Download - Tools for SEO Onsite Audits
Tools For On Site AuditsDon’t Leave Home Without Em!
Mark GinsbergJWP
July 10, 2012
In Browser◦ Browser Extensions
Chrome Sniffer, Mozbar, etc.◦ SaaS Tools
SEOMoz campaign tools, and lots more
Standalone Applications◦ Screaming Frog SEO Spider◦ Xenu Link Sleuth◦ IIS Crawler
Types of Tools
Chrome Sniffer - http://bit.ly/NgrMlx ◦ Quickly find out what CMS the site is using, like wordpress,
drupal, magento, prestashop, etc.
◦ Are they using Google Analytics or another analytics tool?
◦ Which social plugins do they use?
Canonical- http://bit.ly/MMPgAY ◦ Shows if page has a canonical tag different from the page you
are currently visiting
Chrome Extensions I use ALL THE TIME
Click on the icon for more info about the page
SEO Site Tools - http://bit.ly/MMMLyH ◦ Lots of Info about your Site and your page◦ What type of server are you running?◦ External link data – PR, data from open APIs – SEOmoz, Alexa, SEMRush,
indexed pages, lots more
Chrome Extensions I use ALL THE TIME
Mozbar - http://bit.ly/LyWhWi ◦ Nice clean interface◦ On page data◦ Backlinking data◦ HTTP status codes, canonical tags, and much more
Chrome Extensions I use ALL THE TIME
User Agent Switcher- http://bit.ly/OJTJUb ◦ Allows you to change your browser’s user agent
◦ View a webpage as Google does
◦ Use this for checking if website is cloaking
Firefox Extensions I Use for Audits
Quirk Search Status- http://bit.ly/LyYZuZ
◦ Lots of SEO information – like Chrome plugins previously mentioned
◦ Show other domains on IP – shortcut to Bing search
◦ Highlights nofollow links – other tools do this too – I leave this on by default in Firefox and use Chrome as primary browser
Firefox Extensions I Use for Audits
Web Developer Toolbar- http://bit.ly/Nf7DsH
◦ Disable elements to mimics search engine bots◦ Quickly disable:
Cookies Css Images JavaScript
◦ Show link information by default if checking links and are not broken
Firefox Extensions I Use for Audits
General Site Audit - Homepage
Is the site trustworthy?
Would you buy from them?
What is the site about – does the homepage convey this?
Would you give this site your credit card?
General Site Audit - Homepage
Is the site cloaking – showing different content to you and Googlebot
How to Check – view cache in google◦ In Chrome, just add a cache: to the URL and hit
enter
Change user agent in Firefox to Googlebot and then view the page
Compare to the live version you see in Chrome and other browsers
General Site Audit - HomepageNormal User Sees What Googlebot Sees
www.kesherisrael.org
General Site Audit – Homepage - Cloaking
In our example – cached version of the page doesn’t show the cloaking/hack
Google Instant preview does though
Always check with multiple resources – cache, instant, user agent switch
If detected, work with developer to clean up
General Site Audit – Homepage – URL and Canonical Issues
Does the homepage redirect to another page?◦ What type of redirect – 301 or other?
www vs non-www- is there only one version of the page?◦ HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
http://campshutaf.org/◦ HTTP/1.1 200 OK http://www.campshutaf.org/◦ Note – wordpress sites usually pretty good with this,
other cms’s cause lots of problems
Is there a canonical tag pointing somewhere else?
General Site Audit – Homepage – Meta Data
Title tag◦ Proper length?◦ Keyword stuffed?◦ Descriptive?◦ Incorporates brand name?
Meta-description◦ Proper length?◦ Keyword stuffed? Descriptive?
Unique?
Keywords Tag◦ Is it in usage? Is it unique?
Canonical Tag◦ Is there a canonical tag
pointing somewhere else?
General Site Audit – Homepage – Navigation and Site Structure Is the navigation crawlable?
◦ Turn off javascript, images and CSS in Firefox with developer toolbar
◦ Can you still navigate to the main sections of the site?
URL site structure◦ Does the main navigation point to clean urls or
search engine unfriendly URLs?◦ Do the URLs contain capital letters or spaces? Does
the server force lower case letters in the URLs? Live pages - http://ishopforisrael.com/Deals/ and
http://ishopforisrael.com/deals/eSportsonline/
General Site AuditCustom Search Commands site:www.wdcgroup.com
◦ Searches only the domain you specify – tells you how many pages indexed
◦ Shortcut to this query from tools like Searchstatus & SEO Site Tools
◦ If not many pages indexed, could be problem with navigation
cache:http://ishopforisrael.com/deals/esportsonline◦ Checks if page is stored in cache
More advanced search queries: http://bit.ly/OKcLd9
General Site AuditRobots.txt and sitemap.xml Robots.txt
◦ Check if the site has a robots.txt – check to see what it’s blocking
◦ Use Google Webmaster tools to check their access and see if specific URLs are blocked by robots.txt
◦ Are they accidentally blocking access from all search engines? This means they’re blocking everyone:
User-agent: *Disallow: /
Sitemap◦ Does the site have one? Is it linked in the robots.txt file?◦ Does it include errors or URLs no longer live
General Site AuditCategory Pages Content
◦ Is there enough content?◦ Is it organized, laid out nicely?◦ Interlinking◦ Crawlable by the search engines◦ Check for duplicate content – text in quotes
Meta Data◦ Title tags, meta descriptions, keywords◦ Meta robots – are these pages blocked by the search engines
General Site AuditScreaming Frog Awesomeness Why check SEO info on one page when you
can look at the whole site, sections of it, etc?
General Site AuditScreaming Frog Awesomeness Check crawl errors, etc. Supplement this data with Webmaster Tools
data
General Site AuditXenu Does a lot of good
stuff as well
Not specifically an SEO tool, but does produce relevant reports
It’s Free (Screaming Frog full version is £100 a year – free version doesn’t have all features and only crawls 500 URLs)
General Site AuditIIS Crawler
It gives a lot of data and information about the site
Is free and easy to install (if you have Windows 7) – follow the instructions here - http://mz.cm/MdaTuw
Independent SEO Consultant
@markginsberg
www.marksginsberg.com Google+
Skype: msginsberg
Mark Ginsberg