Ultimate SEO Checklist
CheckSite Websites & SEO Niagara Search Engine Optimization
CheckSite SEO Checklist
Step #1: Get to know the client
The first thing you need to do once you & the clients agrees to beginning work is to get to know why their brand exists and what makes them unique. Here are the types of questions you should be asking:
- What purpose does your brand serve?
- How do you differentiate your brand from the competition (what is your unique value proposition)?
Step #2: Understand the business
The best ROI an SEO can deliver on is revenue, so understand how they make money! Here are some of the questions you should be asking:
- What conversion actions can visitors take on your website?
- Who is your target audience? (Define personas.)
- What are your main business goals?
- What is the average life time value of a customer?
- What does the sales cycle look like?
- What are the current conversion rates?
- Is your business or any of your products seasonal?
- How much revenue are you currently generating from organic search on a monthly basis?
- Are you currently doing any Pay Per Click advertising?
Step #3: Understand the community
In some cases, the client’s brand doesn’t have any type of a community, but it never hurts to ask. These are the types of questions you should be asking:
- Does your brand have a voice and personality?
- What is your community like?
- Do you have a blog, forum, or newsletter? How much interaction do you see from them?
- Is there anything else we should know about your community or the community of this vertical as a whole?
Step #4: Understand their SEO/Marketing background & expectations
While some might make this Step #1, the other questions before this are a lot of times the most important. So here are the directly SEO related questions that now need to be asked:
- What are the basic keywords you want to rank for?
- What are a few of your main competitors you want to beat?
- Describe your previous experience with SEOs.
- Was it good/bad? Why?
- What’s making you change SEO vendors now?
- What do you wish your old SEO did for you?
- Define exactly what your expectations are for us from an SEO perspective.
- Have you or a past SEO vendor done anything, to your knowledge, that is, or could be, considered against Google’s Webmaster guidelines? Define exactly what and be as detailed as possible.
- What are some of the previous marketing & PR initiatives you’ve done? Are there any that you or a separate department is currently working on?
- Do you do any offline marketing? If so, please define exactly what you’re doing.
Step #5: Define the resources you have to work with
In a lot of cases, clients have a fair of amount of resources that you as an SEO can take advantage of. Here’s a sampling of questions to ask that can uncover those:
- Can we have access to a company email address?
- Can we have access to Google Analytics?
- Do you have any in-house or contracted web developers? Designers?
- Are you in the process of making any changes to the website?
- Can we have access to executives for questions & interviews?
- Do you have any available budget for linking initiatives such as sponsorships & content assets (i.e. graphics, videos, white papers, etc.)?
- What organizations or associations are you a part of?
- What businesses/consultants have you contracted with in the past?
- Define every business you currently have a working relationship with. (i.e. suppliers, manufacturers, partners, etc.)
- Is your company involved with in anyway any charities or non-profits?
- Are you working with a PR agency?
Step #6: Client-specific questions
Since every client is different, each will need to be looked over for questions specific to their business. Here are a few broader examples.
- If there’s a blog: what is your blog’s editorial plan?
- If they’re ecommerce: can I know your margins or have access to your daily/weekly financials?
- If they recently launched a new product: What do you wish to achieve from this new product? How does it compare to your competitor’s?
All in all, it’s hard to be specific, as each client will be different.
Checklist
Outside of asking those questions, here is a quick checklist of things you should be doing on your own when you’re taking on a new client:
- Find out if your client has any lead generation forms. Fill them out and experience what it’s like to be one of your client’s leads.
- Sign up for their newsletter
- Read their blog
- Read their press releases
- Use a tool like Topsy to listen to what people are saying about the brand & their products
- Setup web alerts so you can see when their brand or products are mentioned. Also setup alerts for their competitors
- Do a Google search for CEO, board of directors or brand name
- Do the same for a lot of the above for their competitors
Closing thoughts
100% of your clients are real humans, so the more energy we put into thinking about the human side of the business relationship, the more we can retain our clients and stay with them as their business grows.
Make sure you’re asking these questions, because the more you know about your clients, the better job you can do for them. Sometimes golden opportunities are left on the table because you’re not asking the right questions, or you might go in blind and do more harm than good if you’re not fully educated.