The SEO Circle of Life
Never in a million years did I ever think that I would be able to compare Search Engine Optimization and the movie Lion King. But indeed, I’ve arrived at this sad, sad state of affairs. What I’m referring to is the circle of life that is SEO.
In The Lion King, the sun rises as the opening chant of the song calls out, with various animals all seemingly becoming alert to a single thing. Animals are shown traveling through various environments. As a giraffe and her calf step out into the sunlight, the first verse of the song ‘Circle of Life’ begins. The giraffe notice a herd of animals in the distance and run over to join them.
As the first verse ends and the chorus begins, the camera pans upwards over a herd of animals to show Pride Rock. Zazu flies in, lands, and bows in front of King Mufasa.
Rafiki arrives and Sarabi is shown holding a young Simba. Rafiki anoints and blesses the cub before lifting him up and displaying him to the animals gathered below Pride Rock. The animals leap, stomp, and cry out in celebration. Towards the end of the song, the gathered animals are shown bowing. The camera slowly zooms out from Pride Rock, and on the final drumbeat the title card – The Lion King in red text over a black background – is shown.
As those in the industry know, the rat race that is SEO is never-ending. Kind of like the circle of life in the wild! While the game may change (and the algorithms), the fact is the Circle of Life keeps on trucking along.
Now some might call this a huge cluster-f**k, but SEO’s call it the SEO Life Cycle. Now this doesn’t mean that at the start of every new spring, you’ll be running over to pride rock and holding your cub/website up for all to see.
Actually, you won’t have time for that, you’ll be too busy with the everyday grind of SEO. And unfortunately, Elton John called and said he won’t be re-adapting his song to your version of the Circle of Life…
Note: THIS WON’T REALLY BE PLAYING WHILE YOU DO YOUR WORK!
The SEO Circle of Life
Below is what I like the call the SEO Life Cycle (or Circle of Life). For any SEO, this means the constant state of evalution, research, tweaks, changes, and everything else that is involved with getting a website to the top and keeping them there.
Sometimes this means weathering storms or even changes to the very enviroment in which the SEO campaign rests, but one thing is assured: the SEO you do today will be different from your SEO approach tomorrow!
1. Research
At the heart of every good SEO campaign is research. It is imperitive that you do not skip this stage or take it for granted. Among the many things you need to research are:
- Your Keywords – What keywords do you want to show up for? What keywords most accurately reflect what you do? What keywords are people actually finding you for – are they relevant? What keywords are people actually searching for — they may not be what you think!
- Your Competition – Who are your competitors? What are they optimizing for? How are you going about snooping on them?
- Yourself – How well-off is your site’s current SEO? Are you committing any of SEO cardinal sins?
2. On-Site SEO
Now that you’ve done your homework, it’s time to apply those findings to the areas on your site that need it! Here are some things you should consider when making the On-Site SEO Changes to your website:
- Crawlability
- Page Titles
- HTML Text
- Meta Tags
- Images
- URLs
- Internal Links
- Sitemaps
Now these are just some good places to centralize your On-Site SEO changes. However, this definitely doesn’t cover each of those areas in great detail, and each website should be looked at on a case-to-case basis.
Chances are at least one of these things needs fixed (maybe all of them), and there may be other issues that aren’t in this list? Just make sure you cover your bases.
3. Off-Site SEO
As I’ve said before, Off-Site SEO is the stuff you do that doesn’t involve making changes directly to your website. Chances are, if you’re the only one working on SEO that this will come after the On-Site work. However, this is not to say that you can’t do them at the same time.
Things you should focus on:
- Link Building
- Directory Submission (Local, Niche, General, etc)
- Social Media
- and basically any other thing that draws exposure to your site!
Remember, Off-Site SEO is just as important as your On-Site work! This is a task that you should always be doing!!! Don’t stop doing it, even when you move onto another task.
4. Reporting & Analysis
Now that you’ve done some work on the site, time to set up some reports! Reporting will enable you to see where your SEO campaign is succeeding and where it may be falling short. This is probably the most important thing you will do, and you’re ability to see and understand trends will make or break your SEO campaign.
Some things you should track:
- Keyword Rankings
- Traffic Increase/Decrease
- Keywords Pulling Traffic
- Search Engines Pulling High Rankings/Traffic
- and probably much more!
Now and most importantly…GIVE YOUR SEO TIME TO WORK! Don’t expect results in a day, week, or even a month!!! Once you implement On-Site SEO, just work on Off-Site stuff and let the rest marinate in the oven for a couple months at least.
This will give you a chance to see trends in more of a long-term view, making it easier to understand. Once you’ve given it some time, here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Has your overall traffic increased/decreased?
- Have your keywords increased/decreased their rankings?
- What % of site traffic is through search engines (Beginning vs. Now)?
- What % of your referral traffic is through links built via Off-Site SEO efforts?
- Are the keywords that you’ve targeted the ones that are pulling traffic? If not, which ones are?
- Which pages on your website are receiving the most traffic?
- Are there any differences in your rankings from engine to engine?
- Where is your traffic coming from (City, State, Locality-Based Keywords, National)?
Examine the trends and see where you did well and where you can do better. Once you’ve answered these questions, you can move on the the next step.
5. SEO Tweaks
Based off of your reports, what areas of your campaign needs tweaking? Is it On-Site, Off-Site, Keyword Targeting, or something else? Ask yourself these questions:
- Is your SEO performing the way you want it to?
- Are the keywords you’ve been targeting the right ones?
- Do you need to change your keyword focus?
- Do you need to make any changes or restructuring to your On-Site Optimization efforts?
- How is your Off-Site SEO coming along? Are you spending enough time?
- Do you need to change your Off-Site SEO focus?
- Have there been any algorithm shifts that may change how you approach SEO?
Now make your tweaks and keep on rolling!
You’ve Completed the Circle, Time to Repeat!
Now that you’ve completed all the phases, don’t go getting any ideas that you’re done. You’re just getting started!
You’ve went through a campaign, did the research, made changes On-Site, done some Off-Site SEO work, reviewed reports, and made some SEO tweaks! BUT IT’S NOT OVER!!
Like I’ve said, the Circle of Life keeps on trucking. The game changes. Algorithms changes. Heck, even you might change. That is why you must continually be in a state of readiness to make modifications.
Keep researching SEO trends, keep working to make your website better, keep building links, keep reviewing reports, keep making tweaks, more research, more website changes, more links, you get the picture yet?
Enjoy!
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