Long and Short Game S.E. O., Yes You Can!
Creating quick, important Wins with Local SEO & Broadening Horizons with International SEO
In the current busy digital landscape, SEO is key to understanding and developing audiences, generating sustainable online traffic, and building leads that grow into relationships that create conversions.
Good SEO practice requires a blend of strategies that address immediate and long-term goals. Balancing short-term gains with sustained growth can be the difference between fleeting success and lasting online presence.
This is where the combination of local and international SEO comes into play.
· Local SEO enables quick, impactful wins by improving your visibility in localised internet searches and attracting your local customers.
· International SEO focuses on increasing reach, ensuring a consistent flow of global traffic and brand visibility growth over time.
This blog will provide actionable insights into optimising your SEO efforts effectively, it will cover key strategies for both local and international approaches to help you create a comprehensive and winning SEO plan. For a library of further insights, Google has kindly grouped several case studies covering various aspects of SEO development.
1: The SEO Process Roadmap
Step-by-Step SEO Implementation Process
An effective SEO strategy requires a systematic approach. Let’s look at a roadmap to create an effective step-by-step SEO process:
Step 1: Discussing and Aligning on Marketing/Business Objectives
Before any work begins, it's important to gain a good idea of your business's marketing goals and objectives. You should be meeting with stakeholders to agree on key performance indicators (KPIs), target audience insights, and your desired business outcomes. Establishing these foundations will allow you to tailor the SEO strategy to support your overarching business plans and drive better results.
Step 2: Initial Keyword Analysis to Identify Opportunities
Next, you need to perform an analysis of the keywords and search phrases commonly used by your target audiences. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush can help identify the keywords most heavily searched. Analysis will help you uncover primary and long-tail keywords that can be integrated into the content strategy.
Step 3: Matching Keyword Research with Landing Page Optimisation
Once you have identified your relevant keywords, it's time to pair them with specific landing pages. Optimising your website landing pages using the targeted keywords helps you improve the chances of your pages ranking higher in search results. The best optimisation includes incorporating keywords into your content's headers, title tags and meta descriptions while maintaining readability.
Tools like SEMrush allow you to select specific keywords and find other relevant primary and long-tail keywords and phrases to target searches being made around your particular industry.
Step 4: Establishing Baseline Ranking and Traffic Documentation
Before you can implement changes, it is crucial to Step 4: Establishing Baseline Ranking and Traffic Documentation
Before you can implement any changes, it is crucial you establish a baseline understanding of your current SEO performance. Start by recording rankings for any target keywords then, your current website traffic metrics, and overall site performance. Following this step will provide a reference point you can use to measure the effectiveness of your new SEO strategy and then track improvements over time. Here is Zapier's list of the top 11 tools for 2025.
Step 5: On-Site and Off-Site Optimisation Techniques
Here, we touch on the use of both on-site and off-site SEO tactics:
On-Site Optimisation: This involves refining your content, looking into areas including page titles, meta descriptions, internal linking structures, and image alt text.
Off-Site Optimisation: Start here by building authoritative backlinks (referencing reputable sites), using social media promotions, and developing partnerships to create link-building opportunities.
A simple graphic from SemRush listing the items generally considered On-Page and Off-page SEO.
Step 6: Continuous Monitoring and Monthly Reporting to Refine Strategies
SEO is not a one-off thing; like many good initiatives, it requires ongoing evaluation and micro-adjustments. Refinements begin in monthly reporting tracking the performance of targeted keywords, trends in your traffic changes, and user engagement. This continuous monitoring ensures your SEO plan can evolve and adapt to new opportunities as well as shifts in the market or updates in search engine algorithms, maintaining your competitive edge.
By following this simple roadmap, your business can develop a structured and effective SEO plan that supports sustainable growth but remains agile enough to adapt where necessary.
Elite Strategies offers a case study of their SEO development and growth through utilisation of the Google Business Profile development over time.
Conclusion
Local SEO will help your businesses gain quick, impactful visibility and engage with the customers on your doorstep, while international SEO broadens your horizons by reaching global audiences and enabling long-term growth; the combination creates a powerful strategy for any business looking to maximise online presence.
A good roadmap to SEO success requires working with both on-page and off-page strategies and building strong backlinks, but you can work to a structured process. From aligning business objectives and conducting keyword research to implementing optimisation techniques and continuous monitoring, each step will boost your site's rankings and credibility.
Balancing these efforts requires planning and adaptability, but by integrating quick wins from local SEO while nurturing international strategies, your business can create a comprehensive approach that enhances visibility and builds your site’s authority over time. Staying the course using this balanced strategy, whilst being agile based on analysis, ensures long-term SEO success that aligns with your business goals.
What Next?
If you are ready to dive deeper into keyword research and continue to expand your SEO efforts, tune in for my next blog post. I’ll be covering some more advanced keyword research tricks to fine-tune your SEO strategy for even greater success. Keep optimising to watch your online presence grow!
