As SEO I’ve started long time ago to see a site in a different way. It’s what makes me good in what I do. It is my weakness in the same time. Because a point of view could be a blinding point in the same time.

A search engine optimization starts with an audit - an extended analysis of the site from SEO point of view. Usually includes details related to:

• spiderability – code issues, HTTP response codes, redirects
• SE friendly URLs
• visibility in search engines - number of pages indexed, number of inbound links
• site navigation
• site structure
• web site indicators as page rank, domain age, Alexa rank
• content related issues - keywords used in meta tags and content
• traffic statistics analysis (if reports are provided)

and gives a very good idea about where a site stands from search engines point of view. Based on it, you will know what to do to bring traffic and increase search engine rankings.

But this should not be all. SEO is a long term strategy and there are more factors to take into consideration for planing. Not only the site’s situation but site objectives and external factors as well.

A step forward in SEO would be to do a SWOT Analysis - a strategic planning method used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats involved in a project. SWOT analysis will help us to have a deep understanding not only of the web site indicators but of the competition and success key factors as well.

Steps in strategic planning based on a SEO SWOT analyis:

1. Keep in mind what are your site’s objectives. Ask few questions related to them:

- What is the site trying to accomplish?
- What is the site trying to get visitors to do?
- What is the site actually providing?
- What the users actually do on the site?

2. Define (from SEO point of view):

- Strengths: site’s attributes that are helpful to achieving the objectives.
- Weaknesses: site’s attributes that are harmful to achieving the objective.
- Opportunities: external conditions that are helpful to achieving the objective.
- Threats: external conditions which could damage site’s performance (if they are).

3. Create a strategy based on information found at step 2. It should answer at:

• How can we use each strength?
• How can we improve each weakness?
• How can we exploit the opportunities?
• How can we mitigate the threats or at least prevent them?

So this is how a basic SWOT analysis for seogan.com will look like.

Do not mind if I will not reveal the long term SEO strategy for it.