One of the most common website analysis questions asked by search engine neophytes is, "Is my site optimized?," followed by, "How can I tell?" and, ultimately, "How can I tell if my competitor's site is optimized?" Well, friends, I'm here to help you answer these simple SEO analysis questions with some easy-to-follow instructions on how to do a website analysis.

Components of an SEO Analysis

Search Engine Index
The search engine index is the cornerstone of any SEO analysis. In order for a site to have good search engine rankings, it needs to be in the search engines' indices. Makes sense, doesn't it? When performing a website analysis, it is important to determine whether or not your site is listed in Google because it is the most popular search engine. It also has the largest index. If you can not find your site in Google, it is probably not listed on the other engines. This should be the first step of any SEO analysis.

To see if your site is listed, start by searching for a site by name to determine if it is in the index. If it doesn't come up, go to Google and type "site:www.url.com" (without the quotes and with your actual URL). This will show how many pages of the site, if any, are in Google's index. If your site does not come up, there are two possibilities. One, the site has not been indexed, or, two, the site has been penalized. Hopefully, the situation is the former and not the latter, or you have a long uphill battle in front of you, and crying doesn't help. In the next step of website analysis, we turn our attention to the external links to a site.

Links

Another critical component of a modern SEO analysis is link popularity. The number of links to a website is a key factor in determining its ranking. Search engine rankings have one thing in common with high school - they are a popularity contest. Each link constitutes a vote for the site; therefore, the more votes, the more popular the site, and, ultimately, the higher the rankings. For a website analysis, I recommend measuring the link popularity of a site in two ways. The first is PageRank. You can take this figure straight off the Google toolbar (a free program you can download from Google's website which is helpful to perform an SEO analysis). Do not put too much stock in the rating though; it is not an end-all measurement because it is not extremely accurate, and it is not always up-to-date.

A Google employee once stated, "PageRank is for entertainment purposes only." The scale runs from zero to ten, and for website analysis purposes I break it down like this: Anything below four is not special. Four is fair, five or six are good. A seven or above is great. Now, to measure the overall number of links pointing to a site, use Yahoo. To do this, type "linkdomain:www.url.com" (without spaces and with the actual URL) into Yahoo's search engine. This gives a ballpark measure of links that is pretty accurate. However, examining your site's link popularity by itself isn't very helpful for a thorough SEO analysis. That's why you should also examine several direct competitors as part of your website analysis. This will help you determine a link popularity benchmark for your industry.

Navigation
No website analysis would be complete without a look at navigation. If you want all of the pages in your site to be in the search engines, you have to make them accessible. You can lead a spider to a site, but you can't make him index. As part of your website analysis, you need to examine whether or not your site has spider-friendly navigation since spiders have trouble following graphical navigation menus. This means that there must be some sort of text navigation menu that a spider can follow, i.e. a footer navigation menu or text links.

To determine if a link is plain text (one that a spider can follow), see if it will let you highlight individual letters of the word. If not, it is probably an image or JavaScript. During your SEO analysis, you should also look to see if the site has as site map. Having a site map with text links is the best way to ensure that the spider can index all of the pages of a site with ease.

Keyphrases
Any SEO analysis must also examine the use of keyphrases. Keyphrases are the backbone of SEO. If you want to have rankings for a keyphrase, it is best to use it on your site. There are several locations on a website where keyphrases can be utilized. The best way for determining their implementation is by looking at the source code (On the Internet Explorer menu, go to View, then Source). For the purposes of this SEO analysis, look at the title, the meta keywords, and the meta description. See if the site is using keyphrases in any of these areas.

If so, check the on-page copy to see if the same keyphrases are present there also. Pay close attention to the meta tag keywords. If there are more than four keywords listed, they are probably using optimization techniques from 1998 that they picked up by eavesdropping on an "intellectual" conversation in a computer lab. In the next step of website analysis, we will examine the site's content.

Content
Search engines like content. When doing a website analysis, look at the amount of text on a page. Check to see if there is a decent amount of text that utilizes the keyphrases. It does not have to be in one large block, but make sure there are at least a couple hundred words on the page. For your SEO analysis, you should also look at the density of the keyphrases. If a keyphrase appears once, it could be a coincidence. If it appears about once every eighty words, they have their stuff together. If it appears ten times in thirty words, don't waste your time on the site as it is probably on its way to the search engine penalty box.

Conclusion
The simple SEO analysis laid out above is not an absolute methodology for determining how well a site will rank on search engines, but it will give you a general idea of your site's potential, areas that need attention, and what you are up against. With the continually increasing popularity of search engines, and the recognition of value from high rankings, the sooner you perform an SEO analysis to optimize your site, the better. For a reasonable amount of effort, you can complete this website analysis and implement changes that turn your site into a powerful marketing device.

About author: Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. Visit www.MediumBlue.com  to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

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