For a typical SEO project to improve Organic Keyword traffic, these are the stages I follow –
Initial ‘External’ look at the site - FREE
Using a number of different software tools and techniques, I will look to see how the site performs, keywords it is found for and how well it is setup.
This provides a baseline to produce an audit plan and the amount and type of work required.
In-depth audit and action plan.
I put together a complete breakdown of every page of the site for setup and keywords onto a shared Google Sheet. Site crawl issues and other technical issues are all listed with corrective measures.
You then decide what work you want me to carry out.
Correcting site structure and setup.
Using the agreed audit and action plan, I work through correcting all of the sites setup and technical issues. This may require access to the sites developers.
This will include adding the site to Google Search Console and Analytics (if not already done).
Work through each page to setup keywords correctly.
With the clients input, I will setup each page around an agreed keyword phrase and add these keywords to a tracking tool for ongoing monitoring.
This can involve improving current keyword rankings or changing the keyword focus for a page to a different keyword.
External link audit.
Pulling in external links from various sources, I will then manually audit these and build a Google Disavow file for any bad ones to be removed.
Ongoing Monitoring.
I setup various systems to monitor traffic volume, number of keywords, and keyword positioning and agree with the client, metrics for Google Analytics reporting.
I will then produce an ongoing monthly report based on these.