Sunday, July 10, 2011

Strategy and Planning

Strategy and Planning: Success in SEO is won or lost in this phase. Everything you do from this point on depends on a winning plan.

Establish Your Goals: Often this stage is overlooked - you know what you want, right? Well sometimes your goal can be virtually unattainable. You must research the competition to find out how much effort it will take to attain your goal. Look at the top sites for your desired keywords and set your sights on beating the weakest link. If the competition is too fierce - set your sights on niche keywords.

Select keywords: Use keyword suggestion tools to find out if your keywords are highly searched and on target. Select relevant keywords but don't try to target too many as this will dilute your site's relevance.

Create content around your keywords. Use the keywords you select (and variations) throughout the site's content. At this stage, don't worry about densities - just write content that is relevant and legible to visitors.

Architecture: Draw out a plan - how will each page in your site flow and relate to each keyword? Make a list of pages and the corresponding keywords they will target.

Link Plan: As you are researching, make a list of prospects for link partners