Maybe you're paying some serious cash for an "SEO Specialist" to optimize your site, or maybe you're an SEO Specialist in the making. Either way, it's good to know what should be happening with the website in question. Here's a basic checklist of tasks that effective SEO should involve:
Strategy
The first part of any project, SEO related or not, should always be planning and looking at strategies on how to approach things. This task should be especially well communicated with the client, illustrating what exactly needs to be done and how each of those needs will be met with a plan of action. It is during this strategizing and planning process that an SEO specialist's expertise and familiarity with the field should really show through. After a strategy has been formed, it's on to it's execution.
Keyword Research
Keywords are the building blocks of SEO. Thus, proper and thorough research of keywords is a crucial task and can make or break your SEO success. This task involves going through dozens if not hundreds of possible key words and phrases around which all of the optimization will be focused. Eventually, this list will be narrowed down to fewer than a dozen...