The days when you could fool the search engines with coding and other black hat SEO stuff are gone. Search engines are being continually updated and upgraded with the latest intelligence and ability, increasing the need for improved SEO tactics and strategies.

Having said this, there are several factors that make an SEO strategy successful: on-page activities, off-page activities, technical SEO, and non-technical SEO. These are the age-old factors that will always play a role in SEO success. Apart from these, here are few more points to remember to take your SEO efforts to the next level:

1. Technical SEO roles and optimization effort

Most of the organizations today have a separate technical team that maintains their website’s technical space. This team may include web developers, content marketers, link building strategists, and an IT technical team to manage security and data storage.

Many times, the coordination between these teams are overlooked and may affect the overall SEO effort. The ideal optimization strategy is to have a constant coordination across all teams for a clear understanding of the impact one team might have on the other. It is critical to include technical SEO in the optimization planning process, and this should be incorporated at an early stage of planning. A well-coordinated team internally will ensure smooth implementation of technical SEO recommendations, optimization, site structure enhancement, etc.

2. On-page and off-page activities balance

On-page and off-page elements are both equally important to scale up optimization effort. There should be a good balance between the on-page and off-page SEO activities. Consider the following activities to create a balance between the two:

On-page SEO efforts:

1. Website architecture and folder structure
2. Sitemap and website navigation
3. Meta tags optimization (using a thorough keyword research and mapping)
4. Fixing technical errors
5. Crawlability and indexability
6. Content updates: refresh and addition
7. Site security
8. Main website and sub-domain inter-connection
9. Internal linking structure
10. Site speed (desktop and mobile) and mobile-friendliness

Off-page SEO Efforts:

1. Social visibility and engagement
2. Articles, news and blog post generation
3. Content sharing

3. Segregate on-page and off-page SEO responsibilities

While there are tasks that are evident on its own, whether they belong to technical or non-technical SEO, there are some that can be missed out on both areas. Such elements can have a destructive effect on the website, user experience, rankings and traffic, and finally the overall sales.

One of the things that is powerful in content strategy is the combined effort of the on-page, off-page, technical and non-technical SEO to set the organic traffic flow right. This may require different combinations of efforts amongst all the factors – website restructure (whether to use sub-domain or not) and revamp, content that is user driver (informative) and supported by off-page activities, and research form external partners.

4. Create an SEO content system

Content generation in any form requires some alignment that will direct all the SEO optimization towards one single goal. Content created from various baselines will not only disregard the intent of other content, but also dilute the optimization efforts altogether.

To ensure that content is in line with the optimization goal, create a system that will help you get a quick reference for content creators. This will answer multiple questions, like what images are to be used and how should it be optimized, what should the meta tags be, what to use as headers and how should it be optimized, what is the intent of the content, and who is the target audience.

Lastly, to stay on top of the competition, you need to build a connection between technical and non-technical SEO effort, on-page, and off-page activities balance. Good coordination across teams will not only help you stride towards your SEO goals, but will also find you new opportunities to stay ahead of the competition.