Archive for November, 2007

Below is a SEO Strategy Document I have used in the past. I decided to post it after speaking with a respected SEO Consultant who wasn’t sure how to craft the document. I hope this helps other consultants as well. Early this year, I also posted an Example of a PPC Strategy Document.

Feel free to add any comments, constructive criticism, etc.

Beginning of document…
This is the strategy document for the SEO initiative within the overall marketing plan for [CLIENT SITE]. This document will provide detail to the strategy, analysis, and optimization recommendations.

It is our recommendation to use both an SEO & PPC Search campaign. However, to initially begin with the SEO component.

The reason the sequence should be SEO before PPC is because a highly optimized webpage will produce a much more efficient paid search campaign due to a higher quality score, and result in lower CPC’s and higher rankings.

Therefore, this document focuses on the SEO initiative for the [CLIENT SITE] main site, and the [CLIENT SITE] ecommerce site.

We will be optimizing the website in its entirety, with a specific success metric on a keyword/landing page combinations.

Primary Objective:
- Increase visitor traffic to http://www.[Client Site].com
- To drive people to the specified content on [Client Site].com from pages that we optimize for specific keyword phrases.
Secondary Objective:
- To generate brand awareness for the [CLIENT SITE] brand.

Domains:
- http://www.[Client Site].com

Target Search Engine:
- Google – We will focus our optimization efforts on Google.
- Google has roughly a 60% market share of search volume.
- Once we have a good ranking on Google, it is more than likely we will have a good ranking on the other engines because the ranking factors are all very similar across the engines.

Budget:
- $[blank] monthly budget

Results Timeline:
- After implementation of the recommendations, there is a delay of at least a week or two, before seeing results in the Search Engine.
- The keyword rankings should continue to improve as the strategic inbound links age, and the SEO implementations have been indexed. On average, the optimum effect from the on-site & off-site SEO effort will be experienced in approximately 12 weeks.

Launch Date:
- January 1, 2008

Keyword Research and Analysis:
- Determine which keywords will pull in qualified traffic, how many searches do these terms/phrases receive, how should keywords & webpages be used in combination to attract search traffic.
- Analyze Keyword Difficulty

Keywords:
- We will concentrate on optimizing keyword phrases that are mapped to a specific webpage.
- 1 Keyword/Landing page combinations.

Domain Analysis:
- Analysis of the website information architecture and internal linking structure
- Analysis of HTML and page layout

Content Analysis & Creation:
- Amount of Indexable Text Content
- Quality & quantity of visible HTML text on page
- SEO Copywriting
- Additional webpage/content creation if necessary

Linking Analysis:
- Overall Internal link structure
- Internal Link Popularity of Linking Page within Host Site/Domain
- Link Popularity
- Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
- The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.
- Link Relevance
- Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site.
- The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword.
- Deep Link Analysis
- Deep link percentage is the % of all inbound links that point at pages other than the homepage.

Link Development:
- Increase link popularity
- Implement a Strategic Link Campaign by purchasing links on websites that will provide a high SEO value.

Indexing Analysis:
- Duplicate Content
- Content very similar or duplicate of existing content in the index
- Possible duplicate Title/Meta Tags on many Pages
- Robots.txt exclusions

Baseline Reporting:
- Generate a baseline Ranking Report for the keywords. The baseline, as the name implies, gives us an indication of where the webpages are ranked on Google, and will be used to measure results.
- Baseline Traffic report for http://www.[Client Site].com
- Baseline Monthly Sales report for http://www.[Client Site].com

Implementation:
- Programming our recommendations. Once all the changes have been completed, we will run an audit to verify that the recommendation was implemented correctly and identify any changes, if needed.

Success Metrics:
- First page Search Engine rankings.
- Increase in Website Traffic to http://www.[Client Site].com
- Increase Sales volume to http://www.[Client Site].com , and generate a positive ROI.

Next Steps:
- [CLIENT SITE] to authorize approval.
- Launch 1/1/08

If you have any PPC clients, you most likely have to send Monthly Performance Reports. It doesn’t matter whether you are running small or large PPC campaigns. Do you separate out Content from Search? Do you measure Conversions? How do you measure success? Do you include analysis?

Here is an example of my “basic” PPC Performance Report. It has many self-calculating formulas within the cells.

A written analysis of the campaign should be included. Whether you choose to include it on the Excel sheet, in the body of the email, or as a separate Word document is your choice. Personally, I like to include it underneath the Performance Report, and write something that is reflective of the summary in the body of the email.

Depending on the intensity of the PPC campaign, you may choose to create a weekly or monthly status report. Within the Status report, you should state:
1) Report Dates (reporting period timeframe).
2) Campaign Objectives
3) Key Highlights & Challenges
4) Optimizations/Creative Modifications
5) Upcoming Activities/Opportunities

In your written analysis be specific and quantifiable. Call out specific CPC’s, CTR, Avg Positions, ROAS, Conversion Rates, etc. Talk about what happened “out-of-the-gate”, and how you optimized the campaign. Talk about strategy. Talk about Keywords ( Brand vs Non-Brand). Talk about Search Engine performance, and possible Search Engine expansion. Talk about upcoming optimizations & activities/opportunities.

I have created many variations of the attached PPC Performance Report Template to include metrics such as Play Rate, CPM’s for Site Targeting, Content Network metrics, etc.

If you don’t have a PPC Performance Report Template, then this one is a good place to start.

There is a relatively new product in the Domaining industry called, Leasing Domains. You can kick the tires around on a domain name before you buy it. Kinda a lease-to-own option.

If you already have an established brand. You might want to leverage traffic from a leased domain, and send the traffic to your established brand site.

But, even with a 1-word domain, there is no guarantee that you’ll get great ranking, due to the competitiveness of the keyword. The leased domain still needs to be optimized. You can see an example of this by doing a Google search for “credit card”.

If you were thinking on using a redirect, well…neither a 301, 302, or meta redirect is needed, if the domain isn’t getting high rankings on it’s own. Because nobody will find the search listing anyway, unless it’s optimized.

Bottomline, if you are going to lease a domain, I think the best use of the domain is to setup another website that contains many content-rich pages. Basically, build another website. And, optimize it for your keyword term. Obviously, the links on the leased site should be links to yourdomain.com.

Although, I think this domaining strategy isn’t necessary, especially for an already strong ranking, & brand presence on a particular search query that is the keyword in your domain name. Unless of course, the strategy is to build out another site, and/or change the brand name.

However, if you can find a domain that has thousands of visitors from type-in traffic, then you could take advantage of using a meta refresh redirect. Just make sure the cost makes sense from an ROI standpoint.

How to Meta-Refresh Redirect:
To redirect to a new page using the meta-refresh, you can use the syntax below:

The number 1 is the time, in seconds, until the page should be redirected. Then, separated by a semi-colon (;) is the URL that should be loaded.

What is Information Architecture?
It’s organizing your site content into groups. It’s how you organize the content of your website, and the categories/subcategories/brands/products, as they relate to the URL structure.

Why is site architecture important?
Good site architecture tells people, AND Search Engines what your site is about. The Page Title, Breadcrumb, Header tags, and page content (copywriting) should all be in sync with the URL structure.

For example:
www.mysite.com/?cat2315&sub654#prod2.html is not good URL structure or a good representation of your information architecture. It would look much better if the URL looked like this: www.mysite.com/mens/casual/pants/cordury.html

Try to avoid dynamically generated url’s that contain multiple dynamic variables. Best practice to use URL’s that contain keywords, and/or makes sense to your website visitors. For existing sites that use dynamic URLs, it might make sense to implement 301 redirects on the URL’s to have them appear as static.

An additional SEO benefit is the URL structure can increase clickthroughs from Search Engine results pages. Consider how many times you DIDN’T click on a search listing because you saw another listing that had keywords in the URL. So, you passed on the dynamic URL, and clicked on the listing that had a URL that made sense, right?

Another important SEO value, is that the keywords are in the URL, especially since the keywords/URL combination is used in a specific, contextually relevant environment. This has a strong tendency to increase rankings when used in combination with other SEO tactics.

As you can see, the site architecture makes it easier for the Search Engine’s to decipher what your site and specific page is about. And, as we all know, the key to being #1 in Google is getting them to think you have the most contextually relevant (and resource-rich, authoritative) page to the search query.

I just re-created my profile on Digg. I abandoned my old profile because I created it a long time ago before I knew what I was doing…and I think it just looks too spammy. So, I’m starting over. It feels good to have a brand spanking new fresh profile.

If anyone wants to be my friend ( and I hope you do), please use this link: http://www.digg.com/invitefrom/slickbird .

The direct link to my profile page is: http://www.digg.com/users/slickbird

My plan is to start using Digg in a much more methodical way to add value to the entire Digg community.

This is so new that there is no documentation on this anywhere I can find.

My Google team is hot for me to get on this, and I think it’s a great product enhancement.

A MDS is essentially a MCC (My Client Center). Although, the big difference is that the advertiser has the ability to create, modify & apply budgets without the need for a separate Service Agreement for each account. One Service Agreement, and then your Google rep just needs to create the child account shells.

It will look the same as your existing MCC, although there will be a button to the right that says, “Modify Budget”:

The Manager Defined Spend (MDS) is a new program by Google designed to allow you to create, fund, and modify your managed accounts with greater flexibility and efficiency.

KEY POINTS:
- Create, Modify & Allocate Budget Effectively.
- Increased Efficiency.
- Customer Flexibility and Control On Multiple Accounts.
- 1 service agreement to cover multiple accounts.

The MDS (Manager Defined Spend) is empowering the SEM’s to adjust their own accounts & budgets/flight dates without the need for an additional service agreement.

Google rep still needs to create a child account shell.
Invoicing still comes to the SEM, and invoicing can be on an account basis, or as 1 consolidated invoice per MDS. Although, the invoices are not mailed. I need to manually pull that from the interface.
When the transition to a MDS from a MCC happens, the Logins will stay the same.

Transitioning to a MDS from a MCC will not affect quality score, because it’s the same account.

1. Your login/password for your MCC remains the same
2. After transition from a MCC, your Active accounts will not go dark. Current Budget remains in the account. However renewing the campaign when the budgets and campaign end dates approach is in your control.
2. Quality Score, Account History will remain intact and will not be affected by this new agreement.
4. You will be able to get every account invoice via adwords account in printable/downloadable PDF’s.