Determine Your SEO Plan of Attack

With every new website or SEO project you need to determine what your goals are. Most often the goal will be to get traffic to your site or page. There are a lot of things that you need to do between starting the page and getting traffic to it that are going to make a huge difference in the amount of success you experience. Planning your SEO strategy is very important, as one miss-step could affect how you rank in a very detrimental way. You are facing thousands of competing sites and sometimes millions. You need to do everything perfectly to get the results you want.

There are six major factors that play into your ranking. They are keywords, content, on-site optimization, links, submissions and of course time. Everything takes time, especially with search engines. They are working with so many millions of sites and so much data that it takes time for things to move around in the rankings. You just have to get used to this and not pay too much attention to the results until some time has passed. Instead, focus on doing the work and things will go much smoother.

I will break down the different ranking factors and give a short explanation of each:

Keyword Analysis
Regardless of the competition or what you are trying to rank for, you need to do this step. Without knowing what you are up against, you have no idea whether you are going to be able to compete or if it's going to be a complete waste of time.

Content Creation
The thing that Google and all other search engines like the most is content. The more content they index, the more results they can show to people that are searching for things. They are on a never ending search to find all the content on the internet and index it. You need to have as much fresh and unique content as you can get your hands on. If you can create hundreds or thousands of pages of unique content, do it. The more content you create, the more authority your site will gain with Google and you will rank higher and receive more free visitors than ever before.

On-Site Optimization
Having your site or pages optimized for your keywords is crucial. Some SEO professionals even argue that it's more important than how many back links you have coming into your site or page. One thing is for sure, it does make a big difference in how you rank. The more of the onsite factors that you are doing correctly, the more relevant your site is going to appear to Google for your keyword. The more relevant you are, the higher you rank.

Links
Many people argue that back links are the core of any SEO strategy and make the most difference. While there are many factors that determine how you rank, back links, or offsite SEO is a main part of it. The more back links you have, the better you will rank. There are many different types of back links, so not all of them will be weighed the same, but generally the more you have, the better.

Submissions
Not as important, but still a factor is submissions. You want to create a Google Webmaster account and submit your sitemaps to Google. This helps Google find your site, and also lets you know if there are any errors with the website or site map. A small step, but important in finding problems early on.

Time
Of course time is a big factor with SEO. You almost need to be a marathon runner so that you can finish the SEO race. You need to keep your head down and focus on work and eventually when Google has caught up with all the work you have done, you will be rewarded.

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