Within an RFP for SEO Consulting is usually a section where the prospective client asks about a Site Analysis.

A full-blown Technical Site Analysis consists of:

• Analysis of information architecture.
• Analysis of source code, and page layout.
• Site Navigation.
• Analysis of Flash & Javascript.
• Keyword usage.
• URL structure.
• Content siloing.
• Internal linking structure.
• Dynamic strategy.
• Robots.txt exclusions.
• Sitemaps (website & XML).

Once you land the consulting gig, there should be a deep dive into each of the Analysis factors above, and a detailed SEO recommendation and implementation.

But, for the purpose of an RFP, it’s certainly okay to provide an overview, or a brief abridged Site Analysis to demonstrate that you put in the time to understand their site & their needs. It also shows you know what you’re doing, and instills confidence in your ability.

The “abridged” Site Analysis can consist of a summarized statement for each of these:

• Sitewide TITLE tags.
• Sitewide META tags.
• Navigation.
• Site Architecture.
• Flash usage.
• Overview of Department, Category, Sub-category, and Product pages.
• Indexibility.
• Is there duplicate content?
• Canonicalization.

Remember, you’re just doing a quick analysis, and providing a summary statement on each of the above factors for the abridged site analysis.

It’s often helpful to also do an abridged Keyword Analysis consisting of:

• Keywords to be Targeted
• Keyword ranking.
• Keyword traffic.
• keyword revenue.

You will also want to examine their inbound link profile, and their internal linking structure.

As you can see, you don’t need to give away the milk for free. This is just part of the work involved to win the business.

Photo credit: sugadeaux

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The big question is “How can I get my video there?” Now it behooves advertisers & publishers to conduct a Video Optimization for specific keywords related to the video. In many cases it’s worth the time & money invested to get your video to the top of the search results page.

Without showing any of my client work, I’ll show a personal video that is ranking. Search for the term, AFX race cars.

10 Tactics for Video Optimization:
1. Use the Keyword in the Title. Make the Title sound interesting.
2. Write approx 2 paragraphs of text for the Description.
3. Tag each video with keywords.
4. Choose proper category for each video.
5. It’s best to put a hyperlink to the target page within the Description, but before the user needs to click (more info) to see the hyperlink.
6. Upload all videos to multiple video sites (Youtube, Viddler, etc)
7. Comments help by showing interest, and by additional user-generated content (more words on the page).
8. Video responses show interest/activity.
9. Rating. Try to get as many 5 star ratings as you can
10. Views, views, and more views.

Treat the video as you would any other webpage, and begin a Link building optimization to increase the amount of Inbound links. Ideally, your objective is to increase Link popularity and Link relevancy. While building links for your off-site optimization, try to mix up textlinks and the number of Embeds. All these are Video Ranking Factors.

A great productivity tool to upload videos to multiple video sharing sites is TubeMogul .

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Organizing your content in content silos is a powerful SEO technique, and combined with proper internal linking can be all that your site needs to rank for your primary keywords.

Links are important both internal and external. Internal links should use keyword-rich anchor text that point to your internal pages within the website. External links are the one-way inbound links from other web properties that point to your webpages.

Although, I can’t overemphasize the importance of lots & lots of content, that has hyperlinks embedded within the content that contain the keyword which you want to rank. Keyword-rich content is important. Don’t get hung up on keyword density. Just make sure you use a few primary keywords on the webpage. SEO Copywriting along with internal linking can be the secret sauce that’s needed to boost your position in the Search Engines to a top spot.

Now, come the links. The internal links should be directed to a “target URL”. The target url is the webpage you want to appear in the search results. The idea is to increase the internal link percent. In short, the internal link percent is the percentage of pages on the domain that link to the Target URL. Pick the page you want to rank, and start internal linking to that webpage using the chosen keyword. If it makes sense for usability, take advantage of the sidebar and footer for internal linking.

Fill your target url with keyword-rich content. It’s okay to link away from your site. Make use of keywords in anchor text, and make sure the outbound links are to “authoritative” sites within your topical neighborhood.

Create content silos that are tightly knitted together by keyword-rich internal linking. Ideally, ecommerce sites should use internal linking to knit together pages within a department, category, sub-category, sub-sub category, and product pages.

Bottomline, the internal linking affects keyword ranking, and contributes to strong content silos. Combined with a properly structured inbound-link campaign are extremely powerful SEO tactics.

Photo credit: bkwdayton

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The link campaign structure needs to be optimized with a social slant, especially with the newest algorithm update from Google, called Google Caffeine.

Overall “link power” is important. Assuming you have that already, your site might just need some fine-tuning using link building. By having an already existing large inbound link portfolio, this new campaign for link acquisition will look natural. Assuming there is already a ton of linkjuice coming from across a wide variety of websites, different countries, ISP’s, IP’s, etc, the small targeted link campaign will look natural, and is a small percentage of the total number of inbound links.

Since the overall “linkpower” of the site is very strong, we just need a small targeted campaign for fine tuning. That should provide a good “lift” for your keywords. Many of which can attain the top positions.

Budget:
Budgets will vary based on your keywords, and how competitive the search results are. Smaller budgets can accomplish the same goals, but will just take a little longer. What can be done with $7500 in 4 weeks, can also be done with $2000 over a few months. Pacing the steady placement of links over time is also important to give a natural appearance to the search engines (Google). Ideally, an ongoing monthly budget for link building should be established.

Targeting:
Stay very focused by targeting aprroximately 5 to 10 keywords.

Forecasts:
There are traffic forecasts, ranking forecasts, and revenue forecasts.

The forecasts are based on the Keyword Demand Matrix. Basically, we look at the current monthly search volume of the keywords, and then look at what your website is currently receiving in search traffic from those same keywords. The increase in percentage of “share of Traffic” could be 100% or more. Meaning, if you have 5% share of traffic, it could increase to 20% of traffic. Obviously, this has to be evaluated on a case-by-case scenario.

Trying to nail down a real number increase can be difficult. So, every site should be analyzed on it’s own. For example, in the music business, there are a whole lot more searches for Metallica than Sean Paul. So, it might be best to forecast based on percentage increases rather than real number increases. And, of course a Keyword Demand Matrix should be generated for each website/campaign.

Photo credit: Dougs2007

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SEO is evolving. Social Media is evolving. The Web is evolving (eg: Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, etc). Google is evolving. These evolutions are algorithm changes.

Speaking on what I’m currently observing, it appears to me that the shift of “importance” has once again swung in favor of content. Not links. In the past, if your website was search engine friendly, then buying links has always helped give a boost in the rankings.

Strong Caution. Don’t just think that just buying links can help you. Link Buying can help. But it needs to be in a much more sophisticated link campaign structure. Just buying links can be a huge waste of money if not done correctly. This is especially the case now, with Google Caffeine.

The winners of this update have been the ecommerce sites which were content optimized, AND “link heavy”. Content optimization includes more than just adding more webpages to your website. It’s a much comprehensive approach for a Web 3.0 world. And, the same is true with link development. Content Optimization now must be thought of as an integral way to build links. Links & Content are bound up more tightly together. Content Optimization is Link Building. Link Building is Content Building.

Here’s another way to classify websites in terms of SEO. Think about these combinations:

• Content light/Link light
• Content light/Link heavy
• Content heavy/Link light
• Content heavy/Link heavy

The losers in this update have been the websites which were “content light”, and “link light”.

The key with this new update is to build reputation and authority. There is a NEED to be consistant building content & links. This may take time. Perhaps, the link building you are lacking is in Social Media.

Ongoing SEO tactics:
1) Continually build content silos.
2) Continually participate in social media.
3) Continually build links using a complex link structure optimized for the social web. Don’t just “buy links”.

Wanna increase your website traffic? Build more content to increase your chances to be found. Build an online social media presence, and diversify your link portfolio.

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Additional Reading:
Google Caffeine: Google’s New Search Engine Index.
Google Releases Public Search Update: “Caffeine” Update.
More info on the Caffeine Update.

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There will always be a need to drive traffic. But, where will the focus be? Will Google still be the primary target?

We’ve all seen the rise in Social Media usage. Some of the more popular Social Networks include, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg, and Youtube. And, we’ve all seen the explosive growth of Twitter. Not only are these growing and active communities, they also can drive a significant amount of traffic. Here’s the forecast of Social Media usage by emarketer:

Niche communities are popping up everywhere now. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Social Networks like Ning. Anybody can now create a niche social network by using their free platform. To see a great example, here is a ning community that I joined, which was created by Larry Brauner. Niche communities like his have the potential to grow huge, and drive highly relevant traffic.

An SEO Consultant should prepare for the shift to social media by getting active on some of these. This takes a lot of time. Some of it I’ve heard described as “busywork”. But, the investment of time is needed. Even if you just choose one or two networks to become active on, it’s very possible that your traffic needs will be spread out to different networks from those people you’re connected to on a single social community. Think of it as a scaled-down version of viral marketing. Although, it could explode into full-blown viral activity.

Now with all this talk of the importance of social networking, I don’t want you to think that traditional SEO is dead. Cause it ain’t!

The search engines aren’t going away anytime soon. There is no Google killer anywhere in sight. And, search engines still drive an enormous amount of traffic. Search engines are where your customers find you. In the future a good SEO Consultant will get you traffic regardless of where it’s from. It’s all about:

• Right Message
• Right Place
• Right Time
• Right Person
• Right Experience

Photo credit: Saioki Fugiyoshi

I like the symbolism of the photo. A good SEO Consultant (the mouse), can control Google (the cat).

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When, I looked at their site. It was very nice. But, very small. These guys are a factory operation that sells direct to the public. Nationwide. And, they are all trustworthy businessmen well respected in their community. I know this firsthand. But, any visitor to their site wouldn’t.

Before looking at the site any deeper, it was obvious to me that they needed more content. All types of content. And a whole lot more pages. This is what motivated me to tweet this morning on Twitter an SEO tip:

SEO tip: Build more content. Google & people want to see more resource-rich webpages (text, video, images).

Here I’m emphasizing content. In a previous post I wrote on the importance of a properly structured link optimization and how it can provide a boost in keyword rankings. So, which is it? Is it content or links. Ah, the ole debate. Well, it’s really a combination of those two things that’ll do it. Don’t ignore either. It’s a combination of the right type of links, and good content.

Content silos specifically. That’s what’s really gonna do it. And, the larger you can make your content silo the better. Stuff it with content. All types of quality content. And, don’t be afraid to use outbound links that go off your site. But, I’ll caution on the use of “weak” outbound links.

With Universal search (press releases, video, images, shopping results, news, etc), placing more types of content on your site is becoming increasingly more important to be found. You never know if your competitor’s video or image will appear above all the natural results. So, it’s best you have a ton of content that’s properly indexed in all the engines, so you stand a shot at getting your content in the search results.

Wanna Drive Traffic? Build Content. Regardless of the type of business you have, keyword & resource-rich content is good for every site. Keep building content.

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