Mark Scott wrote me this morning to ask about recommendations for an SEO "routine" - putting together the process for all the tasks required to successfully implement search friendliness, targeting, marketing and all the other elements of SEO. I'm happy to oblige :)
At SEOmoz, we've got a fairly standard process for sites we build and market (internally; not for clients - a whole different story) that goes something like this:
- Develop an Idea Worthy of Spreading Virally
Since we're not interested in paying a fortune for advertising or promotional campaigns, and have proven to be very proficient with word-of-mouth techniques (particularly on the web), we favor ideas that we think will spread like wildfire, without much incentive. - Conduct Competitive Research
It's critical to know who you're up against, and searching at Google, Yahoo!, del.icio.us/popular tags, Digg and Technorati (depending on the vertical) helps us identify potential competitors. We want to know what they're doing right and wrong so we can execute smarter and better. Alternatively, if the competition has the market sealed up, we won't waste our time with an idea that's already been done well. - Brainstorm Keywords
We're not just brainstorming for keyword research, we're also exploring other angles a project could take and other channels for opportunity. - Keyword Research
You have to know if your ideas have enough popularity and relevance to be an attractive target for traffic. Assume that you can get between 1-5% of the keyword numbers reported by Overture or Wordtracker and then decide - would it still be worth it? When the answer is yes, you've got a winning project. We also use the keywords to know what to target in our pages and our linkbait marketing efforts - generally if we think the idea is good enough, we'll ignore the competitiveness level and shoot for the moon, i.e. the highest trafficked, most popular term/phrase in the sphere. - Information Architecture
Building out the concepts for which pages should exist on a site, what content modules should be on them, and how to organize the site is our next step. I like to use visual software like Flash, but a whiteboard or sketchpad works great here, too. - Keyword Targeting
Now that we have our KW research and an idea of what pages will exist on the site, it's time to determine which URLs go after which terms/phrases. Oftentimes, this means expanding the site architecture, which is fine, but I like to keep in mind that every page targeting a term better also have a reason why someone should link to it that sells itself. Competitive terms won't rank on new sites (or low-link-juice sites) without some serious external link love. - Site Design
Matt goes to work and makes everything look shiny and beautiful. I'm sure there's a long, complicated, arduous process he goes through here, but I just see a page spec go in and something rapturous come out, so I can't speculate about what goes on in his head or on his monitor. - Content Creation
Often the most time-consuming part of the process, this is when we author all of the text, images and multimedia that go into making the site great. High quality writers and editors are critical. - Development
Programming... Glorious, time-consuming programming and lots of it. Luckily, our team is very search savvy, so we don't generally worry about building a site that the engines won't like. However, this is the stage where you need to set the ground rules. It's cheesy and self-promotional, but if all your developers read and trust the guidelines in the Illustrated Search Friendliness Guide, you're going to have a much better time of things later on. - Launch
Hooray! We're ready for launch. The site goes live, we link to it from a blog post or release an announcement to some prominent bloggers in the relevant field and ping friends to test it out. - Social Media Promotion
Generally, since our material is what we consider "Digg-worthy" we'll send submissions to the relevant social news sites and even build a buzz inside communities where we regularly participate. - Standard Link Building
Luckily, we almost never engage in this practice, but on occasion, it can be valuable for a particularly high-return keyword term or phrase. - Analytics
Monitoring your results and finding the weak spots where you can improve is essential. We love Indextools, but often also have separate monitoring on the site to track inbound links (Technorati & Yahoo!), new member signups, contributions, purchases, etc.
What does your SEO routine look like?
This is great feedback, but if I was going to train someone to help me on an existing site, what I find difficult is putting a weekly routine together. Right now I seem to jump from one thing to another with out any real system. I have placed all my urls from my website in a spreadsheet and started adding the inbound links to them with keywords. I am also adding the articles I have written, but have now got to stage where its a big mess. This of course is a nightmare when you are trying to train someone to help.
I wonder what sort of routine people work to on an existing site, e.g. Monday write an article, submit to media sites, Tuesday look for links, Wednesday email to get links etc. (this of course is very rough outline).
This may vary depending on the site and what is needed.
It sounds like you are on your way to creating a tool to help with tracking. One idea might be to break out the different elements you are tracking into different tabs within a spreadsheet... sometimes trying to track too much in one tab makes everything overwhelming.
Perhaps the real challenge is the follow thru. Maybe you need to create a weekly task sheet for each project/site that details your plan by day with a checkoff for each task. This way when Monday comes and you've made that your day for article writing or adding new content to the site, you have that visual reminder and something to check off.
Assuming the person you are training knows how to perform the actual tasks, these kinds of weekly/monthly task lists might help them to get into the program as well.
Without the task list, it may be too easy for things to slide, get put off, or just buried under all the other critical things that come up.
We've created an SEO task management system inside SoloSEO. You can create custom checklists and as you go through the checklists, unchecked items become tasks. You can create checklists for different SEO strategies for example, like more of a social media campaign, or just a traditional organic SEO campaign.
I used to do a lot more of this as far as creating a weekly task sheet and working my way through each task. For some reason I seem to have gotten away from it, which is possibly why I haven't felt as productive recently.
All of the above are exactly the reason why.
Thanks for the reminder.
Very Cool!!
I like this Decalogue so much that I've translated it in the best SEO/SEM Italian Forum.
(https://www.giorgiotave.it/forum/posizionamento-nei-motori-di-ricerca/38697-la-routine-del-search-engine-optimization.html)
Thanks
Love the post if building from scratch, but if not:
1. Relevant authoritative back links. Link baiting and social media.2. Accessibility in themed structure. Making your website easy to crawl and index. Information architecture is key.3. Basic on-site SEO factors. Fresh original content, over and over as the products/service promotion allow.
yep - these as well as a good competitive analysis. yahoo explorer is good for finding links to competitors, spyfu and keycompete are good for researching PPC competitors.
Great post. Especially for someone like me who has just started a blog. Thanks for sharing
Thanks for the overview Rand. I want to ask you to elaborate on each step in this process, though I suppose that's pretty much what most of the posts here are already doing.
I'm curious about when you're developing an idea. Do you tend to look more for ideas you feel provide the better opportunity for profit or would you lean more towards ideas you feel passionate about? I assume the ideal situation is both, but when it's a close call between two ideas which side of the equation might tip the scales?
Matt if you're listening I'd be interested in knowing if you have your own process for a site's design and of course if you do please share.
A great road map Rand, for anyone who needs guidance for their 'SEO routine.' Lots of great information here. Thanks.
Good strategies.
Great starter guideline for good seo practise. I think that this would apply more to a new website, would be interesting to see a plan when managing say 10 clients per month.
Excellent Post, Good one
Excellent stuffs!
To add, help SEO clients establish a new set of small (and manageable) standard operating culture in support of their SEO campaign (link-building). Example: every Friday morning is Article Submission time.
Instil values in them, and make it part of their blood and culture.
Hi Rand, thanks for the great post. I have been a premium member for the last 6 weeks and truely enjoying it.
I am wondering, I know your clients are usually large proven companies; however would you see your routine be any different if you were working for smaller business competing in lesser competitive markets?
For exemple the local plumber who wants a top ranking for local searches wont necessairly need the viral marketing, generally only the on site optimization and moderate link strength will do the job.
This is a Process, not a routine. I would be very interested to see a daily, or weekly routine for the continuing SEM that would go with the development project described above.
I am doing SEO for a mid-size, world-wide company's site. The site was created without much SEO in mind, so taking it from there and making it optimized is not an easy task.
My routine has been optimizing the meta info, adding descriptive text on all the pages, and now we're having a load of articles done.
If it was up to me the whole site would be redone the right way but because this is a fairly new site the company is not willing to spend the money on redesigning it.
Oh think of the compliance regulations you'd have to meet!
I absolutely believe this works for you guys Rand, I'm just wondering: what would you do if you had to build a Fortune 500 site from scratch? Or let me rephrase: a site for a company that doesn't want to use social media / linkbait, for whatever reason... Would you do it? Or would you just not take the client?
Surely if a Fortune 500 company wants to go live with a site, they are going to have a huge advertising budget behind them and a marketing department.
Thus, the building and SEO of the site would be possibly outsourced but the SEM would be part of the marketing department (says an SEM who sits in the marketing department). After all, they will argue the need for a whole, coherent strategy.
i do not think that was the question precisely from Joost.
Good post rand, This is the real process of building a new website.
Thanks
You have given all main tasks for SEO activity but need more information about Off-Page optimization activity here.
Thanks
Anil Kumar Singh
This is a great post, thanks Rand.
I have recently been writing a routine myself so my collegues can see where they fit into the system and why.
Its helpful to let them see the system as it shows that online and offline marketing can/should use different languages. (we have mainly focused in offline marketing in the past).
My routine doesnt add anything to yours, however I had neglected the first two in your list, which are highly valuable.
I am also writing a slightly different routine for when I get a site thats already built (the majority of the time) to SEO/market.
I'll share when its done
I like to create a sitemap right off the bat, it gives you a good feel for the whole project. I also like submitting the sitemap because I think its helpful, especially for a newer domain. A blog is a great way to get the company to start contributing to the indexed content on the site (besides all of its other business benefits). Plus it's "free" so it can be easy to convince them to let you implement one. We always get excellent long tail keyword traffic from blogs, it is fantastic. Creating an adwords account not only can help with traffic, especially while SEO is under way, but it helps the trust factor a bit. Great list, Rand.
Michael I kind of do something similar as far as a sitemap goes. I still like to use index cards to write down every potential page of a site and then add notes to each card. It helps me better see the architecture and generates ideas for new content. It even helps me see where some pages I thought indispensable don't really belong.
It was a tip someone gave me a long time ago and I've used it for any site that is going to have more than a handful of pages.
Our company sometimes gets stuck in a rut "waiting" for clients to add content to a site so we can "optimize" it. Budget-wise this is effecteive, but realistically - it's not. Hopefully our clients are so busy w/ internet traffic they dont have time to write content.
As an outsourced-SEO firm - how do you get your senior account managers (and your clients) on board to spend money creating content? I know it's important - adding new content is key - but are there any tips or tricks you all can offer to move things along?
Thanks for the great article, Rand and to all the Mozzers for a great blog!
~Carrie Hill
Maybe this is another topic, but I think it relates to #1 & #2. How much time (if any) do you spend on these items before you meet / sign-up a client?
I work with small businesses and don't have the notoriety of Rand, so I have to work to build some credibility in my potential client's eyes. I like to do some research before hand, but I struggle with how much time to spend looking at their current site and competition to build this credibility.
I should have clarified in the post that this is a process that we use "internally" for creation. It's NOT how we work with clients (as we almost never do webdev except for in-house stuff). The client process would have to be another post :)
Sorry for the confusion, and thanks for catching me.
I usually start the process by asking a client "what does success look like to you?" and develop the KPI's at the onset of the campaign so when we are working on it everyone knows form the onset how we will be judged. I think that is also discussed earlier as well in the sales process.