We believe that before any other task is undertaken, be it web design or seo related operations, a full and thorough analysis of the market place and target keywords must be completed. Along with keyword analysis we also suggest that a full site heirachy is built. Why do we suggest this? This is the only sure way to get a complete understanding of who your targeted competition are, and what content should appear on which page and under which category (section).
Keyword analysis is a time consuming job, any good SEO company will spend a lot of time on this task, iteratively trying combinations of keywords until a good set of keywords are chosen. These should include both short and long tail keywords (I.E. single and two word keywords, combined with longer keywords). We have a process in place that we've been using for several years, it's very simple but effective and has produced good results for all our clients to date.
Planning out a site heirachy is another important task that should be performed before building any website. This is a very simple process that involves drawing out a tree of all the parts of the site, with the categories being the branches, and the content being like the leaves. For example on this site the top level categories are web design, seo solutions and portfolio. These are just logical groupings of the services we offer.
Once the above jobs have been done, we can work out what market place you will be in, and more importantly who your competition are. Once you know who the competition are, its often much easier to find a few niche markets that are currently not catered for. This can provide quicker time to market.
