Just like people, websites come in all shapes and sizes. They’re different ages, with different backgrounds, histories, motivations, and resources at hand. So when it comes to approaching SEO for a site, one-size-fits-all best practices are typically not the most effective way to go about it (also, you’re better than that).
An analogy might be if you were a fitness coach. You have three clients. One is a 105lb high school kid who wants to beef up a little. One is a 65-year-old librarian who wants better heart health. One is a heavyweight lumberjack who’s working to be the world’s top springboard chopper. Would you consider giving each of them the same diet and workout routine? Probably not. You’re probably going to:
- Learn all you can about their current diet, health, and fitness situations.
- Come up with the best approach and the best tactics for each situation.
- Test your way into it and optimize, as you learn what works and what doesn’t.
In SEO, consider how your priorities might be different if you saw similar symptoms — let’s say problems ranking anything on the first page — for:
- New sites vs existing sites
- New content vs older content
- Enterprise vs small biz
- Local vs global
- Type of market — for example, a news site, e-commerce site, photo pinning, or a parenting community
A new site might need more sweat equity or have previous domain spam issues, while an older site might have years of technical mess to clean up. New content may need the right promotional touch while old content might just simply be stale. The approach for enterprise is often, at its core, about getting different parts of the organization to work together on things they don’t normally do, while the approach for small biz is