SEO Website Audit
Site audits are one of the most important tasks for an SEO adviser and should be completed at the start of every new SEO project.
We suggest using Google’s help for this task, you may have access to other tools, there are many, you decide which SEO tools you feel comfortable using.
Login to Google Webmaster Tools and the Google Analytics Account for the site.
- Determine When the Site Underwent Its Last Major Redesign, this includes anything that resulted in significant changes in URLs, navigation, or content. All of these can have a major impact on SEO, as part of this, check the historical Web analytics data for non-branded search traffic and do you see any unusual shifts in traffic?
- Check the Number of Indexed Pages, just use the "site: command" in Google and record the information gained from there, then check the indexing statistics available within Google Webmaster Tools and compare these numbers to how many pages you think you have, given that the indexed pages data from Google is quite inaccurate, don't expect these to be anywhere near equal to each other, we are looking to see massive differences, say where you have 1,000 quality pages on your site and Google is reporting that it has indexed 64.
- Review the way the site works for you as a user, is the structure logical? Does it flow from higher level topics to more detailed ones in way that makes sense? The more well structured this is, the better it is for users and search engines.
- Use a tool to walk through the Site so you see the pages the way a search engines spider does. Are all the navigation links crawlable? Are the important content elements visible?
- Look for Duplicate Content see if the non-www versions of your pages redirect to the www version of your pages (or vice-versa).
- Check the Amount of Content on Every Page E-commerce sites often have a major problem with this. Handwriting copy for 20,000 products is a non-trivial exercise. The problem is that pages with images and navigation, and little HTML text content, are seen as low-quality pages by the search engines. They may even be seen as duplicates of one another. If you were a search engine, how would you treat a site that looked like it had 20,000 pages without any unique content?
- Look for Pages With "Template Content" the classic example of this is a site with thousands of city pages where the text is the same on every page except the city name has been substituted, guess what? You might as well leave the pages blank with this structure as search engines quickly recognise that there's no unique content (in the HTML text at least) on these pages.
- Intelligent Use of Title Tags and H1 Tags Google Webmaster Tools can give a quick report on duplicate title tags, missing title tags, short title tags, and similar data for your meta descriptions, go to Diagnostics, and then pick HTML Suggestions.
- Duplicate title tags can lead to "keyword cannibalisation" where more than one page on your site compete for ranking on the same search term. This is closely related to the problem of duplicate content, in addition to looking for duplicate title tags, make sure that your keywords are the first words in the title tag (and H1 tag) generally don't lead with your brand name.
- Check the XML sitemap file looking for signs that major sections of the site aren't included. Also make sure the file is using the canonical version of a URL, if you link to a page on the site using one URL and a different URL for that page shows up in the sitemap file, you've just created duplicate content.
- Review the Robots.txt File making sure important sections of content aren't excluded, go to Google Webmaster Tools and use the built-in robots.txt checker (you can find this in the Crawler Access section under Site Configuration). This will show you pages that Google thinks are blocked off by the robots.txt file.
- Perform a redirect check for example, go to http://cairnswebdesignseo.com and see if it redirects to http://www.cairnswebdesignseo.com and then check the HTTP Headers to make sure the redirect used was a 301 instead of something else.
SEO, Search Engine Optimisation, sorry but that sounds like hard work, we hear that a lot….
Guess what, SEO is hard work, we lose more than our fair share of SEO proposals that we send out and we are ok with that, it isn't because our SEO firm doesn’t have proven results and unless someone is expecting SEO on the cheap, it isn't usually a matter of price either.
The reason we don't end up converting more of the proposals that we send out is because we're very clear about the dedication needed to see a SEO project take effect, most people lack time, especially with the difficult economic times that companies face and most companies have downsized and the remaining employees are asked to do more.
Let there be no mistake: if you're going to do SEO properly -- unless you're willing to outsource everything to an SEO provider -- you're going to need people in your company and on your team to get involved and help out.
A well thought out SEO project means bringing all of your team together and working towards a winnable goal, this means press release copywriting, blogging, social media marketing, photos, videos and Web design/development.
If you want to chat about your website, the results it brings now and what you would like it to do, please call us on 07 4057 4751 or email 
and be prepared to be given some straight talking SEO advice and options.
For many companies, however, if they hear that they need to create a lot of pages, hundreds, or possibly thousands, of pages of copy, they say, "Forget it. It isn't going to happen" now not every site needs to be so extreme with content, it really depends on the market you are in, call us and let us explain how much work is required to lift your search engine ranking.
We have helped a lot of people that have had a site built for their business previously and had no concept of what it takes to make that site convert once it is rolled out. "Our site is done, great! Now we'll be millionaires!" yet without careful SEO planning and work the site doesn’t do what they originally wanted it to do – create sales and convert, if your website is not doing what you wanted please give us a call and let us see if we can help you achieve your website goals and needs.
Cairns Web Design and SEO – SEO advisers, web site designers and web site programmers – to discuss SEO for your website please call us on 07 4057 4751 or email
