What You Should Expect from an SEO Proposal - Strategy is key
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An SEO project, no matter how small, should include some kind of up front strategy prior to implementation. Strategy is typically addressed at the start of the proposal with some or all of the following components included as part of the strategic planning process.
- A website analysis (if your site is already live) to evaluate your site’s content, layout, internal linking structure and to initiate keyword selection/research based on existing site content.
- A competitive assessment to evaluate what sites currently enjoy the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your preliminary keywords and also where your top three to five competitors rank for the same list of keywords you use (these are not necessarily the same sites).
- Keyword selection and finalization based on the first two steps listed above.
- A benchmark positioning report that demonstrates your current position for your targeted keywords and how many pages of your site are listed in each search engine.
- An inbound link assessment which tallies up the total sites linking to yours (MarketLeap.com has a great tool for this), and the average inbound links to competing websites.
Not only should an SEO proposal include a line item for strategy, it should also spell out exactly what that means in terms of the deliverable and approximately how many hours it will take to complete. Not all projects will need to go through each of the above-listed steps. For example, you may not need an exhaustive website analysis (for very small websites). Likewise, you may not need to do much keyword research if your client has a predefined list of keywords based on their own data.
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