The surest way to successfully construct a building is to follow a blueprint. A blueprint contains detailed plans and designs that enables skilled personnel to build the structure just from the blueprint. In the same way, a detailed set of plans is the surest way to build a successful search marketing campaign. And just like construction blueprints, while each SEO blueprint may be unique, each will also contain similar details to ensure success. What details should a search marketing blueprint contain?
Defined Goals
The first step in any plan is to know what the goal is. A search marketing campaign may be broad or narrow. It may encompass an entire web site consisting of thousands of potential keyword phrases, or it may focus upon just one subsection of a site. Whatever the focus, it should be clear from the beginning what the desired goals will be. Be specific when defining the goals. Determine the scope of the project. What is the core topic that is being addressed? What content is already established within this core topic? What content should be added to address missing subtopics? How does this area of the site compare to the competition’s coverage?
Keyword and Competitive Research
Once the goals have been defined, the blueprint needs to focus on details. Proper keyword research is vital at this stage. Understanding which phrases are the most likely to bring traffic is a good first step, but care should be taken to realistically address the competitiveness of each phrase. If it is not feasible to rank well for a highly competitive phrase when your business is a fledgling company that is pitted against long-established companies, you may need to work on ranking for the lower-hanging fruit for now. Identifying which phrases are less competitive, but still likely to bring significant qualified traffic is key to this part of the SEO blueprint. Analyzing the competition will also aid in determining which details to include here. With a bit of practice, you’ll find the phrases that the competition failed to address properly, and you can beat them with a detailed, focused plan.
Content Outline
Many times, a site may already have a significant amount of content that addresses the core topic. If so, that content should still be picked apart and evaluated. A fresh eye can often see what the original publishers could not. Content can be tightened, refocused, and expanded upon to create an outstanding resource for the subject matter. No matter how much content already exists, a new outline should be considered. Is there enough information? Is the information arranged logically? Do page titles and section headings represent the key concepts that are being targetted? For every question a user might have about the topic, is there content to answer the question? Does the topic include multimedia whenever multimedia would be useful? Are illustrations and diagrams included when possible? Have podcasts, video, and screencasts been considered as compelling content? Does the copy satisfy both the user’s needs as well as the marketing goals? The content outline should be the ultimate plan for each page of the topic section.
Evaluate and Address Technical Issues
The blueprint should include any technical issues that need to be addressed, such as server problems, coding issues that may hamper search engine bots from spidering content, and any other technical issues that need to be solved to ensure that nothing is preventing the search engines from indexing the site properly.
Offsite Marketing
Finally, the blueprint needs to outline the various ways that the site will be promoted, publicized, socialized, and marketed so that others will link to the site, talk about the site, and recommend the site. Because a large part of any SEO campaign is obtaining backlinks, this part of the blueprint should be carefully considered. Keeping the site’s content fresh, and providing users with that fresh content via such services as blog posts and RSS feeds should be considered. Participating in social networks and joining in the conversation about the topic is yet another way to have a measure of influence over the buzz and popularity of the site. Although you don’t have full control over the links others place on their own sites or the buzz they may generate, you can have an influence by being involved in related social networks and actively promoting the site. If your blueprint contains a detailed outline of each of those offsite avenues you intend to pursue, you have a good chance of being successful with this important part of your search marketing campaign.
Take Action
The final step is to have your team follow the plan, while making sure everyone is nimble enough to adjust it along the way as new information, situations, or problems are presented. While each search marketing blueprint will differ in the details, the basic outlines will all look very similar. Get the core elements right, remember to fill in the details that are specific to each situation, and you stand a very good chance of building a successful search marketing campaign.
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this is great stuff Donna. from someone with an SEO background, I really dig the off line bp analogy to help folks how it applies online!
Hi Donna
Great Post. I was wondering do you use the google free keyword tool for your keyword research?
Thanks!
Hi Pete. I do use it, in fact. I also use several others as well, such as Wordze and Wordtracker, but the Google tool is actually quite good, since they added real volume data earlier in the year. I often recommend it.
Helpful article. As a person with a writing background I am mostly focused on keywords and content relevance.The part about evaluating and addressing technical issues really hit home. Our CMS caused us some issues we’re working to resolve. SEO should be a major consideration when choosing a CMS.
Thanks Donna. I use it too, was hoping you would say that!
Does anyone know why google cannot figure our site out. type this into google
“la capella degli scrovegni virtual tour”
And then Web-Italia, LLC is #7 – click it and it does not go to the proper page.
I know our page titles are terrible – but I do not understand why the pages cannot be indexed.
Justin, that site has a lot of seo issues. The first and most obvious one is that all the pages have the same title. (or at least all the ones i saw). There are probably a multitude of reasons why that is happening. It needs to be evaluated for just about everything, imo.
[...] why Donna Fontenot’s latest post over at Online Marketing for Marketers is a handy one. She does a great job of outlining the core components of a search engine [...]
Brilliant Article. I think outlining the content is a very important process which is often overlooked by many webmasters.
Donna,
Great post. I’d also recommend taking a close look at the link structure of the site while you’re doing the content outline (you may already do that, but I didn’t see it specifically mentioned).
Nice guideline that should help quite a few people.
You’re right, Tampa SEO, the internal link structure may need to be considered, and would probably be part of both the content analysis as well as the technical analysis. In my experience, in most cases, logic will generally produce an appropriate link structure so little or no changes have to be made, but definitely, if the structure is overtly bad, or a technical challenge to search bots, then it should be dealt with.
Hi,
Of course that this is only the start and from these core components you can expand but it’s good that the basic ones are wrapped in one place.
Thank you
It is indeed imperative to find the right keywords in order to bring the most targeted traffic to your website.
Nice article.
[...] why Donna Fontenot’s latest post over at Online Marketing for Marketers is a handy one. She does a great job of outlining the core components of a search engine [...]
Donna, thank you for a very good article. I just got tapped into Google Analytics and was shocked to see that search response is not happening. Is there something wrong with our coding? Is it a titles issue? What do you think? Thanks, Janet
Janet, just with a quick glance, I see you mention “hospitality marketing” as your main focus (i assume), and yet there’s no actual “text” using that phrase on your home page or title. It only exists within an image. Use or lose it, ya know? Also, not sure if you have a local focus or not, but if so, that makes your job easier – as long as you go after the local phrases. Again – use it or lose it. If you don’t tell the search engines what you are about, they won’t guess right. Be specific. Use the phrases in text. And then get some backlinks with some of those phrases too. That’s the quick, down and dirty advice I can give at just a glance.
[...] why Donna Fontenot’s latest post over at Online Marketing for Marketers is a handy one. She does a great job of outlining the core components of a search engine [...]
Business analysis and keyword analysis is the key to success.
[...] Blueprint of a Successful SEO Campaign [...]
Thanks for that, nice post indeed!
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onBlueprint Of A Successful SEO Campaign | Donna FontenotHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onBlueprint Of A Successful <b>SEO</b> Campaign | Donna FontenotHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
[...] Blueprint Of A Successful SEO Campaign | Donna Fontenot http://www.onlinemarketingconnect.com/donnafontenot/2008/10/blueprint-of-a-successful-seo-campaign – view page – cached The surest way to successfully construct a building is to follow a blueprint. A blueprint contains detailed plans and designs that enables skilled personnel to — From the page [...]