There’s nothing more exciting than landing that first client and jumping right into the link building/onpage SEO immediately. But hold on there, sir knight – you’ve got some work to do before you even think about doing actual SEO stuff. Below is a list of preparations I think you should make before putting any time into link building/onpage changes.

Prepare a baseline

Every SEO campaign must show improvement – whether that means more traffic, more leads or higher rankings. If you don’t get a baseline established from the start, you won’t be able to show improvement over time.

1. Keyword Research
   Duh.  Know what you’re wanting to rank for before you start making changes.  I’m hoping this was a no-brainer.
2. Add an analytics program to the website
   Whether Google analytics, AWStats, Webalizer, whatever. Just start getting some numbers on current traffic, keywords etc. Even if there is little or no traffic to the website, establish that up front so that you can show improvement over the months to come.
3. Identify the competition
   It’s important to establish who the big players are – online and offline – and there is a difference. Some businesses have no clue what SEO is, but they may have a big marketing budget that they waste on billboards, sponsorships, etc. Make sure you identify them, along with any “online only” competition who may be ranking well but perhaps aren’t as widely known.
   Know where these competitors are ranking so you can track their progress (or regress) as your campaign kicks into full swing.
4. Run a keyword ranking report
   Run a report of all the current ranking positions with at least the top 20 keywords you are preparing to tackle. Even if it’s blank, this will show that when you started, the website did not have any rankings. I run AWR, and use it against the three major SE’s only.
5. Run the same report for at least two of the competitors you want to beat
   When I recently started an SEO campaign for a real estate client, I first found out who the two “biggest” agents in the area were online, and I ran the same keyword report against their domains.
6. Make a link baseline
   There are several ways to do this, from programs that will do it for you, to a simple Excel spreadsheet that you make yourself. Find out just how many backlinks your site currently has, and do the same for the competitors you identified above.
7. Make an index baseline
   Do the same as above but for the amount of pages the search engines currently have indexed for your website.

Wake Up the Spiders

Now that you’ve got your baseline, you’re going to need to get the spiderfood ready.  Since most likely you are going to be dealing with a site that has probably had little or no updates in some time, the bots aren’t exactly knocking down your proverbial website door to get your new content.  Since your client may be on as much as a six week visit cycle, you need to help them realize there is movement in your camp.

1. Add your website to Google Webmaster Tools
   This simple task can reveal some things that are broken and yet easy to fix on your site.  It will also “tell” the Googlebot that a real person resides behind this domain.
2. Create a robots.txt file
   You’d be surprised how many websites don’t even have one of these.  Help the bots know what to feed on.  At the same time, make sure you tell the bots what not to feed on. (admin, images, includes folders)
3. Make an XML sitemap
   You can generate these fairly easily using sites like xml-sitemaps.com.  Download it and put the xml file in your domain’s root folder.  Then make sure you go tell Google Webmaster Tools where it’s at.  You can also add a line to your robots.txt file telling the other search engine bots where to find it.
4. 404 for the win
   Over the course of the next few weeks, as you start to see stats from the program you installed above, make sure you start to fix any dead links you see.  You should also consider creating a nice looking 404 page that helps the customer find what they may have been looking for.  A page of top-level links would work, or you could even get fancy, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.
5. Decide what URL is best
   Adding a few lines of code to your .htaccess file (what? you don’t have that either?!) can surprisingly help your search engine rankings improve rather quickly.  Decide if you want your site to always show as domain.com or www.domain.com.  I’ve heard theories on both, and personally I always use the www version.

Assuming you follow most of these suggestions, you are now armored and ready to start actually modifying and changing your clients’ website.  Go ye – take thy rankings and climb to victory!