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SEO Explained in a Picture

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Because everyone loves a diagram, right?
SEO
Should be self-explanatory, but here’s the gen: if you don’t invest in content, you won’t get links. If you don’t get links you won’t get traffic – either through rankings or referrals. And if you don’t have traffic you don’t have any money to take as profit or invest in new content.

SEO is an art that touches on all parts of this cycle. Your content has to be right. You have to know where and how to get links. You have to understand your traffic, your site and your customers to monetise that traffic. And of course, you need to know how to measure your outputs.

The next time someone tells you you don’t need SEO, think about that.

36 Comments

  • [...] Arunca o privire aici: SEO CYCLE [...]

  • Toni Anicic 1267 days ago

    http://inchoo.net

    Very nice, and also very true. If you remove any of the arrows from the circle it simply collapses :)

    Reply
  • Mark Nunney 1267 days ago

    http://www.seosite.co.uk/

    I can’t help noticing that your ‘Links’ are shadowed, on the ‘dark side’ perhaps?

    Reply
  • Robert 1267 days ago

    http://www.propdata.net/

    Actually the image didn’t load the first time I tried to load this page which only really made it a lot clearer. Simple box with the text SEO. That pretty much summed it up… no content, nothing to index… nothing to index, nothing of value… nothing of value, nothing to link to… etc ;)

    Reply
  • [...] here. I hope you enjoy the read.Im stealing this from David Naylor because I like its simplicity.  SEO explained in picture, and more importantly as a cycle and a continuous [...]

  • DaveN 1267 days ago

    hi Robert we have Been making some changes recently so bare with us :0

    Reply
  • Chris Peterson 1267 days ago

    Amazing presentation and good explanation about how we get benefit from SEO work.

    Reply
  • Robert 1267 days ago

    http://www.propdata.net/

    Hi Dave. No worries. I actually thought the absence of the image, or content, it really summed up SEO. Of course you need links, but you’ve gotta offer something to link to… ;)

    Reply
  • stampei 1267 days ago

    Notice that the ‘profitarrow’ is less thicker than the money one. So SEO will cost you more than it profits?

    Reply
  • paul carpenter 1267 days ago

    http://www.itsafamilything.co.uk

    @stampei – notice that I couldn’t quite photoshop my way around splitting the bigger arrow properly in two :)

    Reply
  • Mark Nunney 1267 days ago

    http://www.seosite.co.uk/

    I might replace Money with Research because you can SEO for love (no money) but you can’t SEO without research. Then add Analysis after Traffic (because it’s not really SEO without analysing traffic to find out what’s delivering results).

    Reply
  • paul carpenter 1267 days ago

    http://www.itsafamilything.co.uk

    @Mark – oh for sure there’s a whole heap of fine gradings and additional bits of the wheel that you could slot in there. SEO touches *all* of those disciplines, although I suspect we’ll see a trend towards specialisation.

    If I was going to factor “research” into it, I’d stick a circle in the middle with arrows going to every other stage, because research informs everything and I don’t think you can silo it off at a particular point of the cycle.

    Reply
  • [...] colleague Paul has recently done an excellent diagram that communicates how SEO works, so I thought I would adapt his and do one to explain how spammers think SEO [...]

  • Thos003 1267 days ago

    http://pestcontrolseo.wordpress.com

    Just curious but why is the profit arrow smaller then the money arrow in your SEO picture? Freudian slip?

    Reply
  • Arun Pal Singh 1267 days ago

    http://homeforprofits.com

    Nice Picture! It says all.

    Reply
  • Carps 1267 days ago

    http://www.itsafamilything.co.uk

    Nah – just thought it looked groovy

    Reply
  • Thos003 1267 days ago

    http://pestcontrolseo.wordpress.com

    It was just a joke. =)

    I like the image.

    Reply
  • [...] SEO Explained in a Picture, David Naylor [...]

  • Steve 1266 days ago

    http://www.liveambitions.com

    So simple and so true. It’s beautiful.

    Reply
  • Nancy E. Wigal 1266 days ago

    http://www.search-engine-academy-washington-dc.com

    Great graphic – I’m sending my clients and prospects to this, so they see the relationship. Thanks!

    Reply
  • [...] de la imagen: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/seo-explained-in-a-picture.html Compartir este [...]

  • Driveways 1265 days ago

    http://www.crystalclearideas.co.uk/

    Excellent explanation and the picture says it all

    Reply
  • Head Alienst 1265 days ago

    http://www.alienst.com

    Excellent representation, we would like to suggest another arrow; “Psychology”, Marketing Psychology is the simple manipulation of visitors through numerous On-site factors that dramatically increase the conversion, traffic flow and sales of any online business.

    We find this is important for everyone, you can have Content pouring from your ears, plentiful links and thousands of visitors per day… but if they do not like your site layout, colors, link locations, product display, descriptions, policies, contact methods, payment methods and about 1000 other factors than your site will not be successful to it’s FULL potential.

    Every single individual visualizes differently, some might look at a photo and see the trees, others the grass and 100 other people may see 100 other things. It is not important what “you” as the business owner sees, it is important what the person with their wallet open sees.

    You should concentrate on all the factor represented above, however do not ignore the factor that determines whether you convert 10 sales a day or 50.

    Reply
  • Jay Roberts 1264 days ago

    http://jayroberts.co.uk

    thats a great illustration. Really captures it.
    and the comment above on the psychology is so spot on. I have just bought a book on how people respond to colours on the web. Also the layout of the page (golden ratio) makes a huge difference. Seriously cool and exciting when you know the basics of the internet to start to dig deeper into building more successful websites using this little know things.

    It is still new to me but loving learning and applying it.

    Jay Roberts
    UK

    Reply
  • Amelia Vargo 1264 days ago

    This is a great diagram. I love the simplicity of it. And you’re totally right – SEO is a bundle of things that have to happen in cycle. Great!

    Reply
  • Mike Whiting 1264 days ago

    http://www.holidayextras.com

    Putting my aggregator’s hat on, I can’t disagree with any of the comments above.

    For MONEY, you can certainly read £s spent in terms of effort, research, content creation. For CONTENT include layout and funnel design.

    Great simplicity to the circle, which is now doing the rounds among the content creators here at HolidayExtras.com, is a great summation.

    Reply
  • Sam 1263 days ago

    http://www.hepkids.co.uk

    wow, thats true that thye are linking together, if anyone of them collapses its hard to optmise the site, the diagram is simple and very powerful way of explaining the information, its true SEO is a bundle of things that have to happen in cycle. Great diagram…

    Reply
  • Drake 1262 days ago

    http://seo-voyage.com/blog/

    Very short and to the point. Love it! SEO is so important to the success of your site, no doubt. There are times though that I would much rather put that responsibility off on a SEM Specialist or a search marketing expert. I think that in the end the profits will further out-weight the expense of hiring assistance to do your SEO for you.

    Reply
  • shpyo 1260 days ago

    http://blog.shpyo.net

    Briliant ;)

    Reply
  • Mike 1257 days ago

    http://www.omikronmedia.com

    Great image. Perfectly sums up the SEO cycle.

    Reply
  • Joe Reichsfeld 1257 days ago

    http://www.advantageecommerce.com

    As with most things in life, being ‘Brilliant at the Basics’ is the key to mastering the more complex things we deal with. Your picture is a perfect demonstration of where it all begins. That picture can expand page after page with specifics for each section broken out, but if you have no understanding of the big picture, then your action on the specifics is guaranteed to be misdirected. I have been predicting for months that the changes coming for 2010 would be game changing in terms of dointg business on the internet. SEM and SEO is now more important than ever, but reputation management now changes all of it, real time searces, universal searches, twitter, facebook….set it and forget it is will result in more negatives now more than ever. Brilliant post, thanks

    Reply
  • ComputerWerks Web Solutions 1247 days ago

    http://www.computerwerkswebsolutions.com

    I have to agree building a qualitty SEO campaign means you have to look at all aspects of of the circle. Bringing one thing up just means you have to do the other, seo is endless and will be since the day it was born.

    Reply
  • Justine 1226 days ago

    http://www.mesrianilaw.com/

    This has a great impact. A straightforward and effective way of showing the SEO cycle.

    Reply
  • [...] to our RSS feed for regular updates.Paul Carpenter has created one of my favorite depictions of how search engine optimization works for a business. It is a clear illustration of how each of the core components of the “web marketing [...]

  • Mullah Nasrudin 1103 days ago

    Reply
  • Phil @ Football Goalsposts 1090 days ago

    http://itsagoal.net/

    I needed a photo like this for my boss – he thinks my work is easy.
    Thanks

    Reply

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