and briefing readers on subtopics you’ll elaborate on in other posts.

Ultimately, the number of topics for which you create pillar pages should coincide with your business needs, like the number of products and offerings you have. This will make it much easier for your prospects and customers to find you in search engines no matter what keywords they use.

4. Set up a blog.

Blogging can be an incredible way to rank for keywords and engage your website’s users. After all, every blog post is a new web page and an additional opportunity to rank in SERPs. It’s no wonder, then, that marketers cite blogging as the top media format they aim to use for the first time in 2024. (HubSpot’s Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2024)

Long story short? If your business does not already have a blog, consider creating one. As you write each blog post and expand on your clusters, you should do three things:

1. Don‘t include your long-tail keyword more than three or four times throughout the page, as Google doesn’t consider exact keyword matches as often as it used to. In fact, too many instances of your keyword can be a red flag to search engines that you’re keyword stuffing to gain rankings, and they’ll penalize you for this.
2. Second, always link out to the pillar page you created for your topics. You can do this in the form of tags in your content management system (CMS) or as basic anchor text in the body of the article.
3. Once you publish each blog post, link to it within the parent pillar page that supports the subtopic. By connecting both the pillar and the cluster in this way, you‘re telling Google that there’s a relationship between the long-tail keyword and the overarching topic you’re trying to rank for.

5. Create a consistent blogging schedule.

Your blog should be a trove of information for your prospective customers. That means not every blog post or web page you create needs to belong to a topic cluster. There’s also value in writing about tangential topics your customers care about. Doing so will help you build authority with Google algorithms.

But it’ll take time to build that authority, so make it a point to blog at least once a week. Remember, you’re blogging primarily for your audience, not search engines, so study your target market and write about things that they’re interested in.

It may also be helpful to create a content strategy to stay consistent with your blogging schedule and focused on your goals.

Expert Insight

I spoke with Zoe Ashbridge, Senior SEO Strategist at forank. Ashbridge has nearly a decade of experience in digital marketing and SEO.

“Your blog will likely become your biggest traffic generator, providing you’re doing it properly,” says Ashbridge.

“Weekly blogging can feel like a lot, but if you’re starting out, content production is truly what you need. You want to become the most trusted resource within your niche so your users are served and Google prioritizes your site in SERPs,” Ashbridge explains.

Pro tip: A simple Google sheet helps manage blog production.

“At minimum, use a Google sheet to keep a record of the blogs you‘re posting, their keywords, the date published, the cluster they belong to, and the live URL. Refer back to this sheet when you’re monitoring performance or for internal linking,” she says.

6. Create a link-building plan.

The topic cluster model is your way forward in SEO, but it‘s not the only way to get your website content to rank higher once it’s been created.

While our first five steps were dedicated to on-page SEO, link-building is the primary objective of off-page SEO. Link-building is the process of attracting inbound links (also called backlinks) to your website from other sources on the internet. As a general rule, sites with more authority that link back to your content have a more significant impact on your rankings.

Dedicate some time to brainstorming all the various ways you can attract inbound links. Maybe you’ll start by sharing links with local businesses in exchange for links to their own sites, or you’ll write a few blog posts and share them on different social media platforms. You can also approach other blogs for guest blogging opportunities through which you can link back to your website or find different agencies that provide link building services.

7. Compress media files before uploading them to your site.

This is a small but important step in the SEO process, especially for mobile optimization.

As your blog or website grows, you‘ll undoubtedly have more images, videos, and related media to support your content. These visual assets help retain your visitors’ attention, but it’s easy to forget that these files can be very large. Since page speed is a crucial ranking factor, it’s important to monitor the size of the media files you upload to your site.

The bigger the file size, the more difficult it is for an internet browser to render your website. It’s also harder for mobile browsers to load these images, as the bandwidth on their devices is significantly smaller. So, the smaller the file size, the faster your website will load. But how do you compress images and still retain quality?

It’s worth considering the use of a compression tool to reduce file sizes before uploading images, videos, and gifs. Sites like TinyPNG compress images in bulk, while Google’s Squoosh can shrink image files to microscopic sizes. However, you choose to compress your media, keeping files in the kilobytes (KB) range is a good rule of thumb.

Complete SEO Starter Pack

An introductory kit to optimize your website for search.

• Increase your organic traffic.
• Plan your keyword strategy.
• Debunk SEO myths.
• Build a blog strategy.