Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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Now, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do: Explain the thought process that went

into your choices. Perhaps you want to mention keywords that were considered but

disqualified or the various keywords that you combined for more efficient targeting.

Just a couple of sentences will do. You will want to revisit and reanalyze your keyword

picks eventually, maybe as soon as six months from now, so getting this down in writ-

ing now will save you from having to reconstruct your original analysis.

Your Landing Page Choice

“Top landing pages were chosen to correspond with our conversion goals and our top-

priority keywords.”

Now, to make this meaningful, be sure to comment on any judgment calls you

made when choosing landing pages: “I picked the ‘easels’ page rather than the ‘artistic

tools’ page because I think it will be easier to edit.” This is also the place to make a

note of any new landing pages that need to be built and perhaps even your ideas for

appropriate content on these pages. In a broad way, this section gives you a chance to

have your say about anything you think is missing in your site’s content.

Your Competitive Analysis

“Top five competitors were chosen based on input from the sales department and

observations regarding which sites had consistent rankings in the top 30 spots on

Yahoo!, Google, MSN, and Ask.”

Now, feed your readers some juicy gossip: What was the most interesting and/or

enlightening aspect of your competitors’ search presence? Did you identify any trends

that showed what you’re up against? Some possible additions to this section might be

“Our biggest search competitor is Nickeldyme Inc., who has a high level of optimiza-

tion and consistent top-10 ranks for our target keywords” or “I could find very little

evidence that any of our competitors have put any effort into SEO, which represents an

opportunity for us to take the lead.”

Tuesday: Site Visibility

Anybody

can

look at your spreadsheets to figure out how your site is doing with

regard to the hard numbers—ranks, links, and indexing—but probably less than half

the people you encounter will

want to

. What’s more, it’s likely that the people who

Now:

Complete the “Keywords,”“Landing Pages,” and “Competition”portions of your Baseline

Monthly Report.

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