SEO - How to look at a site from an optimisation perspective.

Hi Learners,

Thankyou for coming back to this blog. In our previous post we have highlighted why a website needs SEO. If you missed it, you can check them out here. In todays post we will discuss various steps that you can take to get started with SEO for your new website or an existing website of a client, friend or the company you work for.

There are 2 important skills that will define your success with SEO.

1. Your understanding of the business you are working on. This will include everything, right from what does the business do, whom does it serve, how it makes money & eventually how are people using the website.
2. Your ability to define what keywords to rank for and what keywords will give you maximum business. We will call it Keyword Research for SEO.

Lets start with an example website and an excel sheet.

Know the Business

1. On the excel sheet, write down the name of the website you are working on along with the URL of that website. For the ease of understanding we will refer to a very simple but effective website of a resort called Cidade De Goa.
2. Visit the site and see what is the business about. On the excel sheet, write down your understanding of the business. Ask questions like what does the business do? Whom does it serve? Is location important to this business? if yes where is it located? What is the price of the product? How does the selling happen? and many such important questions that will educate you about the website & eventually the business.

The key here is to get as much information about the website, the business & the products it is selling as possible. 

Know the website

1. List down the Primary & Secondary actionable GOALS of the website. 

This means as you navigate through the website, your users will click on various sections of the website and eventually complete an action. These actions should be grouped into 2 categories - Primary & Secondary Goals.

Primary Goals - The ones that give direct business through the website to the brand (Book Now, Buy Now, Add to Cart, Download etc)

Secondary Goals are the ones which signal engagement of the users to the brand. These actions might not result in immediate business, but have the potential to get more business in the future. (Newsletter Sign-up, Social connect / Share buttons, Save / Favourite buttons, live chat, register, etc)

2. Understand the UI & the UX

Understanding how people use your website is a priority for marketers. Its important to learn about the steps people take to complete the goals of the website. This is a crucial step for developing a business focussed SEO Plan. 

User Interface or UI - This refers to all the components of a physical website ranging from apps used to create the sites, widgets, live chat APIs, form builders, sliders, drop-downs, Click-to-call buttons, Image projections, other supporting software, etc

User Experience or UX - Refers to all components that relate to adding the usability of the site. These can include stuff like page speeds, design & navigation, user interaction, pop-ups, content spread, images, videos, 

Pro-tip* : Try to complete each action by yourself on desktop & on mobile. See how the users complete it and where they are stuck, where is the experience awesome, great but not awesome, ok but not great, bad or pathetic.

Once you have listed down your goals & completed each of those goals yourself, rate your experience on the scale of 0-5, where 0 is "Bad" and needs immediate work & 5 is "Awesome!"

Pro-tip* : You can list down competitor websites & see how is the UI & UX ratings pan out on their website vs your website.

Tools you can use...

To get preliminary idea on the nature of traffic on your & competitor websites...

1. Similarweb.com: Simply add the website URL to this tool. It gives great ball park data about the website like, Global, Country & Category ranking of the site on internet, traffic sources report, referral reports, traffic content report, audience interest, and competitor sites. Its a great starter. You can access this tool from here
2. Alexa SiteInfo: This is another interesting tool which adds to the data you know about the website. Its similar to what similar web gives you, but a few snippets of information like engagement & keyword data make Alexa unique. You can access this tool from here.

To identify page speed errors / fixes on your website.

1. Page Speed Insights - This tool throws essential data about your website load times. It lists down errors and shows recommendations on how to fix them. You can use the tool here
2. Google Test My Site - This tool gives data about load status & load errors of your website especially on mobile. If you have a mobile specific website, you will need this tool. Even otherwise this tool can help you fix some essentials. You can use this tool here. 
3. GT Metrics - If you need a 3rd eye about your website load times, you can use this free tool to get a clear understanding about your website. You can use this tool here. 

Card Sorting Apps like Helio help you create tests and surveys on your website to collect data and organise your navigation menus.

You could use Browershots to view how your website looks on various browsers.

Date from these tools paired with data from Google Analytics (if you have it) would be great to get started.

We will continue with more steps for your website SEO in our next post.

Hope you liked this post. Leave your suggestions in the comments below & get in touch with me in case you have anything specific to ask.

Have a great day ahead.

Mitul Shingadia