1.
Is there a
canonical issue with the domain?
2.
Check for ‘pre-existing’ conditions
like if any previous SEO work has put any kind of hindrance or penalties on the
website.
3.
Is the site search engine friendly?
Obviously, if it is not, it
will make our work that much harder and we should look to change it up or
rebuild it entirely from scratch. Review the source code of
the site. This is the only thing that search engines see. We have to see the content, navigation, links, etc. in
the HTML code? If not, there can be multiple explanations:
- Is the site in Flash?
- Does it use frames?
- Does it use javascript for parts
of the content or navigation?
Ideally all the text and
navigation should be in HTML, and if it’s your site you should really look to
change the site structure to HTML/CSS. But if not then
I. For a Flash site, we
can suggest to restructure the site as HTML with Flash elements added in to
keep the flair you’re looking for.
II.
Another compromise
can be to build the HTML version of the Flash site to run behind the Flash, but
that would mean the we would need to worry about updating and maintaining two
separate websites.
III.
For javascript
dropdown navigation, we can use or suggest many free CSS menus that
are available online and do pretty much the same thing as JS, but are search
engine friendly. Or you can redo the JS navigation where it’s a combination of
HTML and javascript, i.e., the URLs are inside the HTML and javascript is
only used to move them as needed.
IV.
For other javascript
functions that hide the text within javascript from the HTML source, make sure
that the actual content/text is within HTML and then we can use javascript to
only move/animate that content as needed. But if the content is within
javascript, the search engines cannot see it.
V.
Frames just need to
be removed. Nobody uses frames design anymore, and if your site is one of the
dinosaurs it just needs to be rebuilt. Having one frame within a page for
certain functionality is OK, but I’m talking about if your site is built
entirely in frames and you cannot see any content in the source code because of
it.
4.
Has the site been
previously optimized?
If yes as we know, then possibly we will need to do less work. Although,
most of the time we would probably still need to redo what was done previously
if it was done improperly.Quick checks are
- Title tags – are they different
for each page? Do they contain keywords?
- Does a Meta Description exist?
- Is there interlinking within the
content of the page that uses keywords?
- Are keywords used at all/enough
times within the content of the pages?
- Is there a logical navigation
structure that uses keywords?
5.
Check the URL structure
of the site
The URL Structure must be search engine friendly. Change the URL
structure to remove characters such as “?”, “=”, “&”, etc
6.
Check for broken URLs
Having broken URLs means you’re missing out on link juice or potential
traffic. It can also cause confusion from the visitors that may not bother with
your site if the URL they clicked on is broken.
7.
Run a crawl check
on the site
Your site needs to be easily
crawlable. Need to fix issues if any
8.
Run a backlink
report
To see how many links are
pointing back to the site, which anchor keywords are being used, and the
quality of the links you’re getting (PageRank, Link Juice, etc.)
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