Building Your SEO Plan : A template
SEO Plan Template
In other words, what do you hope that the plan and campaign achieves for you? Remember our pep talk on goal setting? A few thoughts on what you might use as a starting point are listed below.
Search Engine Rank. Clearly the first objective of almost all search engine optimization campaigns is to increase search engine visibility. Your goals therefore might include the following components:
- High search engine results page rankings for critical keywords
- High positions in the search engine for a broader array of keywords
- Increase Alexa and Google page ranks
Traffic and Exposure. In other words, how many people do you want to visit your site as a result of your SEO efforts?
- Leads – In other words, how many customer's do I want to contact me? Note: This is less applicable when you are selling products where interaction with a sales person and follow- up required is minimal (business example: www.amazon.com ).
- Sales – How many sales do I expect to generate as a results of my efforts? How will you quantify this, dollars, transactions, etc?
Who are you targeting with your SEO efforts? Be as specific as possible as it is a lot easier to plan to reach a specific group than a broad, unrelated mass.
List the profile(s) of those who the campaign will be targeted towards. Who is the campaign intended for? Who will it help? Humanize the target. Are they soccer moms? NASCAR dads? Once you have the who, it is a question of the how and where.
- How will you reach them? Which keywords will you use? Different people are likely to use different keywords when searching for the same thing. You need to find those that resonate with your audience.
- Where will you reach them? This applies more to your link building strategy. While links alone will boost rank, thinking about where your audience goes will help you gain relevance (important in SEO link building) as well as referral traffic – an ancillary benefit of SEO.
Now that you know who your audience is and have thought through what keywords they might use, its time to set those keywords in stone and link them together under a common theme. A theme that ties together the ideas, products or services you want to sell the customer segment via natural search engine rank.
- Step One : Conduct extensive keyword research as described throughout this guide. Create a comprehensive list and then rank them into your top keywords. Then group these keywords according to themes (related to an idea, product or service).
- Step Two : Choose a set of keywords based on the best opportunity to grow your business using organic search rank – a combination of keywords available, their traffic, their competition and the customer segment / product you want to sell using SEO.
- Step Three : Use the theme and keyword set chosen as the basis for your campaign.
What channels will you use for distribution of your content - what mix of keywords, site / page optimization, link building and directories? The exercise is about understanding and identifying which options you have / want to use within those four channels.
Here are a few rules to keep in mind:
- Follow the guidelines we have set forth for keyword selection.
- Be sure you correctly optimize your site, pages and any location where content will be housed using as many methods you can.
- Be sure you properly build inbound links, ensure the site is related from a contextual point, has traffic and has good search engine visibility / page rank.
- Similar to the criteria outlined for link building, be sure any directory meets the same base level requirements and that you hit the major directories like the DMOZ.
- Despite the numerous options available to you, focus. Don't try every option in every channel at the same time. Pick a handful, try them out and really give them a chance before moving on or adding to your strategy.
- Conduct research. Understand what you competitors and those that rank highly for the keywords you are targeting do. A simple review of their site and their back links will reveal this.
When outlining your mix, use the following template.
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Name
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Type
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Site Name
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Site Url
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Landing Page
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Example 1
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Keyword Density, Site / Page Structure, Link Building, Directory
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Name of website or service where marketing placed
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If an external link, where will the user land when clicking through
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What's your time line? Build a detailed project plan that holds you accountable and identifies the necessary steps.
This will be used to help you track the effectiveness of each SEO tactic.
- Tactic
- Date implemented
- Page view generated (this would be the total page views for the optimized page based solely on your SEO tactic – for example : referrals from Google)
- Leads generated / sales resulting
What's your plan for measuring success and how do you plan to make adjustments if things are not working.
What analytics tool will you use? Choose one and install it. Google analytics is a great free service.
- Set a series of dates to review the results recorded in your placement log vs. your goals.
