Search Engine Optimization Test for Dummies
By: Andrea Trapani
10 Quick Tests to Determine if Your Site is “Optimized” for Search Engines
Search engine optimization (SEO) is more of an art than a science. It is very difficult to know the algorithms that the various search engines apply when indexing a website or processing your search request, but you can intuitively figure them out through trial and error, constant monitoring and testing, and through the use of sophisticated diagnostic tools.
But you don’t need to be an SEO expert to figure out if your site is NOT optimized. In fact, it probably isn’t…most aren’t. All you need are some simple do-it-yourself tests. If your site fails the tests, it’s time to optimize.
Step 1: Make a short list of the keyword search phrases you would like your site to win (i.e., place on the first page of search results). (Hang on to that, we’ll come back to it later.)
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 2: Copy and paste. Go to your home page. See all of the words? See if you can highlight that text and paste it into a Word document. Do this will ALL of the text on this page, even the navigation across the top or side. If you can’t copy and paste the words as text, it is likely that words are actually images, virtually “un-index-able” by search engines, making your site practically invisible to search. Search engines trust and index text above all else.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 3: Was there a Flash intro (like a movie) before you landed on the home page? Search engines cannot easily index Flash. If your site has a Flash intro, chances are the spiders that index your site for search engines aren’t finding much to index.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 4: Check your URLs. Click on any page of your site at random. Let’s say you clicked on “Services,” for example. Look at the window at the top of your browser where you’d enter in a Web address to visit. What does it say after “yoursite.com.”? Each page of your site should have a keyword-specific URL, such as identitypr.com/website-design.html. If the URLs on your site’s pages are not specific to the keywords you’re trying to win, you’re missing an opportunity. If you see something like yoursite.com/page-id=?query9293862381305.php, you have problems. The good news is, it’s usually an easy fix.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 5: Read the text on your site. Is it keyword rich? Do you specifically reference those coveted keyword phrases in the actual text of your site? How often? What about the headers at the top of your pages of text? Are they keyword-specific, or do they simply say “About Us” or “Our Services”? If your header text and paragraph text do not specifically mention your prized keywords, don’t expect the search engines to guess.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 6: Count the pages. Google and other search engines highly regard volume. If your site is three pages, and your competitor’s is 450, which do you think Google will grant higher relevance to when someone does a search on a keyword phrase found on both companies’ sites?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 7: Check the calendar. When was your site last updated? Like volume, Google and the rest prefer to return search results containing content that they can confidently regard as fresh. If your site gets updated once a year, and your competitor’s site gets updated once a month, all things being equal: your competitor’s site will appear higher in search results than yours. In fact, Google is even elevating real-time search results in its returns above those of “static” sites.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 8: Count your links. Is your site linking to any external sites? More importantly, are any external sites linking back to yours? You can control the former; the latter is a bit more difficult. But this is where your media relations efforts and other outreach come in. If you can get news organizations or other large-volume, high-traffic sites, linking to your site, Google will count this as a win for your site, and elevate your site in relevant search results.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 9: How many outposts do you have and maintain? Other content communities and platforms that you control — a corporate blog, Twitter profile, Facebook fan page, LinkedIn profiles, YouTube channels, and so on — serve to optimize the Web-iverse in general, capturing eyeballs and clicks and driving that traffic back to your site, potentially. Without established outposts that your organization maintains and updates, your site is swimming like an Octopus without tentacles.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 10: Search the Web. Take that short list of keyword search phrases that you wrote down and start doing some searches. Where does your site appear in those search results? If you can’t find yourself on the first three pages, it’s time to optimize your site for keyword searches.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
There are a lot of tests here, but each is important in its own way and for its own set of reasons. In aggregate, they begin to formulate the basis for a search engine optimization strategy, though we didn’t even touch on various strategies relative to the site’s actual coding. That’s the topic for another blog post — this one was for dummies (like me). If you’ve gotten this far in evaluating your site, you’ve sized up your site and see where it’s lacking in terms of search. Leave the coding nerdery to the experts.