Seo Tlc For Your Current Web Site

Many of our new clients come to us thinking they need a new website

, when in fact what they need to start with is a little search engine optimization. Before you spend thousands on a brand new website design, why not spend one hour testing your current site's SEO?

2 Minutes

Start by logging into your website. Check the URL in the address bar. Is it the same one you typed in? If not, you might have a redirect going on. That can hurt your search engine raking, so fix it.

2 Minutes

Now type your URL without the www. Were you taken to the www version? You should have only one version of your site - either with the www or without. If that's not the case, fix it.

2 Minutes

Now look at the page title in the upper left hand corner of your browser. Does it contain your keywords? Is it a different title than what appears on all the other pages? If not, fix it.

3 Minutes

Read the headline on your home page. Is your main keyword or keyword phrase included? Is it contained within an actual H1 tag? If not, fix it.

4 Minutes

Read the first paragraph of your home page. Does it contain your keyword phrase? Is it formatted as actual text, as opposed to Flash or a graphic? Try to highlight the text with your cursor. If you can't highlight it, it's not text. Fix it.

6 Minutes

Review your menu bar. Is it easy to use? When you hover over a link, can you see the link's URL in the bottom left hand corner of your browser? If not, there's a good chance your menu bar is not crawlable by the search engine spiders. Fix it.

8 Minutes

Scan your subpages. Are they within three clicks of your home page? Are the words in the file name (the actual page URL) separate by dashes instead of underlines? Do the file names contain your keywords? If not, fix it.

3 Minutes

Examine your robots text file by visiting yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Are you accidentally blocking files or directories that you do want crawled? Is your robots.txt formatted correctly? If not, fix it.

3 Minutes

Check out your XML sitemap by visiting yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Is your sitemap up-to-date? Have you removed any deleted pages? Are your page priorities accurate? If not, fix it.

14 Minutes

Examine your internal links. How do you hyperlink from page to page within your site? Have you included your keywords within your anchor text? Are you referencing your entire URL? If not, fix it.

13 Minutes

Check your site in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Are approximately the same number of pages indexed in each search engine? Can you identify any issues with one engine over the others?

If you're not happy with your search engine position or you feel you're not getting the traffic you deserve, don't assume you need a brand new web site. Chances are, with a little TLC and a little SEO, you can increase traffic to the site you've already got.

by: Karen Scharf

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