SEO is an ever evolving discipline, so staying on top of everything is essential. I believe it’s next to impossible to rank your website on Google if you don’t know the basics of SEO. 

To become a master of SEO, you need a master SEO marketing plan. if you have a good understanding of SEO basics, then we should dive deeper to master search engine optimization. 

In this guide, we’ve outlined a 7 step guide to master search engine optimization to boost organic traffic, brand awareness, sales, and more.

7 Steps to Master Search Engine Optimization

These are the steps that you should follow if you want to take your SEO efforts to the next level. 

#1. Appreciate SEO Audits

The first step if you want to master SEO is to leverage SEO audits as much as you can. You can’t build a future plan if you don’t know where your website stands currently. When you the current standings of your website, you’ll know how to apply the right methods to achieve ideal rankings. 

Google has over 200 estimated factors that determine the ranking of your website. 

If you’re just starting out, accurately measuring and implementing 200 factors can feel overwhelming. But with ideal audits you’ll be able to optimize your website for optimal rankings. The audits are helpful for addressing on-page elements that are lacking. 

If you’re unable to grab the vital rankings even after continuous efforts, audits can help you find out why. If you want to master SEO, an audit allows you to check and optimize the small details that have been holding you back. 

#2. Mobile Optimization Goes a Long Way

Before mobile devices became a global sensation, Google found and processed, and ranked the desktop sties via crawling and indexing. 

After the 2015’s mobile-friendly update, Google considers mobile devices to be a big ranking factor. Mobile-first indexing gives priority to sites that are optimized for mobile devices. If you want to become a master of Search Engine Optimization, you need to focus on mobile optimization. 

Make sure that your websites have a responsive design. Responsive designs mean that the size of your website shifts according to the size of your screen. Your website should work seamlessly for both desktop and mobile users. 

Here are some things to keep in mind while making your website responsive:

• Flexible grid: changeable web page layout.
• Scalable and movable images: ideal size and clarity pictures.
• Implement media queries: CSS technique for rendering proportions to the device size.

#3. Consider LSI During Keyword Research

Do you use the same words always while describing something? If you have a pet dog, sometimes you may call him your pet, sometimes your dog, and sometimes you call them by their name. 

Google takes this into consideration and they value synonyms in high-quality content. Now, the Google’s algorithm carefully considers similar words to track what your content is about and allows it to rank on multiple keywords. 

Google calls this latent semantic indexing (LSI) and it changes how you do keyword research. You can change how you change keywords into your content and achieve better ranking on search engine result pages. 

If you’re looking for a tool to do keyword research, then Google Keyword planner is the best option to find LSI keywords. 

#4. Try to Rank on Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are one of the best ways to generate huge amounts of traffic to your website. But ranking on features snippets takes a lot of SEO efforts. Features snippets are the boxed answers you see on top of SERPs. 

As featured snippets are so desirable, you have to go beyond ordinary SEO efforts to make it happen. 

Featured snippets provide clear, concise, and to-the-point answers to search queries. The best way to land on featured snippets is to make sure your content is straightforward and easy to follow. 

If your content has lists and a proper structure, they can allow you to rank on featured snippet as well. 

Google loves bulleted content that makes your content easy to follow for your readers. 

#5. Revamp and Reuse Existing Content

SEO is not just about creating new content over and over again. You also need to focus on updating your existing content that’s not performing well. You can also use blogs that used to perform well but have since lost their ranking. 

Make a list of the content that you think may bring in some valuable traffic, or content that used to bring in traffic. Revamp the content according to latest SEO guidelines to give it the much needed push. 

You can even revamp the content that’s already performing well. Adding some valuable statistics and links to sources can establish your brand as an authority. 

Go through the list of content, come up with catchy titles, tweak content a little bit, and focus on internal linking a little bit. Even the tiniest bit of effort can give your rankings a huge boost. 

#6. Analyze and Update

All masters of SEO live for analytics. They stay on top of their SEO strategies to see how they are performing. Watching and managing the results of your SEO strategies is vtial for mastering SEO. 

By constantly analyzing your campaign, you can find out why your content/campaigns aren’t performing well. The best way to measure the results is using Google Analytics. 

Google analytics allow you to track all the important metrics in your SEO campaigns. If your campaigns are performing lower than you expected, then you can update them accordingly.

#7. Stay on Top of SEO Industry Trends

If you truly want to become the master of SEO, you need to stay on top of all the industry trends. It’s essential that you read SEO related articles, news, and watch videos from industry leaders. Google is usually very silent about their algorithm changes, but industry experts give a review of the changes made by the search engine. 

Google’s Webmaster Central Blog is the primary source of official news for all the SEO experts. If you want to stay on top of Google algorithm changes, then this is the place you need to be.