Step Wise SEO

Suppose you’re a real estate investor, looking for a good money-making opportunity. You see two homes, both the same size and price.

One home has been totally renovated and looks pristine. It’s got a few recent add-ons and it fills up its lot nicely.

The other home has some ugly carpeting over wood floors, chipped paint, and kitchen appliances that have seen better days.

There’s plenty of room for expansion on the lot. Clearly, you have a better chance of adding big bucks to the value of the second house after some investment of your time and money.

The same principle applies to your website. If your site is already well optimized, looking for big conversion increases from your SEO campaign may be a challenge.

On the other hand, if your site is missing basic optimization, you can probably expect some good improvement in performance.

This is why a site assessment is important: to identify areas in which your site is deficient, but also to set realistic expectations for results.

Indicate yes or no for the following statements about each of your landing pages:

? This page has a unique HTML page title.

? The HTML page title contains my target keywords.

? This page contains 200 or more words of HTML text.

? HTML text on this page contains my exact target keywords.

? This page can be reached from the home page of the site by following HTML text links (not pull-downs, login screens, or pop-up windows).

? The HTML text links from other pages on my site to this page contain my target keywords.

These quick answers provide a basic estimate of your current optimization level. And don’t forget: Lower optimization just means more room to grow!

With your basic site assessment complete, you have a good picture of the current status of your website:

current conversions, site ranks on the major search engines, inbound links, and your current site optimization level. This baseline assessment will serve you throughout your SEO campaign.