SolveYourProblem
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Series
Learn to Evaluate Your Website's SEO Profile
Before you can evaluate your site’s SEO
profile, you need to understand what an SEO profile is and
how it works. An SEO profile for a website is just
like a marketing plan or a business plan – basically, it’s
a strategy
document, putting your decisions into words. This is best
performed on a computer program such as Microsoft Word as
these programs do provide the best bang for your buck. All
else aside, Microsoft does put out some excellent business
oriented software so take advantage of it!
Writing your SEO profile should consist of the following:
An
introduction - This should include a BRIEF description
of your company as well as a purpose statement of some kind.
If you can describe your company in a neat, tight format,
you will be one step ahead of most in the SEO game.
Goals
relating to your Search Engine Status - What do you
want your page rank to be? Where do you want to be listed
under specif key words? top 50? 25? 10? How many pages of
your site do you want search engines to index? Do you want
to pay for listings? These questions will get you started,
but you must go more in-depth into your SEO goals. Also include
the search engines and directories that you feel are necessities
such as Google, DMOZ, Yahoo!, and MSN.
Information
regarding SEO actions and achievements - This
one is pretty self-explanatory. List everything that you
do regarding Search Engine Optimization as well as any successes
caused by these actions.
Once you’ve written an SEO profile, you can compare it from
time-to-time with what’s going on with your site, before
either adjusting the site to reflect your strategy or adjusting
the profile to reflect a strategy change. Generally, it is
wise to stick to the plan, but occasions may arise when you
find that this is simply not logical anymore. In these cases,
you must re-evaluate your entire plan because one change
can effect the rest of your strategy. If you have
an extremely intricate strategy that depends on one thing
going well,
you may want to diversify your strategy. Your profile should
especially focus on special things you plan to do that aren’t
standard SEO practice. Standard SEO work can get you only
so far. Every one of your competitors is probably doing the
same things so get creative. This is one place where doing
something for yourself can really push you to the top. If
you already have a high-ranking site, you should use your
profile to document the reasons why it has happened, to help
you maintain your high ranking.
Keeping your SEO profile updated will allow you to stay
current not only on what’s going on with your website, but
also on what’s going on in the SEO industry. The SEO industry
is very fickle. It can change suddenly without warning to
reflect what a search engine or directory believes to be
the opinion or benefit of the market. Remember that search
engines are always in competition with one another to deliver
the most results of the highest quality. If you stay
on top of your quality, changes in the SEO industry will
have minimal
effect on you. It is still important to track these changes
in order to ensure that your site gets maximum exposure.
Evaluating your website and profile regularly give you an
advantage in the market – you should never let a profile
get older than 3 months, and you should refer to it and update
it every time you make major changes to your site. These
changes include additions of services or removal of services
as well as design changes and SEO work.
There
is software available online that can help you evaluate
your site's SEO profile. Some of these software are very
useful, others are very overrated. The difference that these
programs will make in your fight for page rank and listings
depends on your interpretation of the results nearly as much
as it depends on the value of the software itself. In order
to find some software simply google for SEO software. Reading
the reviews and making judgement calls is the best way to
determine the worth of SEO software. If you think that its
worth going for look at the cost of it. If the cost seems
to high, it probably is. You can generally evaluate your
SEO profile on your own once you have learned what to look
for in an Search Engine Optomized page.
