SweTech
Power Member
- Apr 22, 2011
- 619
- 2,621
The list below is the one I use when I perform a "real" site audit for enterprise customers. It might be interesting to look at for you guys.
Table of Contents
1. Site Architecture
2. Technical/Server Issues
3. HTML Use/Analysis
4. Content Review
5. Negative Practices
6. Keywords
7. Webmaster Tools
8. Social Media
Site Architecture
Canonical URLs (Best Page Addresses)
- Access to pages on domain (www vs. non-www)
- Home Page linking consistency
- Capitalization/Lower Case (capitals in domain name ok, in folders and files a potential problem)
- Print Versions (CSS Rather than crawlable duplicate PDFs/Docs
- Canonical Link Elements ? do they match up right?
- Rel Prev/Next link elements for paginated pages?
- Internal Redirects (internal 301 redirects avoided)
Robots.txt File
- Correctly formatted
- Includes all it should (including cart pages, email referral pages, login pages)
- Includes link to XML sitemap or XML Sitemap Index
Meta robots noindex/nofollow
- Used Appropriately
- Used on pages that a deep crawler might try to index (like form and search results pages)
Category/Site Structure (URLS and Information Architecture)
- Unique and User Friendly
- Use of appropriate category and sub-category link structures
- Customer orientated rather than feature orientated
- Provides tasks/Options for different personas
Choosing File Names
- Uses hyphens as word separators
- Unique
- Avoids Keyword Stuffing
- If file names to be changed, links on site changed, and 301s set up for external visitors
Custom Error Page
- Sends proper 404 code status
- no soft 404s
- Helpful to visitor (navigation, directories, search)
HTML Sitemap
- Organized into user friendly and user oriented categories
- Provides links to most important pages
- Avoids using too many links
- Doesn?t include 404s or links that redirect internally
XML Sitemap
- Properly formatted (XML proper encoding)
- Uses only canonicals
- No 404s and no internally redirected pages
- Submitted to GWT and Bing Tools
Technical/Server Issues
OS/Server/CMS/Catalog Considerations
Server Status: Messages 200, 300, 400, 500
Secure Server | HTTPS Protocol
- No error messages
- No https bleed-over to pages that aren?t supposed to be https
- No certificate authority errors
Search Friendly Links
- All links to be indexed reachable by text-based links or ?href? and ?src?.
Broken and Redirected Links
- Broken links identify, links removed or replaced
- All 301 redirected links replaced with direct links
External Links
- Checked for broken links and redirects and replaced where appropriate
- Pages linked to checked for repurposed content
Duplicated Content
- Internally (see canonical section above)
- Mirrors identified and disallowed/noindexed as appropriate
- Substantially duplicated content on self-owned other sites removed/changed/blocked
- Substantially duplicated content on other sites removed (friendly email, AUP letter to host, DMCA)
JavaScript
- Can pages be navigated with javascript disabled? If not, are URLs for pages accessible in HTML code with ?href? and ?src??
- If Ajax is necessary, is Google?s hashbang approach used?
Dynamic Pages
- Avoid session IDs in URLs
- Avoid excessive multiple data parameters in URLs
- Avoid excessive processor calls
- Avoid calls to multiple servers as much as possible
- Avoid keyword insertion pages (pages were the content is substantially the same except for keywords that are inserted into the pages).
- Keep boilerplate (disclaimers, copyright notices, other text that appears on most pages) that exists on templates light.
- Label page segments semantically well (the div class for those could be things such as header, footer, sidebar, advertisement, or whichever is most appropriate.)
Page Load Times
- Images compressed for right dimensions and for file sizes?
- GZIP or Deflate used?
- Base 64 encoding for images avoided?
- External CSS and Javascript used and minimized?
- Long browser caching dates?
- CDN in use where appropriate?
- Other Page Speed considerations
Cookies
? Navigation of indexable pages possible without accepting them?
HTML Use/Analysis
Deprecated HTML/HTML Validation
- If invalid, are errors the type that will harm SEO?
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
- If invalid, are errors the type that will harm SEO?
Title Elements
- Relevant to the content of the page and be keyword-rich.
- Meaningful and able to stand on its own as a description of the page it titles.
- Persuasive and Engaging to those who see it out of context
- As unique as possible compared to other titles on the site
- If the name of the site appears in the title, it should be at the end of the title, and not at the beginning, unless it is the home page.
- No more than ten words or roughly 60-70 characters in length.
- Unique if possible compared to titles from other sites.
Meta Description Elements
- Descriptive of the content of the page
- Includes the main keyword phrase the page is optimized for
- Engaging and persuasive to viewers who see it out of context (search snippets or social shares)
- Around 25 words or 150 characters in length
- Well written sentences, using good punctuation
- One sentence preferable, but two alright if keywords are in the longer sentence
- Preferable to have keywords as close to the start as appropriate
Heading Elements
- Top level heading should describe the content of the page
- Lower level headings should effectively describe the content they head
- One top level heading preferable per page
- Headings should be used like headings in an outline, in proper order
- Main and subheadings can, and should contain targeted keywords if possible and appropriate.
- A heading element should not be used for the page logo
- Headings for lists and sections in page navigation should use CSS to style them rather than heading elements.
Strong/Em Elements
- For bold text, use the ?strong? HTML element.
- For Italics text, use the ?em? HTML element
- Use Strong and Em to highlight the use of keywords and related words
- When bolding or italicizing other text on a page, use CSS to style how it looks
- Don?t over use bold or italics ? emphasizing too much means emphasizing nothing.
Image Optimization
- Use alt text for images on a page that are meaningful
- Use captions for images on a page that are meaningful
- A caption for an image should be contained within the same HTML element as the image (like a div)
- Select images that are meaningful that are related to the keywords optimized for
- Use the chosen optimized keywords in the alt text and captions where appropriate
- Use file names that reflect those keywords where appropriate.
- Use hyphens to separate words in image file names.
- Use alt=?" for images that aren?t meaningful like decorations or bullet points
- Use alt text for logos that are descriptive of the business or organization
- Larger images with better resolution might be ranked a little better than smaller and lower resolution images.
- Alt text should not be a list of keywords, but can contain a keyword phrase.
- Alt text shouldn?t be more than 10 words or so.
- Avoid keyword stuffing alt text, captions, and image file names.
Anchor Text
- Keywords should be used in anchor text
- If the keywords for a page being pointed to aren?t used, related terms should be
- Anchor text used in navigation should be descriptive of what is on the page linked to
- Anchor text should not use generic terms such as ?click here.?
- Anchor text shouldn?t be longer than 10 words or so if possible
- Anchor text shouldn?t be stuffed with multiple keywords
Meta Data optimization
- Search engines do not use Dublin core meta tags
- Search engines do not use the revisit meta tag
- A robots index, follow tag is unnecessary and redundant
- a NOODP will keep Google and Bing from using Open directory project titles instead of title element titles, if the site is even listed in DMOZ
Content Review
Amount of Text
- Having some minimum amount of text on a page (200 words?) gives search spiders something to index.
Spelling Errors
- Possible quality signal
- Important to credibility
Keyword Use in Copy
- Are keywords chosen for a page being used in page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and content
Keyword Prominence/Visual Segmentation
- How well does the HTML code of a page show how it?s broken down into different blocks (heading, main content, sidebars, footers, etc.)
- Are keywords used in the different sections, and especially in the main content area of pages?
Use of Related Words/Phrases
- Some words tend to co-occur on pages ranked highly for a certain query (or categories of results for queries), and it can help in the rankings for a page to use some of those phrases.
Penguin/Panda Analysis
Is there a loss in traffic that corresponds to one of the Panda or Penguin updates?
Resource: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
Negative Practices
Hidden Text
- Is there text on pages in the same font color as the background?
- Is there text on pages hidden through an offset div?
- Is there a large amount of text on pages in small iframes or CSS scrolling overflows
- Is there text in a font color that matches the font color as the page background that might be mistaken as hidden text?
Cloaking
- Does the site use cloaking to show search engines one thing and visitors something else?
Meta Refresh
- Are meta refreshes used instead of redirects, and if so might they be used in a way which might deceive search engines?
JavaScript Redirection
- Is javascript redirection being used so that search engines see one thing, and visitors see something else?
Outward Links/Link Exchanges
- Is the site using link directory pages that promise being listed in exchange for a link?
Keywords
Keyword Research, Selection and Implementation
- Are relevant, competitive, appropriate and popular keywords being used on the pages of the site?
- Are those keywords being used effectively on those pages?
Keyword Focusing | Mid- to Long-Tail Key Phrases
- Do the main pages of the site focus upon more competitive keyword phrases?
- Do deeper pages with less pagerank focus upon long-tail phrases?
Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools/Errors Analysis*
- Has the site been verified with GWT?
- Has a choice of ?www? setting been made? (Doesn?t have to be if domain access issues are addressed)
- Has a targeted country/location been selected? (Doesn?t have to be)
- Have any errors listed been checked upon?
Social Media
Social Media Audit | Status
- Does the site integrate appropriate social sharing buttons?
- Do the pages of the site provide links to social profiles for the site?
On-Site Social Engagement
- Does the site provide ways to give feedback to the site owners?
- Does the site provide a way to leave comments?
- Is there user generated content on the site, such as reviews and ratings, and does it use rich snippets if so?
- Are there public user/member profile pages, and if so how rich are they in terms of features?
- Is there a forum on the site, and if so, some guidelines for its use?
Analytics
Have analytics been set up for the site?
- Code on every page
Table of Contents
1. Site Architecture
2. Technical/Server Issues
3. HTML Use/Analysis
4. Content Review
5. Negative Practices
6. Keywords
7. Webmaster Tools
8. Social Media
Site Architecture
Canonical URLs (Best Page Addresses)
- Access to pages on domain (www vs. non-www)
- Home Page linking consistency
- Capitalization/Lower Case (capitals in domain name ok, in folders and files a potential problem)
- Print Versions (CSS Rather than crawlable duplicate PDFs/Docs
- Canonical Link Elements ? do they match up right?
- Rel Prev/Next link elements for paginated pages?
- Internal Redirects (internal 301 redirects avoided)
Robots.txt File
- Correctly formatted
- Includes all it should (including cart pages, email referral pages, login pages)
- Includes link to XML sitemap or XML Sitemap Index
Meta robots noindex/nofollow
- Used Appropriately
- Used on pages that a deep crawler might try to index (like form and search results pages)
Category/Site Structure (URLS and Information Architecture)
- Unique and User Friendly
- Use of appropriate category and sub-category link structures
- Customer orientated rather than feature orientated
- Provides tasks/Options for different personas
Choosing File Names
- Uses hyphens as word separators
- Unique
- Avoids Keyword Stuffing
- If file names to be changed, links on site changed, and 301s set up for external visitors
Custom Error Page
- Sends proper 404 code status
- no soft 404s
- Helpful to visitor (navigation, directories, search)
HTML Sitemap
- Organized into user friendly and user oriented categories
- Provides links to most important pages
- Avoids using too many links
- Doesn?t include 404s or links that redirect internally
XML Sitemap
- Properly formatted (XML proper encoding)
- Uses only canonicals
- No 404s and no internally redirected pages
- Submitted to GWT and Bing Tools
Technical/Server Issues
OS/Server/CMS/Catalog Considerations
Server Status: Messages 200, 300, 400, 500
Secure Server | HTTPS Protocol
- No error messages
- No https bleed-over to pages that aren?t supposed to be https
- No certificate authority errors
Search Friendly Links
- All links to be indexed reachable by text-based links or ?href? and ?src?.
Broken and Redirected Links
- Broken links identify, links removed or replaced
- All 301 redirected links replaced with direct links
External Links
- Checked for broken links and redirects and replaced where appropriate
- Pages linked to checked for repurposed content
Duplicated Content
- Internally (see canonical section above)
- Mirrors identified and disallowed/noindexed as appropriate
- Substantially duplicated content on self-owned other sites removed/changed/blocked
- Substantially duplicated content on other sites removed (friendly email, AUP letter to host, DMCA)
JavaScript
- Can pages be navigated with javascript disabled? If not, are URLs for pages accessible in HTML code with ?href? and ?src??
- If Ajax is necessary, is Google?s hashbang approach used?
Dynamic Pages
- Avoid session IDs in URLs
- Avoid excessive multiple data parameters in URLs
- Avoid excessive processor calls
- Avoid calls to multiple servers as much as possible
- Avoid keyword insertion pages (pages were the content is substantially the same except for keywords that are inserted into the pages).
- Keep boilerplate (disclaimers, copyright notices, other text that appears on most pages) that exists on templates light.
- Label page segments semantically well (the div class for those could be things such as header, footer, sidebar, advertisement, or whichever is most appropriate.)
Page Load Times
- Images compressed for right dimensions and for file sizes?
- GZIP or Deflate used?
- Base 64 encoding for images avoided?
- External CSS and Javascript used and minimized?
- Long browser caching dates?
- CDN in use where appropriate?
- Other Page Speed considerations
Cookies
? Navigation of indexable pages possible without accepting them?
HTML Use/Analysis
Deprecated HTML/HTML Validation
- If invalid, are errors the type that will harm SEO?
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
- If invalid, are errors the type that will harm SEO?
Title Elements
- Relevant to the content of the page and be keyword-rich.
- Meaningful and able to stand on its own as a description of the page it titles.
- Persuasive and Engaging to those who see it out of context
- As unique as possible compared to other titles on the site
- If the name of the site appears in the title, it should be at the end of the title, and not at the beginning, unless it is the home page.
- No more than ten words or roughly 60-70 characters in length.
- Unique if possible compared to titles from other sites.
Meta Description Elements
- Descriptive of the content of the page
- Includes the main keyword phrase the page is optimized for
- Engaging and persuasive to viewers who see it out of context (search snippets or social shares)
- Around 25 words or 150 characters in length
- Well written sentences, using good punctuation
- One sentence preferable, but two alright if keywords are in the longer sentence
- Preferable to have keywords as close to the start as appropriate
Heading Elements
- Top level heading should describe the content of the page
- Lower level headings should effectively describe the content they head
- One top level heading preferable per page
- Headings should be used like headings in an outline, in proper order
- Main and subheadings can, and should contain targeted keywords if possible and appropriate.
- A heading element should not be used for the page logo
- Headings for lists and sections in page navigation should use CSS to style them rather than heading elements.
Strong/Em Elements
- For bold text, use the ?strong? HTML element.
- For Italics text, use the ?em? HTML element
- Use Strong and Em to highlight the use of keywords and related words
- When bolding or italicizing other text on a page, use CSS to style how it looks
- Don?t over use bold or italics ? emphasizing too much means emphasizing nothing.
Image Optimization
- Use alt text for images on a page that are meaningful
- Use captions for images on a page that are meaningful
- A caption for an image should be contained within the same HTML element as the image (like a div)
- Select images that are meaningful that are related to the keywords optimized for
- Use the chosen optimized keywords in the alt text and captions where appropriate
- Use file names that reflect those keywords where appropriate.
- Use hyphens to separate words in image file names.
- Use alt=?" for images that aren?t meaningful like decorations or bullet points
- Use alt text for logos that are descriptive of the business or organization
- Larger images with better resolution might be ranked a little better than smaller and lower resolution images.
- Alt text should not be a list of keywords, but can contain a keyword phrase.
- Alt text shouldn?t be more than 10 words or so.
- Avoid keyword stuffing alt text, captions, and image file names.
Anchor Text
- Keywords should be used in anchor text
- If the keywords for a page being pointed to aren?t used, related terms should be
- Anchor text used in navigation should be descriptive of what is on the page linked to
- Anchor text should not use generic terms such as ?click here.?
- Anchor text shouldn?t be longer than 10 words or so if possible
- Anchor text shouldn?t be stuffed with multiple keywords
Meta Data optimization
- Search engines do not use Dublin core meta tags
- Search engines do not use the revisit meta tag
- A robots index, follow tag is unnecessary and redundant
- a NOODP will keep Google and Bing from using Open directory project titles instead of title element titles, if the site is even listed in DMOZ
Content Review
Amount of Text
- Having some minimum amount of text on a page (200 words?) gives search spiders something to index.
Spelling Errors
- Possible quality signal
- Important to credibility
Keyword Use in Copy
- Are keywords chosen for a page being used in page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and content
Keyword Prominence/Visual Segmentation
- How well does the HTML code of a page show how it?s broken down into different blocks (heading, main content, sidebars, footers, etc.)
- Are keywords used in the different sections, and especially in the main content area of pages?
Use of Related Words/Phrases
- Some words tend to co-occur on pages ranked highly for a certain query (or categories of results for queries), and it can help in the rankings for a page to use some of those phrases.
Penguin/Panda Analysis
Is there a loss in traffic that corresponds to one of the Panda or Penguin updates?
Resource: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
Negative Practices
Hidden Text
- Is there text on pages in the same font color as the background?
- Is there text on pages hidden through an offset div?
- Is there a large amount of text on pages in small iframes or CSS scrolling overflows
- Is there text in a font color that matches the font color as the page background that might be mistaken as hidden text?
Cloaking
- Does the site use cloaking to show search engines one thing and visitors something else?
Meta Refresh
- Are meta refreshes used instead of redirects, and if so might they be used in a way which might deceive search engines?
JavaScript Redirection
- Is javascript redirection being used so that search engines see one thing, and visitors see something else?
Outward Links/Link Exchanges
- Is the site using link directory pages that promise being listed in exchange for a link?
Keywords
Keyword Research, Selection and Implementation
- Are relevant, competitive, appropriate and popular keywords being used on the pages of the site?
- Are those keywords being used effectively on those pages?
Keyword Focusing | Mid- to Long-Tail Key Phrases
- Do the main pages of the site focus upon more competitive keyword phrases?
- Do deeper pages with less pagerank focus upon long-tail phrases?
Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools/Errors Analysis*
- Has the site been verified with GWT?
- Has a choice of ?www? setting been made? (Doesn?t have to be if domain access issues are addressed)
- Has a targeted country/location been selected? (Doesn?t have to be)
- Have any errors listed been checked upon?
Social Media
Social Media Audit | Status
- Does the site integrate appropriate social sharing buttons?
- Do the pages of the site provide links to social profiles for the site?
On-Site Social Engagement
- Does the site provide ways to give feedback to the site owners?
- Does the site provide a way to leave comments?
- Is there user generated content on the site, such as reviews and ratings, and does it use rich snippets if so?
- Are there public user/member profile pages, and if so how rich are they in terms of features?
- Is there a forum on the site, and if so, some guidelines for its use?
Analytics
Have analytics been set up for the site?
- Code on every page
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