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20 Things You Need to Know Before Optimizing Your Site

One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization project is also one of the most overlooked – preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is successful.

Before You Start

Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it's for your own site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questions:

)What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffic, more publicity etc.

2)What is the time-frame for this project?

3)What is the budget for this project?

4)Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?

Answering these questions will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.

Get Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?

Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site's search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.

I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your own site or clients.

Get Set: Requirements Gathering

Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client's exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.

To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questions answered:

1)What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Flat HTML etc)

2)What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)

3)Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g. www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing "?" symbols), or does the site use parameter workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).

4)Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?

5)How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScript drop-down menus?

6)Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be optimized?

7)Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps?

8)What is the current link popularity of the site?

9)What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?

10)Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers for integration?

11)Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?

12)What are the products/services that the site promotes? (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)

13)What are the site's geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?

14)What are the site's demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)

15)What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client's target markets will use to find the site in the search engines?

16)Who are my/my client's major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?

17)Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?

18)Do I have access to site traffic logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign? Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?

19)How do I plan on tracking my or my client's conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?

20)What are my/my client's expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?

Answers to the first 10 questions above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you'll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.

This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questions BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.

The remainder of questions are to establish in advance the who, what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.

For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.

Go!

So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You're ready to tackle the job!

Source : isedb.com

If you have a local website for a business operating in a specific geographic area, you don’t need a global SEO program.

A local website is one that has no need to target visitors from around the world. For instance, if you run a spa, a hotel, a real estate agency, a bed and breakfast, a caterer or restaurant, a landscaping or contractor business, automotive repair, any type of retail store or local business service, your SEO plan needs to target specifically local searchers.

A global business might seek rankings for “luxury hotels”. Your local establishment might need search engine optimization for “Chicago hotel”. There is a big difference in the amount of competition between the two search terms, therefore also in the amount of SEO effort and in the amount of cost for you.

We offer search engine optimization for both global and local websites, but our approach is in most cases quite different. Whereas a 12-month SEO program is typically recommended for a global-oriented website, a local business searching for local customers more typically requires just a six-month SEO program. We prefer not to oversell what you are not likely to need.

There are exceptions to the six-month local SEO recommendation. One such exception is for real estate agency websites, where search engine rankings are more competitive than for most local businesses six months is never enough.

Search engine Optimization, SEO, is one of the vital aspects of any website, but it is often overlooked or neglected. A website may look beautiful, the systems may be flawless, but with no visitors, it is a waste. SEO is the process of getting visitors, traffic and ultimately business to your website, primarily through achieving high rankings for your web site on search terms with high volume.

Studies have shown that Internet searchers are a notoriously impatient bunch. Almost 82% of all searchers do not go beyond the first 30 results. More than 60% don't go beyond the first 10 results. If your website is not in the top ten, you are missing out on over 60% of your potential clients. This can prove to be a very costly exercise. Even if you are happy with the traffic you get to your website, and let's say it's 40%. You can get an extra one and a half times that quantity of visitors and business or more as the result of an effective SEO campaign.

There is always advertising available as an option, but that is substantially less effective and more costly. On Google, 70% of searchers prefer the natural results to advertisements. Say the term your site is optimised for has 100 searches a day, and you are in position 12. You'll only get 40% of your potential visitors. If you're in position 21, you'll get about 25%. Position 31 and you'll get less than 19%. If you are number 1, you'll get 100 of them. If you buy an advertisement, you'll get 30% and you pay for each visitor. The moment you stop paying, you stop getting visitors. An SEO campaign on the other hand lasts for years. Once you are at the top, it takes a lot to move you down the results. As such, SEO is the most cost-effective and efficient method of marketing your website.

You also need your site to rank well for the correct keyword or search phrase. One of my favourite examples comes from research I have conducted into the job industry as part of an SEO campaign. The term a search jobs has 21 searches a day. The term job search has over 6000. Number 1 for a search jobs will give you 21 visitors. Number 1 for a job search  though will give you 6000. Choosing the right keywords is an important part of any SEO campaign.

How do you target the site towards a specific search phrase or keyword? By having the keyword in the title tag, the description and in the content. It should also be in the anchor text of links pointing to that site. If you are in a reciprocal link exchange, and the link to your job site is the name of your company, that is far less effective at promoting your website than a link saying ajob search company name. It's a simple step and seemingly obvious, but many website owners do not do that and their site suffers in it's ranking as a result.

With the right proportion of the key word in relation to your content and sufficient inbound links with the right anchor text, your website can become the number 1 site for that term. There is more to SEO than just that, but those are the 2 essential factors. Without good content, or links, your website will never rank well and will never bring in all the business it could.