Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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Red Flags

Through the course of your data-gathering over the last few weeks, you probably came

across several red flags. These are the isolated tidbits of information that make humans

so much better at doing SEO work than any kind of automated system. We hope that

you remembered to note these thoughts in your Task Journal because today you’ll be

gathering them into your Baseline Monthly Report.

For this section, we want you to write issues that do not specifically fall under

the other categories in this document, so “poor rankings” or “not enough inbound

links” shouldn’t go here. Red flags are issues that may be detrimental to your overall

SEO health and that need to be addressed sometime in the future. Here are some

examples:

• None of our files have meta description tags.

• I found several outdated listings for the following URLs available on Yahoo! and

MSN….

• I found the term “X” instead of our current products in our listings.

• There are a large number of nonindustry competitors in the top ranks for our

terms.

• Most of our inbound links are using the old product names and logos.

Don’t get bogged down in trying to figure out exactly how to handle these red

flags. As you proceed through your plan in Part III, you will be given time to address

them. Just make sure to soften the blow with a statement like “I will be working to

address these over the next several weeks.” And you will, with our help!

Thursday: Personalize

Use this day to tune your Baseline Monthly Report for its intended audience. You

know your team and your boss, so you know whether they’ll drool over a section

titled “How to Bring Us to the TOP!” or a section titled “Search Marketing Best Prac-

tices.” And you know if your team likes to read a lot of details or needs bullet-point

summaries that they can glance through while they rush between meetings. Today,

you’ll spiff up your document with those bells and whistles that separate the “wha?”

from the “wow!”

Now:

Complete the “Conversions” and “Red Flags” sections of your Baseline Monthly Report.

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