With this, I’d like to share to everyone the SEO process that I’ve able to make for the past years. I’ve based these SEO process steps during my training 5 years ago, of course it started all there. Plus, with the help of other SEO specialists and their blogs too, I just added some steps that I’ve been doing for the past years, steps that have been effective for me and my clients.
My 8 SEO Process Steps
Website Analysis
Duration: 1 to 3 hoursThere are a lot of tools that you can use for this, that can help you with analyzing the website that you wish to optimize. With these tools, you’ll be able to know what areas that the website needs to improve, to add, features that will not only help in ranking the website but also convert the traffic to more sales.
Business Competition and Analysis
Duration: 1-3 DaysIt’s important to know what business you’ll be marketing online. There are a lot of businesses that we can market online, from services to products, there are a lot of customers looking for it online you just have to get out of there and market it.
Through knowing what’s the client’s business is all about, you’d be able to know what keywords to target, what market to target, and present the data to the client. Hopefully, through the data and numbers of potential customers and sales that they can have online, the client will be convinced that SEO is not an additional cost but actually an investment for their business success.
As for the duration on how long this will be achieved, it may take a lot of time since there are circumstances that the SEO specialist is not familiar about the business. Like for me, there are businesses that are new to me but it’s common in the US.
With the help of the client, this can totally speed up through providing what their company is all about their products and services, why they choose this business and how they started it all, plus providing the top competitors according to them.
Keyword Research
Duration: 3-5 DaysNow, knowing what the business is all about, what products or services that you can help them market online, you can then use the terms they use and feed it on search engines like Google to find other relevant terms that you can use as a keyword to target.
Use the Google Keyword Planner, look at the competition, the average search volume on your target area. Pick the best keywords to target, share these list of keywords to the client, and if they give it a go, then pick the keywords to prioritize.
Based on my experience, not all clients can decide what keywords that they wish to rank. Sometimes I even convince my client not to go for a keyword that will not help them build their online reputation and/or make sales, sometimes clients have made up words and there’s no one looking or searching for it online – I don’t usually try to convince my client not to, there are some who just want to make that word as their brand.
So, yes it may even take a week or more before you come up with the final keywords to target. Depending on how the client responds, how you present it, how you help them decide faster, etc.
Website Optimization
Duration: 3-7 DaysNow this, there are some clients who wants to skip this step and just want me to go and do the offsite optimization. It’s either they’re too excited or they just don’t want to give me an access to their website.
I do understand the trust issues here, but it’s very important for your website to be optimized and touched by a SEO specialist, because there are things that the SEO specialist knows and the web developer doesn’t know. The SEO specialist is actually and usually more updated and knowledgable on optimizing the website, so it’s really important for your website to be optimized.
But if you want to skip this step, you might want to read my blog post on “Meta Tags - Is it Still Important?” it’s when I only asked for the access just to at least touch the meta tags, none other else. Just that. Just meta tags. That is because they don’t want anything, even a single letter be changed on their website, and I just “begged” to let me at least touch the meta tags since it’s not actually seen by their visitors.
In website optimization or commonly known as onsite optimization, you only not edit the meta tags, if possible we need to study and make corrections to the structure of the website. Not only to make it easier for your visitors to o around the website, but also for search engines to find the pages that will help us in ranking the website.
We'll also implement or make the changes necessary that we've found on our website analysis. Since in website analysis we're able to find out what areas needed to change, what are lacking, how to make the website better, we'll all make these changes if possible - since again there are some clients who don't want everything changed. Plus, we'll also implement the keywords we've selected to optimize the website for, optimizing the pages we picked for that keywords as the keyword's landing page.
Depending on how the website is designed, how many pages that is needed to be optimized, and all. On average, I can finish this in 3 days but to some clients I felt like it will take me like forever.
Search Engine Submission
Duration: 5 minutesIt’s very simple, you just give a signal to the search engines that “hey, I made some changes on our website, I’ve made it more search engine friendly, maybe you want to check it out?”.
There are also tools online to help you with this.
Link Building / Offsite Optimization
Duration: Monthly campaignThis is actually the monthly campaign. It’s when you create contents, find quality sites, find relevant sites to promote the website and build links to your website.
Can you do 1,000 links per month? Please don’t do that. Please take note that SEO is organic, it should natural and search engines like Google detects these. They may penalize the website, or even ban your website if they detected that there's something "unnatural" going on about your website. Be careful on how many links you build each month and what type of links you make, there are ethical ways to do this and it’s best to do it in an ethical way to ensure your website’s future.
Website Monitoring
Of course, while doing the offsite optimization, you must monitor on what’s going on to the website. How your SEO is affecting the website, the traffic, the visitors, and the conversions. With monitoring on what’s going on with your website you’d be able to know and compare the progress and see or show on how SEO doing on your website.SEO Reporting
With the data gathered for your monitoring, you’d be able to analyze everything and see if SEO is helping. But please take note that SEO is not an overnight work, it’s not a magic wand, it doesn’t take few weeks for you to be the #1 on Google every time someone looks for your products or services.If “TRUST IS EARNED” so is with SEO, “Ranking is Earned”. It doesn’t take for you to trust someone right away like it’s a TRUST AT FIRST SIGHT, it will take to getting to know the person before you can really say that you trust them.
This is the same with search engines, why will Google rank a website as #1 or #10? Because Google trust them, Google knows that they have the content that Googlers (Google Users) are looking for. So, optimize the website, give a signal to search engines, market it offsite, and make search engine realize and remember each month that you should be on their top list.
I hope my 8 SEO process steps that I've shared with you will be able to help you on how SEO goes on my side. Some SEOs may have a different process but surely the basics are there, and should be there. I also do hope that with this article, you get the idea that SEO needs a lot of work, the first month is crucial for the following months and years success, also that it works two ways your SEO service provider can't do this alone. The client's cooperation is also highly valuable.
Got a question about SEO? Leave it as a comment below and I’ll try to answer it as best as I can through a blog post.