SEO Plan to show your Boss

Recently a friend of mine asked me to give him an seo plan he can show to his manager and support his ideas about redoing their company website. I had to come up with a rather general plan of items - something that will start the discussion with a decision maker about redesign with search engine optimization in mind of a business website.

These days there is no need for a lot of convincing when it comes to ranking in search engines but people will be amazed how people are resistant to change and spending money in these tough economic times.

In case the person on the other side of the table kind of agrees now is the time to switch from their 90's looking website to a new modern layout with SEO in mind here is a good summary of items you should have in mind.

Accessible Content

• Choose your website platform so content is well organized, well accessible both for users and search engines

Explain use of platforms like Wordpress and Joomla provides a cost effective and success proven website solution. Less money, bigger results - what else would a CEO want?!?

• Design a layout that meets the latest standards in usability for search engines and users

Your new design should be totally 2009ish - look at the approach your favourite websites are taking and apply it for your business.

• Make it as easy as possible for your content to be shared by your visitors

Incroporating video, audio and social media websites with your business properly means more money and more fun for everyone - a big Yes.

+ the only way you could be in facebook all day and get away with it!

Keywords

• Perform thorough keyword research and decide on the keywords you will target to bring organic traffic.
• Perform on-page optimization using those keywords

Keyword research is one area I would recommend hiring an SEO consultant. This is the foundation of your internet presence it is very important for this to be done right. Money given for keyword research and on-page optimization are money well spent!

Content

Assigning this to a person with writing passion is the key. To rank in search engines and have tons of traffic you need to provides lots of good content... or just little more than your competition. This is where all the keyword research comes into play.

Links

• Perform content interlinking using the keyword phrases you want to target

The rule here is that it 1) has to look natural 2) anchor text keywords need to match with title page of linked page. If you are alrady getting a headache just give this to the SEO consultant as well. This is what we live for - internal linking.

• Brainstorm ideas and build comprehensive list of different ways to attract incoming links

Read more on: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-from-a-to-z

There is so much on this topic that this is really not the right post to elaborate. Lets just say you need as much good links as you can get!

Social Media

•    Get involved in communities sharing interest in your business.

Be an advisor, newsman, party friend and whatever it takes to make people trust your brand. Never in history of business there were so many free tools to spread the word about your company. This is the power of Social Media. The key is to do it right. (I personally believe that unlike real word where is believed any publicity is good, on social media bad publicity is 100% bad.)

•    Create widgets and give out free videos, reports, content to spread your brand and make friends with people that share your interests and industry.

Once you and your boss are comfortably floating in the new world of social media, content platforms, seo, sem, ppc and other abbreviations - making this all work together will increase revenue with double digits. You can go even crasier with branding your own widgets, shoot professional videos and give out free online seminars about your business. All coming back to you as increased brand awareness and hopefully Christams Bonuses for everyone!

Videos that will help:

Watch the SEO Pyramid movie by SEOMoz http://vimeo.com/2509081 - will help understand the foundation you are trying to build upon.

Provide overview of http://www.commoncraft.com/videos#technology - how watching these movies would help people understand what Internet is nternet and how business should take advantage of all these new avenues of sharing information.