Search engine exposure is extremely important to any online strategy, and an analytics program is essential for tracking a variety of metrics related to your website's performance on search engines. However, there are other factors outside of a statistical package that can help you evaluate your site's search engine visibility.
Tip #1 Descriptive Titles
Most people have heard that the title tag is the most important element of a web page, but have you looked at your site's title tags recently?
Performing the query site:www.domain.com on Google will show you all of your indexed pages and you can instantly see what users are seeing for all of your pages.
Below are two examples, one with good descriptive titles and the other where they have forgotten to optimize their titles.
Good Titles
Poor Titles
If your titles aren't descriptive and accurately representing the information a user is going to see when they get to your page, then there is a good chance they will not click on your listing.
Tip #2 Quality Meta Descriptions
Just like the titles above, you can read all of the descriptions for your indexed pages with the same site: query. If the descriptions aren't written to convert users, then you could be missing out on traffic.
If you don't have the tag <meta name="description"> in your markup, then Google will pull related pieces of content to make up a description for you, but if you really want to have control of your site's message, it is best to develop compelling meta descriptions that will work to entice users to click on your listing.
Good Descriptions
Poor Descriptions
From the two descriptions above, can you tell which one was written with users in mind and which one was automated by Google? Are all of your descriptions interesting enough to make you click on them?
Tip #3 Indexed Pages
Indexed pages are another easy way to tell how well your site is performing on the search engines. If you know you have 200 pages on your site and Google says you have 35, then you know you have a problem somewhere.
To review your indexed pages you use the same useful search query that you used for your titles and meta descriptions, site:www.domain.com.
Indexed Pages
Whenever you make adjustments to your site – adding or removing elements – it's very easy to create indexing issues. For example, when JMG recently launched this new site, there were a few problems with indexing because of the CMS we were using. To the outside world, the site appeared fine and had no problems, but according to Webmaster Tools, we had some serious indexing issues. None of the pages were getting indexed and we were virtually blocking ourselves from the search engines. After a little trial and error, we were able to figure out the problems and now all of our pages are getting indexed almost as quickly as we can write them.
If your site has problems being indexed, it can be extremely beneficial to explore the problem and take steps to resolve it.
Tip #4 Canonicalization Issues
This might sound like a rather advanced aspect of search engine optimization, but it really boils down to basic website development.
Canonicalization errors occur when your website returns multiple versions of the exact same page. In the eyes of the search engines, these four pages are actually four different pages and in the real world they are all the same:
domain.com
www.domain.com
domain.com/index.html
www.domain.com/index.html
Canonicalization errors are a problem because they can present duplicate copy issues, and because they divide your domain's links across several URLs. Ideally, you'll want all URL variations to redirect to one primary version. So if a user types in domain.com, your browser will redirect to the www.domain.com version or vice versa.
You can check how your pages redirect with what's called a HTTP header check. Type in each domain, one at a time, to see how a search engine views your domain's configuration.
No Canonicalization Issues
You can see from the above image that when a user types in jacksonmg.com, the server redirects the user with a 301 (moved permanently) to the www version that we decided to use as our primary URL.
Canonicalization Issues
non www version returns a "200 OK" server response
www version returns a "200 OK" server response
It doesn't matter if you go with the www or non www version of your URL, as long as you stay consistent.
Tip #5 Inbound Links
Inbound links are the foundation of an effective SEO strategy. Google basically treats inbound links as a "vote" for a particular website. The more votes you have, the more authoritative your site appears.
When Google runs across two sites of similar content, they will usually rank the site with more inbound links higher in the search results.
An easy way to check your inbound links is through Yahoo Site Explorer. Yahoo shows the most accurate count of inbound links compared to other sources, but you can also use Linkscape from SEOmoz or Exalead.
Home Page Links
Site Wide Links
If your site lacks a substantial number of inbound links, this can be a key area for improvement to help build your search engine visibility.
Building search engine placement isn't something that happens easily. In order for your website to establish search engine rankings and build an online presence, it has to be developed properly. Test your website on the above factors and see how it comes out...I'm willing to bet that you discover a few issues that you weren't aware of or find areas for improvement with your site's development.
What about you? Has your site run into any roadblocks that you weren’t aware of? Let me know in the comments below.