The basics of SEO can still be summarised into these three main areas: research, onsite SEO and offsite SEO. From three broad areas degenerate into a lot of different tasks. But let’s look for a moment into summarising each of those areas specifically.
Research
Your research should cover keyword research but it’s necessary to go beyond that. Consider the following: audience research, competitor analysis, environment and overall market research. The more data you have to your disposal, the better focused your planned strategy for SEO becomes
Onsite SEO
Once you have your research carried out, you need to move onto working on the foundations for the website: from the url structure, onto the server configuration, use of CDN, speed and mobile optimization and later on the content itself. You may find that you need to rewrite the content from scratch and once it is published ensure it is well-optimised so that both humans and robots can find it. This are is very broad and comprises both technical and editorial components.
Offsite SEO
This one is kind of the promotional part of SEO paradigm. The final aim is to garner links for the website. Whether you work on it in a way where you target link opportunities directly or work on improving the website content and answer your clients questions in a compelling and creative manner it is up to you. But ultimately the goal will be to increase the number of inbound quality external links pointing to your site. Local SEO is part of Offsite SEO.
Whatever the stage you are at with your SEO, it is always a good idea to ask yourself the question: do I know enough about my target audience to began working on my site? do I have enough keyword depth? have I go enough content? what is the scope for my work, can I have short, medium and long term objectives defined as part of the overall strategy?
SEO can be conceived holistically to make it grow from ground up in a way that’s sustainable, or it can also work very well in an Agile environment where it would be a supporting force to the ultimate goal of the project.