SEO Value Pyramid & Time Line

SEO Value Pyramid & Time Line

Doodling to explain the SEO Value Process to a new batch of SEO students, and we came up with the following SEO Pyramid. I thought of sharing this as it will be a useful “Guide” for SEO enthusiasts to better understand the SEO process, SEO value and SEO timelines.

SEO Expert Services - Week 1

1. Keyword Discovery and Analysis. This is the foundation of any successful SEO campaign, so it’s important to get the “winning” keywords for your business, services and products in the beginning itself. This process generally takes 4 to 5 days, and there are many useful free and paid tools to help you do that. Keep in mind; finding the right keywords is all about researching statistical, analytical and forecast data for keyword usage, history and competition over time, in specific geographies.
2. On-page Optimization. The KISS (Keep it Simple ……) concept works great here. Keep in mind that each well optimized page can be a source of traffic and conversions for your website. I would suggest focusing each page on 1 to 2 related keywords only, with modifiers like location, industry, long tails and mis-spellings, included in Meta tags and the content of that page. If you have a CMS driven site, then ensure your CMS allows facility of giving unique title, description and keyword tag for each page, and that your dynamic URL’s are short and SEO friendly.
3. Google local, Maps, and Yahoo local. This not only helps the search engine identify the location (for geo targeting) of your business, it also puts your business on the local map for anyone searching for products and services you could offer. Local listings are displayed on the top of the SERP (search engine result pages), and many people want to do business with someone who is close by (types of businesses where service and personal contact is crucial) can reach your website almost immediately.
4. Corporate Blog. This is going to become your most valuable asset to power up your keywords/ website and share valuable content with your visitors. You will be using the blog to post new articles, How To’s, testimonials, reviews, press releases, case studies, videos, photographs, PPT presentations and more. Both WordPress and Blogger offer free hosting platform - so get cracking.
5. Analytics and Webmaster Tools. These tools will help you monitor the visitors to your site, visitor trends and demographics, entry/ exit pages, traffic sources, track conversions, performance of keywords, submit site maps, check on links and broken/bad links and a lot more.

SEO Expert Services - Week 2

1. Web Directory Submissions. These are the easiest links you can acquire, and there are many relevant, regional and niche web directories where you could submit your listing. Avoid directories that are not relevant to your business, products and services, though global directories should be included in the category your business fits under. There are many paid directories as well (Yahoo Dir, Business.com etc) which are great links to have, but I would be selective not to use up the clients budget in this activity, as it can be well spent in other places.
2. Social Bookmarking. Great way to promote your content across user communities like Digg, Mixx, Stumble Upon etc . The trick is to get other users (or your network) to up vote, thumbs up, review or comment on your content. This makes the link you are building permanent, and leads to more traffic as users generally opt to check links (and vote up links) that already has many votes. They key to social enlightenment is participation!
3. Press Release. Getting back good links to your website from the press releases syndications, a journalist may chance upon you story and make a National release out of it. Though ensure you have a worthy story first!
4. Power up pages. This is an easy way to power up the existing pages of your website. Take each page link and post across relevant social bookmarking sites, and get a few users to up vote, thumbs up, review, or comment on your content. Don’t try and bookmark all your pages in one day, but rather just 3 to 4 links a week. You don’t want the social sites to blacklist you for spamming. Tip: Don’t use social bookmarking sites for just link building purposes. Get involved in the community, make friends, help them, and ask them to help you.

SEO Expert Services - Week 3

1. Weekly Content Strategy. Each week you can create unique and useful content focused around the keywords you are targeting for that month. The types of content can vary - like articles, how to’s, FAQ’s, case studies, pictures, videos, testimonials, PPT presentations, press releases etc. This content can be posted on your corporate blog. Both your visitors and search engines will love you for this effort.
2. Weekly Syndication & Promotion Strategy. Each week you take the content from the blog and syndicate to select article sites, and promote across select social bookmarking sites. Get other users to participate by voting your content. Each type of content can be syndicated and promoted across relevant syndication channels.A video can be syndicated to video submission sites. A How to article, can be syndicated to “How to” sites.
3. Social Media. Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc. Keep in mind social networking is about building a network of contacts (potential business) and enhancing brand communication and recall.

SEO Expert Services - Week 4

1. Website Review. Getting links from relevant blog sites will go a long way in your SEO strategy. Of course you will have to figure out that no blogger will review and link to your site because they love you. An additional tip here is to power up the external blog review pages by promoting across select social bookmarking sites and getting vote ups. Powering important external pages that link to you will in turn power your keyword pages.
2. Links from Relevant Websites. Get links from sites that are relevant to your business, products and services back to your important keyword pages. These industry links are “relevant” links and are highly valued by search engines. Tips: Avoid reciprocal linking unless it’s with very few select partners and not just for the purposes of link building. Another option, three-way link building is often tedious and filled with rejection. I would focus on “value” based link building.
3. Blog Commenting & Forums Posting. Find a few blogs and forums related to your industry. Spend time each week posting useful comments on blogs, and post/ answer queries on forums. If you cannot create value to the discussion by blogger/ forums users, then its best to avoid this strategy. Also if you plan to place links in the comments and forum posts, then make sure those links add major value to what’s being discussed, otherwise your comments, posts will not be accepted.
4. Monthly Campaigns. Each month choose one social bookmarking site from the ones you are participating in, and choose one story/article from the previous articles you have bookmarked. The objective in the campaign strategy is to get 15 or more users to vote up your content. This accomplishes two things. A chance that your story gets “hot” and as the author of the content you gain popularity.
5. Monitoring, Tracking and Reporting. Prepare weekly/monthly reports to track the links you are building. Prepare a report from Analytics each month showing progression over various metrics of conversion.