SEO DEVELOPMENT PLAN
Before I begin explaining the SEO checklist which goes into making an effective SEO plan for the successful marketing for any business, let me give you an introduction of SEO. It stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means optimizing a website as per the guidelines defined by major search engines like Google, Bing & Yahoo, so that a website can perform better in those search engines and come up higher on the search engine listing page for certain sets of keywords searched on them by a user.
Smart SEO Checklist
The SEO checklist I’m defining here is the sets of tasks that every SEO developer need to keep in mind right from the beginning of a website development. This checklist should have a certain hierarchy maintained so that search engines treat a website as a flawless (or as flawless as it can be) entity and provide it a better place among thousands of other competitor websites.
Now let’s focus on the checklist which I’m going to split in two parts: On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.
On-page SEO Checklist
The On-page SEO is still divided into three parts with respect to different stages of web development mentioned below:
Pre Web Development
Business Analysis and Research
Competitor Business Analysis
Keyword Analysis and Research
During Web Development
SEO Friendly URL Generation
Robots.txt File Creation & Implementation
Content Creation with Correct Keyword Density
Meta & Image Alt Tags Implementation
Pre Website Launch
Google Webmaster and Analytic Code Implementation
301 Redirect for Canonical URL’s
Sitemap.xml Implementation
Business Analysis and Research
The first thing that is required to understand client business is the thorough analysis and research of client business without which other SEO tasks can’t be implemented correctly. The main important task SEO developer need to understand are what is client business, Geolocation for his business and end users to client business.
Competitor Business Analysis
Before targeting specific keywords for the client, there is a strong need to first analyze the top 3 competitors of client which help to determine what are the main keywords competitors are targeting, what is the design architecture they are focusing on and finally what are the top websites from where they are getting anchor backlinks.
Keyword Analysis and Research
It is one of the core SEO task which is the basic building block to get a website on top position on SERP. Lack in proper keyword research may lead to poor reputation of a website for some specific keywords chosen during keyword research. So keywords should be chosen after a deep research on client business.
SEO Friendly URL Generation
SEO friendly URL generation helps to make a website URL easy to understand by visitors and create more chance of getting clicked, as visitors also read the URL content while browsing on search engine for the searched query.
Robots.txt File Creation and Implementation
Robots.txt file is an important file that tell web robots which web pages to crawl(read) or not. And during the time of development, a robots.txt file need to be implemented which tells the robot, not to crawl the draft web pages of the website. If it’s not done then there are chances that draft site web pages may get crawled and indexed on Google’s database. If it happened then it implies a bad impact on website reputation, so this task need to be done on time.
Content Creation with Correct Keyword Density
Content creation practice should be done with the use of correct keyword density as per defined by the major search engines like Google. A web-page content which is specifically written for users and has keyword density of around 1% is considered to be SEO friendly content.
Meta and Image Alt tags Implementation
Meta tags play a vital role in keyword rank positions for the desired business keywords, so meta tags which include meta title & description should contain primary keywords that are describing the web-page’s content. Apart from this image alt tags are important too, as Google reads image tags also.
Google Webmaster and Analytic Code Implementation
Just before website live, a website need to have Google Webmaster and Analytic Code Implemented, so that website errors and important stats can be monitored easily.
301 Redirection for Canonical URL’s
Before live, it is also important to put a 301 redirect on different versions of URL’s to one main URL so that Google do not treat different versions of URL as different URL and penalize due to content duplicacy.
Sitemap.xml Implementation
Sitemap.xml implementation is also important as it makes the crawling and indexing of web-pages more easier on search engines. So, it need to be done at final stage of website live.
Off-page SEO Checklist
The successful off-page SEO work plan involves Link Building that need to be considered after website live is segregated into four parts which include directory submission, content marketing, video optimization and social media marketing. Let’s have a look on all these tasks separately:
Directory Submissions
Search Engine Submissions
Manual Directory Submissions
Niche & Local Business Submissions
Forums Posting
Social Bookmarking Submissions
Blog Submissions
Classified Ads Posting
Content Marketing
SEO Friendly Article Marketing
Press Release Marketing
Doc, PPT & PDF Marketing
Video Optimization
New released optimization of Youtube Videos with proper Title, Description, Keywords.
Publishing Videos on top video sharing websites like dailymotion, metacafe, vimeo, myspace, etc.)
Social Media Marketing
Daily updating, sharing, commenting on major Social Media accounts (Facebook, Google Plus, linkedin, Pinterest, etc.)
Joining & creating communities related to your business and updating things there.
Creating account on social media community websites related to your business and will promote your business there.
All these off-page SEO plan require a strategic approach for successful business promotion. Hopefully, I will share the detailed information about these off-page SEO plans in future with thorough analysis on each and every aspect of these tasks.