The Next Step, Creating a Plan

By Chad Formica

Denver SEO Consultant

Okay, so now you know the difference between Organic Listings, Pay per Click Listings and Local Directories at least in the way that it appears in Google. Other search engines like MSN and Yahoo have a similar layout in the fact that they also have local listings pay per click results and organic listings.

My assumption as to why you ever came here to read me dribble on and on about SEO is that you, like most of my clients are sincerely interested in obtaining the highest organic listings that you can for your site. As a matter of fact, I bet that by now you want to just jump right into it and learn how to get that 1^st page result for Google searches. The answer to your question of how to achieve this is not an easy one, and it is not something that I can get to the heart of inside one post or 20 for that matter. It is important for you to understand the entire landscape of search engines, how they work, what they do to index the internet and much more, before we ever approach techniques and strategy.

So with that being said, the next step to your Search Engine Optimization campaign is to draw up a plan of attack. Just like a business, you must have a plan. I think of it just as I would any other marketing campaign. If you were going to run a commercial spot on television, or a direct mail campaign, I don't think you would just send out any old mail piece or run any type of commercial and hope that business would start funneling in the door, would you? Search engine optimization, even though it is free costs you much time and effort and if you are paying a search engine optimization professional to handle this campaign it is costing you money too!

So where do you start, you don't know any HTML (if you do, I am being figurative here), you do not understand anything about the internet, so how could you possibly draw up a SEO plan? That is exactly the reason for this post.

The first step to creating a SEO plan, like any other plan, is to establish your goals. What do you want to achieve with your search engine optimization campaign? Do you want to increase traffic to your site (obviously), do want more "top of mind awareness"? Your SEO/SEM (search engine marketing) plan will help you determine where you should focus your work. Probably one of the biggest reasons that an SEO campaign fails is the lack of a clearly defined goal. The goal for your plan must be built around your business' needs and it is not something that every single business requires. So, let's take an example of an attorney in Denver that specializes in personal injury law in the Denver Metro Area. (We will get into keyword research and defining the best use of keywords in future posts) Why would this attorney want to show up for "personal injury attorney"? Any searcher that types this in will soon find themselves sitting in front of a myriad of directories and sites that will lead them to lawyers in their area. Do those results give them exactly what they were looking for? Probably not. Those searchers will more than likely search again, and this time for something like "personal injury attorney in Denver".

So here is what I am saying, just going for keywords and trying to attain the best ranking for that keyword is not good enough. If I were handling the campaign for the Denver Attorney, I would need to understand his business much better. I would find out what kind of personal injury cases is he/she looking to attain, is there a minimum size for the cases they handle, who are their competitors? Most importantly what do they want to achieve by being more visible online. By answering these questions I can define a goal. Your SEO goal (this goes without saying, but here goes anyway) should align with your business goals.

I recommend setting at least three goals in the beginning of your SEO campaign. Your first goal should be what you are going to achieve in the next 60 days, your second goal should be what you will be achieving over the next 180 days and your final goal will be what will be complete in the next 12 months. I can guarantee that someone is asking themselves right now, "What would I possibly set as a goal; I do not know anything about SEO?" So let's come up with a few goals that might apply to someone who is just getting started with SEO.

If you read my previous post title "Where do I start my SEO?", than you read about the difference of local listings versus PPC versus organic listings. So let's start off this campaign for the Denver Attorney who specializes in class action lawsuits for the medical industry. After examining his business, we find that he is a attorney in Denver and he is mainly interested in obtaining class action law suits in the medical field (obviously I am not an attorney and I am using my imagination here, so if you are an attorney and I am completely crazy make sure to comment and teach me something will you?). Contrary to my previous statement about the injury attorney, I would assume that this attorney's audience is national and that he would want to get in front of every possible searcher that is looking for a talented attorney to start a class action suit. With this being the case, I would develop goals like the following:

Goals for Denver Attorney SEO campaign:

1. Develop a page one presence for local searches in Colorado (60 day goal)

a. Research and find out how many local searches pertain to business

i. Obtain a page one ranking and local listing with Google Maps for those search terms

ii. Establish a PPC or CPC Adwords account and purchase keywords for these campaigns

b. Establish a blog for social networking (unfair that I listed this goal just yet as we have not covered the topic of blogs just yet, don’t fret I will in the future)

2. Develop a page one presence for local searches in adjacent states (i.e. Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, etc) (180 day goals)

a. Again, research and find out the local searches that pertain to personal injury

3. Start to implement strategies and campaigns to obtain rankings for “national search terms”

a. Continue to expand my local search campaigns into other states within the United States

Now, for an attorney that is actually involved in the business of forming class action lawsuits, I would imagine that he/she would be able to go into much more detail than I about these goals. These goals should remain flexible at all times; we don't want to be too rigid with the goals as we do not want our goals to get in the way of our SEO. We just want a bearing, a place to end up. Just like a road trip, it is uncommon to get in the car, pack your things and have no idea where you are headed.

For your SEO Plan, this is really the first step. Now after we have established our goals we can work on developing the rest of our plan. My next post will take us into more details of the SEO plan and we will start by examining the site currently in place. If you do not currently have a website and you are starting here, than good for you! Excellent SEO starts with the inception of the site, having to come back and correct what was done incorrectly in the beginning can be very time consuming.

As always, please comment and e-mail me with any questions you might have.