Resources are never infinite. If you\'re not careful you can
spend them spinning wheels and tweaking things that will have
no real effect on your search traffic. Plan effectively, and
you\'ll achieve true growth and a positive return on your
investment.
The difference lies in understanding how search engines work -
how they crawl the web and how they use that data to rank web
pages - and how your website does or doesn\'t meet these
criteria.
The Technical Audit
The first order of action is the technical audit of your site.
Tackle these issues first because this represents the foundation
of your site. Some technical problems can render web pages
invisible to search engines. Identifying and resolving these
issues upfront is critical.
A technical audit should include:
* Code cleanliness / content visibility
o Does the site use JavaScript heavily?
o Is the code bloated?
o Is content generated by JavaScript or otherwise not
SEO-friendly?
* File size / page load time
* Navigation structure
o Is the navigation Flash or JavaScript driven? If
so, does it degrade gracefully for browsers that don\'t
support these technologies (like a search crawler)?
* URL structure
o Are there session ID\'s in the page URLs?
o Are the URLs long and do they include multiple
variables and parameters?
o Do the URLs contain keywords?
* Title tag / headlines
o Does the site have unique titles and headlines on each
page (sometimes content management and eCommerce systems
weren\'t built with this feature)?
* Current index
o Have search engines fully indexed the site? If not,
why?
* Canonicalization issues
o Are there multiple URLs for the home page or other
pages?
This technical audit can sometimes uncover serious problems.
If your site includes session IDs in all URLs, for example,
you\'ve got a major problem. Search engines do not index URLs
that include session IDs. Some older content management and
eCommerce systems were built this way, and, to put it frankly,
there\'s no point in launching an SEO campaign if this can\'t be
fixed.
Other problems are not quite as detrimental to SEO but still
should get attention.
If your site navigation is generated by JavaScript and does not
occur as standard HTML in your source code, it\'s likely that
search engines aren\'t seeing it. This means they also aren\'t
reading the words in your links - an important signal for page
relevance. In the worst cases, they haven\'t indexed pages
linked to this way at all. Rebuilding your navigation to be
SEO-friendly can yield positive results without requiring
significant costs.
The Content Audit
Having content that is relevant to your site topic and attracts
links is a crucial piece of the puzzle.
This is a bit simpler than the technical aspects, but simple
doesn\'t mean easy.
Your content can target keywords, but the user experience must
always come first. When in doubt, sacrifice keyword use for
better copy.
Some of the content aspects that are important:
* Keyword targeting
o Do your title tags include relevant keywords?
o What about your heading tags and body copy?
o Does your site navigation use relevant keywords or
more general language like \"services?\"
* Link attraction
o Do you have link-worthy content? Has anybody linked
to it yet?
* Readability
o This gets more into usability issues than SEO, but
it\'s vastly important. Does your content grab the
reader? How well does it convert visitors into
customers?
While targeting keywords is important, the general rule here is
never to sacrifice your user\'s experience for SEO. They don\'t
like it, and they\'ll get cranky and leave. And forget about
attracting links if users don\'t enjoy your pages.
The Trust Audit
Why do search engines rank some pages over others? The simple
answer: they trust that the content will satisfy the user.
Google\'s algorithm has always been focused centrally on signals
of trust. There is money in ranking well, and for this reason
webmasters, bless our hearts, can\'t be trusted to be honest or
objective about how much trust we deserve.
This is why Larry and Sergey (Google founders) decided to focus
on links as a signal of trust and authority. The basic idea is
that the more links that point to a page, the more authoritative
and trustworthy the page. The other major search engines
followed suit.
Over time, since links were \"out of the bag\" and link building
schemes erupted across the web, search engines have honed their
algorithms to use other signals to determine trust.
Still, links are the single most important aspect of trust -
and, in almost every case, SEO as a whole. Even tiny sites with
just a few, poorly-optimized pages can rank well for competitive
keywords if they simply have a powerful enough inbound link
profile.
What to look at in evaluating website trust:
* Inbound link profile
o How many links does the website have?
o Are any of these links on websites with a high PageRank
or a large number of inbound links?
o What anchor text is used in inbound links?
o What pages do these links point to?
* Site age
o How long has the site been live?
o How long has the domain been registered? The older
the better.
o How long is the domain registered for? The longer
the better.
* Outbound links
o Does the website link to other websites?
o Are any of the websites this website links to spam?
Do they look to have been penalized by Google? Are
they in a \"bad neighborhood?\"
o Has the webmaster obviously engaged in link schemes,
reciprocal or otherwise?
These questions aren\'t always easy to answer, but they\'re
important. Many of them are crucial.
Before you start researching keywords, creating content,
building links or otherwise optimizing your website (or hire a
professional to do so), you need to know where you stand and
what to expect moving forward.
The answers aren\'t always pleasant, but if building the volume
and relevance of your search engine traffic matters to you these
answers matter too.