Those are both good reasons to implement an SEO plan. One other reason you might consider
investing in SEO is to increase your revenues, which you can do by funneling site visitors through
a sales transaction while they are visiting your web site. SEO can help with that, too.So before you even begin to put together an SEO plan, the first thing you need to do is determine
what goal you want to achieve with that plan. Be sure it is a well-articulated and specifically defined
goal, too. The more specific, the closer you will come to hitting it.For example, a goal to “increase web site traffic” is far too broad. Of course you want to increase
your web site traffic. That’s the overarching goal of any SEO plan. However, if you change that goal
to “increase the number of visitors who complete a transaction of at least $25,” you are much more
likely to implement the SEO that will indeed help you reach that goal.Make sure the goal is specific and attainable. Otherwise, it’s very easy to become unfocused with
your SEO efforts. In some cases, you can spend all your time chasing SEO and never accomplish
anything. Search engines regularly change the criteria for ranking sites. They started doing this
when internal, incoming, and external links became a factor in SEO. Suddenly, every webmaster
was rushing to add as many additional links as possible, and often those links were completely
unrelated to the site. There was a sudden and often meaningless rise in page links. It wasn’t long
before the linking criteria had to be qualified with additional requirements.Today, link strategies are quite complex and must abide by a set of rules or your web site could be
banned from some search engines for what’s called SEO spam, or the practice of targeting a specific
element or criteria of search engine ranking, with the intention of becoming one of the highest ranked
sites on the Web. If an SEO goal has been established, however, you’re more likely to have a balanced
traffic flow, which will improve your search engine ranking naturally.In addition to well-focused goals, you should also consider how your SEO goals align with your
business goals. Business goals should be the overall theme for everything you do with your web
site, and if your SEO goals are not created with the intent of furthering those business goals, you’ll
find the SEO goals ultimately fail. Be sure that any goal you set for optimizing your site for search
is a goal that works well within the parameters that are set by your overall business goals.Finally, remain flexible at all times. Get a goal, or even a set of goals. And hold tightly to them. Just
don’t hold so tightly that the goals get in the way of performing great SEO activities. SEO goals and
plans, like any others, must be flexible and must grow with your organization. For this reason, it’s
always a good idea to review your SEO goals and plans periodically — at least every six months, and
quarterly is much better.Creating Your SEO Plan
Once you have a goal or set of goals in mind for your web site, it’s time to create your SEO plan.
The SEO plan is the document that you’ll use to stay on track as you try to implement SEO strate-
gies on your site.20
Part I Understanding SEO
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