[MUSIC] Welcome to Milestone 1 of the Search Engine Optimization project-based course. During this milestone you will focus on gauging a site's opportunity for improvement. You will be required to identify a website that has opportunity to rank higher in search. You should use the knowledge you have gained throughout the specialization to spot these opportunities. For example, are their title tags optimized? Do their pages lack substance? Do you run into a lot of errors while browsing the site? I advise you to look at several different sites, and gauge the level of effort needed to get this website to rank higher in search. To complete this project, the greater level of effort needed to fix a website, the better you will be able to perform on your milestones. You can find the sites through various different ways. If you choose, you can offer your services to a real business or website owner who needs assistance. Alternatively, you can find a website that isn't ranking well and perform the parts as if you were working directly with the website owner. Where possible, I urge you to use this as an opportunity to reach out to live business owners who may need assistance, as this will not only grant you experience working with a client directly, it may also result in a referral or case study that you can use later down the road. Some methods you may want to use to find business owners who may be open to SEO services include posting an ad on Craigslist or a similar site. You can state that you are a student and need a site to work on your final project. Or you can find a business on Craigslist or other sites who are advertising the need for SEO help, but be sure to disclaim that you are a student, and see if they are willing to work with you. Find start-ups in your area that could benefit from a SEO strategy. Find local non-profit groups and organizations that may be open to an SEO audit. Or, if you have friends and family that own a business, approach them and ask if they would be open to you providing them with SEO recommendations. If you choose not to work directly with a website owner, that's fine too. You can find websites by brainstorming a topic or industry and performing keyword searches related to that topic. I would avoid the first page of search results as there is likely to be less opportunity on these sites. [MUSIC] Now that you've identified the site you'll be working with, it's time to come up with a pitch, so potential clients or managers can see the opportunity the site has for increasing its ranking. Create a list of website's top strengths and weaknesses. Along with each weakness, develop an argument for why the website will rank better after improving on these weak points. Once you have this information, let's create an actual pitch. It helps if a potential client or manager can see visual elements that back up your claims. Using screenshots, graphs or other data, create a PowerPoint presentation of five to ten slides that addresses these areas of opportunity. It is best to stick with one to two main points per slide, and make it as visual as possible. Use bullet points or small amounts of text where needed to call out certain elements. For example, if title tags are an area they can improve upon, show them where the title tags are, the current text of the title tag, and highlight that this is important to an SEO strategy. Generally, you would present your findings to the client over the phone while sharing your PowerPoint. For this part use screen recording software to showcase your PowerPoint while discussing each slide. [MUSIC] Finally, let's assume the client liked your pitch and signed up for your SEO services. Alternatively, this could be a business you were hired as an in-house SEO for. Come up with a list of questions that will help you plan out the best SEO strategy going forward. These questions should relate to the client's intended target audience, their goal for the site or business, the history of the website, such as questions around potential SEO work done in the past, resources they have available and more. You want to ask them enough questions to get a good idea on where to start and what success looks like to them. Come up with a list of 10 to 15 questions that you can go over with the new client or manager in a typical kick-off meeting. Let's get started.