If your strategy focuses on link acquisition, the end of the year is a good time to move part of your efforts to other areas.
The holiday season has come again and you know what that means ... the year is almost over and it's time to start preparing our SEO strategies for the next year!
Along with the New Year mood, the end of the year means time for reflection - and this is also true for SEO.
As your current SEO strategy ends, now is the time to think about additions to the strategy. In particular, if your strategy focuses on acquiring links and reaching out manually, the end of the year is the perfect time to shift some of your efforts to other areas.
Prioritize the future
We are not saying that you should abandon your current link building strategy - backlinks are just as valuable in December as they are in March.
However, you should be aware that site owners (people who will link to you) are generally less responsive during the holidays, and it’s better to spend your time on events that will prepare your site for links in the future.
Instead of desperately trying to squeeze the last part of this year's ROI, we suggest investing in long-term initiatives that will bring dividends in the future. These initiatives include:
• Competitive analysis and review
• Planning and creating content
• Audit of technical and internal SEO issues
Optimize your SEO efforts at the end of the year by prioritizing actions that will affect the long-term future of your site
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Competitive Analysis and Review
As the year draws to a close, this is a great time to check competitors and analyze what they have done in terms of search.
A good place to start is the content of your competitors, analyzing which you will find out which pages help them attract organic visitors. Tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush make it easy to make a list of the most popular pages on competitor sites. Browse through these pages to determine if it would be appropriate or necessary to create such pages on your own site. During the review, answer the following questions:
• Is this topic relevant to my audience?
• Do I already have an existing page that covers this topic?
• What type of traffic will be obtained from the rating for this term (upper, middle, lower)?
• Do I have the resources and time to invest in creating a page?
It is important to ask these questions, and not just copy your competitors - not all the best pages of competitors will make sense for your site, audience and goals.
You can also use these tools to track your competitors' keywords over the past year. Comparing this data with the performance of your own site can help you identify areas in which competitors might get around you.
SEO is not only about getting new keyword rankings and organic traffic sources. Search results always change, and if you do not protect your ranking, you will lose them. Tracking your competitors' keyword growth will help you identify potential threats before they become losses. If you see competitors succeed in areas where you are not sustainable, think about these topics:
• Updating an existing page with fresh content with greater depth
• Optimization of factors on the page
• Overview of internal link features
