How to Have a Positive SWOT Analysis in 2018

Whether your company is ranking or tanking, you can always benefit from a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis, and there’s no better time than this upcoming year. SWOT analyses should be assessed by objective eyes and from as many viewpoints as possible to accurately ascertain where your company stands.

SWOT analysis

Although there will always be areas that can improve, there are certain steps you can take to make your strengths and opportunities outweigh your weaknesses and threats. A business is only as strong as its website, with search engine optimization and Google Analytics at the core of its marketing strategy. Offsite content should also be given as much attention as onsite content marketing is. With these strategies in your corner, you’ll have little to fear of your weaknesses and threats this 2018.

Create a Solid Website
We live in an age where the success of your business depends largely on how much of a presence your website has. If your website and online traffic reside in your “weaknesses” category in your SWOT analysis, it’s time to beef up your web design. A solid website not only helps to achieve the goals of a business, but also fulfills the needs of the user.

When these two priorities are out of balance, you ultimately get a website that makes nobody happy. To avoid this, figure out what exactly your company goals are. When you know what you want to achieve, it’ll make it easier to design your website. Consider who your target audience is as well as other parties that might be interested in what you have to offer.

For example, by using social data to find out which social networks are generating leads to your site, you can research more on the audience that typically uses that platform. By having in mind the kind of people who will be visiting your site, you’ll know which digital experiences to highlight and emphasize to meet client needs. This can be made easier by mapping out the journey of the user. Depending on how people arrive at a site and which keywords were used to find it, multiple design elements can be put in place to help users along.

Lastly, keep things simple. It’s much easier for a person to make a decision when there are fewer options to choose from. Too many choices may prompt users to not choose anything at all and leave your site. Focus on what the end goal of your company is and narrow down options to only those that contribute to that goal.

Implement SEO Strategies
Search engine optimization is crucial for getting your company seen online. Many opportunities can be seized and threats eliminated if you have a robust SEO campaign. However, how well your SEO strategies are doing can be hard to track if you don’t have the right tools. That’s when Google Analytics comes in handy. This comprehensive service tracks and analyzes all sorts of data involving your website to see what’s working and what’s not.

The first thing you’ll want to analyze is the overall organic traffic your site is attracting. This traffic is not influenced by paid ads, so it should give you a clearer idea how well your SEO campaign is doing. By clicking “Overview” under the “Acquisition” tab, you’ll be able to see a general view of how many people visit your site.

Depending on how well or poorly you’re doing, you may want to take a look at the keywords associated with your site. Keywords are at the heart of SEO, and ranking for specific ones is crucial to establishing an online presence. By clicking the “Queries” section, you will find relevant information on the keywords you’re ranking for.

You will also receive data on which pages rank for which keyword, what position that page is on the search engine results page for a given keyword, and how many times your web page was clicked because of that keyword. Seeing how well some pages are performing compared to others will give you a good idea what your weaknesses are and what you can do to turn them into strengths.

Market Onsite and Offsite Content
Content can be classified as either onsite or offsite. Onsite content resides on your website and includes content such as blog posts. Offsite content is when other websites post about your business and link back to you. Both have their own benefits and work best when they are utilized together in a content marketing campaign.

Onsite content gives viewers something to look at and websites something to link to. This is where keywords come into play as well. Keywords are most effectively optimized when they are used in blog posts and other pages on your website. When it comes to customer retention, onsite content is also champion.

If you consistently publish relevant and insightful blog posts, people will be coming back for more. You can also highlight the products and services your business has to offer by providing them as solutions to dilemmas posed in your articles. These articles and blog posts are essential to offsite content and upping your SEO game even more. By having quality content to link to, different websites will be able to link to your posts and build authority to your site.

Having your links featured on other sites also increases traffic back to your own website. This traffic is known as referral traffic, and it can even outnumber the traffic your onsite content produces. The more high-traffic sites that link to you, the more likely your site will attract new visitors. Content marketing is all about visibility, and in order to be visible, you need the help of both onsite and offsite content.

SWOT analyses are a great way to judge where you’re at as a company. Strengths and opportunities can be realized to thwart potential weaknesses and threats. However, this can only be done if you have the right foundation.

You need to have a solid website to hook in visitors and an SEO strategy to keep them coming. To keep your online traffic consistent, continue to create linkable onsite content to generate offsite content. By implementing these strategies into your business, you’ll not only have a positive SWOT analysis in 2018, but for years to come.