We get a lot of requests from clients who want to know all the right steps for proper search engine optimization. While there is a ton of detail that go into each of these sections and often it takes experience and education to make a positive impact here, based on popular request we have simplified the SEO process accordingly.  Below, please find and review SD Interactive’s 12 step approach to search engine optimization:

1. Have a clear keyword strategy – What are the keywords you are optimizing for? This, above all else, will determine your SEO success. Choose your keywords carefully (traffic potential and competitiveness) and you are on your way. Once you have your keywords, get a list together so you can track and follow your progress. Also, good to know for linking priorities.
2. Meta tag optimization – are your tags completely optimized? There are preferred limits set by the engines. Google, for example, will display up to 66 characters of a title tag, cropping at times to complete certain words. Do you have too many characters? Too many keywords in your title? Do you use keywords in your descriptions?
3. Content optimization – is your content optimized? Are your keywords in your content? Do you cross-link? Do you use anchor text in your cross links? Are you images optimized? Do you have your keywords in your image name and alt text? Are your URL’s optimized? Are your keywords in your URL string? Do you have videos? Are they optimized? Do you have your keywords embedded into the video tags? Do you have a press release/media section? Is it optimized? Do you have a blog? Is it optimized?
4. XML Sitemap, robots.txt files – Do you have these in place? If so, are they optimized and current?
5. Site/Code optimization – Good code is a huge factor for ranking your site. How good is your code?
6. X-Factors – How fast does your site load? How fast do your pictures load? Are your images compressed for quicker loading? FYI Slow load times alone can be an entire reason for not ranking better.  Domain age – how long has your site been on the web? Also a huge factor in ranking. Legacy sites normally do better. How long is your commitment to your domain? If less than a year, not a good sign. Longer is better since legitimate businesses commit to the long term not the short term.
7. Off-page optimization – Once your site is launched, you must engage in three things link building 9) content development 10) social media marketing. More info listed below.
8. Link building – The most important part of off-page SEO is to obtain high quality, one way links to your website from relevant websites. There are a number of ways to get links but quality has now surpassed quantity – so look to obtain links from highly relevant, high Google PageRank sites. Over all other forms of link building, these produce the best results.
9. Content development – Adding fresh content to your site is a win for your customers and for your rankings. Make sure you have a content development strategy and constantly add new pages of content to your site. Can be done via blog, static HTML pages, press releases, new home page stories, RSS feeds, etc but the content needs to be unique and not duplicated anywhere else on the site.
10. Social media marketing – extremely important these days to “extend” your brand outside of your own web presence and social media allows you to do just that. For obtaining loyalty from existing customers, Social media does wonders. For SEO, however, the most important element to a Social Media Strategy is to get people to talk about you (and link about you).
11. SEO reporting & analytics – the most important thing you can do is to track your results and their impact on your bottom line. Tying in an SEO report with your analytics is therefore critical these days. What good is it to rank #1 for a keyword that does not produce results. Instead, better to focus on words with better returns. There are many tool and analytic programs that can handle vast amounts of data to help you make better decisions with your marketing spends.
12. Review and readjust – If you words aren’t working, make changes. You are never stuck with your original keyword decisions and can change them when necessary.
    

While admittedly simplified, following this 12 step approach to SEO should hopefully always point your SEO campaign in the right direction.

Tags: Search engine optimization, SEO, seo basics

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 22:19 and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.