Does anyone have an SEO strategic plan template for a beginning SEOmoz'r?

[kyle21ct]

I'm fairly new to the SEO world and am going to be creating an SEO strategic plan for my boss (with his help). I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations on a template to use, outline to follow, must have's/don't need, etc. Anything you're willing to share would be greatly appreciated!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for the detailed answer. Some good advice here, but I can't say I agree with everything. In particular, it's a pretty broad statement to say that Social marketing has nothing to do with SEO. We know Google uses social media to discover new content, social shares are highly correlated with rankings, and Google has incorporated many SEO-like features into Google+ that have implications across the broader algorithm.

Also, social signals are greatly incorporated into personalized results and local SERPs.

There's a few other points. But I guess we both agree to learn as much as you can and question conventional wisdom. We agree more than we disagree.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

I'd also recommend performing a site audit. A good resource would be: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-perform-the-worlds-greatest-seo-audit

Also, our Learn SEO section is a good place to start.

[DougRoberts]

I'd also add some research upfront...

You and your business - What are your business goals and how are you going to measure the success of your campaign. It's not just about the #1 rankings or even the traffic, you'll want to be looking at sales or business leads etc. Once you know what you're trying to achieve you can start to work on a strategic plan to achieve them!

The greatest template in the world isn't going to tell you what your goals are or how to achieve them!

You mention brand, so you'll need to figure out how you'll measure brand influence (searches for your brand and/or direct traffic can be one indicator, as well as mentions of your brand in social) but look at how this branded traffic is converting.

You need to understand the market your operating in and watch out for any seasonal variations or any external factors (economy, competition, policy/law) that may influence your business.

What's your budget and what resources (esp. people) do you have available. Are you going to do this internally, with help from a consultant or with the involvement of an agency.

And you can't forget your customers...

Your Customers - Who are your customers, what are their needs/problems and motivations. What are they trying to do (their intent) when they visit your site. How does this affect their choice of keywords when searching (and remember that the same people with the same problem may use different keywords when they have a different level of awareness of their problem and the solutions that exist. Don't be afraid to talk to existing customers. Discovering the language they use can be enlightening and will help you avoid industry jargon etc.

Your Competitors - You need to take a good look at your competitors, and not just their link metrics. Look at their websites, social, customer services from a customers point of view. Be realistic about their strengths and weaknesses. What are they doing wrong, what are they doing right and how can you beat them!

Your content - What assets / content do you already have that you can exploit. Once you know what your customers goals are, and how they are searching how can you build content that helps them achieve their goals. How can you optimise your content so that you're not covering too many topics on a single page - keep your content specific and relevant.

Make sure you've got your analytics and reporting set up. Make sure you've got your goals set up correctly. You'll need to know how your website is performing today before you start working on your strategic plan. Make sure you're happy segmenting your audience to reveal the different behaviours of these segments and specific opportunities.

Audit your website - Carry out a full audit of your website.There may be some quick fixes/wins that you can easily make straight away. It's important to know if you have any technical problems or limitations that your campaign is going to have to work with.

Here's a good site audit article: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-perform-the-worlds-greatest-seo-audit

There's no point optimising your titles if your pages aren't being indexed!

Planning - When you start looking at the tactical actions you can take, make sure you understand their cost and commitment, the difficulty and likely impact. You'll need to prioritise. I don't know how big your team is, but trying to do everything at the same is likely to be a nightmare, especially if you've got some of the more challenging things to do such as changing the culture of the business to provide more/richer content and increase customer engagement on social platforms etc.

Also make sure you understand any risks. Make sure you're aware of search engines policies and any governance/guidelines you're going to need when you start doing your social outreach. One badly written email,tweet or a poor customer review can undermine months of effort. For the risks you can anticipate, plan a suitable response.

Review - Make sure you set up regular reviews to look at the results of your campaign and evaluate how well your metrics and tactics continue to be relevant to your business goals. Don't be afraid to ditch metrics that don't provide actionable insight and avoid death by metrics! Don't fall into the trap of tracking too much!

Good luck!

[JesusD]

Loved your post!! From a SEO point of view, i think you are right on the money. I happen to agree almost on everything.

But from a marketing strategy POV, i would think that social signals are key. They not only strengthen your brand, but also ensure engagement with an ongoing and ever changing audience.

You mentioned this " Google does look for this, I had a case study in 2012 that proved this floating around somewhere.". Where can we find your study case! i would love to read it!

Also "every 3 months when Google makes another update lol" haha so true! cruel but funny!

Thanks for sharing your experiences!

[MarketingOfAmerica]

Hello Jesus Duran,

There is a lot of talk right now and you will find a lot of bias answers all over the web.  While many tactics work for many scenarios I highly suggest you use the following tactics.

Read up on these factors.

1. Onpage SEO -

A. Over optimization

B. Keyword Density

C. SEO friendly URL Structure

D. Inner Linking

E. RSS Feeds - how to proper utilize them.  I have boosted a site to a 50 DA off of RSS            feeds alone due to feed burner and many other feeds etc..  Make sure you learn how to set these up correctly.

F. Blog - utilize wordpress, learn everything you can about wordpress for your blog.  Learn the best SEO plugins to use

G. Meta Tags - Make sure you use an SEO friendly title.  Again many have a lot of opinions on this and honestly I use the following   Keyword | Keyword | Keyword  and it has never failed me.  I hold ranks for terms like  payday loans, cash loans, cash advance, cheap SEO, affordable SEO, CRM, CRM software, and 1000's of others.   I am not saying I know it all by any means, but I have had my fair share of experience on what works.    Make sure your description will really pull people in for conversion purposes when they read it.   You can use other forms like - or , etc.. Many will work, but I feel the | is the best, but again that is my personal preference not a fact.

H. Content - Make sure your using proper content techniques for conversion purposes and SEO purposes both.  This is very tricky sometimes, but you will know when you have it, this can take some fine tuning before you get it right.

That is a great start to onpage SEO.  Many will tell you Onpage is everything and it's what you need to rank.  I have a case study after the penguin 2.0 update that just happened here http://dailyseotip.com/what-other-marketing-firms-want-you-to-believe-that-isnt-true/3356/  and I encourage  you to read it.   It will prove that Onpage SEO isn't everything and if your offpage SEO is strong enough it will easily make up for bad OnpageSEO.

2. Offpage SEO

There is a fine line on what to do here, on what works, what will not work, and what will not work every 3 months when Google makes another update lol.  Offpage SEO involves quality backlinks.  A backlink is a link leading from another site to yours.

Research the following.

A.  Anchor text diversity - This is very important.  I suggest that you build to your brand name, domain name - many variations of it, natural terms like click here, visit now, etc..

B. Platform Diversity - Many people make the mistake of using 1 type of platform to submit to and this may work, but doesn't end well.  Google does look for this, I had a case study in 2012 that proved this floating around somewhere.

C. IP diversity - Try to submit to many websites not just the same one over and over.

D. Press Releases, sites like prweb.com is a very reputable company, but is also very expensive.  You can submit to some high authority free press sites, but I wouldn't make a habit of it, these sites generally don't have very good moderators due to so many people submitting all day.  I feel a lot of these in the future will get penalized for allowing low quality content to go through.  When you write a press release, make sure that you are writing it in 3rd person and you have a catchy title, example title " XYZ Company Just Lowered Their Prices By 50%"  and of course there are many different ones you can use.   Never use your keywords in a press release.  A press release can get many backlinks for your website if submitted properly.  The last thing you want is for your anchor text diversity to shoot up to 17% or something high  along those lines.  Make sure you use brand names, urls, etc..

E. Guest Posts -  There is a very fine line on what is ethical and what isn't.  When you write a guest post, don't write an article just to write it. Make sure you are putting something out on the web that is informative.  Ask yourself this, will your article help someone else achieve something other than making them bored lol.  Make sure that it's catchy, try to write about new stuff on the market.   I highly suggest  myblogguest.com   Ann Smarty is a great person and her team of moderators read over your content as much as possible and make sure that you aren't just submitting to submit and others would like this. They also check over grammar which is important for me since mine is terrible lol.  They will help teach you the ins and outs of writing.   Link to popular sites like .gov, edu, MOZ.com and other high authority sites on the web.    Try to place your anchor in the byline and don't get to greedy.  Only use 1 anchor per guest post.

Don't get sucked into software spam tactics like 1000 social bookmarks, spammy blog posts, low quality directory sites.  Here is a good list of quality directory sites  http://www.dirjournal.com/blog/business-directory-deals/  these were rated by SEOMOZ a while back and I have personally utilized some that were relevant for some of my websites.   Only use high quality white hat tactics!

Oh and listen to Rand Fishkin hes a smart person

While there is a lot more to SEO than this, I feel this is a great start for anyone right now after the Penguin 2.0 update.

Also, that guide you mentioned is a great guide, however there is a lot in their that isn't needed for SEO like social media links.  Again read my case study and you will see why I am saying this.   If you have a limited budget or time ,this isn't where I would spend my time or money at.  Sure it's great to have, but I hold very competitive ranks for sites without a single social site linked to it at all. No likes, not tweets, etc..   Social marketing has nothing to do with organic SEO, now I am not saying it won't in the future, but it does't right now and my case study proves it over and over again.

I hope everyone enjoys reading this and it can help some others along the way.

Matthew Boley

[JesusD]

I am also fairly new to SEO. I found this recent guide to be exceptionally accurate in order to rank better, increase traffic and conversions. Blueprint to Rank. Also the beginners guide to SEO is a great resource, view it here. http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo. If you plan to invest time on reading, i would read the book The ART OF SEO by Eric Enge.

However, the best way to learn is to get into the mess and actually have the SEO experience. Start by making your company and site SEO and User Friendly. Then try to engage in the Ranking and Driving Factors such as inbound links, social signals, and user engagement.

As a roadmap per se i would recommend the Blueprint to Rank. Its grrrrrreat!

Hope you like them.

Regards!