The process of SEO is rarely straightforward. Ideally, when we start a new campaign we'd love FTP details to the site. We'd love to be able to FTP in and see lots of lovely pages all hosted on the domain that we are working on. We'd like nothing more than to be able to upload some files such as a robots.txt, a sitemap.xml or a .htaccess file....

BUT

The real life scenario is rarely that simple. There are often issues to work around such as a Content Management System (CMS), or dynamic pages with data drawn from a database that we cannot access.

Sometimes a stumbling block might seem irresolvable. If a site has 3 quarters of its contents hosted on another domain, which it redirects to via frames - there will be practically nothing we can do to get those pages ranking well. What the SEO team have to do is work out how to move forward from this situation. Work out what the Unique Selling Point (USP) is that this site offers and add lots of great content that supports this USP and IS hosted on the right domain.

Other problems such as restrictive CMS have to be solved in their own way too. If a CMS doesn't allow you to upload files such as a robots.txt or a sitemap.xml then you need to think of other ways to ensure all the pages are indexed. In this case it's important to think of innovative off page strategies - i.e. how can we get lots of quality, one way inbound links that point to these internal pages to ensure that they all get indexed properly.