How do I analyze a clients SEO?

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keltichiro

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So I'm still trying to wrap my head around how SEO works...there's more to it than I thought there was. Though, it doesn't seem that difficult - I Think.

My question is, if a client comes to me and says "help! our business's site doesn't seem to be ranking very high in Google, what can you do?"...where do I begin? Do I pull up their page code and check their Meta tags - and then research those keywords to see if they're good (High monthly searches and low competition right?)...and also check the rest of their site to see if those keywords are showing up at all in the site...if I understand correctly, there needs to be a certain density to the keywords..a few percent or so?...Any articles on the site need to be over a certain length....300 words or so...or something else?

Am I on the right track?
 
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I've been doing a little reading since making this thread, and...according to Yoast, meta keywords are now a waste of time...so if that's the case then I shouldn't be looking at a websites meta keyword tag...so now I'm not sure where I find their keywords.
 
analyse their top competitors and you will find yours anwers. there are many tools such as ahrefs, majestic, semrush, traffic travis, etc.

for example, you say 300 words but if the top competitor has 3000 words in their ranking page, its better to have 3000 words too.

you found this forum so you are on the right track :)
 
No offense if you don't know how to analyze a clients website and rankings. You shouldn't really be offering SEO services and meta tags have been dead for some time now. Also keyword density as a ranking factor is much less important than it used to be, no more magic 4% keyword density for ranking.

1. Compare clients backlinks to competitors. But don't blindly copy check whether they have good links from high quality sources etc.
You can use tools like ahrefs and majestic seo to do this.
2. Check if each page has on-page SEO done properly, if not optimize.
3. How does the content compare, in comparison to competitors site. Low quality content may have trouble ranking.
4. Look into page load speeds, lower page load speed better user experience and increase Google crawling.
5. Check for 404 errors, broken re-directs, poor backlink profile, manual or algorithmic penalties.
 
I do not offer SEO services... i dont know enough about it to do so ;)

Ill have to peek at those tools. Im not familiar with them
 
I'd suggest doing an analysis of onsite factors as well as looking at links pointing to their site already. Beyond them knowing what their competitors are doing is key to success... what terms are their competitors targeting, what terms would they be best off focusing on? Just because a there is a highly competitive term with high traffic volume, doesn't mean that's the term(s) they should be targeting.
 
BadBoy, what do you mean by on-site SEO? I thought I knew (meta keywords) but since those are dead, what do we do now?
 
Meta keywords does not help in the determination of ranking, but however having both keywords and description is good and does not harm. Keyword density can leave it at 1% will be sufficient, contents more important.
 
I don't think you should be working on client sites if you're a noob.
Start by getting a few sites ranking on your own.

You can stat by checking out the white hat / black hat seo sections and read sticky-ed threads. Some are fairly old buy you can find some good info in them.
After that you can visit Kimi's SEO blue prints for 2012 and 2013.

After that start taking action, learn from experience and read some more.

GL
 
I appreciate all of the awesome replies. This is all good stuff, I'm learning a lot - however - I don't offer SEO services, as I said earlier.

I'm asking so I can learn so one day perhaps - I can offer them :)

Anyway! to recap a little bit, so I know I'm following...

I'm going to want to know keywords....then I'll need to use Googles keyword tool to check those keywords...and the higher the search and the lower the competition is what's key?

I'm also going to want to know backlinks, so I'll use something like ahrefs to pull up that info...the more backlinks the better?

I have ahrefs pulled up now, but I'm seeing stuff I don't understand..."Referring pages for anchor phrases"...."Referring domains for anchor phrases"...are those metrics that I should pay attention to?

Now then, all of that being said - as Resolute suggested, I'll go and read some more, lol *going to search for Kimi*
 
Please note that the competition indicated at GKT is not the competition if you wish to rank in terms of SEO for the particular keywords. This competition refers to PPC competition. To better analyze you need to use softwares to extract out the websites competitors that are currently ranking on Page 1. You can try using Traffic Travis the free version, though it's not really a very good indication but at least it's something!

keltichiro said:
I appreciate all of the awesome replies. This is all good stuff, I'm learning a lot - however - I don't offer SEO services, as I said earlier.

I'm asking so I can learn so one day perhaps - I can offer them :)

Anyway! to recap a little bit, so I know I'm following...

I'm going to want to know keywords....then I'll need to use Googles keyword tool to check those keywords...and the higher the search and the lower the competition is what's key?

I'm also going to want to know backlinks, so I'll use something like ahrefs to pull up that info...the more backlinks the better?

I have ahrefs pulled up now, but I'm seeing stuff I don't understand..."Referring pages for anchor phrases"...."Referring domains for anchor phrases"...are those metrics that I should pay attention to?

Now then, all of that being said - as Resolute suggested, I'll go and read some more, lol *going to search for Kimi*
Click to expand...
 
OH I had no idea...I've installed Traffic Travis now, and am currently tinkering with it.
 
Click on the SEO tab, Competition and then you can roughly analyze. Click on the Advanced Setting to change some settings as well like ticking In Title and Top 10.

keltichiro said:
OH I had no idea...I've installed Traffic Travis now, and am currently tinkering with it.
Click to expand...
 
Your best bet is to hang-out in the white hat SEO forums here, search G for the most up-to-date thinking, and hunt-out respected SEO reports performed on different sites. A month of that and your knowledge will be much improved. Basic SEO isn't rocket science. While doing all of the aforementioned things, get your hands dirty, read every good source you can find, and begin to experiment with your own ideas.
 
Two free basic on-site reports are juxseo.com and woorank.com. Woorank will only let you use it once a week unless you subscribe, so make it worth while.

gtmetrix.com will give you a basis of what you need for speed optimization.

As far as on-site seo goes, you keep mentioning meta keywords, but from my understanding the other meta tags do play a role: title and description.

Play with the reports, keep doing research, and just learn by doing. I agree with everyone above, start by analyizing, but do your own sites first, then you can work from there.
 
bartosimpsonio said:
Moz is a pile of bullshit.
Click to expand...

I also feel this way as well. although some of the stuff they say about seo is helpful for general online seo, I feel like their holding back on the important things especially for offline seo.
 
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