Checking your website SEO

Just how do you go about checking the SEO qualities of your website? Below are a few simple steps that will give you an indication of how your website is doing in SEO terms.

1) Use Google Webmaster reports

if you haven’t already, make sure your website is registered on Google Webmaster. With in it under the Search Traffic section is a report called “Search Analytics” – this details for you:

  • Click through – the number of people who clicked on a search entry for your website
  • Impressions – the number of times a search entry was shown for your website
  • Position – the position in the search results your search entry got to (lower the better).

In an ideal world you want to see the Clicks, Impressions and Position all trending up over time. The report also gives you a breakdown of the search terms.

Another good report is under the Google Index section and is called the Content Keywords report, this orders by decreasing frequency what words Google considers significant in your website – this is often a big surprise..

2) Do Actual Searches

We suggest you do this with a browser in its ‘anonymous’ mode. Basically you enter search terms and see what comes up from your website. Do you rank well for search terms you think you should be on? Does the sample text in your search entry make sense?  Is it actually engaging?

Also put in a search for all your search entries, so if your site was www.mysite.net you would put in Google ‘site:www.mysite.net’ (without the quotes). Now the order they come back in is the ‘natural’ order of significance Google applies to your pages – i.e. the first page is what it usually considers the most ‘significant’ or ‘fresh’. This is usually when people find out Google has given a lot of significance to the Contact or Privacy page (as it’s linked off every page).

 

So, how did you do? Find any surprises or had a  ‘wow thats bad’ moment?  So, how are you going to fix it? You have two choices at this point:

  • Use our Website Checker – this will give you a detailed report you can use with your website developer to get the SEO of your website right on track, or,
  • Get in touch with Aykira  – we can sort out SEO issues and a whole load of other website issues for you.