Tuesday, June 28, 2016

A structured process with search engine optimisation is important to ensure steps are not left out. All websites have many positive and negative points; it can be easy to spend too much time focused in one area. By following a process and assigning time-scales you can monitor your progress and easily notice when one area is slipping behind.

There are many aspects of SEO and if you are struggling with one area it is advisable to spend your time focusing on something different. This allows you to stay productive and working on other areas of optimisation. Sometimes after moving onto another aspect of SEO your subconscious works out the solution to your previous problem, so never get bogged down one problem for too long.

The Search Engine Optimisation process can be structured in the following steps:

Review A review of a websites visitor and traffic statistics helps gain an insight into the current and previous performance of the website. It is also important to review and discuss current and previous online and offline marketing activities. Best practice marketing encourages a synergy of all marketing communications to display quality, trust and clarity.

With Search Engine Optimisation it is important to review a websites current online footprint, by understanding how visible the site is within web and media resources. The external online footprint is important, but paying attention to the structure of a website is also a key point of review. A websites internal structure should be well thought out and promote interlinking of related media resources whilst encouraging visitor contributions and comments.

Discuss Completing a review to understand a websites current and previous online marketing history allows key trends and profiles to emerge. From gaining this new insight, the following points should be discussed with the stakeholders involved.

Key performance indicators should also be highlighted and agreed.
The sales funnel and primary conversion goals.
Content generation should be planned and discussed to best serve the website visitors.
If required, a brainstorm should occur discussing how to better improve the website to meet its overall objectives and streamline visitor interaction. When working on online marketing projects, transparency and awareness is an important aspect of communication for all involved. Everyone should understand when new campaigns and promotions will launch, this allows all involved to better support each other.

From viewing captured website usage data the popular areas of a website can be identified. This provides a good indication of what new content would best serve the site visitors. The content generated should be focused around the keywords your site visitors use to find your products and services. This allows you to talk directly to your customers using the words and phrases they relate to. From including and aligning your content with these keywords, it helps the search engines understand how your website should be ranked within search results.

Keywords Full keyword research and development should occur to understand and expand on the existing keywords used. User search trends change regularly, what once could have been the most beneficial keyword to gain high visibility for, could now not be as popular as it once was. Researching for long tail keywords is also important, these are often phrases that specifically related to a particular product or service and provide higher conversions.

Once all the keywords have been reviewed it is sensible to collate them into levels of importance, for small to medium sized websites a simple list of primary and secondary keywords would be recommended.

Plan Once everything has been reviewed, discussed and understood a plan of implementation should be created. These are often called 'Search Visibility Plans' and contain the steps involved for a website to gain visibility from online promotion of specific marketing campaigns. Sometimes it is important to physically develop a website to better serve its users and the search engines. This development should be planned so it is completed before a new marketing campaign is launched.

Content should be planned and discussed with the content contributors to guide and coach them on how to best generate content focused on keywords. Milestone review points should be planned to stop and review the websites current online footprint. Discussions should then occur to ensure progress is meeting the current demands of the website.

It is also important to plan for any external factors that may influence the websites visitors, if press coverage is planned it needs to be communicated to all involved. This allows for different activities to be separated and independently reviewed to judge their effectiveness.


optimisation checklist

0 comments :

Post a Comment