Introducing the SEO Hierarchy of Needs

These sort of structures are helpful in creating an idea in a clients head of how to wrap there mind around the complexity of SEO. Its impossible to start any SEO campaign without a firm foundation of the keywords the site will be targeting. In the end it is always about the keywords.

Virginia, first off, let me congratulate you for making it into the Top 100 SEO Blog Posts (@evancarmichael.com)!

I like to think of the ‘hierarchy of needs’ not as a pyramid but as a series of events that form a continuous circle, ie keywords->Architecture->Design->Links->keywords->Architecture->etc.

The ‘circle’ is kicked off by defining your business goals and the whole process is wrapped up in Analytics. It is the insight provided by Analytics that forces you back to the keywords step and so the cycle begins again.

Gordon

that’s call great visualization thanks

The hierarchy itself is the clue to be able to attain high ranking and increase traffic.

Great visualization! We find ourselves drawing a similar pyramid when our clients want to jump into the world of social media and web 2.0. You have to have a strong foundation and the basics down packed before you get into the “sexy” stuff.

Its true to say people often mix up the whole process and like building a real pyramid, if your first layer of foundations are poorly constructed the whole thing will come crashing down.
In the offline world people hate doing market research, but if you don´t how do you know there is enough interest to make your business succeed?
There is no excuse for this online because research can be done at a relatively quick pace in comparison to offline methods.
Great post that put things into perspective!

Definitely a great post! These 4 elements sure are the essential things in SEO. One should definitely focus first on the keyword and content of the site, as this will become its foundation.

But just like Maslow’s pyramid theres a loophole. People can be on any step and be able to go up or down according to circumstance.
Someone who has attained the highest level of “link development” may still need to revert to the lowest level on the pyramid “keywords and content. The inverse may also be true that someone in the first stage may have needs from the higher stages.

Yes, yes, yes! These are the things that we try to explain to our clients every day. It’s hard sometimes when they are so eager to get to the end of the project, to slow them down and tackle the details but it’s worth it in the end.

Thanks for the nice image also!

Haha, a print out for the fridge? I think that graphic could do a little better than that; after all its not done in crayon! ;) Something like your desktop background to really hammer it into your brain or something seems more appealing to me.

now that graphic is a print out for the fridge. Thanks for sharing.

I think this is elegant genious, thank for the framework!

Great contribution to the discipline of inbound marketing. I was just talking with the head of web marketing for a fairly large tech company ($550million) who has had to use all kinds of relationship capital to bring a rigor and discipline to the evolution of the firm’s web marketing practices and technologies. This would have been a great tool to aid that discussion!

Awesome graphic and nice tie-in to Maslow. Well done!

I think the problem with the industry is that so much has been made of link building over the past few years that many people have forgotten the importance of the fundamentals.

Great post by the way!

So many companies try to jump ahead and start link building and social media without really taking a good look at the website first. It all starts at the foundation.

Great Post Virginia. I agree with the idea of Hierarchy. Although I would probably split out and reorder some of the earlier parts ( I’d put Keyword Research & Site architechture before content).

Understanding in advance what types of content can attract Links will greatly help when you actually come to executing on your link development strategy. Not all content can attract links (in high volume), so you need to make sure you account for this in your structure.

I think Darrell’s right in as much is there has the capacity to be a lot of overlap in real-world workflow (you might start to build some directory links while building out some other content, you’ll likely keep researching keywords continually, etc.) but I like the ability of the pyramid graphic to communicate the need for certain elements before other elements provide value, and I think with any really effective info graphic there are caveats.
As Virginia said in the comments I think the post/graphic would be a great way to quickly orient a small business owner with the way certain SEO elements support and amplify the benefits of other activities.
Nice post!

I totally agree with these points. Taking on a linkbuilding client with a poor website (and service) is not worth the hassle. Who is going to want to link to a poor site? It only makes your job harder.

Great article, but its amazing how many new projects/clients try and get you to skip the analytics so you dont have a baseline. Trying to slow a campaign so the base is built well can sometimes cause problems, but its often necessary.
If dont get results peel back the layers until you get the results that you need.

Thanks, Darrell. You bring up a good point that I forgot to mention! There are definitely steps in the process of SEO that are never really done. Even if an effort to optimize a particular feature of the site may have occurred at one point, it’s still important to continually monitor the performance of keywords, on-page elements, Web design and links. None of these SEO tasks are ever really over. Usability testing and analytics data should help marketers and Web developers create a feedback loop to aid continued efforts of site optimization and improvement.

Usability testing isn’t limited to the “Web Design” stage. It can also be very important during “Site Architecture and On-page Elements”. At that stage, you just do informal testing or use a service like UserTesting.com.

I agree, Alan! All the more reason an upfront and educated marketer needs weapons to right the wrong. Pointing to this graphic might not be a bad way to explain it to the small business owner who calls up and says, “I need links!” Because then I say, “Yeah, why do you say that?” And then they say, “Well, my friend Greg said that links is what you need to rank.” And then I say, “Your buddy’s right that links are valuable, but lets start from the beginning…”

Virginia,
I’m in total agreement. I do think, however, that many people in our own industry help to contribute or are the root cause of at least part of the problem. I routinely go up against ppl with “SEO” in their title or company services list, who claim “all you need is links”. It’s all they know in many cases as well.
And how many marketing people are so caught up in the social-media-glam factor? Which has bled through to the media…
When these two ways of thinking combine, many site owners think they’ve been given the solution, as compared to having to re-do their existing site, often from the ground up. Sad. Truly sad.

Funny how the smaller parts of the SEO puzzle tend to be the most challenging ones.