Developing The Perfect Search Engine Optimisation Plan

Develop An SEO Plan For Your Business Success

Having a written search engine optimisation plan is essential to tracking your progress and ultimate success. Knowing exactly what your customers want, and how they search for you online, will help you in formulating a plan and watching your progress up the search engine slippery slope.

The following points will help you to see through the 'fog' and clarify what needs doing first. You'll also discover if you really need the help of an SEO consultant professional seo help to achieve your business goals faster.

Where to Start With Your SEO Plan?

First of all you will need to define what your goals will be for your website and business. Your goals could be to feature on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN for your top five keyword phrases, to attract 1000 more potential customers to your website, to increase your conversion ratios (visitors into buyers) or to attract 'x' amount of more readers to your newsletter - or all of these.

The key is to write down where you are now and where you want to get to in 3, 6, 12 months time.

Construct your SEO focused action plan around a measurable worksheet you can refer to frequently as you implement it. Once you know where you're going it's time to get your thinking cap on - because the words you choose now, could make or break your business. Yes... it is that important.

Keyword Selection - The opening chapter of every good story starts on a solid foundation. As the story unfolds it leads you through many twists and concludes with a satisfying outcome. SEO is no different. Knowing what your potential customers are searching for online, the keywords for your product/service/business, should lie at the heart of your campaign.

Your best keywords will help you with:

On-Page Optimisation (effective text and keyword use on your web pages)
Off-Page Optimisation (strategies off the page of your website that will maximize its performance in the search engines
Increasing the visibility of your website and overall sales for your company.

Choose the right keywords and your customers will find you. Also, assuming that your offer is good, they will buy from you. After all, pretty websites don't sell but great offers and customer service do.

SEO Plan Step 1 - On-Page Optimisation

This can be very time consuming if you have a very large site with hundreds of pages. However, starting with your main landing pages can spread the workload and allow you to focus in on what needs attention first.

SEO Plan Step 2 - Off-Page Optimisation/Marketing

This area of SEO is where the real work begins. This is not a definitive list and, depending on your niche, there are opportunities for creativity.

Search engine optimisation is an ongoing process if you want to stay ahead of your competitors. As the Web evolves what works to day may fall out of favour tomorrow.

Do You Have The Time To Build Your Business On the Web?

The process of SEO is time consuming and as such most small / medium sized businesses don't have specific in-house resources for online promotion & marketing.

As such, you have a greater opportunity to outrank and step ahead of your competitors.

Statistics show that, despite the credit-crunch, online advertising spend is forging ahead. Why? Because consumers are continuing to search online in increasing numbers for a myriad of products and services.

Your competitors may not have woken up to properly fulfilling their customers needs online just yet - but they will. This is your chance to improve your return on investment as traditional forms of advertising are slowing down dramatically.

Start improving your search engine rankings and gaining more customers today...

To DO List	Web Page URL	Completed	Dates / Notes
Keyword Analysis
Keyword Density
Meta Tags Optimisation
Image Optimisation (jpg & gif)
Image Link Optimisation
Text Link Optimisation
Meta Tags Optimisation
Alt Tag Optimisation
Sitemap Optimisation
W3C Validation
Overall Site Structure & Cross-linking