SEO - is not links! Or what SEO specialsits to do
- SEO |
When communicating with a webmaster and an online project manager, I often hear that links play an important role in SEO. They give so much importance to the links that the work of SEO-specialist seems to them to be based in finding ways to add links to a website, they appear to be defined by their ability to write anchors and choose the donor, or worse, their use of link exchange.
In the same time when meeting each other, SEO specialists are mostly interested in questions like who dilutes the anchors, which links to buy or how to place quality links and how to choose a procurement strategy or how to find a natural link placement. Many clients of SEO-services think of work distribution of the expert that promotes their project approximately in the following way:
That's how they plan to spend their budget - funds spend to pay a specialist and to buy links. That's the ideal feeding ground for an automated system, isn't that? But in fact, a good SEO-specialist (with experience) perform a variety of tasks, most of which are associated with analysis and intelligence.
Let's look at what goes into the work SEOs
1. Choosing a web host. I think that every SEO specialist has to deal with these questions - how to choose a hosting and its location. It is hard to recommend the name of a single host, my client sites are located in many different hosts. I have my own preferences, I would not want to force you, but I find it hard to work with market leaders. And pricing policy is not a factor, but rather tech support and administration. I don't want to pay a substantial amount for administration of a smaller project, I prefer hosting where there is a service administration with a small surcharge. Especially when it comes to the VPS, I tried this VPS hosting for some of my projects. I was pleased with tech support which is quick, efficient and knowledgeable.
2. Analysis of niches. Before starting working on a new project, it is necessary to analyze the landscape, especially when it comes to marketing and long-term investing (or upload, depending your view angle). Who are the players on the market? How long have they occupied this niche and what have they managed to achieve? Who will we have to compete with and who are to better to make friends with? All of these questions have to be answered to develop a good promotional strategy for your web site.
3. Predictions. Based on this analysis we develop forecasts for the client - how much traffic and orders we can get for them (in short and long term)? We also talk about risks. Based on forecasts, the client decides whether it makes sense to invest, or even - to conduct an online business (it's possible that nobody buys meteorites online, and it is better to work as a miner). By the way, if at this stage the client decides not to work with SEO specialist, and the specialist is not paid for the new traffic, the company loses a day (or more). That's why, many companies do not offer to conduct an analysis, they say briefly - "we can promote sites, do you want that to or not?", Implying that the client has an analytical mind and have everything is properly analyzed or vice versa - the client has no clue and don't think of the future.
4. Working with keywords . Having decided to promote a web site, you need to prepare and, above all, to compile a list of keywords - these are the key phrases that people can and should find on the site. Depending on the scale of the project, the core list may include from 10 to 10,000 words or even more. And, despite the fact that there are tools to work with the keywords, many specialists have to compile the list manually (including conducting some brainstorming). From a large variety of phrases you need to select the most effective and promising. This may seem like a simple task, but, in fact, it takes substantial time of a SEO-specialist. When the final list is complete, it has to be grouped, as each group will have its own purpose and its own characteristics, and of the result will depend on the future structure of the site (if the client gives the go-ahead for its change).
5. Analysis of the site. It means a technical analysis of the site and internal SEO-audit. Make sure that the site works well and fast, CMS does not generate duplicates, unwanted sections covered by indexing using the correct encoding, content is visible to search engines and so on ... On the basis of the analysis, you need to develop the recommendations for changes to the web site administrator.
6. Statistical analysis. If a site has already existed for some time in the network, one of the tasks of SEO-specialist is to analyze the website statistics including site's current performance, how users find it, which queries they use, what kind of search engines they come from and so on. If the site is moved to another company (or other SEOs), it is necessary to review the past promotional strategies, dynamics of positions and methods used, as well as the acceptability of these methods (in terms of their long term benefits). Note that I haven't talked about links to this point.
7. Promotional strategy. At this step, after completing all preparation, we develop a promotional strategy and present it to the client. The strategy establishes goals, identifies tasks (what needs to be done to achieve the goal) and assigns roles and set time schedule (who does what and when). There will be different strategies for every web site, depending on the starting point and goals.
8.Learning new tools. The market of SEO is changing, the approaches are changing as well, there are new tools and services coming up on the market every day. The same thing is happening in the market of desktop applications, every month there are new tools that require time to learn. Who is investing in the professional development - the client, the employer or specialist? Everyone decides for themselves, but keep in mind that SEOs need to dedicate time to professional development, including learning of new tools (this item isn't billable to the client, but it something that needs to be done for the SEO specialist by either employer or professionals themselves).
9. Optimization of site structure and selection of pages for promotion. It is time to do something with the site, the client has yet to see any results besides analytical reports. The first thing to do at this stage is to optimize the structure of the site, index the important pages and sections and make them available in a small number of clicks from the main page, use the navigation filters, bread crumbs and CNC. Perhaps this work will be done only once, but all further work on the site will depend on the structure. The keywords and the structure of the site, as well as the client's vision dictates what pages to show for the the query in each group. Perhaps this step does not apply to small projects with just 2-5 pages, but you need to select entry points and justify your choices for the online retailers and other large sites. This is one of the SEO-specialist tasks (you can't fully automate this process).
10. Creation and content optimization. Some pages from the target structure may not even exist and you want to create content for them, or additional content may need to be added to existing pages. Task for the SEO specialist here is to write a detailed task description for the person responsible for content writing if the optimizer is not doing it. You must register the titles, meta tags, optimize text and images, remove all the excess and make sure that the content has been indexed (visible for search engines) for each and every page. All work must be done in the accordance with the existing keywords. The more pages on the site the longer it takes to optimize the content. It is almost impossible to automate this but you can use templates, this step will require a lot of hours.
11. Search sites for links. It's very difficult to promote a site without links to other sites with similar theme, the SEO specialist has to dedicate time and efforts to search sites to insert links. This can be done periodically, the site may deteriorate or disappear and/or competition in the niche may grow.
12. Analysis of the sites of competitors. It also takes time to analyze the web sites of the competitors, how and where they promote themselves, what links they use and how to distribute the links weights in the structure of your site. It helps to find new sources of links, come up with new ideas and stay within the budgets.
13. Where to place links. Once you have the links selected, you need to find a place for them, which is a painstaking work that requires attention and time.
14. Monitoring of donors. After adding the links, you need to monitor them using special tools. The professionals are interested in performance of donors, as well as their quality, measured indirectly.
15. Monitoring of website (its position and performance). Work does not end after the link have been added. Make sure that the site itself works, you need to prevent it from falling or breaking, pay for hosting, detect the presence of new or duplicate content, scan for errors in the webmaster panel. Also at this stage, SEO-specialist periodically checks the position of the site, follows the trends and takes the necessary measures. All this takes time but it is partially automated by special tools.
16. The introduction of adjustments. There are no guarantees in SEO, all the previous work was based on the analysis, forecasts and experience, after the work is done it is time to analyze the results and make adjustments. Adjustments may be made in the structure of the site, its content and the promotional methods.
17. The search for new entry points. Sooner or later there comes a time when a site has reached its ceiling, or a dedicated budget runs out. In this case, SEO-experts look for new entry points, places additional material on the site, or start using new methods to get new links. The more entry points there are on the site the less risk for the traffic and therefore to sales at critical moments.
18. The introduction of new ideas. If the search for entry points refers to the analysis, the introduction of ideas is the internal optimization. This phase may include types of work listed above.
19. Working with snippets. Working with snippets (text descriptions in search results) is also the responsibility of SEOs but it's usually negotiated separately. It is important that the site is not only in the top, but also has the utmost appeal.
20. Web analytics That is a very important stage of the work with the site - you analyze traffic, visitors' behavior, look for bottlenecks, develop and improve site functionality and assess the effectiveness of SEO-campaign, and identify problem areas in the structure, navigation and content.
21. Reports. Preparation of reports for the client also takes time, it stands out as a separate task for the SEO specialist. The reports may include data from web analytics of the site audit, change in the position of the site in the search engines and transitions to different keywords (or groups of phrases). The reports must be clear and concise for the client to understand the work done and results achieved.
22. Submit your site to reputable directories and reference books. SEO is not only about getting traffic from the search queries, but also from other areas of the search engine, like Google Maps, search for images, news, and other sources (directories, catalogs).
23. Tracking news and industry trends. The search engines are not standing still and are constantly updating their ranking factors. Tracking the news, as well as learning new tools is the professional development not related to a specific project, however, SEOs specialist should stay on the cutting edge in their field.
24. Experiments You should think twice before making material changes to a web site -you need to understand pros and cons - it is better to test the changes first. Conducting of various tests and experiments, both within the site and beyond, is another time-consuming task for a SEO specialist.
25. The answers to customer's questions The last task (but not least) is the communication to the client - consulting, training, Q&As and discussions. If all the above combined into a table, you get a table where the first column is the ability to automate the process, and the last is the frequency of certain types of work. Of course, some of the stages of the work can be done by others - a copywriter, analyst (if there is a special department) and a project manager. That's why it makes sense to get a campaign from a SEO firm that can perform the wide range of tasks. If we now look at a chart of the distribution of SEO specialists' tasks to meet the types of work listed above, we get a more complete picture (as compared to the first embodiment in this article). As you can see, SEO - is not a link! External optimization is only 10% of the total amount of work (and part of this is the analysis of the link profiles of competitors). The work of SEO professional is in an analysis and internal optimization. What do you think about that? Do you agree that the SEO isn't about links and your budget shouldn't be based solely on them. How would it change your interaction with the client / SEO specialist?
In the same time when meeting each other, SEO specialists are mostly interested in questions like who dilutes the anchors, which links to buy or how to place quality links and how to choose a procurement strategy or how to find a natural link placement. Many clients of SEO-services think of work distribution of the expert that promotes their project approximately in the following way:
That's how they plan to spend their budget - funds spend to pay a specialist and to buy links. That's the ideal feeding ground for an automated system, isn't that? But in fact, a good SEO-specialist (with experience) perform a variety of tasks, most of which are associated with analysis and intelligence.
Let's look at what goes into the work SEOs
1. Choosing a web host. I think that every SEO specialist has to deal with these questions - how to choose a hosting and its location. It is hard to recommend the name of a single host, my client sites are located in many different hosts. I have my own preferences, I would not want to force you, but I find it hard to work with market leaders. And pricing policy is not a factor, but rather tech support and administration. I don't want to pay a substantial amount for administration of a smaller project, I prefer hosting where there is a service administration with a small surcharge. Especially when it comes to the VPS, I tried this VPS hosting for some of my projects. I was pleased with tech support which is quick, efficient and knowledgeable.
2. Analysis of niches. Before starting working on a new project, it is necessary to analyze the landscape, especially when it comes to marketing and long-term investing (or upload, depending your view angle). Who are the players on the market? How long have they occupied this niche and what have they managed to achieve? Who will we have to compete with and who are to better to make friends with? All of these questions have to be answered to develop a good promotional strategy for your web site.
3. Predictions. Based on this analysis we develop forecasts for the client - how much traffic and orders we can get for them (in short and long term)? We also talk about risks. Based on forecasts, the client decides whether it makes sense to invest, or even - to conduct an online business (it's possible that nobody buys meteorites online, and it is better to work as a miner). By the way, if at this stage the client decides not to work with SEO specialist, and the specialist is not paid for the new traffic, the company loses a day (or more). That's why, many companies do not offer to conduct an analysis, they say briefly - "we can promote sites, do you want that to or not?", Implying that the client has an analytical mind and have everything is properly analyzed or vice versa - the client has no clue and don't think of the future.
4. Working with keywords . Having decided to promote a web site, you need to prepare and, above all, to compile a list of keywords - these are the key phrases that people can and should find on the site. Depending on the scale of the project, the core list may include from 10 to 10,000 words or even more. And, despite the fact that there are tools to work with the keywords, many specialists have to compile the list manually (including conducting some brainstorming). From a large variety of phrases you need to select the most effective and promising. This may seem like a simple task, but, in fact, it takes substantial time of a SEO-specialist. When the final list is complete, it has to be grouped, as each group will have its own purpose and its own characteristics, and of the result will depend on the future structure of the site (if the client gives the go-ahead for its change).
5. Analysis of the site. It means a technical analysis of the site and internal SEO-audit. Make sure that the site works well and fast, CMS does not generate duplicates, unwanted sections covered by indexing using the correct encoding, content is visible to search engines and so on ... On the basis of the analysis, you need to develop the recommendations for changes to the web site administrator.
6. Statistical analysis. If a site has already existed for some time in the network, one of the tasks of SEO-specialist is to analyze the website statistics including site's current performance, how users find it, which queries they use, what kind of search engines they come from and so on. If the site is moved to another company (or other SEOs), it is necessary to review the past promotional strategies, dynamics of positions and methods used, as well as the acceptability of these methods (in terms of their long term benefits). Note that I haven't talked about links to this point.
7. Promotional strategy. At this step, after completing all preparation, we develop a promotional strategy and present it to the client. The strategy establishes goals, identifies tasks (what needs to be done to achieve the goal) and assigns roles and set time schedule (who does what and when). There will be different strategies for every web site, depending on the starting point and goals.
8.Learning new tools. The market of SEO is changing, the approaches are changing as well, there are new tools and services coming up on the market every day. The same thing is happening in the market of desktop applications, every month there are new tools that require time to learn. Who is investing in the professional development - the client, the employer or specialist? Everyone decides for themselves, but keep in mind that SEOs need to dedicate time to professional development, including learning of new tools (this item isn't billable to the client, but it something that needs to be done for the SEO specialist by either employer or professionals themselves).
9. Optimization of site structure and selection of pages for promotion. It is time to do something with the site, the client has yet to see any results besides analytical reports. The first thing to do at this stage is to optimize the structure of the site, index the important pages and sections and make them available in a small number of clicks from the main page, use the navigation filters, bread crumbs and CNC. Perhaps this work will be done only once, but all further work on the site will depend on the structure. The keywords and the structure of the site, as well as the client's vision dictates what pages to show for the the query in each group. Perhaps this step does not apply to small projects with just 2-5 pages, but you need to select entry points and justify your choices for the online retailers and other large sites. This is one of the SEO-specialist tasks (you can't fully automate this process).
10. Creation and content optimization. Some pages from the target structure may not even exist and you want to create content for them, or additional content may need to be added to existing pages. Task for the SEO specialist here is to write a detailed task description for the person responsible for content writing if the optimizer is not doing it. You must register the titles, meta tags, optimize text and images, remove all the excess and make sure that the content has been indexed (visible for search engines) for each and every page. All work must be done in the accordance with the existing keywords. The more pages on the site the longer it takes to optimize the content. It is almost impossible to automate this but you can use templates, this step will require a lot of hours.
11. Search sites for links. It's very difficult to promote a site without links to other sites with similar theme, the SEO specialist has to dedicate time and efforts to search sites to insert links. This can be done periodically, the site may deteriorate or disappear and/or competition in the niche may grow.
12. Analysis of the sites of competitors. It also takes time to analyze the web sites of the competitors, how and where they promote themselves, what links they use and how to distribute the links weights in the structure of your site. It helps to find new sources of links, come up with new ideas and stay within the budgets.
13. Where to place links. Once you have the links selected, you need to find a place for them, which is a painstaking work that requires attention and time.
14. Monitoring of donors. After adding the links, you need to monitor them using special tools. The professionals are interested in performance of donors, as well as their quality, measured indirectly.
15. Monitoring of website (its position and performance). Work does not end after the link have been added. Make sure that the site itself works, you need to prevent it from falling or breaking, pay for hosting, detect the presence of new or duplicate content, scan for errors in the webmaster panel. Also at this stage, SEO-specialist periodically checks the position of the site, follows the trends and takes the necessary measures. All this takes time but it is partially automated by special tools.
16. The introduction of adjustments. There are no guarantees in SEO, all the previous work was based on the analysis, forecasts and experience, after the work is done it is time to analyze the results and make adjustments. Adjustments may be made in the structure of the site, its content and the promotional methods.
17. The search for new entry points. Sooner or later there comes a time when a site has reached its ceiling, or a dedicated budget runs out. In this case, SEO-experts look for new entry points, places additional material on the site, or start using new methods to get new links. The more entry points there are on the site the less risk for the traffic and therefore to sales at critical moments.
18. The introduction of new ideas. If the search for entry points refers to the analysis, the introduction of ideas is the internal optimization. This phase may include types of work listed above.
19. Working with snippets. Working with snippets (text descriptions in search results) is also the responsibility of SEOs but it's usually negotiated separately. It is important that the site is not only in the top, but also has the utmost appeal.
20. Web analytics That is a very important stage of the work with the site - you analyze traffic, visitors' behavior, look for bottlenecks, develop and improve site functionality and assess the effectiveness of SEO-campaign, and identify problem areas in the structure, navigation and content.
21. Reports. Preparation of reports for the client also takes time, it stands out as a separate task for the SEO specialist. The reports may include data from web analytics of the site audit, change in the position of the site in the search engines and transitions to different keywords (or groups of phrases). The reports must be clear and concise for the client to understand the work done and results achieved.
22. Submit your site to reputable directories and reference books. SEO is not only about getting traffic from the search queries, but also from other areas of the search engine, like Google Maps, search for images, news, and other sources (directories, catalogs).
23. Tracking news and industry trends. The search engines are not standing still and are constantly updating their ranking factors. Tracking the news, as well as learning new tools is the professional development not related to a specific project, however, SEOs specialist should stay on the cutting edge in their field.
24. Experiments You should think twice before making material changes to a web site -you need to understand pros and cons - it is better to test the changes first. Conducting of various tests and experiments, both within the site and beyond, is another time-consuming task for a SEO specialist.
25. The answers to customer's questions The last task (but not least) is the communication to the client - consulting, training, Q&As and discussions. If all the above combined into a table, you get a table where the first column is the ability to automate the process, and the last is the frequency of certain types of work. Of course, some of the stages of the work can be done by others - a copywriter, analyst (if there is a special department) and a project manager. That's why it makes sense to get a campaign from a SEO firm that can perform the wide range of tasks. If we now look at a chart of the distribution of SEO specialists' tasks to meet the types of work listed above, we get a more complete picture (as compared to the first embodiment in this article). As you can see, SEO - is not a link! External optimization is only 10% of the total amount of work (and part of this is the analysis of the link profiles of competitors). The work of SEO professional is in an analysis and internal optimization. What do you think about that? Do you agree that the SEO isn't about links and your budget shouldn't be based solely on them. How would it change your interaction with the client / SEO specialist?
If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.