SEO AUDIT- EXAMPLE.COM

Transcription

1 SEO AUDIT- EXAMPLE.COM your Reliable internet company SEO Audit for example.com, performed between 10/06/ /06/2013 by Alex Chris.

2 Table of Contents Introduction... 2 Executive Summary... 2 What are your options?... 3 Our proposal... 5 SEO Audit Checklist... 7 About Alex Chris About Reliablesoft.net P a g e

3 Introduction Customer requested to SEO Audit example.com because the performance of the site in Google is not as expected and conversion rates are low (just above 1%). Web Site Identity Site designer: Previous look n feel: Domain Created: Best month of Google Traffic: Sudden traffic drop between April 19 April 29 due to the following Google updates: April 19, 2012 Panda 3.5 April 24, 2012 Penguin 1.0 April 27, 2012 Panda 3.6 Since then the average daily traffic from Google is Before April 2012 the maximum number of Google traffic was They currently have a running contract with and I have already asked them to stop it since it can only make the situation worse. Executive Summary It is clear that the website was hit by Google updates on April Only 6% of websites hit by Panda and Penguin managed to recover. As a general rule, artificial link building is violating Google s guidelines and once punished it needs a lot of work to convince Google that you will not violate their guidelines again. Don t forget that it s their game and their rules and if you try to violate them it is hard to impossible to win their trust again. From my experience with Panda and Penguin it is easier to start over on a new domain than trying to recover from a penalty. Nevertheless, in terms of SEO, there is substantial room for improvement. The SEO Audit checklist gives all the details but the most important points are: Work on your titles and descriptions Change your Internal linking practices Optimize the size (in bytes) of images Check and fix broken links (both internal and external) Add 'nofollow' to all external links Implement Google Authorship Create a custom 404 page Configure all settings for Google and Bing webmaster tools Submit a more optimized sitemap (xml) Provide for a mobile friendly version Work on Social Media 2 P a g e

4 In summary, these are the pros and cons about your existing Internet presence: Pros Good product Good author profiles Nice feedback from existing customers and industry professionals Expertise about the niche Ability to support the product by providing advice about the niche through the blog Ability to promote the product by contributing content to other websites as experts on the subject Cons Web site needs SEO work (see checklist below) It is penalized by Panda and Penguin and it is difficult to recover Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube) needs a new strategy currently it does not bring in any traffic Must look for other sources of traffic besides Search engines, Social media and PPC campaigns. What are your options? As I see it you have three options: 1) First is to do the SEO changes (per checklist) to the existing website, work on Social Media, find new sources of traffic and try to recover form Panda and Penguin. Part of this process is to find and remove any links that were artificially generated, which is not an easy job to do. 2) Second is to keep the existing website as it is and start a new website. It is important to register a new domain and keep the 2 domains complete separate from each other. You also need to keep the new domain on a NEW Google Account (maybe use an account in the name of your Wife if she doesn t have one yet or in the name of the other author). I will give you more retails and the reasoning behind this at a later stage. Product is good and with a proper digital marketing campaign the chances of succeeding are greater. Maybe you should also reconsider a re-branding of the product? In other words you keep the product as is for the current website and for the new website you change the name Again this is an area that needs more thought and discussion. 3) Third, do both i.e. perform the changes on the current website and work in parallel with the product re-branding and launching of a new domain. My suggestion is to go with the third option. We can do the necessary SEO changes to the website and try to improve social media marketing etc. and if the situation does not get better in 4-5 months, we stop working on it because probably it will never recover. 3 P a g e

5 In order not to lose valuable time, we also work in parallel on the re-branding and launching of a new website that is not affected by any Google penalties and has all the potential to rank high and bring in more customers and conversions. When a website is not penalized and we follow a good digital marketing strategy (and not just SEO) the results are amazing. Read one of my case studies on how caloriesecrets.net went to 100,000 visits per month from Google ( 4 P a g e

6 Our proposal Based on the above suggestions, if you decide to assign to reliablesoft to work on your current website and or your new website, the financial details are outlined below. 1. Option 1: Silver Package (20 hours per month) SEO Social Media Management Design long term SEO strategy Register to Google Chrome store Monthly Progress Reports Setup Newsletter Review PPC Campaigns Examine other promotion methods Other agreed activities as per SEO Audit 2. Option 2: Setup new website (including blog, SEO, Shop, Mobile Version) + Silver Package (20 hours per month) After new website is launched 3. Option 3: Setup new website (including blog, SEO, Shop, Mobile Version) + Silver Package (20 hours per month) $400 $1000 (once off) $400 (per month) $1000 (once off) $400 (per month) Monthly based on hours worked. Charge is $20 per hour. The $400 can be the ceiling and any work completed after the 20 hours will be charged next month. If we don t get results after 4-5 months we stop the engagement. Design new website ($1000 once off fee) and then start working on Social Media and other agreed activities. The charge for the on-going services is $20 per hour. The $400 can be the ceiling and any work completed after the 20 hours will be charged next month. Note: During the period of site design you will not be pay any monthly fees Option 1 and Option 2 together. We work on an hourly basis to fix the existing website and in parallel we do the design of the new website. Options 2 and 3 include: Design a new website based on a new domain, on a new Google Account. SEO optimize new website and once we get to unique visits from Google we start testing different layouts for the product selling page to increase conversions. 5 P a g e

7 Work on social media to increase brand awareness Promote the website/product by contributing on websites like webmd (more about this later) Work on the blog to get more targeted organic traffic. I will give you specific instructions on what to write about (title, word length etc.) Register website to the Chrome web Store Provide for a mobile optimized version as well (currently 30% of your traffic comes from mobile devices but your current website is not user friendly when viewed on mobile). Review your PPC campaigns Run Facebook ads Run Twitter promoted tweets Notes: The above costs do not include hosting of new website (aprx $70 per year) The hourly payment excludes: money spend on PPC Campaigns or money spend for advertising or for the purchase of any software or services from a third party vendor. Payment is monthly after the submission of progress report (By Paypal or as agreed) For the period of the website redesign phase you won t pay any monthly fees. Advance payment upon contract agreement : $300 Basically you have to pay a once off fee for the redesign of your website. The cost will cover the new design and the setup of the shop to sell your products. The charge for the on-going services is per hour ($20). What I have outlined above are some of the activities we need to do. At the end of each month you will be given a progress report with the activities performed / hours spend / benefit for the website. Most probably is that as we go deeper into the niche we will find new activities and these will be included in the on-going scheme (if we both agree that we need them). For budgeting purposes we can set a monthly ceiling. This means that we can define the maximum amount you will pay per month and if more hours are needed, we can transfer the payment in the next month(s). Duration for the website re-design: This is not expected to go over 1 month. During this period you are not paying any per hour or monthly fee. Duration of the on-going process: We can cancel this any time without cancellation fees. 6 P a g e

8 SEO Audit Checklist Item Description Comments Priority ON-SITE SEO Home Page Title Home Page Description Child Anxiety Child With Anxiety Anxious Child Children.Home page title is keyword stuffed need to change to something more natural. For example: myanxiouschild Award winning audio program for child anxiety Treatment program for child anxiety using cognitive behavioral therapy. Clinical and kidfriendly. Developed by Psychologist and Counselor. Home Page description is ok. Titles are unique for each page? NO. Titles need to be unique for each page. For example testimonials page title is <title>anxiety in Children Testimonials Turnaround - Turning Fear Into Freedom</title> which is exactly the same with the Benefits page. There are 31 duplicate titles in total. Titles length is between characters? Current titles are 100+ characters while they should be between characters. Description tag is unique for each page and not keyword stuffed? Description tag is between characters? Description tag is not keyword stuffed? Some descriptions are ok but for some need fine tuning. For example the description of the product page is Treatment program for child anxiety. Cognitive behavioral therapy program for anxious children with separation anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), panic attacks, social anxiety, school refusal, phobias and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Which is not only more than 160 characters but it is also keyword stuffed. In total there are 66 duplicate descriptions that need fixing. See comment above See comment above 7 P a g e

9 Permanent Link structure (URL) format? H1 Headings for titles? Use of H2 and H3 for subheadings Small paragraphs and use of bold, italics Is there a unique logo for the web site? Is there a favicon? Content on the web site is fresh? Content length on post pages? Internal linking Do you link internal pages? Internal linking Use of anchor text (is it varied?) Trying to rank for high competitive keywords? OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. Yes. Latest posts from the blog are displayed on the home page. It varies but if you want to rank for certain long trail keywords, you may have to provide for more lengthy content ( words per article). This is an area that can be improved. Google will not penalize a website if it is using keyword anchor text for internal links; on the contrary it is something they encourage webmasters to do. For example in the home page you have To read what parents and kids are saying about Turnaround, click HERE. this could change to: To read what parents and kids are saying read out customer testimonials Not applicable. See comment above. Overall the website does not rank for any major keywords. Before the April 2012 update it was ranking for some medium and high competition keywords like (children with anxiety, child anxiety etc) and also for a number of long trail low competition keywords. Is there an ALT tag for all images? Most images make proper use of the ALT tag except for the images used in the blog. 8 P a g e Are image files names descriptive? No. For example the image in the home page is slide_4.png. Instead it could be my-anxiouschild-crew.png

10 Image file size is optimized? Blog comments have the nofollow tag? External links have the nofollow tag? Banner ads have the nofollow tag? Are pages with duplicate or no content, noindex and nofollow? Too many ads above the fold? Checked for invalid use of 301 and 302 redirects? Site implements rel=canonical to identify the original content? Site checked for broken links? Page speed: Average time to load home page? No. For example the size of the image on the home page is 236KB. By converting the image into jpeg format (without losing quality) and by applying compression it can go to 50KB. This is a substantial saving from one image only that will help the website load faster especially for new users. Not Applicable. No. My advice is to use the nofollow tag on all external links to avoid any risks. Also many external links use keyword anchor text which is not recommended. Also the nofollow tag should be applied to categories, tags and tag cloud. Not applicable. Not applicable. Not applicable. Not applicable. Ok. There are many broken links both internal and external and this is very bad for SEO. For example many pages point to: which is not valid. You can use XENU to get a list of all broken links that need to be fixed both for internal and external links The page speed score according to Google page speed is 66/100. This is very low (a good score is above 90). According to webpagetest.org the load time for first view is 5.201s and repeat view is With a bit of optimization this can go down to 3 and 2 seconds respectively. A cloud service will probably NOT be needed. Page speed: Average time to load other pages? First view 3.31s and repeat view 1.94s 9 P a g e

11 Google Authorship status implemented? Are most important pages linked to from home page? Are most important pages linked to from Sidebar? No. It is very important to create a Google+ business page and bind all pages of the website and blog with the Google+ profiles of the 2 authors. Ok. Ok. Is there a user sitemap (html) in the main menu? Yes but need to be reviewed to include pages from the blog as well. Is there a related posts section below each detail page? No. This can be used to enhance the user experience on the blog. Is there an author for all site pages? No. This is very important and should be used together with Google authorship. Is there an About, Contact and Privacy policy page? Is there a breadcrumb on all pages? Is there a custom 404 page? WEB SITE CONTROL Is the web site registered on Google Webmaster tools? Is the web site registered on Bing Webmaster tools? Checked robots.txt? Is there a valid XML Sitemap? Yes but it s good to have a disclaimer policy as well (since this is a medical site) Ok. No. Invalid links are redirected to the home page. It is better to have a custom 404 page to inform users on what content is not found and where they can go next. Yes but you should specify: Target country, preferred version (www or no www). Make use of Structured data to help Google understand that site structure better. Yes. Need to go through all the options to ensure that there are no errors and that all details are submitted ok. Ok. Yes but the same sitemap should be used in Google and Bing. Also the sitemap should only include pages and posts and not tags or categories. Out of the 141 submitted urls only 39 are indexed by Google. 10 P a g e

12 Is the web site registered with Google Analytics? Ok. SOCIAL MEDIA Social media buttons on all pages? Is there a Facebook business page? Is there a Google+ business page? Social media buttons must be made visible and above the fold (where possible) on all pages. The blog has the buttons but the posts are not promoted in social media Yes. More frequent updates are needed to encourage interaction with the readers. It is also recommended to run a facebook campaign (Facebook Ads) for increasing facebook likes. Also the Facebook Business page should only share content related to and no other websites (you can use your personal FB accounts for that) No. The page needs to have a dedicated Google+ Business Page, properly bind with the website. It is also important to keep the Google+ active and it is extremely important that both authors have an active Google+ personal page and that Google Authorship is implemented for all pages of the site, including the home page, product pages and blog. This action alone will increase website trust, something necessary for health related websites Is there a Pinterest business page? No. A proper Pinterest page should be created and updated regularly. Is there a twitter account? Are social media profiles SEO? Yes but with only 904 followers. Needs a lot of work and proper promotion. You can use twitter advertising platform to get more twitter followers and promote tweets. They are but the overall social media marketing campaign has to be designed from the beginning since currently it does not generate any traffic or conversions. Facebook Like box? No. A Facebook like box should positioned in the sidebar. Google+ Add to circles button? No. A Google+ button should be positioned in the sidebar. Newsletter and RSS registration? RSS does not work and newsletter needs configuration to become more user friendly. 11 P a g e

13 OFF-SITE SEO Number and type of inbound links? According to webmaster tools there are 2,803 incoming links. Unfortunately most of them are artificially generated links and this is the major reason that the website was penalized in April Each of the 2,803 should be examined manually and if it is not a natural link should be removed either by asking the website owner to remove it or using the Google Disavow tool. This process is very consuming and only 6% of the websites that were hit by Panda and Penguin managed to recover. Web site page rank? PR 3 Expected for a 5 year old website WEB SITE PROMOTION Does the web site have a mobile version? Is the web site listed in Chrome Web Store? Is there a native android app in Google Play? Is there a native amazon app in Amazon Store? Is the web site listed to Technorati? Does the web site have a dedicated YouTube channel? No. Provide for a mobile optimized version as well (currently 30% of your traffic comes from mobile devices but your current website is not user friendly when viewed on mobile). No. Chrome web store is a great source of traffic and the web site has to be listed in a relevant category. No. No. N/A. Yes but it need optimization like all other Social Media Channels 12 P a g e

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15 About Alex Chris Alex has more than 12 years of practical experience with software and web development, SEO, Social media marketing, ecommerce and Internet Marketing. He studied Computing, Multimedia and ecommerce in the UK ( ). In 2002 he completed the Associate Bankers Diploma (American Institute of Bankers) and he is also a Microsoft Certified.Net developer. Over the years he has worked extensively with different technologies (Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP) as a software developer, analyst and project manager. In 2002 he founded a web development and SEO consulting company that helped many clients succeed with their web marketing campaigns. He also the author of the book Traffic Boost your web site You can connect with Alex on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ About Reliablesoft.net Reliablesoft.net founded in 2002 and since then has engaged with a number of clients and helped them build their Internet presence. Besides SEO services reliablesoft offers web design, mobile development, PPC campaign management, social media management and everything that is needed to succeed on the Internet. 14 P a g e