SEO Success Factors

I was recently asked about the success factors of an SEO campaign. There are many, but let's take a look at three of what we consider the most important success factors

1. Knowledge Is Power
   It's very important for us to know what prior SEO activities have been conducted on a site. This can make or break the campaign. On a few occasions, our team of site analyzers have uncovered controversial techniques that even our client didn't know had been performed!
   It's also very important for us to have access and learn from your web site analytics data. SEO is about getting the right people to your site from search engines. Your analytics data prior to SEO and after SEO is a constant gauge to see if your SEO company is traffic-focused, not just placement-focused.
   Finally, the knowledge of understanding how your target audience is searching for your offerings allows an SEO best practices firm to shoot for the bullseye where visitors convert, not the outer rings of the target where visitors are "just browsing". Since the early days of SEO, this has not changed. 
2. Link Popularity
   With the significant weighting of link popularity in Google's algorithm, there are very few sites that can ignore link building. Now crucial to your site's success at major search engines is the continual effort of adding quality, relevant third party links to your site. Trust me, most of your competitors are doing just that.
3. Flexibility To Site Changes
   Always make sure to take the temperature of potential clients as to their flexibility to make changes to their site that will make the site more search-engine-friendly.