A Typical Search Engine Optimization Strategy

1. Analyze current search engine ranking and website traffic. By establishing current traffic analysis, you can measure optimizaton success.
2. Research current competitors. Where are they advertising? What keywords are they targeting?
3. Determine Link Popularity. Who links to your website? To your competitors?
4. Research keywords and key phrases for your business. What keywords will produce the best return on your investment?
5. Review and revise webpage architecture and structure. Construct website so that each search engine can read, traverse and index each webpage into their databases.
6. Review and revise content, implementing search strategies and techniques. Since 85% of all Internet users use search engines and 90% of all traffic comes from the top 10 search engines and directories, efforts are focused on the most critical. Using the targeted keywords, pages are crafted with structure and content to rank well.
7. Test pages against targeted search engines. Do the new pages measure up to all the tests?
8. Manually submit to the top search engines and directories. Automate submissions to all others. Submitting puts your name on the list for indexing and will take 1-8 weeks to complete. Since some directories are edited by human hands, indexing to search directories like Open Directory can take additional time.
9. Track results via Website Statistics and CGI Software (Ad Tracking/Hosting). Is traffic increasing and from which search engines and for which terms?
10. Monitor positions with custom reporting. Have a report emailed to you regularly that tells you where you currently rank on the top search engines for your targeted keywords. The positioning report not only shows progress but also alerts you to any slipping positions.
11. Manage and track specific advertising campaigns (Ad Tracking/Hosting). Allows you to channel your advertising dollars to campaigns that work.
12. Pursue other forms of online advertising including pay-per-click, publishing of technical articles, and press releases. Consider a new avenue of driving traffic to your website.
13. Review, Revise, Refresh your content, and Resubmit. Online promotion is a constantly evolving process.