Preparation and Planning

The goal of this section is to lay the foundation for SEO success. This will require forethought on your part. You need to understand what you’re trying to accomplish.

Many people use search engine rankings to determine how successful their SEO efforts have been. This is usually a mistake. It is NOT important how high you’re ranked. It IS important how much money your business makes. Your goal for your SEO efforts should not be rankings; it should be how much qualified traffic reaches your website and purchases whatever it is you’re selling.

Later in this section, we’ll go into more detail about choosing which keywords will help you achieve those goals. Once you know what those keywords are, then you can start worrying about how well you rank for them. So, as a caveat, whenever I talk about ranking well, I’m talking about RANKING FOR WORDS THAT DRIVE PROFITABLE TRAFFIC.

Here are the contents covered in Preparation & Planning:

• Make a Product Worth Ranking For
• Keyword Research
• Competitive Research
• Choose a Domain Name
• Choose a Hosting Company
• Plan Your Website Content and Site Structure
• Choose a Content Management System (CMS)