12 Step SEO Strategy For Massive Agency Growth in 2023

As a digital agency, your primary goal is to help your clients grow their businesses. But, in order to do that effectively, you need to be able to grow your own agency as well. 

One of the most effective ways to do that is through SEO and using a CRM from early-on itself to bring the right kind of automation and usage of technology in the business. 

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the ongoing process of optimizing your own site and its content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). By ranking higher in search engine marketing alone, you'll increase organic traffic to your website, generate more leads, and ultimately, close more deals.

But, How do you get started with SEO? And, what tools should you be using to optimize your own site and its content? 

In this ultimate guide, we'll answer those questions and more, so you can start growing your digital agency using SEO.

”SEO is a Skill, it cannot be taught but it can be learned”

In order to understand and master a skill, you need to concretise your foundational knowledge about SEO. 

Hence before even jumping onto this guide, you should know how SEO started, when did it start, and its entire evolution.

SEO has changed multifold in the last decade, let's see what SEO looks like in the year 2023 

The early days of SEO agencies were characterized by simple tactics like keyword stuffing and link farming. But as search engines became more sophisticated, they began to penalize websites that engaged in these practices.

In 1998, Google was founded, and it quickly became the dominant search engine, thanks to its PageRank algorithm, which relied on the quality and quantity of backlinks to determine the relevance and authority of a website.

Over the years, Google has continued to refine its algorithms and introduce new ones, in order to improve the user experience and combat spammy tactics. Some of the most important algorithm updates include:

1. Panda (2011) - Focused on penalising websites with low-quality or duplicate content.
2. Venice (2012) - The Venice Update ensured Google’s search results included pages based on the location you set or your IP address.
3. Penguin (2012) - Targeted websites with spammy link profiles and over-optimized anchor text.
4. Hummingbird (2013) - introduced semantic search, allowing Google to better understand the meaning behind search queries and deliver more relevant results.
5. Pigeon (2014 ) -  It aimed to make local results more relevant and higher quality, taking organic ranking factors into account. 
6. RankBrain (2015) - a machine learning algorithm that uses artificial intelligence to help Google better understand the relevance of search queries and the intent behind them.
7. Possum (2016) - this update made local search more independent of the organic results.
8. BERT (2019) - It’s a machine learning algorithm, a neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP). The name BERT is short for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.
9. Page Experience Update: In this update, existing page experience signals will be combined with Core Web Vitals, a real-life measurement of key user experience factors
10. Helpful Content Update - The helpful content update brought an increased focus on the quality of content appearing in the search results. It’s all about rewarding ‘people-first’ content — content that really answers user's questions and provides a satisfying experience.
11. E-A-T—Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—is a principle Google’s search quality raters use to determine the quality and effectiveness of search results. 

Quality raters are real people who determine how well Google’s search results meet users’ needs based on the Search Quality Rater Guidelines 

Feedback from quality raters doesn’t directly impact rankings. But it does help Google make algorithm improvements over time.

So while -E -A - T is not a direct Google Ranking Factor, it still goes hand-in-hand with SEO.

If you are new to SEO then, you can think of SEO in 2023 as like being a squirrel trying to collect nuts for the winter. 

You spend hours, days, and even weeks carefully selecting the best long tail keywords, crafting the perfect content, and building your site's authority, only to find that the search engines have changed their algorithms and your hard work is now for naught. 

It's like trying to store acorns in a tree that keeps moving every time you get close.

Despite all the challenges and frustrations, SEO company in 2023 is also a lot of fun. It's like a puzzle that never gets old, a game that always has new rules, and a race that never ends. And if you're willing to embrace the absurdity of it all, to laugh in the face of the ever-changing algorithms, and to stay curious and creative, you just might find that the rewards are worth all the effort.

With all that knowledge of the foundational history of SEO, you are in a better position to implement the tactics outlined below. 

This guide is applicable for any type and size of agencies, but it's specially curated for the List below:

1. Social Media Agency
2. Digital Marketing Agency 
3. Full-Service Agency 
4. Search engine optimization (SEO) agency
5. Pay-per-click (PPC) agency
6. Content marketing agency
7. Email marketing agency
8. Digital PR agency
9. Creative agency
10. Web development agency
11. Influencer marketing agency
12. Mobile app development agency
13. Virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) agency
14. Advertising Agency 
15. Branding Agency 
16. Online Reputation Management Agency 
17. Integrated Marketing Agency 
18. Event Marketing Agency 

Now, we can jump directly onto discussing the ultimate guide to hacking SEO for agencies and deploy a Lead Generation machine that works like an SMG rifle

You are 12 Steps away from getting the Recipe of SEO right.

1. Know your Tools 
2. Identify an Industry Niche 
3. Set Goals
4. Competitor Research & Analysis 
5. Backlink Gap Analysis 
6. Website Restructuring 
7. Establish a Pillar-Cluster Model 
8. Implement Internal Linking 
9. Perform Site Audit ( 3 Levels ) 
10. Content Creation & Marketing 
11. Off-Page SEO 
12. Measurement & Optimisation 

1: Know Your Tools 

Sign up on all the below tools before starting up the research. They all have 7 Day Free Trials available.

• Keyword Research Tool - There are many options to choose from ( Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, Moz ). Our Favourite is Semrush. 
• Competitor Research Tool - Semrush 
• Backlink Analysis Tool - Semrush 
• Forecasting Tool - SEO monitor 
• SEO Auditing Tool -  Screaming Frog/Seorch 
• Website Audit Tool -  Google Page Speed Insights 
• Content Audit Tool - Surfer SEO 
• Keyword Clustering Tool -  Cluster.ai / Keywordinsights.ai /Thruuu
• Industry Demand Research Tool: Google Trends 

Disclaimer: We are not affiliated to any of the tools by any means or manner, we do not endorse the tools, we are displaying the tools that are available in the market and the ones that you should know about. 

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2: Identify an Industry Niche

Go to Google Trends 

Use the below Keyword Templates to gauge the demand of your prospective industries 

Assumptions:

You are a Digital Marketing Agency offering Digital Marketing services or a Full Service Agency offering all the services that fall under the Umbrella of Digital Agencies 

You physically Operate from LA, California, United States.

You want to specialise in building a niche for SaaS Industry 

KW Template 1: Industry Vertical + Agency Type

With Assumptions:

• Template 1: SaaS marketing agency
• Template 1.1: SaaS digital agency
• Template 1.2: SaaS SEO agency 

You can similarly keep changing the industry Vertical & the agency type to match your needs 

Filter Options to choose from on Google Trends while researching 

• Choose Country: United States 
• Duration: Past 12 months 
• Categories: Leave it as is “All Categories”
• Search Type: Web Search 

Now you can add another Industry Vertical in "+ Compare"
Let’s try adding a Cryptocurrency marketing agency ( Industry Vertical + Agency Type ) 

This is what the result look like:

• SaaS Marketing Agency: Blue Colour
• Cryptocurrency Marketing Agency: Red Colour 

As we can see clearly the Demand i.e Total Keyword Searches synonyms to the term Cryptocurrency Marketing Agency has been abrupt and inconsistent since Dec, 2022, whereas the Keyword searches for SaaS Marketing Agency has been on a rise and shows consistent patterns. 

This is a clear indication that SaaS Marketing Agency has more demand over Cryptocurrency Marketing Agency in United States as per the last 12 months, the data may change basis upon the geography you choose in the filter options.  

Google Trends also offers data on 3 different areas

• Subregion 
• Metro 
• City 

Here is a screenshot of how a Subregion data would look like:

What you can infer from the image below is: The demand for SaaS Marketing agency is majorly concentrated in 2 Subregions in the United States.

1st: Virginia 

2nd: New York 

Now you know that all your marketing collaterals, targets, focus, content, references and standards needs to be personalised for SaaS companies based out of Virginia and New York. 

PS: Contextual Personalisation created the highest amount of relatability and high relatability entails higher shares, more shares are more traffic, thereby ensuring more leads. 

Up till now you were able to nail down 2 things-

1. The Right Tools to use 
2. The Geography you should target basis the demand 
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3: Set Goals 

The Goal Setting Format can look something on these lines: 

1: Input the Number of Client Conversion every month you wish to achieve from SEO: ____

2: Target for Leads Every Month: ___ (Assume a Conversion rate from Lead to Buyer is ____ )

3: Amount of Traffic required to generate 20 Leads: ____ per month 

4: Target Volume: _____ ( Assuming you will be able to achieve an average rank of 7th or 8th on the SERP’s. At 7th position you should be able to drive 5 to 10% of the Traffic Share, although this greatly varies across industries & geographies ) 

Download Link to the Goal Setting Template

Note: These 400 Traffic needs to belong to the Commercial or Transactional Intent 

In simple words, keywords contributing to 400 traffic per month need to have buying intent, and the nature of the keyword is a very good signal to identify the buying intent. This data is naturally shown in Semrush, just like the screenshot attached below:

• Informational Intent: The User wants to find an Answer to a Specific Question 
• Navigational Intent: The User wants to find a specific page or site 
• Commercial Intent: The User wants to investigate Brands or Services 
• Transactional Intent: The User Wants to Complete an Action 

Now you are successfully able to generate a challenge statement to reach your defined goals. In our case with the above numbers the challenge statement would be

"Find out x number of Keywords whose summation of the volume should be equal to 4000"

Filters: Only search for keywords with Commercial and Transactional Intent because we are interested in optimising for only Middle and Bottom Funnel Keywords to generate leads.

As we can see in the image below, instead of searching the direct term “SaaS Marketing Agency”, I went ahead and searched for SaaS Agency to make my search term more broader so that I am able to cover all the keywords that belongs to the SaaS agency searches ecosystem 

We can see in the image that the Total Volume Available in United States for SaaS agency searches are 3580 ~ 3600 

Our Target was 4000 volume, but we can go ahead with 3600 volume as well because the difference is minor. 

4: Competitor Research 

Now based on the industry niche you chose for yourself, you can do a regular Google adwords search in 2 different methods

1. Fire up google.com 
2. Type your chosen Industry Vertical + Agency Type + Name of your city or state or country ( Try all Combinations ) 

Method 1: Identify your local competitors 

When I ran Google Search with the query “SaaS Marketing agency in California”

Below are the top 2 results that I got:

I would conclude by saying Kalungi & NoGood.io are 2 of my Local Competitors dominating the SERP 

Similarly you have to make a list of 4 - 5 such local competitors 

Method 2:  Identify your Country Level competitors 

Now lets run a query for “SaaS Marketing agency in USA”

Below are the 4 Results-

I would conclude that my top 3 Country level competitors are 

1. Growfusely 
2. Upcity 
3. Single grain 

A master approach would be to:

Find out mistakes in your competitors, do it better than them so that you can beat them on the SERP and bite into their traffic share to the point of maximum leverage. 

See room for improvements, hacks, and implementations methods executed by your  competitors, try to learn from them, steal their ideas and methods and implement them into your website. 

Originality is nothing but Undetected plagiarism.

When you steal from 10 places it isn’t labelled as stealing, but when you just steal from 1 place, the intention and conclusion becomes clearly evident, now you know what is to be done. 

Fire your Competitors website on Semrush and look for the below charts & records.

a. Organic Position Distribution

By looking at an organic position distribution chart, you can derive several insights, including:

1. The overall visibility of the website: The chart gives an overview of how many keywords the website ranks for and how many of those keywords are in the top positions.
2. The website's strengths and weaknesses: You can identify the keywords for which the website ranks well and those for which it doesn't. This information can help you identify areas where the website needs improvement.
3. Competitor analysis: You can compare the organic position distribution of the website with that of its competitors. This can help you identify areas where the website is lagging behind its competitors.
4. Keyword research: The chart can give you ideas for new keywords to target, based on the keywords that the website already ranks for.
5. SEO performance monitoring: You can use the chart to monitor changes in the website's organic position distribution over time, which can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your SEO strategies.

Example: 

An example of how an organic position distribution chart can be used to identify strengths and weaknesses can be seen in the following scenario:

Suppose a website that specializes in selling organic skincare products has an organic position distribution chart that shows that it ranks well for keywords related to "organic skincare," "natural skincare," and "vegan skincare," but ranks poorly for keywords related to "acne treatments" and "anti-aging products."

Based on this information, the website's marketing team could focus on improving the website's performance for these weaker target keywords either by optimizing relevant pages and content or developing new content to better the target keywords for these keywords.

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b. Top Organic Keywords

Looking at the organic keyword positions of a competitor in SEMrush can provide several types of intelligence, including:

1. Competitor keyword research: By examining a competitor's organic keyword positions, you can gain insights into the keywords they are targeting and the search terms they believe are valuable for their business. This information can help you refine your own keyword research and identify new opportunities for content creation and optimization.
2. Competitor content strategy: By analyzing a competitor's organic keyword positions, you can gain insights into the types of content they are creating to target specific keywords. This information can help you understand the type and format of content that is resonating with your audience and inform your own content strategy.
3. Competitor on-page optimization: By examining a competitor's landing pages and the keywords they are ranking for, you can gain insights into their on-page optimization tactics, such as the use of relevant titles, meta descriptions, and headers. This information can help you improve your own on-page optimization and compete more effectively in search results.
4. Competitor domain authority: By analyzing a competitor's organic keyword positions, you can gain insights into their domain authority and backlink profile. This information can help you identify opportunities to build high-quality backlinks and improve your own domain authority.
5. Competitor market share: By examining a competitor's estimated organic traffic, you can gain insights into their market share and the level of competition in your industry. This information can help you identify opportunities to capture a larger share of the market and differentiate your business from your competitors.

Overall, analyzing a competitor's organic keyword positions in SEMrush can provide valuable intelligence for your SEO strategy, including insights into their keyword strategy, research, content strategy, on-page optimization, domain authority, and market share.

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c. Branded Vs Non Branded Trafic

SEO professionals can derive valuable insights from analyzing the ratio of branded vs non-branded traffic, including:

• Brand Awareness: A higher ratio of branded traffic indicates stronger brand awareness.
• SEO Strategy: A high ratio of non-branded traffic suggests successful targeting of a wider range of keywords.
• Competitor Analysis: Comparing the ratio to competitors can provide insights into their SEO strategy and branding efforts.
• Conversion Rate: Branded traffic is more likely to convert to sales or leads.
• SEO Performance: Changes in the ratio over time can indicate the success of the SEO strategy.

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d. Competitive Positioning Map

The Competitive Positioning Map in SEMrush provides valuable intelligence for SEO companies and experts, including:

• Competitor Analysis: Identify primary competitors and evaluate their strength in the market.
• Keyword Research: Identify high-value keywords worth targeting.
• Content Strategy: Refine content strategy based on competitors' tactics.
• On-page Optimization: Identify on-page optimization opportunities.
• Link Building: Identify potential link-building opportunities and improve the domain authority.
• Market Share: Identify opportunities to capture a larger share of the market.

Overall, the Competitive Positioning Map is a powerful tool for SEO experts looking to gain insights into their competition and optimize their search engine marketing strategies accordingly.

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e. Follow Vs Nofollow

An SEO campaign can derive valuable insights from analyzing the ratio of follow vs no-follow links in SEMrush, including:

• Authority and Trust: Follow links are seen as more valuable and trustworthy by search engines, so a higher ratio of follow links indicates greater authority and trust.
• Link-Building Strategy: A higher ratio of no-follow links may indicate a need to adjust the link-building strategy to focus more on obtaining follow links.
• Penalty Risk: Too many no-follow links can raise red flags to search engines, potentially resulting in a penalty.
• Competitor Analysis: Comparing the ratio to competitors can provide insights into their link-building strategies and potential areas for improvement.

According to a study by Ahrefs, the average ratio of follow to no-follow links for websites is approximately 1:1, meaning half the battle of all links are follow and half are no-follow.

However, this can vary widely depending on the industry and specific website. A higher ratio of follow links is generally seen as a positive indicator of website authority and trust.

f. 'People Also Ask' Feature

This Trend clearly indicates that Kalungi has a specific PAA strategy in place.

Getting fresh content featured in the "People Also Ask" (PAA) section can increase your website's visibility and drive more organic traffic from website visitors. Here are some strategies to help you rank in the PAA section:

1. Conduct Keyword Research: Identify the keywords and topics that trigger the PAA results and target them with your content.
2. Create High-Quality Content: Produce high-quality content that answers the user's question in a clear and concise manner. Use relevant keywords and provide detailed information.
3. Optimize for Featured Snippets: Optimize your content for featured snippets, which are often used in PAA results. Use headings and bullet points to structure your content, and include the question and answer within the content.
4. Use Schema Markup: Use schema markup to indicate the question and answer format of your content, making it easier for search engines to identify and feature in PAA results.
5. Focus on User Intent: Understand the user's search intent and provide a relevant answer that satisfies their query. Anticipate related questions and provide answers to those as well.
6. Monitor Results: Monitor the performance of your content in the PAA section and adjust your strategy accordingly. Update and refine your content to ensure it stays relevant and up-to-date.

By implementing these strategies, you can improve the online visibility of your business online, increase high volume keywords organic traffic online, chances of ranking in the PAA section and drive more organic traffic to your website.

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As you can see in the image below, the top pages for Kalungi are their 2 blogs followed by their Home Page and then again blogs ( Now you know where to incline your strategy towards )

This is the first page, where you will learn how to pick keywords from your competitors

Follow the Below Steps 

Query your competitor (We have taken Kalungi.com ) in this case 

Apply the following filters 

1. KD: Easy ( Anything between 15 to 29 as KD is considered as Easy ) 
2. Intent: Commercial & Transactional 
3. Advance Filters: Select Exclude — Keyword — Containing — Kalungi ( This will filter out all the branded keyword terms - why you may want to remove it because there is no point in targeting your competitor's brand name or brand keyword.

Refer to this image:

Download this list as a .CSV 

Repeat the same exercise with the below filters 

Repeat 2: 

1. KD: Possible ( Anything between 30 to 49 as KD is considered as Possible ) 
2. Intent: Commercial & Transactional 
3. Advance Filters: Select Exclude — Keyword — Containing — Kalungi 

Download this list as well 

Repeat 3: 

1. KD: Difficult ( Anything between 50 to 69 as KD is considered as Difficult ) 
2. Intent: Commercial & Transactional 
3. Advance Filters: Select Exclude — Keyword — Containing — Kalungi 

Download this list as well 

You may repeat this exercise for high-difficulty keywords as well, but it's not recommended for people who are starting out with their SEO journey or for people who have minimal exposure to the subject of SEO. 

With this exercise, you should have your list of keywords ready.

In case the number of keywords to be targeted is too high for you to start with then you may want to further filter it more and go with the ones with LOW KD and also check for relevancy to your business and offering. 

You should also join our earlier list of 37 keywords that we found just by using the term “SaaS agency” in Semrush from the Keyword Magic Tool Area. 

5: Analysis of Backlinks

Keep your 4 - 5 competitors' website URLs handy and fire them in Semrush, in the Backlink Auditing Section

The most important metrics to look for while backlink auditing are

a. Number of Referring Domains

• Referring domains are external websites that link to your website, and the number of referring domains can indicate the popularity and authority of your website in the eyes of search engines.
• In SEMrush, the "Referring Domains" metric shows the number of unique domains linking to a website or webpage.
• Generally, the more referring domains a website has, the better its chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
• A study by Ahrefs found that the number of referring domains was the strongest correlation with organic search traffic, with websites having more referring domains also having more organic search traffic.
• However, it's important to note that the quality of the referring domains is just as important as the quantity. High-quality, relevant, and authoritative referring domains will have a greater positive impact on your search engine rankings than a large number of low-quality or irrelevant domains.
  

b. Total Number of Backlinks

• Generally, the more backlinks a website has, the better its chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
• A study by Moz found that the number of unique domains linking to a website had a high correlation with rankings in Google search results.
• However, it's important to note that the quality of the backlinks is just as important as the quantity. High-quality, relevant, and authoritative backlinks will have a greater positive impact on your search engine rankings than a large number of low-quality or irrelevant backlinks.
• Additionally, it's important to analyze the anchor text used in the backlinks, as over-optimization or unnatural anchor text can result in penalties from search engines.

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c. Charts of New and Lost Referring Domains

• The number of New Referring Domains can indicate how successful a website's link building efforts have been recently, as well as how much interest it is generating from external sources.
• On the other hand, a high number of Lost Referring Domains can indicate a decline in the popularity and authority of a website.
• It's important to note that the quality of the referring domains is just as important as the quantity. High-quality and authoritative domains will have a greater positive impact on search engine rankings than low-quality or irrelevant domains.

PS: You can also see from which domains have your competitors lost their backlinks and get in touch with them to get yourself a backlink, your chances of success increases with this approach.

A reach out email template is given below, which you customise as per your need and directly copy paste it into your own mailbox

Dear [Website Owner/Editor],

I hope this message finds you well. I came across your website [Website Name] and was impressed with the quality of your content and the engagement from your audience.

I am a [Your Name], a [Your Profession/Title] with expertise in [Your Expertise Area]. I was wondering if you would be interested in a guest post on [Your Topic], which I believe would be of great interest to your audience.

I have attached a few topic ideas for your consideration, but I'm also happy to come up with something specifically tailored to your website and audience.

I am familiar with your website's guidelines for guest posting and I will ensure that the post is unique, high-quality, and adds value to your website. In return, I would appreciate a backlink to my website [Your Website URL].

Thank you for considering my proposal. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best regards,

[Your Name]

d. Categories of Referring Domains

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• The categories of referring domains can provide insights into the types of websites and organizations that are linking to a particular website or webpage.
• For example, if a website has a high number of backlinks from authoritative and relevant websites in the same industry, it can indicate that the website is well-respected and trusted within that industry.
• On the other hand, a high number of backlinks from low-quality or irrelevant websites can harm a website's search engine rankings and reputation.
• A study by Moz found that links from high-authority domains have a greater impact on search engine rankings than links from low-authority domains.
• Therefore, it's important to prioritize earning backlinks from high-quality and authoritative domains, particularly those that are relevant to the website's content and industry.

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6: Restructure your Website 

The more the number of pages you have indexed on the internet the more easier for you to rank for more keywords 

Make sure to have Web Forms on your Brand Website, usually, agencies who are successful at converting leads generated from SEO are the ones who use a CRM to manage the leads they receive from the Web Forms integrated into their website, one such popular software used by agencies is Clientjoy.io 

It is a best practice to not have more than 3 levels of Nested URLs. And keep your important landing pages and landing page name pages (Business Driving Pages) as close as possible to the home page.

7: Create a Pillar-Cluster Model for your website 

What is a Pillar Page and How to come up with one?

A pillar page is a comprehensive piece of content that covers a broad topic in depth, with a main focus on providing value to the site structure and user. Pillar pages are designed to be the core component of the site structure's main hub for a specific topic, providing an overview of the topic and linking to more detailed subtopics or related content.

Here are the steps to decide on the pillar page:

1. Identify a broad topic or theme that is relevant to your business or industry.
2. Research the topic to determine the most important subtopics or related keywords that should be covered.
3. Create a detailed outline or mind map of the content that will be covered on the pillar page, including sections for each subtopic or related keyword.
4. Determine which subtopic or related keyword will be the primary focus of the pillar page, based on relevance and search volume.
5. Write the content for the pillar page, including detailed information on the primary subtopic and linking out to more detailed subtopics or related content.
6. Optimize the content for search engines, using relevant keywords and optimizing meta tags and headers.
7. Promote the pillar page through social media, email marketing, and other channels to drive traffic and increase visibility.
8. Monitor the performance of the pillar page using analytics tools to track traffic, engagement, and other metrics, and make adjustments as needed.

By using your keyword engine marketing strategy and keyword research keywords following these steps, you can create strong pillar page marketing reports that provide value to your current clients and audience, helps with client referrals, build relationships with a current client, get new clients, and helps to establish your authority and expertise in corporate marketing training in your industry.

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What is a Cluster and how to come up with one?

In SEO, a cluster is a group of related pages that are linked together to provide comprehensive coverage of a specific topic. The cluster is made up of a pillar page that serves as the main hub and several supporting pages that cover related subtopics in detail. The linking structure between the pillar page and the supporting pages signals to search engines that the content is comprehensive and authoritative on the topic.

Here are the steps to come up with a cluster:

1. Identify a broad topic that is relevant to your business or industry.
2. Research the topic to determine the most important subtopics or related keywords that should be covered.
3. Choose one of the subtopics as the primary focus for the pillar page.
4. Create a detailed outline or mind map of the content that will be covered on the pillar page and supporting pages, including sections for each subtopic or related keyword.
5. Determine which subtopics or related keywords will be covered on the supporting pages, based on relevance and search volume.
6. Write the content for the pillar page, including detailed information on the primary subtopic and linking it out to the supporting pages.
7. Write the content for the supporting pages, providing detailed information on the related subtopics and linking back to the pillar page.
8. Optimize the content for search engines, including using relevant keywords and optimizing meta tags and headers.
9. Promote the cluster through social media, email marketing, and other channels to drive traffic and increase visibility.
10. Monitor the performance of the cluster using analytics tools to track traffic, engagement, and other metrics, and make adjustments as needed.

By following these steps, you can create a strong cluster that provides comprehensive coverage of a specific topic and competitive keywords, signals authority to search engines and helps to get new leads and improve your search engine rankings.

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8: Implement Internal Linking 

Internal linking is a crucial aspect of SEO that involves linking different aspects and pages of your website to improve the user experience and to help search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your content. The pillar and cluster model is a popular approach to internal linking that involves first creating content on a pillar page, which serves as the main hub for a broad topic, and then creating supporting cluster pages that provide more detailed information on specific subtopics related to the pillar page.

Here's how you can do internal linking using the pillar and cluster model:

1. Identify your pillar page: The first step is to identify a broad topic that you want to create a pillar page around. This could be something like "digital marketing" or "healthy eating."
2. Create your pillar page: The pillar page should provide a comprehensive overview of the topic, covering all of the key subtopics that you want to address.
3. Identify your cluster pages: Once you have your pillar page in place, the next step is to identify the supporting cluster pages that will provide more detailed information on specific subtopics related to the pillar page. For example, if your pillar page is about digital marketing, your cluster pages might cover topics like SEO, PPC advertising, email marketing, and social media marketing.
4. Link from the pillar page to the cluster pages: The pillar page should include links to each of the supporting cluster pages, using descriptive anchor text that helps users and search engines understand what the linked pages are about.
5. Link from the cluster pages back to the pillar page: In addition to linking from the pillar page to the cluster pages, it's also important to include links from the cluster pages back to the pillar page. This helps to reinforce the relationship between the pages and to signal to search engines that the pillar page is the main hub for the topic.

To illustrate the importance of internal linking, think of your website as a library, with each page representing a book on a specific topic. Internal linking is like the index at the back of the book that helps readers navigate and find related relevant information. By linking your pages together and adding keywords and inbound links in a logical and meaningful way, you're providing a better user experience and helping search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your content. This, in turn, can help to improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your website.

For example, if you have a blog post about "The Benefits of Yoga for Stress Relief," you could link to your cluster page on "Different Types of Yoga Practices" which in turn links back to your pillar page on "Healthy Living and Wellbeing". This way, the readers can navigate easily between the pages and find more relevant links and information, and search engines can see the relationships between the pages, making them more likely to rank higher in search results.

9: Site Audit 

Site Audit is performed on 2 Levels 

Level 1: 

SEO Site Audit: This level of audit typically displays SEO related On-Page Issues which includes content level gaps as well , it won’t necessarily speak about Website Performance issues.

You will have to classify your on page errors in the following categories:

• Broken links
• 4xx pages 
• Redirect Chains & LOOPS
• External Broken Links 
• Low Word Count
• Low Text to HTML Ratio 
• Large Javascript & CSS
• Redirect Http to Https pages 
• Pages with more than 1 H1
• Permanent Re-directs 
• Orphaned pages 
• Page Crawl Depth 
• Canonical Tags 
• Non Indexing issues 
• URL Structure
• Missing breadcrumbs 
• Length of Title & Meta Description 
• Duplicate Meta Descriptions 
• Missing Meta Descriptions
• Duplicate Title Tags 
• Duplicate Content 
• No Alt Attributes
• No Anchor Texts

Best tool to be used: Screaming frog & Semrush

In this example: We have analysed our own Website: Clientjoy.io 

Level 2: 

Technical Website Site Audit 

Recommended Tools:  Gtmetrix, Pagespeed insights by Google 

Switch to Waterfall Model - This chart exactly tells your developer which resources, assets or code files are causing damage to Website Load Times

Switch to Structure Tab - To get a Layman friendly understanding of what needs to be fixed to improve the website performance 

Some Images from Google Page Speed Insights.

Your Objective on Page Speed Insights is to get the result as passed for Core Web Vitals Assessment 

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10: Off Page SEO

• Clutch 
• Upwork 
• Digital Agency Network ( DAN ) 
• Jelloow
• Biz Bulwark 
• Credo 
• Agency Spotter
• Hubspot Agency Directory 
• Shopify Plus Marketplace 
• PartnerHub Marketplace 

Make sure to write SEO optimised and keyword infused content on these websites while setting up your account, you will not only get SEO benefit but this is also a quick way to garner high quality leads

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11: Setup Goals and Tracking in GA4 

Some important goals that should be tracked are 

• Everyone who fills out the contact form on your website 
• Everyone who downloaded a free resource or a case study that you are offering 
• Everyone who subscribes to your blogs 

The best way for tracking would be setting up a Unique Thank you page after every action. 

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12: Content Marketing 

Write blogs on topics that would be searched by the industry niche you have selected, if the industry niche that you have selected is SaaS and you are offering Digital Marketing Services to them, then you have wanted to write a blog on 

A: Top 10 Goals to Track in a SaaS Business 

B: How to increase your MRR using SEO?

C: Top 10 Marketing Agencies for a CRM product

Secret Tip:

If you are running a Digital Marketing Agency, then try to have either the word Digital or Marketing in your Domain name, this will give you an upper hands advantage when you start optimising your website for the search engines 

Example: ABCdigital.com 

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Conclusion

The key to growing your agency using search engine marketing strategies or using the best seo agency is to focus on creating valuable, high-quality content that targets the right audience with keywords and appeals to your target audience.

By conducting thorough keyword research, using search engine marketing strategies, optimizing your website for search engine marketing strategies using on-page and off-page factors, and building a strong backlink profile, you can use search engine marketing strategies to improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site.

Additionally, staying up-to-date with the latest search engine marketing strategies, SEO trends, and algorithm updates is crucial for maintaining your success in using search engine marketing strategies in the long run. With dedication and patience, implementing a strong SEO strategy can help your agency stand out in a crowded market and achieve sustainable growth.