SEO Strategy & Management: What to Do When You Are in Charge of Everything?

(Before It's News)

Everything you need to know about Search Engine Optimization, PPC advertising, Social Media Marketing, Conversion Rates, Affiliate Marketing, through Google Plus Optimization, along with full Writing and Blogging tips, including: SEO Copywriting, Article and E-book Writing as well as Guest Blogging enchanted with Graphic & Web Design, Video Editing along with Web Development.

You probably wonder what everything is and how one person can be in charge of everything in the SEO world. Many SEO consultants have specialized in one area of expertise and leave the rest of the work to those who have perfected their knowledge in these areas. However, when you are at the beginning of your career it can happen so that you must develop a complete strategy for dealing with SEO on a website. This often happens to bloggers as well, those who want to do all the work by themselves. Managing a large amount of data in such situations can be overwhelming, so we have decided to help you develop a basic strategy you can later on change and adapt, as you learn more about the website you are working on and its visitors.

Developing a strategy for a brand new website differs from developing it for a website which has been around for quite some time. Those who are starting from scratch can use this section as an on-page plan of action.

Detecting problems on a website

A website can have many issues which prevent it from “succeeding”. In my experience, problems most often occur on-page and in the area of link-building.

On-page check

We will highlight some of the areas to check and mention some of the tools which can be used. The audit of an existing website can be more thorough, but we will deal with some of the most common issues.

• URLs and canonicalization

First of all, you need to choose the canonical version of the site, www or non-www, if it has not yet been chosen. Some further settings may be in place later on, but this one is done at the beginning.

The other important thing in this section is to check if all of the URLs are static. If not, they should be. Also, there should be only one URL for a content page, regardless of the path used to get there. The keywords should be used in URLs, as close as possible to the domain.

• Titles

Check a sample of titles all across the website. They should be up to 70 characters long, descriptive as possible with the use of keywords. The most important keywords go near the beginning.

• Meta tags

You should check a sample of page, category and all the other existing description tags. Check if they fit the frame of 140 characters, how well they are written and if they contain keywords.

Also check the robots meta tags to make sure all pages which should be indexed are set to “index, follow” and those which shouldn’t be indexed to “noindex, follow”.

• Robots.txt

This file can mess up the indexing heavily if someone handled it without having the knowledge required. If this file looks like this:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

The website you are working on is in trouble. Change the file to only disallow the indexing of the admin section, and set the rest “noindex” tags on pages individually.

• HTTP error codes

All pages which return a 404 error code should be redirected to an existing page similar in content.

• Site architecture and navigation

You need to make sure the site you are working on has its every page easily reachable to both humans and bots. See how the site is organized. The architecture should be flat, that is, each product page has to be close to the home page. The maximum is 3-4 clicks away, not more. This is what we recommend.

As far as the bots are concerned, you need to make sure navigation works for them to. The easiest way to check this is to turn off JavaScript on the Firefox browser and use The UserAgentSwitcherplugin to see the page as the Google bot would.

• Sitemap

The sitemap should be placed in the web root folder on the server, and submitted to Google using Webmaster tools. The existence of the sitemap should be checked directly on the server, and Webmaster Tools are used to check if the map was submitted and if it is in the proper form. You may need to update it according to the recent changes on the web site.

• HTML problems

Use this HTMLValidator to check whether everything is ok.

• CSS problems

Use CSSValidator to check CSS.

• Site speed

There is a toolforcheckingsitespeed as well. This is a tool by Google which also gives you improvement suggestions.

• Images

Check their filenames and alt tags. Alt tags are important and need to contain keywords.

Focusing on keywords

Yes, keywords are still important, believe it or not. Even though keyword stuffing and similar techniques are definitely out of the picture, it is still important to know which phrases you should focus on and use more frequently than others. You need to pay attention to certain things.

• Know your niche – this helps you find a plethora of variations and long-tail keywords.

• Know your tools – they are essential for narrowing down extensive lists and finding the keywords worth keeping.

• Tools which highlight the way people use the Internet and search for what the website you are working on offers are important for discovering trends and using them in finding the best keywords.

• Keep in mind that you need to use diverse keywords. Exact matches are the most relevant, but you need to pay attention to the way search engines work. They use synonyms, recognize the phrases even when they are scattered in the text in the form of single words and chunks the phrase in question consists of, and they give more value to long-tail keywords. Know the game you are playing.

• Never try to trick Google or you will have some bad time.

We bring you the list of free keyword tools worth using:

• GoogleInsights

• GoogleKeywordTool

• GoogleWebmasterTools

• MergeWords

• WordtrackerTools

• Soovle

Sorting out keywords and fixing/doing on-page SEO should be your priority. I have put these two sections in this order, because to fix something you first need to detect it. Some of those things can be done/fixed before the keyword research and some can’t. So organize your time wisely and make a thorough action plan in order to do this as efficiently as possible. After that we come to the link building.

Planning a link building strategy

Link building can be conducted in many ways, and there is definitely more than one strategy for it. Go through these steps for building a basic strategy you can later on expand.

• If the website you are working on has been around for quite some time, check its backlink profile using OpenSiteExplorer or a similar tool, as well as the Webmaster Tools. If any of the links look fishy, do everything in your power to remove them. Rmoovtool could help.

• Check the web neighborhood based on the keywords used on the website.

• Make a list of competitors this way, but also try using some tools for that.

• Mark the websites which would potentially have an interest in linking to you. Then check them to see if you really want a link from them (Open Site Explorer).

• Check the competitors’ backlink profile to identify websites which have given them links and could give links to you as well, or even put a link to the website you’re working on instead of the competitor’s link.

• Content the webmasters. Make sure you do this in a proper way, since unwanted e-mails marked as spam can bring you troubles.

• Work on the existing content and develop a content strategy as well as a content marketing strategy. The content is your best bet, so use it to create link bait. This can help you:

  • Appealing and compelling titles.

  • Ego bait.

  • Memes, infographics, comics and other fun and shareable content.

  • Lists of top something.

  • Tips and tricks of the trade.

Conclusion

Once you have a good foundation, it is easy to build further up. This article can help you build a foundation, and we would love to hear what will your next steps be.

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