I have decided for my 2^nd quarter goals to concentrate on SEO for My Office Assistant.  My goal is to see if I can up my organic search rank for the keywords that I have chosen.   The reason that I chose this goal is because I want to see where I rank by using tips and tricks learned along the way without having to launch a pay per click campaign.  I also took into account that 75%  of people click on the organic search results in comparison to 25% for paid results.

Now to understand where I am going you need to realize that Google ranks based on relevance and authority.  The relevance part if pretty straight forward, you type in the search term and Google returns a result based on matching of the term.  I have decided to try out some long-tail keywords or phrases that I believe my people will want.  Now for the authority or the measure of how important Google feels your page is.  Google calls the weight of the authority the PageRank and it is based on the theory of academic paper rankings.  The rank of academic paper is given based on other papers that cite or reference it.  So my goal is to incorporate simple tactics to define my page authority.

As part of my initial site audit I will also pay attention to my purpose because in order to know what I want to achieve I need to have clear goals or a path to get there.  With this in mind, a Statement of Purpose is the first step on my list before I move on to keywords and phrases to incorporate.  Why you ask, because without the definition of where I am going I will not be able to choose the right words to get me there.

I will also be evaluating the content on my site.  In order to sync everything up I really need to be sure that my message is being conveyed properly.  To do this step I have asked several trusted colleagues to review a page or pages on my site to see if they are receiving the message I feel that I am sending.  I have also asked them to pick out a few key phrases or words that stand out to them.

Now the fun begins, I started out by checking my website grade using website.grader.com.  My current grade is 76, and with that you receive a report giving suggestions on what you are doing right and what can be improved on.  This is where I will start, by taking all the suggestions and creating solutions for them.  This is also how I will determine if my efforts are paying off once I progress through my journey.   With my initial evaluation and audit it will help me choose tags, titles and strategies to easily make changes to the areas in which I am lacking.

Next stop on my journey, integrating social media to widen my reach.  If you are thinking on starting a similar journey, you may want to pick up a copy of Inbound Marketing, Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah.  (thanks Hubspot for the book that I won in one your contests!)

All the best,
Lee