Every SEO task or project should be part of an overall strategy. Whether it’s a content marketing strategy, an international expansion, or just a crawler project aimed at fixing technical SEO problems, these articles can help you decide what’s important, what works with your customers, how much resource you might need and help you think about the wide range of tasks that are possible. Maybe SEO isn’t actually what you need. A short PPC project might be the answer.
Tip: Our 9-part SEO Strategy Made Easy training series is available.
In addition to SEO strategy information for small businesses, including checklists for those short of time, we’ve also included processes that can be used to guide specialist SEO projects such as keyword research, using Google Trends and doing digital due-diligence on domains, perhaps before buying or migrating,
Web accessibility is also an important consideration and this isn’t just about being mobile friendly. Font sizes, button sizes, descriptions, subtitles, colour and content-shift must be considered for all types of user.
Once you’ve started the SEO process rolling, how to you measure SEO? Without tracking performance you won’t know whether you’re throwing money and time down the drain. What exactly is a good SEO result anyway?
Outsourcing is a topic that most SEO projects will consider. Do you keep it all in-house, give it to an agency or have a freelance expert work with you? Are they proposing black-hat SEO ideas that could get you in trouble in the future. That SEO audit they are proposing – is it good, bad or just a money-grab? What should you expect from an SEO audit?
Types of SEO activities
SEO can be split into a number of categories, which roughly translate to skill areas and skill levels.
- SEO Basics – Things to know before you get started on an SEO project.
- Technical SEO – Setting up the web environment including domains, hosting, content management systems, web software and more advanced topics such as caching and sitemaps, for which there might be easy ‘plug-in’ solutions. See the list below.
- On-page SEO – Content targeting, meta information, quality, formatting and titling that can help Google and customers to understand the topic more easily.
- Off-page SEO – Outreach and publishing activities that can influence the way other websites link to your content.
- Advanced SEO – Topics for which an advanced skill level is required. JavaScript handling, CDNs, cloaking and edge-SEO.
- Google algorithms, guidelines and crawling information – ongoing information needed to understand where Google is taking SEO.
- Measuring SEO with performance indicators.
- SEO strategy – Checklists and ideas about how to run, monitor and measure SEO activities for different types of businesses and budget.
