This article refers to the process involved in rolling out a new client that has adopted a search engine optimisation strategy.

Client Objectives

Determine Client Objectives

• Speak with client to determine what the main areas of the business that the client wants to focus on:
• Target Area – suburb, state, country, World Wide
• Best Selling Product or Service
• Major Industry categories, names of products and services client wants to focus on to expand business
• Keywords the client feels would be most beneficial
• Client competitors
• Any enquiries the client is unable to provide products or services for

Research to find any existing rankings the client may already have

• This could impact the suggested keywords as well as have a significant impact on the strategic planning of the optimization (as you will have to take these ranking into consideration when optimizing – especially if these rankings are already delivering good traffic and conversions to the website)

Keyword Research

• Determine if client has any existing analytics data or previously had any PCP campaigns run
• If YES then look at the data and begin determining what is currently delivering traffic to the website and focus on these key areas as a basis
• Refine your list of keywords provided from the client with your findings from the analytics data to provide the initial list of keywords – Keep in mind being able to justify your selection of keywords
• If NO then carry on with independent research of keywords
• Determine if client has had any other statistics or data being collected from independent resources and gather a list of keywords generating the bulk of the traffic to the website
• Commence independent research into potential keywords for the client to review and discuss
• This includes looking in through the Google Adwords External tool to determine what are relevant & high search terms and include in list
• Reviewing competitors websites to determine what the main focus is here – this sometimes provides some good insight into what areas may be potentially useful it also gives a good understanding into what the competitors are working towards
• Look at independent tools to further validate the initial list of proposed keywords
• Using previous historical data from other clients in the same niche make any further inclusions to the list of keywordsUsing previous historical data from other clients in the same niche make any further inclusions to the list of keywords

Competitor Analysis

• Review the source code to determine if competitors are using any other keywords not included in the list (that may be beneficial to the client)
• Using the websitegrader.com (by hubspot) or any other independent website grading tool have a look at how the website is structured to determine how well optimized the website is
• Compare the structure, content, etc of the clients website to the competitors that are ranking well – determine if there are any areas that you could improve on in the clients website or that the competitors have not done well that (so you don’t make the same mistake
• Determine the sizes of the clients and competitors website, age of the website, inbound links, structure of website (informative, narrative, ecommerce, etc) – could provide insight into how competitive the industry is

Discuss potential list of keywords with clients & get feedback

• Provide client with the list of keywords to review
• Discuss your findings with the client providing insight into why you have recommended this list and the methods you have used to gather this data
• Review keywords the client has provided you and ensure that both parties are happy with the suggestions
• After feedback is receive research further into any areas that we discussed with client if necessary
• Amend the list of keywords to accommodate the feedback provided by client
• Provide client with the list of keywords you would recommend and get approval on the list of keywords

Commence Google Map optimization

• Using the most suitable location based keywords (from research and discussions with client) create the Google Map for the client within there own Gmail account
• Ensure that the title, description, services, etc are all accurately reflecting the business as well as marketing the business in an affective way to
• Ensure that the keywords are naturally incorporated into the key areas that will assist with getting the map ranking for the target terms
• Validate the Google map
• Using similar details reinforce the Google Map listing by submitting the client into similar website such as
• Hot frog – True local – Street-directory, Local business guide, etc
• Monitor the maps progresses initially every couple of days and then on a weekly basis to ensure that the listing has been indexed in Google and is beginning to rank for the client
• Inform the client once the Google Map listing is ranking on the first page

Reviewing Client Website

• Run the website through the following tools to determine that there is no underlying issues with the website
• Install Google Webmaster tools – view the data
• Run the website in the website grader tool
• Run the website in the IIS (Internet Information Services)
• Using the list of keywords approved by client commence reviewing the clients website
• Look at the structure of the website
• Determine what sort of website the client has (informative, navigational, ecommerce, etc) this will affect the strategic planning of the optimization
• Use a website grading tool (i.e.: websitegrader.com (by hubspot)) to rate the current website prior to
• Independently review the website to determine how the website is structured
• Make notes on any areas that you believe are having a negative impact on the website
• Make notes on any recommendations to further improve the website from an SEO opinion
• Look at the current meta data including Page title, descriptions, keywords,
• Look at the structure of the website from a coding perspective to determine if there are any areas that may have some impact in the way that the website loads – to ensure that the load time is as low as possible – this could include images (and there size), the use of tables instead of divs, the CSS etc
• Review the current content on the website – this includes making suggestions to improve the keyword density or reduce the keyword density (if sounding spammy)
• Organize with content writers to provide some new content if required
• Look at the current titles being used in the website and provide suggestions to improve this structure to make the content flow better and/or strategically place emphasis on the keywords
• Look at the images used within the website – provide recommendations to optimize the images (if not already done) including where the images are stored, names of the image, alt text for images, etc