No one plan will fit every website, depending on your particular business, goals and experience, your needs will always be different from my other clients. My first step will always be to take you through a Marketing Assessment.
This will give us a holistic and detailed view of not just your website needs, but more importantly your overall marketing mix and how Search Engine Marketing can enhance it.
We'll analyze the following areas:
- Benchmarks
- Overall Online Marketing Approach
- Additional Needs
- On-Page Optimization
- Sales & Lead Conversions
- Depth of Engagement
- Future Objectives
Almost all of the recommendations I make include the following:
Common Client Campaign Strategies
1. Keyword Term Analysis
I will ask you to make a list of keyword terms that you would like to target, and once this has been done I will carry out further research to determine the hundreds, maybe thousands of keyword terms your target audience uses to find companies like yours. We will analyse to find out which of these have the best ranking potential, this is usually found by looking at how many times a search term is searched on, and by looking at the amount of competing websites.
Unlike the keyword research that you may have seen prior to visiting my website, rather than analysing the number of websites indexed in a particular search engine for a particular keyword, I will determine the amount of websites that are optimised for that particular search term. These are the only real competition as you will quickly outrank any website that aren't optimised for the term.
This means that they will be many keywords out there that appear highly competitive at first glance that are quite easy to rank for!
The opposite is also true, we'll uncover the keywords that look as though they will be easy to rank for but in actual fact have a few thousand different SEOs promoting them, not that I'm afraid to compete but I promote working smart prior to working hard.
Once the master list of keywords is complete, I'll provide you with it so that you can provide your feedback.
2. Content Creation
As we’ve mentioned before, content is key to any search marketing campaign. Therefore, there are three content areas that we will target:
On-Site Optimization
- This includes the content on your website that your visitors can see, as well as the content on your website that the search engines see. I'll compare your website (page by page) to the highest competing pages in the search engines and make recommendations to change your pages accordingly. Depending on our service agreement I may be making the changes for you.
- Sometimes there are errors that prevent the search engines from analysing your website properly, so I'll pay close attention to this to make sure that your code to text ratio and other coding elements aren't negatively affecting your rankings.
- You visible content for optimal keyword density may have to change, but this will be carried out while maintaining your sales effectiveness.
Article/Content Creation
One article/piece of content will be produced for every keyword term we choose to promote. Traditionally this is between 200-400 words, however I always strive to go much further and produce articles in between 500-600 words so that they can be distributed online through PR websites and article distribution websites. Each article will be well written, informative and engaging to ensure they will add value to visitor's experience in visiting your website. More importantly, we add these pages slowly over time to ensure your site grows organically. This is a key element Google and other search engines look for when ranking a website – that it is constantly updating and adding new information.
Publicity
We’re not talking about traditional PR here. With your help I'll develop additional articles that pay close attention to your target market's pressure points, the tips they need to hear, the secrets they need to know, and the problems and solutions your company addresses.
I don't place these on your website, but distribute them to hundreds (sometimes thousands) of other websites who are looking for compelling articles on your particular subject. This achieves two objectives:
1) each article links back to your website, earning you one-way links from authoritative sites
2) the more independent websites that discuss your company or publish an article written by your company, the better your reputation will be.
Your potential customers will find your company discussed on other websites, or see that other websites have endorsed you by publishing your article.
Linking Strategy
Although we'll be collecting links from our article promotion, I'll negotiate links on your behalf, I'll concentrate on sites with high page rank and traffic, as links from these are considered powerful 'votes'.
An ongoing linking strategy will be place to ensure that your website's backlinks are being built.
RSS Feeds
RSS feeds will be implemented on your website and Blog (a blog will be included if you don't already have one – you should!) to keep visitors in the know about new content. I can also notify search engines and other online properties through the use of your RSS feeds, resulting in the faster indexing of your pages.
Tracking and Analysis
I implement Google Analytics on every website that I work on. You will receive detailed reports on how your website is being used and the amount of traffic it is receiving, and your visitor's behaviour.
I believe this data is invaluable, in that it allows you to make decisions about your website based on hard facts and not guesswork.
Traffic Conversion Optimization
This is made possible because of the powerful analytics software that Google allows us to install on your website. Many SEO campaigns fall short here, and Manifield Web Design and SEM excel, rather than just get traffic to your website, I get sales and leads.
Using Google Analytics I can statistically analyse your site to see what is working for you and against you. I can use this information to generate split testing campaigns, testing on page factors such as headlines, offers, colours, layout, intro paragraphs etc. Each version of a page will be tested against each other to not only determine the best version of each element, but the best combination of elements too.
Pricing Models and My Guarantee
I price each campaign on a per-client basis. Pricing is based on the amount of hours you want me to dedicate to your project each week, as well as which strategies you’d like me to implement.
However, I am more than happy to work with your budget and can accommodate a variety of pricing models, including: hourly, per-project, weekly salary with a cap on hours, etc.
My Guarantee:
I cannot guarantee a certain number of rankings or that particular keywords will get ranked with particular search engines. There are simply too many variables to consider and anyone guaranteeing such should be avoided at all costs.
However, I do guarantee the quality of my work.
When I tell you that I'l reach a milestone within a certain amount of hours, if I fail to reach that milestone, I will complete additional work for free or at a pre-determined reduced fee until said milestone is reached.
In addition, if after six months of site optimization, traffic is far below satisfactory, we will re-negotiate a severely reduced fee to continue promotion until a reasonable increase in traffic is reached.
