Site audit for Website Optimization
Goals of the website optimization?
Every search engine optimization program begins with a site audit. However, a site audit consists of much more than that of the actual site. It begins with the verbally expressed goals of the client that he or she expects to reach from search engine optimization.
Is the point of this to drive sales, build brand visibility or to get a site ranking in a variety of areas on the web while the final decisions regarding the aforementioned categories are being made?
Evaluation
A site evaluation takes all of the elements of the site in to account. You see, your optimization isn’t just about aspects of your content and how your site is put together, but the overall picture which takes into account everything after the site ranks as well and most importantly, the first 3 seconds of impact of when a visitor sees your site for the first time.
SEO 101
If you have come to our site in search of search engine optimization then you probably have a good clue to what SEO 101 constitutes but let’s run over a few of the basics. Firstly there is the appropriate labeling of pages, which companies still don’t do correctly today. There’s the assessment if there is even real HTML text available on the page. And beyond that we have to make sure that certain individuals haven’t taken the liberty of trying some illegal techniques out that their “SEO Knowledgeable friends” have talked them into. Really guys, putting invisible text on the page is so 2002 and stands to get you banned from search engines. And no matter how cool the idea of using the CSS display none attribute sounds, it isn’t!
QC of Your Website’s Optimization
Of all the various things you will need to keep in mind in the future in regards to SEO 101 of your website, the acronym that you need to keep foremost in your mind is QC (Quality and Consistency). Let’s break that down a little further: By quality we are not specifically referencing how grammatically well a piece of content is written but in how well it is written in the context of the website’s focus! And by consistency we mean; the ability to keep the focus of the content on topic so that we don’t confuse the search engines with misleading tangents. The best way to think about how to convey your message to the search engines is to think of how you would convey your message to a fifth grader. Fifth graders don’t necessarily get metaphors and they can’t understand your very pretty pie chart. They need facts and they need them laid out in a basic way. Simply put; if a fifth grader doesn’t get your content then there is a good chance you won’t get a great score with the search engines either!
Your SEO Technically
Of course we need to get down to the nitty gritty. I need to see your website as the search engine spiders see it (spiders – small programs that crawl the web to read and index websites for the search engines). If the spider can’t see your precious content then how are they to know how to properly rank your site?
After I check out your actual website I will then check out the popularity of your website in the eyes of your peers on the web. Are you are thought leader? Do your peers link to you, which is one of the fundamental needs for Google to consider you ranking worthy?
There are over 200 aspects of Google’s algorithm that your site needs to be perfect for and I am here to help you get there!
