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20 Things You Need to Know Before Optimizing a Web Site
By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007

One of the most important aspects of a search engine
optimization project is also one of the most overlooked –
preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance
of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is
successful.

Before You Start

Before you start any search engine optimization campaign,
whether it's for your own site or that belonging to a client,
you need to answer the following questions:

  1) What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site?
     What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more
     subscribers, more traffic, more publicity etc.

  2) What is the time-frame for this project?

  3) What is the budget for this project?

  4) Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a
     joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or
     outsourced?

Answering these questions will help you to build a framework for
your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and
scope of the campaign.

Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?

Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project
is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review.
This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a
site's search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design,
page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body
text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other
design elements that can impact search engine indexing.

I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with
recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in
my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as
search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing
staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice
versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing
something similar for your own site or clients.

Steady: Requirements Gathering

Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can
tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client's exact needs. For
those of you servicing clients, this information is often
required before you are able to quote accurately.

To determine your project requirements, you need to have the
following questions answered:

  1) What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash,
     PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Flat HTML etc)

  2) What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm,
     .php, .cfm etc)

  3) Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will
     the URLs contain query strings? e.g.
     www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212,
     (containing "?" symbols), or does the site use parameter
     workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is
     more search engine friendly).

  4) Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and
     other pages to be optimized?

  5) How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or
     graphical links or JavaScript drop-down menus?

  6) Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many
     of these will be optimized?

  7) Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does
     the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps
     (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login)?

  8) What is the current link popularity of the site?

  9) What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would
     it benefit from link building?

 10) Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or
     will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers
     for integration?

 11) Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the
     site?

 12) What are the products/services that the site promotes?
    (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)

 13) What are the site's geographical target markets? Are they
     global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?

 14) What are the site's demographic target markets? (e.g. young
     urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)

 15) What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my
     client's target markets will use to find the site in the
     search engines?

 16) Who are my/my client's major competitors online? What are
     their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?

 17) Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report
     to them?

 18) Do I have access to site traffic logs or statistics to
     enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign?
     Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?

 19) How do I plan on tracking my or my client's conversion
     trends and increased rankings in the search engines?

 20) What are my/my client's expectations for the optimization
     project? Are they realistic?

Answers to the first 10 questions above will determine the
complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site
pages currently have little text on them, you know you'll need
to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search
engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site
currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages
without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the
site can be indexed, and so on.

This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs
involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites,
obtaining accurate answers to these questions BEFORE quoting is
absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the
middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.

The remainder of questions are to establish in advance the who,
what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This
will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to
target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.

For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might
consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to
complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their
exact needs.

Go!

So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the
site, you know more about the target markets, you know how
compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much
work is involved in the search engine optimization process.
You're ready to tackle the job.
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Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine
optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and
respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as
running a daily Search Engine Advice Column
(http://www.searchenginecollege.com/blog.htm), Kalena manages
Search Engine College (http://www.searchenginecollege.com/) - an
online training institution offering instructor-led short courses
and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization
and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
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