The Ins and outs of SEO Business

This paper is basically for the newbies who are relentlessly looking for an answer but are not able to find one. How to do SEO? Where to start, what the SEO process is all about? This is something which acts as barrier to pursue their career in the SEO field. Internet is jam packed of resources which explain various aspects of SEO in great detail but very few are able to link them to each other pretty well. In fact I haven’t seen any so far. Anyways, I am going to explain the SEO process (very broad view) I follow. Your SEO process may be different. So be easy on me if you disagree with me on something. And feel free to correct me or add something useful to this paper.

Client Analysis
A SEO process starts with client analysis in which you determine the advertising objectives, budget of the client and the keyword phrases for which he wants to rank his website. Adv. Objectives can be getting certain no. of orders, leads, registrations, downloads, traffic volume or simply top rankings for targeted keyword phrases, page views etc. In client analysis we do the:

1) Profile Analysis
2) Product Analysis
3) Market Analysis
4) Website Analysis.


Profile analysis
It is the analysis of the client’s background like nature of the business, no. of years in the business, industry type, employee’s base, client’s base, market share, market value, turnover, PR (Public Relations), brand image etc. SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities, threats) analysis is also carried out in profile analysis to determine how client’s partnership opportunities can be leveraged. How strengths of a business can be maximized and how weaknesses can be minimized to overcome threats (like lack of resources, low budget etc). SWOT plays a key role in setting up realistic adv. Objectives and developing marketing strategies which work for a business.


Product Analysis
In product analysis we determine the features, benefits, price range, market value, market share, perceived value, USP, brand image, product life cycle of the client’s products.

Market analysis
It is all about knowing the target audience of the client. Who are they (i.e. their age group, sex, qualification, profession, income, lifestyle, likings, disliking etc)? Where they live (so that we can direct our marketing efforts towards them)? What are their desires and expectations from the type of products sold by the client and most importantly why they buy the product (i.e. consumer behavior).

Website analysis
It is done to find out up to which extent the site is e-commerce friendly, up to which extent the site is SEO friendly and what type of traffic the site is getting (traffic analysis). In website analysis the first thing that we do is determine up to which extent the site follows the Google webmaster guidelines. This analysis gives a good idea of SEO friendliness and usability of the website. Each step of SEO process is documented via spreadsheets and word processor.


Competitors Analysis
After client analysis, we do the competitors analysis in which we again do the profile, product, market and website analysis (as mentioned above) for each of the top competitors of our clients. We do the competitors analysis of the top 10 competitors for primary keyword (keyword which has the potential of sending largest volume of relevant traffic to the website).


Keyword Research
On the basis of client and competitors analysis we do the keyword research. In keyword research we determine those keywords which are relevant to business products, which have good search volume and low keyword difficulty.


Decide Strategies
Here we decide strategies for link building and website promotion. Link building strategies include identifying linking partners and then determining ways to get back links from them. Website promotion strategies include ways of promoting a website through other mediums like social media, PPC, affiliate marketing, e-mail marketing, press releases, traditional media etc. It includes media planning if you have plans to buy ad space on various media and media vehicles.



Resources Estimation
Once the strategies are decided, we then do the resources estimation in which we determine software, hardware, firmware (i.e. people) and hosting requirements to achieve the desired goals. The time and cost required for the whole project. Resources estimation is important to determine whether or not the budget aligns with the adv. Objectives and to justify your adv. Cost.


Create Proposal
After resources estimation, we develop a proposal for our client. This proposal contains reports of competitors’ analysis, keyword research, our link building and promotional strategies and the time and cost required for the whole project. The objective of the report should be to specify how your link building and promotional strategies will help the client in achieving his adv. Objectives. If your client is a big company, then your proposal may exchange several hands before it is presented to the CMO (chief marketing officer) or CEO for final approval. Once the proposal is approved, a particular budget is allocated for your work.

Website Optimization
It is done to enhance the usability and user engagement of the site and to improve its overall conversion rate. We follow AIDA communication model for website tweaking. According to AIDA model, a website (esp. e-commerce website) should have following four attributes:

1.It must be able to get attention of the visitors.
2.It must be able to raise interest in the visitors to browse the website.
3.It must be able to build desire in the visitors to buy your products.
4.It must be able to obtain action i.e. convert visitors into sales or leads

If website tweaking is skipped, then the site may not convert relevant traffic into desired sales/leads and thus the whole SEO campaign may lose its effectiveness.


On-page optimization
After website tweaking, on-page optimization starts. In on-page optimization, web pages are made relevant to search engines for targeted keywords.


Link Building
It is done to get relevant back links for the client’s website so that the site can achieve top rankings for targeted keywords.

SEO Analysis
The final step in the SEO process is ‘SEO analysis’ in which we continuously measure and evaluate the effectiveness of our SEO campaign. Any step in the SEO process can be repeated any number of times to improve the effectiveness of the overall campaign.


This is a very broad view of the whole SEO process. Each step you see in the process is a just a tip of a huge iceberg and elaborating them any further is beyond the scope of this paper. Just like event planners, SEOs also carry tons of check lists to speed up the whole process. Anyways now you know what you need to learn to do SEO. So what are you waiting for? Start learning the basics and implement them on your domain as you make a leap to advance stuff. Tons of SEO tools and tactics are available on the net. You just need to look around.

Chao!

SEO Himanshu


(I got the idea of using SEO as prefix to my name from DJs, like DJ Tiesto. If you leave your name like this, people (esp. retailers) get an idea of what you do and they may think of you when they need a SEO. So next time you go to a shop to purchase something or meet a prospect, you may introduce yourself as SEO <your_name>. Just my 2 cents )

This is a great post.

I can't tell you how many SEO "experts" have called me up about my websites & then not even known what it was I sold, or needed.
I had to actually ask them to look at my sites, ask them what keywords they thought I might want to rank for, then ask them to see where those sites fell in the serps for those keywords.

These guys who call can't be bothered to spend 45 seconds to learn about who they are trying to sell to.

Well put himansu.
Can your elaborate more thing here how you decided keywords and targeted market and what is your SEO Plan for any of the website.

Very nice post himanshu. Do you have any intentions on breaking this down a little more and going deeper into some of these subjects?

I am particularly interested in how you obtain certain information such as:
- Profile, Product and Market Analysis
- Keyword research (back on the prowl for methods of finding which words will convert, what terms people are searching and determining the competitiveness and search volume of terms)

I've spoken to people before who own websites and have absolutely no clue who their target audience is (in terms of age, gender, etc) and have no clue how much of the market they make up or how much is available to them. Perhaps some software can be created to help online business owners pull this data from their past sales but how else do you gather this information?

Again, great post. Keep up the good work!

Hi Stan! Keyword Research is a very big topic, therefore can't explain it in detail. In short, I first determine primary keywords through business' products/services or on the basis of website theme (if website is theme based like 'wedding planning') and then i determine secondary keywords on the basis of primary keywords. I dont have any fixed SEO plan. I simply follow the 10 steps process as mentioned above. For market segmentation i interview the client and do the product research.

Thank u himansu I got you point you mean to say first you find out theme of the website then you do keywords research I am sure some time use google adwords and also you visit your copetitors website and try to find out what your competitors are targeting.
If I have to be website wiht same theme first I do research with generic terms and add secondry keywords just for example my stps will be firstly I target
Step 1> Wedding planning new delhi
Step 2> wedding planning delhi
Step 3> Wedding planning India
step 4> wedding planning

I interview the client. As he know his business the best.
I dont start any SEO unless i dont have at least 2-3 weeks of Google analytics data. The best and fastest way to find out which words will convert and which wont, is by running a PPC campaign. For target market, profile and products analysis can help a lot. If you understand the business and what it sells, you get a good idea of the target audience. You can guess the market share through competitors analysis, if the data is not available. You can also buy market research report from marketing agencies to get accurate figures. Through Sites like www.bizminer.com you can purchase industry reports which can help you a lot in knowing about market trends, consumer behavior, market share etc esp. if you believe in figures and accuracy. However i don't recommend going in that much detail unless your client is very big or u need to prepare a strong case study or proposal. More you will go in detail, more you will realize that SEO is just another form of marketing and is not just TLC (title, links and contents) as some guys claim.

yes it is because you know that you may use clikable title those reflect you business, and for links you use targeted anchor tag because as above you mentioned you do profile market research what you analysis I guess you also analysis what is the terms will be brings our queries or business, and content after your research you will also add content which reflects your services or product.

yup. you got it.

But for that kind of research I never use any tool this comes out from my brain storming thanks Himansu for this great and awesome thread.