Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Process
1. Initial Analysis
[Meeting with customer]
This meeting is designed to ascertain the website's objectives, target market and how success is to be measured. An initial set of keywords are provided by the client.
2. Keywords analysis
The keywords provided by the client may be thought of as relevant keywords but the keyword analysis is aimed at finding out what the customers will actually search on most
Find keywords:
Keyword Playground -
Users enter keyphrases in Search Engines to get information they need, It is VERY important that you optimize for such keyphrases. This tools help you determine key phrases and report on its monthly search estimate.
3. Competitor analysis
At this stage we need to find out who your competitors are, what keywords are they using, and how well are they ranking. Some of the tools below also look at backlinks. This will be useful when we get to stage seven.
Keywords from sites:
Domain Stats Tool -
This tool helps you get all kinds of statistics of your competitor's domains. The statistics include Yahoo WebRank, Pages Indexed by various Searcb Engines, Backlink count, Alexa Taffic Rank, and Age of the domains.
Competitor's Links
4. Combine keywords
[Meeting with client to agree on keyword list]
In order to collect a good number of quality keywords stages 2 - 3 may be repeated. Once satisfied with the number of keywords we would meet with the client to agree on the final keyword selection.
5. On-page optimization - web design
- Site structure - we look at the technology being used to see if it might will hamper the visibility of the website in search engines. If there are any problems this may require a total or partial rebuild of the site.
- Code structure - we look at what is know as the more traditional aspects of SEO, namely the meta tags, title tags, header tags, and alt tags.
- Internal link structure - your website should be like a smaller version of the internet. Where appropriate pages should link to other pages. In addition to internal linking we also examine usability issues related to the navigation i.e. to ensure that users can easily find things on your website.
- Keyword density and document length - we examine the use of keywords in your tags as well as within the copy of your website.
[Meeting with customer to agree on-page changes as discovered during this investigation]
Create optimized content.
Change tags to reflect keywords.
Search Engine Spider Simulator - This tool Simulates a Search Engine by displaying the contents of a webpage exactly how a Search Engine would see it. It also displays the hyperlinks that will be followed (crawled) by a Search Engine when it visits the specified webpage.
Keywords from themes:
Keywords from sites:
6. Site Test
Test the site in different browsers and screen resolutions to ensure that there are no bugs.
7.Off Page Optimization
Submit site to search engines.
Domain Strategy
Buy a new domain or buy a "secondhand" domain name. If you have bought a secondhand domain name you will need to check it to make sure that it has not been banned by any of the search engines. The older the domain the better. Another important factor is where the domain is located.
- Domain Age Tool - check the age of the Domain you are
buying. The older the better.
- Has that Domain been banned by Google? If you can't find it
resubmit it in Google Webmasters
- Determine a Website's Country -
Not ranking well in a country specific Search Engine? Many Search Engines determine a website's country based on the physical location of the IP Address. To rank better in a specific country make sure your website is hosted in the same country.
- bad-neighborhood checker
Domain Age Tool -
This tools displays the approximate age of a website on the Internet and allows you to view how the website looked when it first started. It also helps you find out the age of your competitor's domains, older domains may get a slight edge in Search Engine Rankings.
Linking
Manual submission of site to search engines and directories
Monitor the inclusion of pages
Track results - note that it can take from 5-10 weeks after site submission to become listed and ranked.
Domain Age Tool -
This tools displays the approximate age of a website on the Internet and allows you to view how the website looked when it first started. It also helps you find out the age of your competitor's domains, older domains may get a slight edge in Search Engine Rankings.
Check Yahoo WebRank -
This tool help you evaluate the importance of a URL as perceived by Yahoo and Google.
Backlink Summary - This tool will give you get a summary of your competitors backlinks.
Backlink Builder -
This tools help you build a LOT of quality backlinks, it searches for websites of the theme you specify that contain keyphrases like "Add link", "Add site", "Add URL", "Add URL", "Submit URL" etc. Most of the results could be potential backlinks.
Reciprocal Link Check -
This tool helps you ensure that your link partners are linking back to your website. It also determines the anchor text used by your link partners to link to your website.
8. Check progress
Check search engine rank
Check search engine registration
9. Fine tune and tweak
Go back to the beginning to fine tune keyword list and on page
optimization and create more links