SEO Process
SEO Philosophy
This summarises the philosophy behind SEO process that we have created to help us manage our clients' SEO campaigns.
It is by asking and answering questions like these systematically that we hope to create a logical, efficient and profitable process for managing an SEO campaign that delivers against its objectives.
By questioning, taking action, monitoring results and then refining the approach for the next phase of the SEO campaign, we hope to build a process of continual improvement.
By following a systematic process, you don't get bogged down in data, you get advice, insights and purpose; and a marketing process that makes it easy for you to plan, budget, manage and report on your SEO campaigns.
Over time you can build a clear picture of when and what tactics and tasks you have undertaken, and what impact they have had. This is the SEO process that our Analytics SEO Project Management Tools were built around. It's produced good results for us and our clients; we hope it does for you too.
Effectively, our SEO tools walk you through (or 'run you through' - for advanced time poor SEOs) the SEO process, and work with you to answer these kind of questions (and more besides) in an iterative ongoing process.
1. Website Audit - Assess Current Situation
What is your website analytics software telling you?
Have you set up a data feed from Google Analytics (or other provider) into our system?
What SEO work have you done so far and how far has this got you so far?
What keywords (paid/non-paid) are being used to find your site?
Is your Analytics package correctly reporting organic traffic and PPC traffic from Google, Yahoo and Bing? Most website analytics packages require you to configure trackable URLs in your PPC ad manager to report correctly.
How well do your visitors convert into sales?
Have you enabled Goal Setting and Funnel tracking on your analytics package?
What keywords should you rank for? Perform extensive keyword research - or pay someone to do keyword research for you.
How does your website rank for these keywords?
What are the priority keywords in terms of #of visits and #of conversions that you want to optimise for?
Have your technical developers or website designers setup your site in the best way?
2. Determine SEO Campaign Objectives
Who are your competitors?
What have they done to attract users to their sites?
Who is ranking for your keywords?
How strong are they?
How close can you get in the short, medium and long term?
What are the right SEO phase 1 objectives?
What are the right medium and long-term objectives?
What is it going to take to get there?
How much did your website cost; initially and now annually?
How much business does your site generate?
What is the potential business you could generate?
How much should you therefore invest in SEO to see a return?
What specific and measurable objectives should you set yourself (or your SEO supplier)?
3. On-Site SEO - Analyse and Change Website
What parts of the website can you change to help you rank better?
Look at factors such as; site structure, domains, meta tags, copy, content optimisation
Do you or your web developers have the skills to make the necessary changes?
4. Off-Site SEO - Promote Your Website - Seek Links
Who is linking to your competitors?
How can you get them to link to your site too?
Who else has quality relevant websites and blogs that could link to your site?
What generic and specific directories could link to your site?
Are you willing to pay for links from quality web directories like the Yahoo directory and Best of the Web?
What article directories and press newswires can you submit content to?
Do you want to do this or outsource it to SEO specialists?
Steps 3 & 4 run in parallel, as you (or your SEO agency) can be seeking links whilst you are implementing recommended website changes.
5. Measure and Refine Approach
What changes in your rankings, visits and conversions are you seeing?
What is working well and not so well?
What keywords are not performing (low conversions)?
What keywords are performing well and what keywords show the best opportunity for bringing your traffic and conversions?
How much more activity do we need to do in SEO Phase 1 to meet your objectives?
Start Your Second SEO Campaign
How can you refine your approach in Phase 2 and beyond to accelerate the growth of your business?
Plugging Google Analytics into the SEO Process is absolutely essential. Couple the power of this analytics software with some cool SEO tools and project management functionality and you get a marketing dashboard for SEO that should just make managing your next SEO campaign that little bit easier.