This week our good buddy and SEOmoz Global Associate, Tom Critchlow, is back in the hizzy for an awesome installment of WBF. In this video, Tom will walk you through all of the important components to look at when conducting a basic SEO Site Review. This is the bread and butter of most SEO consulting so for those of you new to the game, it's a great primer; and for those of you witha few miles behind you, it's a great reminder of all the things you should be checking.
Feel free to participate in the comments and share any other information you typically include in a site review, or any great methods or tricks you've found to make site reviews easier to conduct or more valuable to the client. Enjoy...
SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-SEO Site Reviews Step-by-Step from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
Tom wanted me to add:
"Vanessa (Fox) pointed out a post on Jane and Robot which is has some really useful guides on search friendly development as well as some good checklists for diagnosing website issues. It's developer focused but I urge you to check it out: search friendly design patterns for web developers"
Here are links to a couple of the tools Tom mentions in the video:
- Live HTTP Headers
- SEOmoz SEO Tools
You said ERR and UMM too much you TWAT.
LMAO. Dude you crack me up.
Clearly you were trying to up the difficulty level on "Tom Critchlow-The Drinking Game!"
At least one person will read this comment and not make the connection between the comment's author and the guy in the video :)
C is for Critchlow
;)
Err, Umm here's my take - Will Critchlow knows his shit inside and out. Great presentation Will. You're like the fucking Hugh Grant of search marketing.
Show me an Englishman that can speak without a bunch of "Er-Um" and I'll show you Tony Blair. Great guy that I have an abundance of admiration for, but I'd rather be a "Hugh Grant" any day of the week.
Bottom line - Will Critchlow has forgotten more about PPC during a ten minute presentation than those damn magic markers can write on a 4x6 whiteboard!
Bloody fucking brilliant primer Will!
Tom, on the other hand, knows nothing of SEO...
(I kid, I kid...)
Here's everything you said in a bulleted format (For the most part) - thanks for the great presentation.
1. First Impressionsa. Look at the website like a user
2.Accessibility/Spiderabilitya.Turn offi.JavaScript ii.Cookies iii. CSS iv. Is it a mess? Is there a site?
3.Check the robots.txt
4.Crawl Test Tool (Spider Test)
5.Browse GoogleBot (https://www.smart-it-consulting.com/internet/google/googlebot-spoofer/)
6. Site search: domain a. Brand Searchb. Google Cache (Important Pages on site - does G cache it? Content the same? )
7. Duplicate contenta. Search the content stringsb. Check the non www vs the www version of the site (URL redirects)c. Check all domains (.jsp/.html) (Site IP Check from SEOmoz)
8. URLsa. 1 URL per pageb. Nice URLs (Keyword rich)c. Unique title tag (KY|Brand)
9. Content Reviewa. Enough content (Text) on each pagesb. Header Tags (Key phrases in the header tags)
10. Meta Tagsa. Check for KY Stuffingb. Description for concisenessc. Robots (De-index)
11. Redirectsa.301b.Live HTTP Headers (FF plug in)
12. Internal Linkinga. Number of linksb. Anchor Text (Use Phrase)c. Check for nofollow links (Outgoing use nofollow)d. TOS/Legal (Nofollow those)
13. Geonitcha. IP locationb. Local addressc. Google Local (Register with this)d. SEOmoz tool
14. External linkinga. Anchor textb. Deeplinkingc. Look natural? (Even distribution)d. Paid links (Do they look "obviously" paid?)
15. Semantic HTMLa. Bulky pages (Long load times / + bounce rate)b. Missing ALT text and Imagesc. Poorly formatted code
Is it a Safari glitch, or is the above list somewhat mashed?
Glitched. Must be Canadian with all the A's. :)
Wow - nice list, thanks for transcribing :-)
dub-dub-dub and non-dub-dub-dub, just fantastic. You did an excellent job Tom, don't let anyone tell you different. Everytime I come to SEOmoz I learn something new. This vid followed in that same schema.
I wasn't even going to mention the dub-dub-dub bit :) Tom, we love you, really.
I love you too guys :-D
Tom, you are so cute with the Um, Ah thing.This was a great overview. I even wrote it down. We all do these things, but it's nice to have a list for when your brain decides not to work.
Okay, so I'd love to hear someone talk about how to rid your site of paid links. :) Someone wanna take that and run with a blog or YOUmoz post?
Thanks Tom ... I missed a few of these on my own SEO checklist.
I would also add to the list: Check site for Malware Penalty and use this tool: https://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-05-23-n62.html
Good point - i'd like to add that just as you've got a Google health check - a general SE's check should be done - Yahoo and the site safety feature (if mcafee site support thinks your dangerous) could potentially really damage the site being reviewed.
Well done Tom. You covered a lot. Here are a few ideas that may have been in mind but are worth specifying.
Domain name age - many a client has been grateful to know that their domain would be expiring soon and even how to renew it in one case.
Spell check - misspelled words make a bad impression and we hate to see keywords misspelled.
Page load or speed test - no time to run for coffee
Readability test - indicates what grade level the content is written for.
Favicon - missing favicon can cause a page not found error from Google last I looked. Still true?
Thanks again for the list. I am always on the look out for more items to check in an SEO Review.
Thanks for the mention, Tom!
The link doesn't seem to work though. The checklists and resource lists are at:
https://janeandrobot.com/post/Search-Friendly-Design-Patterns-For-Web-Developers.aspx
Look forward to watching the video!
No problems - nice resource :-) I've updated the links - it's a FF3 bug I think!
It sure is. For the moment, you have to add the links in the html. This is a good note for everyone using Firefox 3 who writes YOUmoz posts, too.
Jane, could you have a look at the links in Tom's other Whiteboard Friday?
Fixed :)
Love your work Jane. :)
The checklists and processes on janeandrobot rock - I have been recommending them to people left, right and centre since you told us about them Vanessa. Dropped a link into a Q&A answer the other day. Good work :)
great post, didn't notice the ums and ahs till i read the comments ;-)
one thing i'd like to add is some more firefox plugins that are really useful - apart from the live http headers - just in case you don't know them.
- web developer: great for switching off javascript and css and disabling cookies
- user agent switcher: look what your site looks like as googlebot (or lynx or slurp ...)
- cookie watcher: ideal for deleting the current session cookie - useful for testing especially session-bound links
regards
Thanks for the links - web developer and user agent switcher I was already aware of but the cookie watcher one is new and looks really useful! Thanks
yes, but unfortunately cookie watcher doesn't work in FF3 (yet) ... and i couldn't find an (equally small) alternative, maybe i hack it myself :-)
Nice Job Tom.
Doing it in front of a camera amps it up a little doesn't it.
I always hate listening to myself but it goes a long way in improving a presentation.
I like lists. Once you have done your thing a few times it is easy to think you don't need one. But just like pilots we all need them or eventually we skip something and it ends up being needlessly frustrating.
Great job.
Yeah - it's really tough doing it front of the camera. I'm fine at presentations so I thought it'd be just the same but it's actually a lot more scary! There's lights, cameras and action!!
Both my whiteboard fridays were shot on the same day though so for the next on I'll definitely be more prepared :-)
Totally agree that there's a difference between video and presentations. With presentations, you can look at your audience. I like that. The camera isn't so forgiving, the lights are really hot and I was constantly trying not to look at Scott.
this vid really kicks arse cheers Tom. And the pace was perfect too, well done ;)
Greeeeeeat post! Can't wait to see the site process during the SEOmoz expert seminar.
Great break down of SEO site Review. I think I'm just going to adopt your layout. :)
Great job!
It's nice to know I am covering all the bases. This list will help me ensure I don't miss anything moving forward. Thanks!
I missed this the first time round, but just watched it as I was boning up on Site Reviews.
I used screen captures to try to capture the whiteboard text but they came out too fuzzy, so I listened again and transcribed the list. In case anyone else can use it, I'm copying it here.
1) First Impressions
Usability
2) Accessibility/Spiderability
Turn off java script
Turn off cookies
Turn off CSS
3) Google Health Check
site:www.companyname.com
Brand search
Check Google cache to compare
4) Duplicate Content
Search content strings on web
Check www. vs. non-www.
Check all domains (Site IP Check)
5) URL's
Only 1 URL per page
Clean short descriptions/Keyphrase rich
6) Title Tags
Unique
Descriptive
7) Content Review
Enough content
Header tags
8) Meta Tags
Check for keyphrase stuffing
Meta description for usability
Robots.txt
9) Redirects
Live HTTP Headers (I'd use Open Site Explorer instead now)
Check everything
10) Internal Linking
Number of links
Anchor text
Check no follow
11) Geo Location
IP location
Local address
Google local
SEOmoz tool
12) External Linking
Anchor text
Deep linking
Look natural
Paid links
13) Semantic HTML
Bulky pages
Missing alt text on images
Poorly formatted code
I found it very useful and not only saying that, but also applying this presentation and some of the above great comments (specially related to Firefox plugins) to run my first proper SEO site review :)
Hi,
Really great advise here ..!
Website reviews are great reserve to conduct high attention
Hey Tom,
Excellent video. I've used this a number of times as a refresher for site reviews.
Ever thought about doing one of these for a bigger site? Like say an ecommerce site that has endless amounts of pages? I'd find that super helpful.
Best,
BRLM
Will be providing a summary of the video on our blog as this is a great post Tom. Don't worry about saying ERR and UMM too much; you'll get the hang of it. :)
A great blog with quality content – will be back for more.
-- edited by Jen - removed link
I don't know but for me I think he was going too fast and talking too fast.
I really enjoy when expertise take the time to whiteboard SEO best practices. It would be nice to have a QA session as part of the whiteboard but I understand that this is more of a video than a presentation.
GREAT resource Tom, thanks. There are a few things I wasn't considering in my site reviews that I will definately start doing.
One point i want to personally be clear of. If anybody can give me an answer, that would be awesome:
1. I have heard people mention CSS in many blogs and comments. As a designer, CSS, to me, is a very important and effective tool. Does CSS in any way impede in SEO?
Not really . . . you can always override a CSS call on the individual page you are trying to optimize. If there are any negatives to CSS from an SEO standpoint, they are outweighed by the positives associated with being able to implement broad changes more efficiently.
In a minor sense, I've seen it impact search engines automatically parsing text I don't want them to parse for the description. For example, let's say you have a css positioning system in place and divs (with content that, on screen, is displayed AFTER the content you want to be used), come first in the CODE.
I've found that this means sometimes navigation or other elements show up as the description field, rather than either my meta description OR more of the keyword-heavy text on the page that I'd want the engines to use.
The one thing I tell our clients is to not replace standard HTML elements with custom IDs and Classes. For example, use H1 and not <div id="headline">. Absolutely use CSS to customize the look of your HTML elements, just don't get rid of them. The reason is that because standard HTML elements are standardized the search engines can use them to create a hiearchy and better identify relevant keywords.
There's been a few incidents with CSS dropdown menus being created to avoid javascript (which impedes crawling) and getting the site in question suffering a penalty.
I've re-designed one of my own templates (the code structure at least) after I realized floating divs to the right meant the last content came first and visa-versa. [edit: when crawled...]
And yeah... using CSS instead of HTML is not wise. Turn your CSS off, like T.C. said, and see if the search engines can understand your non-formatted page. Search engines... and blind people. (T.C. = Tom Critchlow)
Also, deceptive CSS is definitely a reason Google will penalize a domain.
But generally, CSS is god's gift to old school HTML, if used properly.
Will watch the video in a sec, sounds promising... but I noticed there's a typo in the title ("Steb?") and the javascripted links don't seem to work for me...
All fixed - I think it's a FF3 bug. Well, the links are a FF3 bug... I don't think Scott can blame his stubby fingers on FF3 :-)
Who couldn't resist the 90's rave music to get into a white board friday mood? For some reason the video kept freezing at 3:20, and I don't think it's posted on YouTube yet. I'll check back again later.
I don't post on YouTube anymore. They were causing me too many problems with their 10 minute max and their sucktastic video compression quality.
Good stuff Tom. It seems to me that this would be a good development checklist as well.
BTW you come across as being very competent and trustworthy even if perhaps a bit uncomfortable before the camera - who wouldn't be though? Good job.
Great Session. Really Enjoyed the video and its really very usefull point for basic starter and also for expert too.
Because we can forget some of point when we work on it. But it may cause lot.
Again Thanks
hey guys...
first time in your website.
awesome video! helps a lot! (i'm a nub in SEO)
Raphael from israel
Great video Tom, so useful to have all these listed in one place.
I esp agree with "external links: do you have enough?" being an important question in any site audit. It's the difference between onpage optimisation being not-too-useful and working wonders.
Fantastic video. I compared it to my checklist when doing a site review and it really reinforced my methods and practices.
A great presentation of the key parts of SEO!
A extra tool for FireFox and checking Headers in more detail :
Tamper Data: https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/966
I like the post very much but could you speak just a little bit slower, please. Sometimes it's hard to hear what you're saying.