Being a fulltime SEO for a corporation, I find my side projects limited to helping one or two clients at a time. Sometimes I think it would be nice to manage more clients to broaden my portfolio, but I think by engaging a limited number of companies at a time I can provide better service with stronger results. I’ve recently come full circle and am helping a company I previously worked for in a different fashion with their search engine optimization. I am very excited at the prospect of helping a company that helped me so much early in my career.
With this project, I plan on documenting certain steps that will hopefully help SMB’s who are trying to leverage SEO best practices for their own gain. The first step on any search engine optimization project is to find out exactly what the company is trying to achieve with their SEO goals. Below I have compiled a list of questions I frequently use before starting a new SEO project. Feel free to review and use for your own purposes.
SEO / Social Questions
- What type of customers / audiences are you trying to reach with search engine optimization?
- What are the top keywords potential searchers would type to find your site?
- What Keywords would you like to focus on?
- What is your primary geography scope? What are the main areas you’re currently targeting successfully?
- What future areas do you plan on expanding to?
- What tracking software do you have currently for monitoring visitors?
- How difficult is it to make minor adjustments to code and content?
- What are your growth expectations for the next 12-18 months?
- What do you want to accomplish in terms of SEO in the next year?
- Do you own any secondary domains that you’re not currently using?
- What other forms of advertising are you currently participating in?
- What is the current marketing strategy?
- Who is your web host?
- What platform is the website built on?
- What company are you using to design your website currently?
- What are some major roadblocks you’ve hit in the past with your SEO/ PPC / and Social campaigns?
- How important are bing and yahoo to your organic traffic?
Social
- How often are you updating your social media currently?
- What would you like to focus on primarily?
- Do you have a blog setup?
- How often would you like to update social campaigns?
- What do you want to convey through social media?
- What type of image do you want to portray in terms of messaging, attitude, etc?
As I said before, this is just a small list for you to use to gauge your clients or your own needs. Did I leave any important questions off? let me know!