SEO Timetable

In my consultations with local business owners for Prosper Portland, we always leave them with a short-term, mid-term, and long-term to-do list. It extends far beyond SEO, and varies wildly by business, but the Timetable here is meant to distill the key elements of a strong SEO foundation, and put those elements in a consistent order of operations.

On-Site SEO (20 – 100 Hours, One Time)

1. Choose your CMS + Layout (4-5 Hours)

   Many business owners aren’t aware of how big an impact the website platform (Content Management System) they choose can have on their SEO. There really are only three you should choose from:
   – Squarespace (best for visually-focused, service-oriented small businesses like photographers, interior designers, or real estate agents)
   – Shopify (best for all eCommerce businesses)
   – WordPress (best for small businesses that need to produce a lot of content to compete in SEO, such as lawyers, dentists, or consulting firms)

2. Setup Analytics (1 Hour)

   I used to recommend Google Analytics to every small business, but can no longer do so after the release of Google Analytics 4, one of the most difficult-to-configure products I’ve ever used. Fathom and Plausible are low-cost, easy-to-use options which can help you track lots of important things that your visitors do on your website. Once your business is at a stage where you can hire someone to help you with marketing, he or she will be very glad to have all of that data to work with!

3. Discover Keywords (3-10 Hours)

   Remember that your customers are your best source of keywords, in the words and phrases they’re already using when they contact you. Start with those phrases and expand your keyword list with terms from Google Suggest and Google Trends.

4. Theme Keywords (2-4 Hours)

   You may actually end up with too large a list of keywords for the number of pages on your website. That’s OK. If there are themes that are really important to your business, but you don’t yet have a page, use that as your roadmap for what content you need to create.

5. Site Architecture (4-6 Hours)

   Remember, you need a dedicated page for each keyword theme, and your most important pages should be in your primary navigation and linked from your homepage.

6. Content Creation (4-40 Hours)

   Remember to use headings and think beyond just text-based content. Internet users have short attention spans and Googlebot will probably read your content more closely than they do!

7. Optimize Internal Links (1-3 Hours)

   Once the bulk of your content is created, go back and cross-link your most important pages, using the anchor text you want them to rank for.

8. Optimize Title Tags (1-8 Hours)

   The final, and arguably most important, step in on-site optimization is to write compelling, keyword-rich Title Tags to tell Google what each page is about, and to encourage searchers to click through when they see that page ranking in search results.