1. Alex Craven – MD
Integrating SEO into Development
Alex Craven - MD

5. • Alex Craven – MD
Winning the Political Battle

6. Know your enemy

7. Payment
on
Results

8. “
“

10. Everyone knows
money
If you get
you only make
results

12. • Alex Craven – MD
Working with developers

14. Working with Developers
• Run a workshop
• Explain the Strategy
• Why?
• Bonus Structure
• Anticipated results
• Involve them in the project planning
• Involve their SEO ‘expert’ in the discussion

15. Involve the
senior decision
maker in the
first meeting

16. Let them know their work has helped

17. Some Examples

18. • Alex Craven – MD
Practical Project Planning

19. Project Planning
• How SEO requirements impact scope
• Why SEO NEEDS to be included at the very beginning

20. BriefCommercial
Objectives
Creative
SEO
Usability
• The larger the client
the less important
SEO often is

21. SEO BriefCrawlable
Wordpress
Content
Requirements
Domain
Navigation
Architecture
Platform
SEO requirements that impact upon the scope

22. Project Lifecycle - Waterfall

23. Project Planning
• Ecommerce project lifecycle
• Project plan
• Client content population guide

26. Client Content Population Guide

27. Project Planning
• Project launch Check List

28. SEO Development checklist
# Item
1. Are ALL project stakeholders identified?
2. Define roles of stakeholders in relation to the project
3. Ensure all stakeholders understand contract terms & targets
4. Organise project kickoff meeting with all stakeholders
5. Produce clearly structured kickoff meeting agenda, allow senior
decision makers to leave at relevant point

29. 6. Key phrase research and sign off by client/decision maker
7. Produce prioritised list of SEO requirements, seek input from
developers as to implementation difficulty and collaboratively agree
prioritisation as part of brief finalisation
8. Organise SEO training sessions with relevant people within the
client/developer team
9. Agree KPI’s
10. Identify tracking capability and agree KPI reporting format, identify any
gaps and feedback into project requirements
SEO Development checklist

30. 11. Produce benchmark report in agreed format
12. Review and contribute to Sitemap / IA
13. Review creative concepts and provide feedback
14. Draft content population best practice guide (tailored to design)
supporting content plan
15. Review inner template designs as they are produced
SEO Development checklist

31. 16. Review content provided and optimise
17. Review technical specification / development platform etc.
18. Support site launch planning process
 301’s if existing domain
 URL Structure
 Canonicalization
 Sitemap update
 Tracking code check
 Webmaster tools
 Robots.txt
SEO Development checklist

32. 19. Pre launch benchmark report
20. Post launch analysis:
 Page indexing
 Crawl errors
 404 errors
 301 mapping check
 Analytics/web stats check
 Site accessibility
 Ranking check
SEO Development checklist

33. Where it all goes wrong
• Brief signed off isn’t what gets built
• Client won’t accept SEO recommendations
• Client agrees specification but ‘forgets’ this when site
comes out of dev for UAT and requests removal of
copy / other SEO elements
• No robots.txt PPC landing pages
• No robots.txt on dev site
• Developers don’t know how SE’s crawl websites

34. Where it all goes wrong
• Client is late populating site, no time to check prelaunch
• Client copies content from competitor
• Products in more than one category (duplicate content)
• Rushed UAT / population SEO best practice abandoned
• Client updates website without telling you
• Client owns similar website (another brand or region)
and copies content (doesn’t tell you)

35. Take-aways
• E-commerce development
lifecycle
• Project launch plan
• Common pitfalls
• SEO Development
checklist
• Lifecycle info graphic
• Client content population guide

37. Alex Craven
T: @AlexCraven
E: acraven@bloommedia.co.uk
W: www.bloommedia.co.uk