We Answer A Regular Question Asked To SEO Consultants Far And Wide - How Do You Begin An SEO Campaign.
Sunday, November 15th, 2009A familiar question to consultants providing SEO Services the world over is how do you start an SEO campaign?
The answer to this question depends on whether you are working with a new website, or a previously optimised website with well chosen keywords.
For the sake of this article lets suppose we are dealing with an existing site that is already established but not ranking too well, the keywords are carring good volumes of traffic.
Stage 1 - Analysis
Analysis is the first step for any successful SEO campaign, it allows us to ascertain the current state of play, both regarding offsite and onsite optimisation, it also gives me an indication how competetive the niche is by looking at the amount of competition sites and each keywords KEI index. And also allows me to identify the best keywords for that site.
By using SEO powersuite spyglass software I can also determine the number of existing links a page has, the PR of each of those links and additionally what anchor text was used for each link, handy information to have.
Stage 2 - On Site Optimisation
Onsite optimization begins with me checking the site for orphaned pages and either relinking them into the site navigation (if they are unintentionally orphaned) or more normally deleting them as they are no longer needed, Dead links are also removed, site map and robots files are checked and created or corrected where nessecary. All titles and meta tags are checked for correct structure and keyword density, I also ensure they are not duplicated. Then I optimise the page content, for keyword density, proximity and prominence aswell as correcting any obvious shortfallings with the sites usability, navigation and presentation are usually the main issues here and by correcting any obvious issues, I can have a helpful effect on the bounce rate, which in turn pushes up the websites conversion rates. (great news for any client)
Stage 3 - Search Submission
You would think that any existing site that has been around for a while would be listed in every search engine under the sun, but you would most likely be incorrect, I have included this step as it can really effect the traffic a site recieves over time. It is always worth submitting a website to all relevent search engines, it doesnt take long, and if each of the small search providers only deliver 3 hits per year, then that could add up to 1200 visits that you wouldnt have otherwise had. For the smaller search engines auto submission tools are fine (although I would never use them for the main search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo - manual submission only there).
Stage 4 - Link Building
Link building is by far the most time consuming part of SEO Services, this is because its never really finished, the moment you stop is the moment your rankings start to slide. The number of links required to see a page one position varies widely dependant on the keyword being promoted, some keywords you could have a first place ranking with only fifty links, other keywords you could probably have fifty thousand links and be nowhere close. A good technique to help ease the strain of link building is “link baiting” this fundamentally involves creating content that other people will want to link to, meaning they do the work for you, clever eh? Some of the best link baits can be free webtools like word counters, link checkers, favicon generators etc.
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