SWOT ANALYSIS & SMART PLAN

SWOT ANALYSIS & SMART PLAN

There are many methodologies for business planning. One of the more well-known ones is the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis. There are also methodologies for ensuring that the plan objectives are the right type of objectives, such as the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-lined) Plan. Next we will take a look at both of these in the context of SEO.

SWOT ANALYSIS:

Sometimes you need to get back to the basics and carry out a simple overview strategy of where you are in the marketplace, and where you would like to be. A simple SWOT analysis is a great
starting point. It creates a grid from which to work and is very simple to execute.

As you can see from the SWOT chart in below, Strengths and Weaknesses usually stem from internal (on-site, business operational, business resource) sources, whereas Opportunities and Threats are from external sources.

Where does SEO fit in here? To explore this, it is helpful to use an example. Take Business X. It has a website that was built on WordPress, makes use of category tagging, adds at least one
page of content every two days, and has excellent knowledge of its industry. Its domain name isn't ideal -- Businessnameandkeyword.com -- but it is decent.

Business X does not get much traffic from search engines, but its rival, Business Y, does because Business Y has had its website up for a long period of time and received some great links along the way. Business Y doesn't have any SEO plan and relies on its main page to bring in all traffic.

This is because Business Y has a keyword-rich domain name and people have linked to the site using the domain name (giving it keyword-rich anchor text), and because of its longevity on the Web.

There aren't a lot of target search queries; in fact, there are fewer than 50,000 for the core set of keywords. Business X's site ranks on the second page of Google results, whereas Business Y
is ranked #3, with Wikipedia and About.com taking up the top two positions.

Neither of the businesses is spending money on PPC (paid search) traffic, and the niche doesn't have much room for other entrants (there may be 10 to 15 competitors). Both sites have similar link authority in terms of strengths and numbers. The businesses deal in impulse purchases -- the products evoke strong emotions.

The preceding analysis suggests quick wins for the Business X site, as well as where the priorities are. It also forms a great starting point for a long-term strategy and tactical maneuvers. This example is simplistic, but it illustrates how instructive a fleshed out SWOT can be. It does require you to have analyzed your site, the main competitor(s), the keywords, and the search
engine results pages (SERPs).

SMART PLAN

Every company is unique, so naturally their challenges are unique. Even a second SEO initiative within the same company is not the same as the first initiative. Your initial SEO efforts have changed things, creating new benchmarks, new expectations, and different objectives. These all make each SEO project a new endeavor.

One way to start a new project is to set SMART objectives. Let's look at how to go about doing that in the world of SEO.

• Specific objectives are important. It is easy to get caught up in details of the plan and lose sight of the broader site objectives. You may think you want to rank #1 for this phrase or that, but in reality you want more customers. Perhaps you don't even need more customers, but you want higher sales volume, so in fact having the same number of orders but with a higher average order value would meet your objectives better.


• Measurable objectives are essential if one is to manage the performance in meeting them -- you can't manage what you can't measure. SEO practitioners have to help their clients or
  organizations come to grips with analytics, and not just the analytics software, but the actual processes of how to gather the data, how to sort it, and most important, how to use it to make informed decisions.


• Achievable objectives are ones which can be accomplished with the available resources. You could decide to put a man on Mars next year, for example, but it is just too big an undertaking to be feasible. You can be ambitious, but it is important to pick goals that can be met. You cannot possibly sell to more people than exist in your market. There are limits to markets, and at a certain point the only growth can come from opening new markets, or developing new products for the existing market.
  
  Aside from basic business achievability, there are also limits to what can rank at #1 for a given search query. The search engines want the #1 result to be the one that offers the most value for users, and unless you are close to having the website that offers the most value to users, it may be unreasonable to expect to get to that position, or to maintain it if you succeed in getting there.


• Realistic objectives are about context and resources. It may be perfectly achievable to meet a certain objective, but only with greater resources than may be presently available. Even a top ranking on the most competitive terms around is achievable for a relevant product, but it is realistic only if the resources required for such an effort are available.


• Time-bound is the final part of a SMART objective. If there is no timeline, no project can ever fail, since it can't run out of time. SEO generally tends to take longer to implement and gather momentum than paid advertising. It is important that milestones and deadlines be set so that expectations can be managed and course corrections made.

"We want to rank at #1 for Bunk Beds" is not a SMART objective. It doesn't identify the specific reason why the company thinks a #1 ranking will help it. It doesn't have a timeline, so there is no way to fail. It doesn't state an engine on which to be #1, so there's a guaranteed argument if it means to rank on GOOGLE and you get the job done on Yahoo!.

"To increase Term Bunk Beds generated by natural search by 30% over six months" is a far better objective. There is a deadline, and the company can certainly gauge progress toward the specific objective. The company can look at its current market share and the resources committed to see whether this is achievable and realistic.

Source: Art of SEO

7 Simple Geo Targeting Tips for Your Site.

7 Simple Geo Targeting Tips for Your Site.

How do they do this?

By looking at a number of factors, such as:.

• Country-specific domain name - eg. .com or .com.au or .co.uk etc. etc.


• Where your site is hosted - be careful with this as a lot of hosting providers may have their offices in one country, but use servers and equipment based overseas.


• Language used in your website content - even things like UK English vs. US English can make a difference due to spelling and colloquialisms.Inbound Links to your site - are they mainly from other Australian websites, US sites, UK sites etc.


• Listing of your address / location / phone number on your website.


• Location of people who look at your site - if your site has more traffic from Australian visitors it is likely to rank better in Google.com.au than it would in Google.com.

Knowing the above information makes it a lot easier to perform a Geo Targeting audit on your site. Here are the things I would do:

1. If you run an Australian website and your main customers / clients are other Australians, spend the few extra dollars and buy a .com.au domain name. If you’re targeting clients in the UK, buy a .co.uk. etc. etc.


2. Apply the same logic (as above) to the web hosting - spend a few extra dollars to have your website hosted in the country that you are targeting.
   Be sure to check that your hosting provider uses equipment based in your country too. If you still aren’t certain you can check their IP’s using SEOmoz’s IP Location Tool.


3. Take the time to check your spelling and use the type of wording your clients will understand and are familiar with.
   For example the term swimwear, swimsuit, beachwear, cozzies, bathers and togs all mean the same thing but people in Queensland, Australia (where I’m from) rarely use the term bathers or cozzies - we wear ‘togs’.


4. An inbound link is like a personal referral or testimonial for your website. Having links from other relevant local sites will be far more valuable with Geo Targeting than having lots of inbound links from overseas sites.


5. Submit your site to local business and local search directories - this can often be one of the easiest methods of attracting local links and local traffic.
   As a rule-of-thumb, just make sure the directory presents well and that you are comfortable being listed amongst the other sites that are in the directory. If you think the directory isn’t great quality, you’re probably right and it should be avoided.


6. Mention your address, location and contact details in the footer of each page - this is one of the easiest things to do which can help tell your clients and the search engines that you are a local business.
   The only time this doesn’t really help is if you have offices in multiple locations. Mentioning a dozen countries / cities in the footer won’t do much for your local profile in each of those places. If this is the case you should build separate sites (or at the very least separate pages) for each location.


7. Build your brand locally as you will usually rank well for your business name before you’ll start ranking for more competitive terms.
   Ensure you promote your site through off-line advertising methods, which can be as simple as including your website on your business cards, letterheads and other corporate stationary.
   This will help you gain local search traffic and as mentioned above, if your site has more traffic from Australian visitors it is likely to rank better in Google.com.au than it would in Google.com.

GEO-targeting Analysis.

GEO-targeting SEO doesn’t end at SEO-targeting promotion. To fully understand visitor behaviors of each GEO market, try using geographic Meta data for accurate results. Several Boston Internet marketing companies have used Web analytic software and IP databases that provide a range of locations for specific requirement when a version of a web site or advertisements need to reach only a specific city within the states.

GEO-targeting Design.

Websites targeting multiple GEO regions may have a few versions of the site. And each version targets one particular language. For the same version, the page may be configured according to the location automatically. It’s a common practice to use IP address to identify the geo region of a visitor. For design of each version, make sure to work closely with the designers who really know about that market. The design of the website should suit the style and taste of the local users. A website targeting US market has much better chance of success if a Boston web design company is involved, instead of a web design firm from India. Geo-targeting depends on the user's settings. As an example, an English web site may display different versions according to the user's location, whether Canada, Australia or the United Kingdom, since Geo-targeting identifies the user's keyword settings, language and location.

GEO-targeting Promotion.

All major search engines serve the search results based on both what users are looking for (the quires) and where they come from (location). In fact, major search engines Google, Yahoo Search!, and Microsoft’s Live search all have a different version of the main search engine for either major language or a country. A searcher from UK will see the different search results than a searcher from Australia even though they use the same search engine and search for the same term. Search engines rank pages according to what kind of links a site is pointed and where the links are from. If a website site gets most of links from UK, the site will rank well when UK users look for information in a search engine. If you’re not located in the GEO market you target, work with a local SEO firm is productive and rewarding. A Boston internet marketing company that really knows about Boston SEO will do a much better job for acquiring links from either US sites or Boston local websites.

Courtesy: SEO-NEWS