The 8 Elements of a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Campaign

14 years ago

By Ray “Catfish” Comstock, Senior Search Strategist, BusinessOnLine

In order to successfully complete all tasks required in a comprehensive SEO campaign, it is helpful to organize those various tasks and tactics into relevant categories. This allows us to have an organized approach to consistently address all elements of an SEO engagement. It also allows us to describe SEO in a way that people can understand, and serves as the foundation for a consistent process and approach to SEO as a service.

In the past, I have always divided the SEO landscape into three categories: On Page, Off Page, and Site Wide.

• On page optimization refers to aligning the content and meta data of a Web page with the targeted keyword phrases that the page is relevant to.
• Off page optimization refers to aligning the link connectivity of the website to the keyword phrases that are most relevant for the situation.
-Off page optimization is further divided into two sub categories: Internal off page optimization and external off page optimization.
• Internal link optimization is concerned with site elements like the global navigation template and breadcrumb navigation.
• External link optimization is primarily focused on third party links that point to your site and what keywords are being used in those links.
• Site wide optimization refers to cleaning up all the technical issues which can cause problems for search engines in indexing and ranking your site. Issues like URL structure, 301 versus 302 redirects, flash, Ajax and Java script, rel tags, xml sitemaps, and many other details make up our list of site wide optimization rules and tactics.

Until recently, this model was an accurate reflection of the issues that need to be addressed in any SEO campaign. But, as search has advanced and new metrics have been developed that affect search rankings, a new model is necessary to encapsulate the variety of new tasks that are important to any successful SEO campaign. Below is the new search periodic table of the eight elements of SEO: