1. Do Your Homework First
You should have a solid grasp on the current state of SEO for your website and the opportunity that optimizing presents before attempting to gain support for your initiative.

Analyze current on-page SEO, URL structure, internal link structure, external links, etc to determine which areas need to be addressed. Be prepared to highlight both successes and shortcomings. Highlight the successes as something to build on.

Use whatever existing analytics data you have to determine the current amount of organic traffic. Perform keyword research, using tools such as Word Tracker’s Free Keyword Suggestion Tool (http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/), to identify target keywords for which you want to attract traffic. It’s important to understand the relative quantity of searches made by users in order to narrow the list to the highest opportunity keywords.

Next compare your rankings against your competitors for these key terms. Use tools such as SEO Books Rank Checker (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/) to determine how your website stacks up.

With this information you are ready to build your case for SEO and develop an implementation strategy.

2. Communicate the Business Rationale
Everyone wants their initiative to be the “top priority” for IT. You must make the case why this SEO initiative should be made a priority. Use the current SEO state analysis, competitor analysis and keyword opportunities to assemble your business case.

Make sure that senior management on the business side is on-board before going to IT. IT wants to know that the initiative has clear support within the organization and how the project aligns to the business goals of the company.

Now you are ready to talk to IT about the details of the initative.

3. Define the Scope & Effort
Using your analysis put together a list of prioritized items you would like the IT team to implement. Note: Depending on your current state, some efforts might be undertaken before others. For example, if your on-page SEO is poor, then you may wish to target this aspect before you attack internal link structure. Massive duplicate content might be addressed before implementing a site map.

Your list should also be prioritized by what you believe would have the greatest positive impact on meeting the business goals. Let the IT team determine the effort (for their responsibilities) and you provide the effort for your area of responsibilities.

Don’t expect an immediate determination of effort. The IT team will likely want to provide a more educated effort and risk analysis. Ask for a date to receive their estimate. If the date is too far out, ask for something looser that can be used to gauge relative efforts.

4. Phase the Rollout
The IT team doesn’t have unlimited resources and most likely won’t be able to take on all the items on your list. Be flexible and willing to work with IT on how this initiative fits into their schedule.

Companies that commit themselves to SEO should understand that it is a long term initiative. Impact is seen over time and conditions change so set expectations that SEO is something that should be built into processes and regularly re-evaluated.

5. Don’t Rule Out the Intangibles
Individual IT team members are generally more excited to work on projects that they learn a great deal from or ones that enhance valuable skills. SEO projects often allow them to expand their skill sets and challenge their creative thinking.

If the project has high visibility within the organization, then convey this fact to the team. Their contributions to success will be made evident.

6. Don’t Give Up
Since your project will like have to be prioritized with all other initiatives, you likely won’t get everything you want exactly when you want it. Discuss regularly with IT the progress of the initiative, including regular updates (monthly, quarterly) containing your analysis of the impact based upon analytics. Positive results will motivate the IT team to want to work more on the initiative.

When presenting results to the business side of the organization, make sure you highlight IT’s cooperation and essential contributions to the project. The IT team will appreciate the recognition and you will gain respect for not hogging the spotlight. 

Following these 6 steps should increase the likelihood that the IT team will be on-board with your SEO initiatives.

I’ll be presenting (see final presentation below) on SEO for social media websites. This presentation is geared towards how to design a Search Engine Optimized social media website. The presentation will use real world examples of three social media websites: twitter, digg and stumbleupon to illustrate best practices and pitfalls for SEO.

The process we’ve developed involves considerable interaction with and feedback from the client throughout the project. We’ve broken up the project into 6 or 7 mostly overlapping phases:

It’s important to note that the UI design is determined about half-way through the project. This helps ensure that the design is driven by the business need and functionality instead of the other way around.

• •Goals (of project/website)
• •Scope List
• User List (Primary. Secondary & Tertiary)
• User Objectives
• Use Case List
• Design Needs (Look and Feel)
• Search Engine Optimization Analysis (Current state, if any, and future needs)
• Seed Keyword List
• Competitor List
• •Company Strengths & Weaknesses
• Key Messages
• Technical Requirements
• •Assumptions

Functional Definition Phase

• Competitor Analysis (Navigation, Messaging)
• Site Map
• Page List
• Navigation Elements
• Wire Frames
• Messaging
• Creative Brief
• UI Design Concepts
• Prioritized Target Keyword List
• Alignment of Use Cases to the Site Map/Page List
• Alignment of Keywords to Page List
• Forms (Fields & Validation)
• Technical Operating Environment Definition

Development

• Page Template Creation (From UI Concepts) (HTML/CSS)
• Template Image Creation (category specific images, etc.)
• CMS & Database Setup for Development
• Style Guide
• Custom Client Specific Coding (Functionality Not Available in CMS)Â
• Configure Content Management System to create categories, pages, menus, lists, etc.
• Seed Content
• Page Content Creation & CMS Integration

Testing & Go Live

• Integration Testing (plugins, content, etc.)
• User Acceptance Testing
• Deploy Solution to Production Environment
• Turn Site Live
• Training
• Support

Every project is unique. So expect to modify your plan with each and every project. Hopefully, this plan will give you a decent baseline to start with.

What is SEO?

At ForwardLeap, we believe that at its core, SEO is:

• The continuous study of the factors that tend to influence web content’s ability to be discovered, analyzed and ranked by search engines.
• The practice of defining and implementing legitimate strategies, based upon the study of factors, in order to maximize the chance for web content to be found by users seeking to find matching content from search engine inquiries.

Basically, it boils down to figuring out what search engines like and/or need and giving it to them.

Is SEO Needed?

It may be obvious to state, but the reason anyone cares about Search Engine Optimization is due the fact that a large number of users use search engines to find content and content publishers want to attract a targeted audience of users at a low cost. If you can relatively cheaply get your web pages to rank well for search terms entered in a search engine by users, then SEO is desirable to you.  

A Basic Example of Why SEO is Beneficial

Search engines like site maps (documents that efficiently list the content, such as web pages, on a website). A site map can help a search engine to easily find newly added pages on your website. Your content won’t rank if it can’t be found by the search engine. If a page is buried several clicks away from the homepage, it can take some time for the search engine to find the page and thus longer for your website to begin receiving search engine referrals for the page. 

Understanding the content discovery process for search engines and implementing a strategy to best take advantage of it can lead to more referrals from search engines.

The Evolution of SEO

Some have said that SEO has no future. SEO isn’t going to die, it just going to evolve. The practice of SEO has been evolving since its inception. As the search engines improve and expand their algorithms for ranking, SEO techniques will continue to evolve along with it. If social factors or the amount of traffic influence search engine rankings, then the SEOs of will modify their strategies to maximize results. If personalized search becomes more pervasive, then SEOs will find ways to influence it.