GlobalBX

Great SEO is the product of sound research, actionable intelligence and thorough planning. The following tips can help keep you on-course as you navigate the process of developing a high-performance SEO campaign.

1. ROI – All efforts MUST be evaluated based upon their contribution to the bottom line. Rankings reports, bounce rate and traffic statistics are all important metrics, but don’t ever forget that at the end of the day the only important measure of success for an SEO campaign is how it assisted the organization in realizing its goals.

2. Analytics into Action – Analytics data has no impact on your campaign in and of itself. Pretty charts and graphs are essentially useless unless they inspire and guide a course of action. Develop a concrete methodology that allows you to turn analytics data into concrete actions.

3. Testing and Refining – Develop a system for testing and refining new ideas in an environment that minimizes impact on your core website. Page layouts, experimental navigation, keyword targeted landing pages, color palettes, etc.

4. The Big Picture – Always view the SEO campaign in terms of how it fits into the organization’s big picture. How does it compliment other marketing and branding efforts? What are the other areas of activity or departments would be able to benefit from your campaign research or analytics intelligence? Be an open book.

5. Be an Attractive Click – This one seems to get overlooked quite a bit. Now that you have visibility within your targeted search results, what are you doing to improve the attractiveness of your listings? You still need to convince the searcher click your listing.

6. Be Accountable – The concept of performance accountability makes a lot of marketers nervous. For SEO, which is still considered a “Black Art” by many, it is absolutely essential that you develop reasonable goals for which you are accountable.

7. Note Everything – Keep a campaign journal in which you date and record absolutely everything done within the scope of the campaign. If you changed a font, corrected a spelling error, bolded a word, removed a link; every painful detail must be included. In the right hands this information can provide real answers to many questions that still leave the world’s top SEO’s scratching their heads.

8. Maintenance – SEO is not a one-shot-deal. It is a full time job. Monitoring, improving, growing and evolving the campaign requires a constant effort.

9. From the Search Engine’s Perspective – The search engine’s job is to furnish the user with the most relevant and beneficial results for their query: Do your pages qualify? Focus groups can be good for this type of evaluation.

10. Avoid SEO Forums – Stay away from the latest SEO fads, tips, tricks and “expert opinions”. Most of the information you will find in popular SEO forums is complete garbage. The same regurgitated guess-work that has been passed around in the industry for years. Learn what makes a website relevant. Learn what makes a website important. Study your top performing competitors. Let your analytics instruct you. Listen to your users.