1. Initial Analysis



[Meeting with customer]

This meeting is designed to ascertain the website's objectives, target market and how success is to be measured. An initial set of keywords are provided by the client.

2. Keywords analysis

The keywords provided by the client may be thought of as relevant keywords but the keyword analysis is aimed at finding out what the customers will actually search on most

3. Competitor analysis

At this stage we need to find out who your competitors are, what keywords are they using, and how well are they ranking.

4. Combine keywords

[Meeting with client to agree on keyword list]

In order to collect a good number of quality keywords stages 2 - 3 may be repeated. Once satisfied with the number of keywords we would meet with the client to agree on the final keyword selection.

5. On-page optimization - web design

Site structure - we look at the technology being used to see if it might will hamper the visibility of the website in search engines. If there are any problems this may require a total or partial rebuild of the site.

Code structure - we look at what is know as the more traditional aspects of SEO, namely the meta tags, title tags, header tags, and alt tags.

Internal link structure - your website should be like a smaller version of the internet. Where appropriate pages should link to other pages. In addition to internal linking we also examine usability issues related to the navigation i.e. to ensure that users can easily find things on your website.

Keyword density and document length - we examine the use of keywords in your tags as well as within the copy of your website.

[Meeting with customer to agree on-page changes as discovered during this investigation]

Create optimized content.

Change tags to reflect keywords.

6. Site Test

Test the site in different browsers and screen resolutions to ensure that there are no bugs.

7.Off Page Optimization

Submit site to search engines.

Domain Strategy

Buy a new domain or buy a "secondhand" domain name. If you have bought a secondhand domain name you will need to check it to make sure that it has not been banned by any of the search engines. The older the domain the better. Another important factor is where the domain is located.

Linking:

Manual submission of site to search engines and directories

Monitor the inclusion of pages

Track results - note that it can take from 5-10 weeks after site submission to become listed and ranked.

8. Check progress

Check search engine rank

Check search engine registration

9. Fine tune and tweak

Go back to the beginning to fine tune keyword list and on page optimization and create more links

Miles Woolgar

e-Marketing By Design