SE Submission

According to Wikipedia - A phase is one part or portion in recurring or serial activities or occurrences logically connected within a greater process, often resulting in an output or a change. Hence, in this instance we refer to the Phases of SEO.

With so many posts online vague touting the practice of SEO, what better time to lay the foundation from a tactical point of view about the subject. What follows are the Phases of SEO and how to apply them strategically for optimal search engine visibility.

Phase I - Pick a topic: this is the most crucial phase, the more relevant the content on your site is based on semantic topics the higher your pages will rank collectively.

Just think of the buddy system, as soon as one page cracks the top 10 results for Google for a specific keyword, based on how you link to yourself you can pull other keywords into the spotlight.

Phase II - Strategically Develop Content: Creating a wealth of information on a topic is a bonafide long-term SEO Strategy. Granted this method is not applicable for every site, however, once your site hits a specific benchmark as far as size is concerned and the content is grammatically correct and well written, then the reputation of quality and website authority is developed over time which is all you need to outrank 90% of the competition.

Most seasoned authority sites that rank across several thousand keyword combinations are websites that have two prominent things, age and thousands of pages (both provide link equity to the main domain).

The first noticeable stage is when a site has 200-300 pages, the first signs are typically increased spidering activity and discovery time for fresh content. What this means is, the less time you have to wait for your changes to impact the search engines result pages.

Less time waiting in line to get in the index translates to content and link building velocity, which leads to the next step. The next benchmark happens around 600 pages, 1000 and so on.

Phase III - Internal Link Building: Just think Wikipedia for one moment to grasp the depth of this SEO model. The site reeks of authority on virtually every topic ever known to man, yet the simplicity of the site architecture and linking makes topical relevance seem like second nature. This is a pure content development strategy.

There is something to learn about not trying to cover too many topics in one area or on one page, however there are no quandaries about creating more pages to accommodate additional topics.

The missing ingredient is trust and time, which when developed, provide the expression for those solid internal links (if have a page about green widgets, then link to it from any other page that mentions widgets in the site) this will create a virtual theme on the subject.

By reinforcing topical relevance through methods such as these, you can cut your reliance on other sites to a minimum as your own site gains the ability to promote itself to search engines.

Just think of it like a good friend who may not need the third party referral as trust is developed when search engines become more familiar with your topic and allow your pages to cut to the front of the line.

The higher you rank above the fold (on the page without having to scroll) the more traffic clicks your results in search engines, so the real value of adding copious amounts of content through new pages with relevant titles (like a shopping cart, blog posts or articles) strategically over time, the higher your site will rank for the terms in the title tag as well as the content on those pages, so get cracking.

Stay Tuned for The Phases of SEO Part II series when we cover (1) time and chronology and how it impacts Page Rank and Trust Rank (2) which keywords are worth it and why (3) how to externally link to your posts for optimal results and (4) what indicators to look for as your site starts to sprout rankings from keyword stemming as well as other fundamental SEO principals…