What comes before SEO but after making the website?

[Sonia]

This is not really a chicken and egg question, so what does come before SEO, Social Media and Inbound Marketing. When many businesses think about increasing their traffic they start with all the usual terms of SMO, SEO, Social Media and Inbound Marketing. This is before they consider the functionality of their website. Your website should always come before undertaking and Social Media or Inbound Marketing.

Why your website functionality comes before any SEO, Social Media or Inbound Marketing is that you need to consider if your website is capable of converting your new visitors into leads. What is the point of any increase in traffic if we cannot covert any of it into leads or customers? A good way to view your website is a part of your overall sales process and look to see how your website integrates into it. This should always come before undertaking an SEO, Social Media or Inbound Marketing.

You can see why this is an important step before you do any SEO, Social Media or Inbound Marketing. A quick test would be to write down your sales process in simple steps and see how or if your website adds to the sales process. Let's take an example of a car dealership, the reason why I picked that one is that most times the sales has to take place offline in person. Their sales process might be something like this:

1: Potential clients comes in or phones up about a particular car.
2: After an initial chat with a salesperson may agree to test drive
3: Once returning from the test drive the fun starts with the valuation of their current car etc
4: And so on