VArgo SEO Methodology
There is no magic in SEO. No power tool to hugely increase the website traffic. No single action to make a sudden difference.
In many aspects, SEO looks a lot like hard work. It doesn’t involve shoot-from-the-hip guesswork, and it doesn’t have the excitement and appeal of magic work -that doesn’t exist in SEO. It calls for knowledge, skill, experience, and expertise across many disciplines.
In fact, SEO is a systematic process of constant working on details.
At VArgo, we try to optimize this process with a methodology of 7 parts.
- A. Research and competition
- B. Strategy and approach
- C. Technical improvements
- D. Content production
- E. Link building and off-site presence
- F. Test, monitor, analyse and adjust
- G. Report and feedback
The nature of SEO requires doing parallel work on different parts. So, these are not necessarily “steps” here.
Before going further, let’s define some phrases here:
- Methodology: The set of systematic methods.
- Methodology Parts: Not steps. Each subset of the Methodology.
- Actions: Or steps. Each individual activity from any Methodology Part.
- Plan: The prioritized set of Actions.
- Strategy: The approach to make the Plan.
In the past few years, we worked with partners like UPGUYS and Peekage, growing their organic traffic. This content is going to reveal the same methodology that we used to do that.
Let’s get into the details of each methodology part.
A. Research and competition
Evidence-based recommendations, in our experience, are much more likely to produce ground-breaking outcomes than glib “best practice” ones. Who, exactly, is in the league? What can reasonably be expected to achieve?
To know more about the game and the playground, we start the process with basic research.
- Business research
- Competition research
- Keyword research
- Website content research
On top of that, we need to know about the resource and assets in our partner’s company, and about the current SEO status.
We need all of this information to have an effective overview of who is our partner, where they stand, and where they should go.
B. Strategy and approach
To conduct an SEO strategy, we need to know about the long-term strategy of the partner’s business, and what they are doing in marketing generally. This helps to synchronize SEO strategies with business strategies more effectively.
Meek tweaks cannot make a difference. Extraordinary improvements result from extraordinary approaches.
We will form a unique approach as unique as their business to strike the market. There are no pre-formulated “best practices” here.
This unique approach will answer a lot of questions regarding content production and link building in the future.
The approach to SEO, is what the website will become in terms of search engine presence. This translates to the type of content and links we will create for the website.
C. Technical improvements
Technical improvements include 3 parts:
Part I: Critical errors
Finding critical errors in crawlability and indexability of the website. This part helps to find any critical blocking errors before investing more into the process.
Part II: Scalable website architecture
Designing the scalable architecture of the website as a foundation to apply all other SEO activities to it.
Developing this structure should be done in a way that follows the unique market approach developed earlier.
Part III: Technical improvements
Finding improvement opportunities to increase search engine presence in the dynamic, ever-changing environment of SERPs.
D. Content production
Based on the research done about the business and competitors, we find keywords to target and produce content around them, in the following steps:
Step I: Finding concepts
Everything starts with concepts. We draw a map of broad concepts that the website should target. These are the targets through which people who are searching for them could have a commercial interaction with the partners’ website.
Step II: Clustering topics
After prioritizing the concepts, every concept is split into clusters. Each cluster hold a number of content pieces, informative (typically blog posts) and commercial (typically commercial landing pages).
Step III: Creating the web page
Outlines are designed for each content piece. After writing and creating the content, the final product will come out as a web page.
During this process, we analyze industry news, data, and upcoming trends to produce content around them. This way, we create super-optimized content, based on data-backed opportunities.
Content that ranks.
E. Link building and off-site presence
Using various techniques, we will find a unique approach for the link-building campaign.
This includes defining the kind of websites to target for link building and the number and types of content required for building an outreach strategy.
As our creative strategies will grow and your brand gets stronger in the market, we make sure that the link-building campaign is keeping pace with other online marketing efforts.
Any other off-site presence should be monitored. Including advertising, PR, or partnerships, that could affect link building.
We mainly create backlinks via content-led approaches to prospect publishers.
A comprehensive list of qualifications is used to choose any referring domain. This is separated mainly into four categories:
- Domain & hosting details
- SEO metrics
- Website history and trends
- Manual content audit
F. Test, monitor, analyze and adjust
Our strategies are constantly evolving and adjusting.
Test: We test everything. Any actions will be monitored to see if they worked and should be continued. Including all activities regarding link building and content production. Nothing will be “set and forgotten”.
Monitor: We monitor the KPIs and metrics in detail, so we know
- how well we did,
- which of our actions produced good results, and
- what could be expected and when.
Analyze: Analyzing the data puts light on opportunities that we take to move even further. With this approach, we see not just the objective, but also possibilities and opportunities to move beyond it.
Adjust: Our strategy and techniques adjust constantly based on data. One of the main goals of applying a data-driven approach is to multiplying the result of successful actions.
G. Report and feedback
We are committed to offering weekly, monthly, and quarterly performance reports in detail.
Moreover, after each major step during the process, fully customized reports are also delivered.
On top of that, if any partner wish to keep track of a certain activity, they can request an on-demand custom report with the details required.
For instance, if they want to receive a weekly report on the PR and the latest keyword rankings, we will compile all details in a comprehensive report.
We build our strategy all around your identity. Business insights and industry knowledge are important things that our partners share with us. This is very crucial. We take it and translate it into actions for more improvements.
Our toolkit
We like to simplify things.
A lot of times, we want to believe that there is a superior way to do something; after all, if it’s not broken, why fix it, right?
So, we use a few different trustee tools for various aspects of the process. Tools listed below help us automate and carry out SEO plans and strategies.
- SEO: Ahrefs, Semrush, Answer the Public, Majestic SEO, SimilarWeb, Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- Content: BuzzSumo, Jasper, Grammarly
- Google Tools: Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
- Link building and outreach: Streak, Snov.io, Canva
Final words
Our methodology is an iterative process that starts with the analysis of primary sources, and proceeds to a strategy for your online presence that is entirely customized based on your brand identity; no pre-made checklists or “best practice” formulas are leading the way.
This overview has demonstrated that our methodology is a process of activities that spans many different disciplines rather than being about best practices.
Although it may sound less appealing than whipping our wands and making a “magic keyword” or a “specific link”, there is not a simpler, more reliable method we are aware of for expanding an online business.
