Website Analysis |
Website analysis includes everything form simple error checking to comprehensive traffic statistics.
Many SEO specialists believe it is important that your website is error free and complies with standard language standards. You should also consider the accessibility of your website.
It is also believed for higher search engine ranking you should pay careful attention to the content and keywords of every page on your website.
So how do I check all these things?
There are three main methods of analysing your website.
Firstly you can pay someone to do it for you and secondly you can purchase a program or buy access to an online tool that will conduct the analysis for you.
Finally you can use one of the many free online tools and conduct the website analysis yourself. |
A graphical representation of how
Page Rank works courtesy Wiki
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Do the rules guarantee my website in the top 10
One thing to take into account is if I was to be totally frank about website analysis then I must emphasise that although the rules are considered essential for higher ranking I have seen a number of sites that appear to break almost every rule and yet still can be returned within the top 10 ranking on Google.
That is a phenomena that I am still researching
Beware of varied results
Also be prepared to be confused, almost every website analysis tool I have used gives varying results for the same website. I won’t say too much about why that is as it is discussed in my article “The truth about SEO” however basically nobody except maybe the tech guys at Google know what really influences the search position of your website thus many so called specialists can claim to know the secrets without dispute.
I don’t claim to know all the secrets however I do have a very good idea about what does work and what doesn’t. |
So what should I check?
Standards and Compliance
This check will ensure you do not have any errors in your code.
You should use the appropriate validation checker for the language used such as HTML5 or XHTML. |
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Device compatibility and functionality
There are a number of various devices that someone may use to browse your website thus you should ensure that it can be viewed on as many of these devices as possible.
Certain content such as Flash or HTML5 may only be viewable by certain browsers or devices. Generally the latest smart phones such as the Android can now display Flash content however not everyone has the latest smart phone.
Content can also be displayed differently between browsers.
You should test your websites functionality and layout with as many devices and browsers as possible.
The latest smart browsers also have the functionality to detect phone numbers so you should check any contact information is in the correct format to be automatically dialled when clicked.
The W3C site above provides information on the various format standards. |
Accessibility
You should make sure your website is accessible to the wider audience and consider font sizes and colour. I feel standard rules for hard print should also apply to websites.
Avoid using a large number of different font types, font sizes and varying font colours. This will not only make your site easier to read by physically challenged visitors but easier to read by all.
While briefly talking about this, I would also suggest you only include content such as images that are relevant and obviously don’t use anything that is not, such as clever little JavaScript features. |
Using website analysis to control my ranking
Once all of the above has been achieved to the best of your budget or ability then you can move on to the next stage of your website analysis which is believed to determine your ranking within the various search engines.
Factors within you website code such as page title, meta tags and the content itself are all deemed to be relevant to ranking.
FreeWebSubmission.com has a free online page analyser that will check your content and display any issues with your content. |
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You can also use this site to submit you site to ALL the top search engines for free.
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Analysing ranking, indexing and traffic?
One of the most important analyses you should undertake is analyse your website ranking, indexing and traffic. When your website is submitted to the various search engines then each search engine will visit your website and begin to index and rank each and every page.
Now this is where it gets complicated because every search engine will rank and index your site differently to the next, some may not index all of your pages at once and others may never index or rank all of your pages.
I emphasise pages rather than website because this process is conducted on a page by page basis so you should thus apply all of the advice above to every page and test and analyse every page of your website.
For checking UK rank I recommend using http://urlspy.co.uk/
And for checking duplicate content, broken links, XML sitemap, internal page rank, and more.. http://www.siteliner.com/
How to check my website is submitted to search engines
To check that your website is added to each search engine type in your websites URL or domain name, if all is well it should be returned at position 1.
How to check each page is indexed by a search engine
To check each page simply type the full URL of that page into each search engine and again it should be returned at position 1.
A quick way to check the whole of your site at once is to use the command ‘SITE:’ followed by your domain name thus.
site:http://www.brianmoreau.com
This function appears to work for most major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Yahoo actually gives additional information on each page indexed such as the number of In-links and their location.
If a page is not indexed it may be because it contains an error or has content that is considered not worthy of being indexed or it could even contain a ‘Poison Keyword’
An example of this is shown below for the page http://www.brianmoreau.com/articles/The_truth_about_search_engine_optimization.php which contains what is considered ‘poison’ by Google and maybe Bing as it is not indexed by either. However Yahoo has indexed that page. |
Google page index check finds an in-bound link to that page but indicates
the page is not actually indexed by Google itself.
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The same page index check conducted by Yahoo clearly shows the page has successfully been indexed.
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Website traffic analysis
Alexa offer a number of valuable free tools for checking the traffic rank of your website, you can even check and compare the traffic rank of your competitors.
In addition Alexa shows you the top 500 websites on the internet and the most popular pages on the internet right now.
If you use the Firefox web browser you can install the Seo Quake toolbar and check ranking and indexing for all popular search engines at once for every page you visit. You can also check keyword density, domain whois information and a number of other tools.
Finally you might like to consider using Google Analytics or even explore the features of your own web host. Hostgator for example include website traffic analysis with their hosting packages. This information will show you a number of details such as where your visitors have come from and what is your most popular page on you website.
One last very useful link I must tell you about is Microsoft adCenter Labs which have a vey good range of tools including keyword research.
What more do you want for free?
Happy website analysing.
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