Moving on after the Initial Site Analysis, we need to do the Site Analysis. Under the site analysis comes the various checks which need to be performed. The checks performed are:-
Google-Yahoo-MSN Indexing: We check the no of site pages indexed by Search Engines. This is carried out with the site search query.
ex) site:ashutoshsachan.blogspot.com
We analyze the results and if the site is not indexed in any of the SE's then possibilities are that the site might be banned by the SE's. Other cases may be in case of new sites, they might be in the Sand Box period.
Google Internal / External Links from Google Webmaster : The links pointing to our site from different sites (i.e linking to our site) are known as External links. Internal links are the links from the various web pages of our site pointing to the home page of our site. Both of these need to be analyzed. More the no of Internal links, better is the anchor tag optimization; More the no of External links or the Back links, better is the weightage given to our site by the SE's.
The site needs to be verified in the webmasters to access the webmaster statistics.
Penalty Check : The site needs to be checked for penalty on it. If the site is penalised then it won't be included in the search engines result. To check whether the site is banned by Google or not, we use the self-seo.com/google_ban_tool. If any black hat techniques are used to optimize the site, then the SE ban the site from their results. Re-inclusion of the site can be done by removing the spammy techniques used and then raising an re-inclusion request with the respective search engines.
Page Rank: We need to keep check on the Page rank of the site. If the page rank gets reduced then it shows that the site is loosing its value in terms of quality score. Page rank is basically the quality score given by Google in the scale of 1 to 10. Google itself has the PR of 10. Google.co.uk has PR of 8. Better the PR, more is the chance of site being ranked in the SERP's with little SEO efforts.
Last Indexed Home page : Caching of the site needs to be checked regularly. If the site is getting cached regularly & frequently then it shows that the SE crawlers recognize the site as being updated frequently, i.e fresh content site. Implementing fresh content on the site attracts crawlers.
Average Crawl Rate : It is the frequency of the crawlers visiting the site. Avg crawl rate can be determined from webmasters tool.
Server Header Checks : The Server Headers needs to be analysed to keep an eye on the response the site is getting from the server every time a request is made for the site. If evrey thing is in place then "Http 200 Ok" is returned. If the site is permanently redirected then 301 header response is obtained.
404 Page Check : From webmasters tool, we check for the web crawl errors of page not found. These include the broken or missing links pointing to our site and indexed by Google. 404 pages need to 301 permanently redirected to the relevant pages of the site.
Canonical Issue : For most websites, the www and non-www versions both resolve to the same content but can be browsed independent, especially if using internal links without the full domain name.
Similarly it's often possible to view both ashutosh-sachan.com/ and ashutosh-sachan.com/index.html
The following urls could contain different content, but in most cases it is the same:
www.ashutosh-sachan.com/
ashutosh-sachan.com/
www.ashutosh-sachan.com/index.html
ashutosh-sachan.com/index.html
ashutosh-sachan.com/index.php
This gives rise to url canonicalization, whereby Google has to decide which url is the best represented from the possible options. This results in the distribution of the PR among the pages. In this scenario, we check the indexing of the site. If the site is indexed majorly by www version then we put a 301 permanent redirect from
ashutosh-sachan.com/ to www.ashutosh-sachan.com/.
Invisible Text : We need to check for any hidden text present on the site. Hidden or Invisible text may result in the site being banned by SE's as this is considered as the Black Hat Technique.
Copyscape Check : The site needs to be checked with Copyscape to make sure that it doesnot contain any duplicate content. Duplicate content leads to site being penalized.
Domain Expiry Date : We need to keep an eye on the domain expiry date, so that it may be renewed before being expired.
W3C Validation : The site needs to be validated through W3C to check the HTML coding errors. We remove these errors to make the site easily crawlable by the SE crawlers.
Once you (web site owner) have decided to knock down your competitors out of the rankings, the you need to do the Initial Site Analysis of your campaign. By ISA we mean you need to jot down the specifications of your website. The following areas need to be considered:-
1. Domain Targeting Check:
If the web site is hosted in the location in which we are targeting our customers, then it is beneficiary for us. The website server hosting needs to be checked. Though, it does not have any negative impact of server being hosted in any location, yet shifting the site to targeted location based server would help in speeding up the visibility of the site in targeted domain.
For Ex-If the website server is hosted in Australia at present and we are targeting .com domain then shifting the site to United States based server would help in speeding up the visibility of site in .com domain.
2. Server Header Checks :
We check the server responses & server type in order to check if the responses returned from the server are proper. If any redirects are applied then they should be proper. We check the server type as the redirects can be easily done for Apache, but they need to be done from hosting company in case of Microsoft IIS.
Headers returned from: http://ashutoshsachan.blogspot.com/:
The following is the snapshot of HTTP headers returned by the webserver to the browser. These headers provide information about the page and its content to the web browser.
Cache-Control: public, max-age=0, proxy-revalidate, must-revalidate
Connection: close
Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:37:43 GMT
ETag: "40ff44ac-2182-4512-bf63-911064aa4eb2"
Server: GFE/2.0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 51094
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Expires: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:37:43 GMT
Last-Modified: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:14:00 GMT
Client-Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:37:44 GMT
Client-Peer: 74.125.93.191:80
Title: SEO Expert Delhi Ashutosh Sachan -Internet Marketing Service Firm-Online Strategies Branding Consultant,India
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Meta-Description: SEO Service Expert - Online marketing consultant Delhi. Ashutosh Sachan Online marketing services include Search Engine Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Link Building Services, Web Design and Development Services, Pay-Per-Click Management Services, Direct (online) Marketing Services, Web Content Writing
X-Meta-Generator: blogger
X-Meta-Keywords: Web Consultancy, Online Marketing India, Online Marketing Company India, Diversified Outsourcing Services, Branding Consultants, Branding Consultant, Targeted Traffic Machine, Targeted Traffic USA, Website Positioning Strategies, Online Adverts, Targeted Traffic UK
X-Meta-MSSmartTagsPreventParsing: true
3. Domain Registration :
Check out the registration date of the site domain. It would help in figuring out the following observations- If the site is not old enough and its not being ranked in SERP then the possibility is that the site may be in Sand Box ( as stated in the Sand Box Theory, new site do not get ranked for initial 6-8 months as Google verifies the site creditability)
If the site is old but still not ranking then it might be banned by the search engines or not properly optimized.
4. IP Ban Check :
We need to make sure that the site is not banned by search engines, as if banned it won't be included in the SERP.
5. On Site Checks :
Navigation Check
Flash Check
Frame Check
Coding Check
Traffic Script Check
W3C Validation
Home Page Size
Code to Image Ratio
Code to Text Ratio
Server Header Checks
Dynamic URL's
Meta Tags
H1 Check
Alt Tags
CMS Used
Content Duplication Check
Number of Inbound Links to Home Page
Number of Outbound Links from Home Page
HTML Sitemap
XML Sitemap
After doing the initial site analysis we frame out the corrective measures to be taken to beat the competition.
In my next post, I would share how to proceed further.....
1. Domain Targeting Check:
If the web site is hosted in the location in which we are targeting our customers, then it is beneficiary for us. The website server hosting needs to be checked. Though, it does not have any negative impact of server being hosted in any location, yet shifting the site to targeted location based server would help in speeding up the visibility of the site in targeted domain.
For Ex-If the website server is hosted in Australia at present and we are targeting .com domain then shifting the site to United States based server would help in speeding up the visibility of site in .com domain.
2. Server Header Checks :
We check the server responses & server type in order to check if the responses returned from the server are proper. If any redirects are applied then they should be proper. We check the server type as the redirects can be easily done for Apache, but they need to be done from hosting company in case of Microsoft IIS.
Headers returned from: http://ashutoshsachan.blogspot.com/:
The following is the snapshot of HTTP headers returned by the webserver to the browser. These headers provide information about the page and its content to the web browser.
Cache-Control: public, max-age=0, proxy-revalidate, must-revalidate
Connection: close
Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:37:43 GMT
ETag: "40ff44ac-2182-4512-bf63-911064aa4eb2"
Server: GFE/2.0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 51094
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Expires: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:37:43 GMT
Last-Modified: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:14:00 GMT
Client-Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:37:44 GMT
Client-Peer: 74.125.93.191:80
Title: SEO Expert Delhi Ashutosh Sachan -Internet Marketing Service Firm-Online Strategies Branding Consultant,India
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Meta-Description: SEO Service Expert - Online marketing consultant Delhi. Ashutosh Sachan Online marketing services include Search Engine Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Link Building Services, Web Design and Development Services, Pay-Per-Click Management Services, Direct (online) Marketing Services, Web Content Writing
X-Meta-Generator: blogger
X-Meta-Keywords: Web Consultancy, Online Marketing India, Online Marketing Company India, Diversified Outsourcing Services, Branding Consultants, Branding Consultant, Targeted Traffic Machine, Targeted Traffic USA, Website Positioning Strategies, Online Adverts, Targeted Traffic UK
X-Meta-MSSmartTagsPreventParsing: true
3. Domain Registration :
Check out the registration date of the site domain. It would help in figuring out the following observations- If the site is not old enough and its not being ranked in SERP then the possibility is that the site may be in Sand Box ( as stated in the Sand Box Theory, new site do not get ranked for initial 6-8 months as Google verifies the site creditability)
If the site is old but still not ranking then it might be banned by the search engines or not properly optimized.
4. IP Ban Check :
We need to make sure that the site is not banned by search engines, as if banned it won't be included in the SERP.
5. On Site Checks :
Navigation Check
Flash Check
Frame Check
Coding Check
Traffic Script Check
W3C Validation
Home Page Size
Code to Image Ratio
Code to Text Ratio
Server Header Checks
Dynamic URL's
Meta Tags
H1 Check
Alt Tags
CMS Used
Content Duplication Check
Number of Inbound Links to Home Page
Number of Outbound Links from Home Page
HTML Sitemap
XML Sitemap
After doing the initial site analysis we frame out the corrective measures to be taken to beat the competition.
In my next post, I would share how to proceed further.....
