SEO-friendly URLs - get everyone involved with a fun and effective SEO step

To really set the note for the SEO project, you should involve as many people as possible as early as possible in the project. And why not do this with an effective SEO initiative, that will almost immediately show improved results?

Most sites don't have SEO-friendly URLs, and this is a good way to start the project.

After defining the goals, search phrases and success criterias, you give the programmer an assignment to
a) rewrite the current URLs to SEO-friendly URLs. This assignment should also include the mandatory 301 redirects
b) write a robots.txt file
c) generate a sitemap.xml and/or sitemap.txt and submit these to Google Webmasters Tools and Yahoo.

Never get too involved. Know your boundaries.

Unless you plan to become your client's new webmaster, database manager, programmer, graphic designer and towel guy combined, draw your boundaries. Never get too involved. For instance; don't do any programming. Make it clear from the start that your client needs to do the programming in-house and that you will not code a single line of PHP or ASP.

You're giving the customer advice and is transferring knowledge to his company. Period. When you're selling SEO, don't use words like "key ready" or anything like that.

Share your gameplan with the client

From the first day of the project, start writing a document called a "gameplan". Share the gameplan with your client, no matter how general and inadequate this gameplan is, by granting the client read-only access to this document. The gameplan will then develop on a day-to-day basis. This document will simultanously serve as a project log and a historic document, describing every move of the SEO project.

Google Documents is great for sharing documents.

Install web statistics before your SEO begins

Measuring traffic is a keyword in any SEO project. Well, measuring in general is the only way to determine if the SEO project turns out as a success or a complete disaster.

As an SEO consultant, your first job is to persuade the client to install a web statistics tool. Use Google Analytics, and be sure to get access to the entire web statistics, not only certain reports.

This gives you figures for the "before-site", statistics which show how little traffic the site had, compared to the traffic the SEO work generates. This is a unique success factor which will look good in your final report to your client.