10 Things You Must Do to Prepare Your Business for SEO

10 Things You Must Do to Prepare Your

Business for SEOBy Greg Shuey

#1: Accept SEO Agency as Part of Your Marketing Department

Share insight into your other marketing initiatives with your in-house SEO or SEO agency– To help them integrate with your team– Will help create synergies (+1 for using a

buzzword!)– Accomplish much more than if you leave them to

fend for themselves

#2: Establish/Work Towards Real Online Marketing Goals

• Ranking #1 for a trophy keyword is not a valid SEO marketing goal

• Real online marketing goals should be established before starting your SEO campaign

• Real online marketing goals should be revenue driven

• Example: I need to increase online leads by 15%

#3: Give Up Full Analytics Access

• Whatever analytics package you are using, your SEO needs daily insight to set proper SEO strategy.

• If you don’t give up full access, your SEO will not be able to help you accomplish your goals.

• Your SEO can take your money, and perform work, but without the proper analytics, you aren’t going to get anything out of it.

#4: Share Sales Data

• Goes hand-in-hand with sharing analytics data• Some business are really nervous about

sharing sales data - get over it• Sales data helps your SEO to see how much

ROI their efforts are producing• Share how much products/services cost,

margins, etc.

#5: Put Your Ego Aside

• Forget what you learned 5 years ago• Nothing can kill and SEO campaign faster than

OLD out-of-date best practices• Check your ego at the door• Your agency lives and breathes this stuff every

day – they know the current best practices

#6: Change Your Website

• Ties directly to putting your ego aside• Your SEO will perform a site optimization with

a list of changes– MAKE these changes

• There is only so much an SEO can do through “off-page” efforts

• When you get a list of site optimization recommendations – Please MAKE them

#7: Priortize I.T.

• This goes with making changes to your website

• Many sites use complicated back-ends that only the I.T. department can touch

• Prioritize your initiatives with I.T. to be ready to make the site optimization changes as quickly as possible

#8: Blog Your Heart Out

• Search engines love fresh, quality, relevant content => Company Blog

• Have everyone in the organization participate!• Ideally -> 1 piece of blog content per day• Your SEO can help create some content, but

they should be more focused on strategy

#9: Give Up an Email Address

• This is a sticking point with a lot of businesses• They feel they cannot trust their SEO with a

company issued email• If you want to be uber successful -> integrate your

SEO fully, which includes giving them an email address

• Will be used for link development and content placement outreach

• A real email address will provide much much better results to your SEO’s efforts

#10: Leverage Business Development and Partnership Relationships

• Very difficult to secure top-tier links• Leverage current business development and

partnership relationships• Requires ample effort between your SEO and

biz dev guy, and possibly the head of your sales team

• These are the type of links that will be game-changers for your SEO efforts

Conclusion

In order to prepare your business for SEO, it will require a lot of team work. This is not a “pass the baton” effort, it requires integration and collaboration between all parties.

Visit http//www.SEO.com/blog to learn more about SEO.