1. Visit the home page, www.domain.com.
v Does it redirect to some other URL?
v Review the Page Title.
v Review site navigation:
v Page URLs
v Check whether keywords are used appropriately in text links or image alt tags
v Review home page content:
v Check for appropriate keyword usage
v Check for a sitemap
v Do a “command-A” to find any hidden text.
v Check PageRank via SearchStatus plugin for Firefox
v View source code:
v Check meta description (length, keyword usage, relevance).
v Check meta keywords (relevance, stuffing).
v Look for anything unusual/spammy
2. Analyze robots.txt file.
v Check for what’s being blocked and what’s not.
3. Check for www and non-www domains
v Only one should resolve; the other should redirect.
4. Look at the sitemap (if present).
v Check keyword usage in anchor text.
v The number of links
v Check whether all(category, sub-category, etc.) pages are listed
5. Visit two category/1st-level pages.
v Repeat Step 1 and this will be quicker since many objects (header, footer, menus) will be the same. In particular, look for unique page text, unique meta tags.
v Check for appropriate PageRank flow. Also look at how they link back to home page.
6. Visit two product/2nd-level pages.
v Same steps as 5.
v Also, if the site sells common products, find 2-3 other sites selling same exact items and compare product pages. Are all sites using the same product descriptions? Unique content is best.
7. Do a site:domain.com search in all 3 main engines.
v Compare pages indexed between the three.
v Are pages indexed unusually high or low based on what you saw in the site map and site navigation? This may help identify crawlability issues.
8. Use Aaron’s SEO for Firefox extension to look at link counts in Yahoo and MSN.
v If not in a rush, do the actual link count searches manually on Yahoo Site Explorer and MSN to confirm.
