The SEO Analysis: What it is and Why You Need it - What a Site Analysis Should NOT Include (Page 3 of 4 ) - Solicitation - An SEO obviously wants his or her analysis to lead to your purchasing their services. But if your analysis is littered with endorsements, sponsored links or even too much of the company's own propaganda, then you may want to reconsider hiring that company. For example, a client showed me an analysis he received from another company. Even though the analysis was free, it was only about four pages; and of that, only a half a page was even any kind of analysis whatsoever, and it was so general that it honestly was just a waste of paper, and could have applied to just about any site on the Web. The rest was that company's advertising and solicitation of its own services. Needless to say, this was a major turnoff for the client, who hired me instead.
- Irrelevant Statistics - While this one may on the surface seem like a no-brainer, let me explain what I mean. Obviously if you are looking for keyword analysis, and you have a site about breeding pug puppies, you don't want statistics regarding celebrity car auctions. This is not what I mean here. What I mean is that many SEOs will fluff up your analysis with statistics regarding your competitors, or even its search engine findings. If these numbers don't help you understand how to improve your search engine standing or improve your site, then you don't need them in your analysis. While we always include reports with many of these findings as addenda for reference purposes, we don't usually put them directly into the analysis.
- Reports that Cannot be Backed up with Evidence - You've heard about it and probably experienced it for yourself when an SEO firm shows you their results for other clients with top ten SERPs (search engine results pages). It is necessary for you to be able to have a link to view them yourself, or that the company can provide specific, preferably dated, evidence of their magic. Screenshots are great, but they don't make a lot of sense when there is no corroboration of those events. Further, if you are being told that your site is falling in the SERPs due to this or that factor, the SEO firm should be able to provide evidence why this is the case.
- Possible Futuristic Events or Predictions - There is absolutely no one that can predict what a search engine may or may not do, and as a result there is not an SEO firm in the world that can make predictions about how your site will do in a search engine. This is a sticky subject because it gets into the area of guaranteed results. I've seen countless firms out there that offer Top Ten results guarantees, or number one results. I shake my head every single time.
I had a prospective client just recently for whom I did an analysis. They were a small company started by two programmers who had a travel industry website, which was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, the travel industry is the #2 most sought after industry in regards to keywords on the Internet, and while they were happy with the results of the analysis, we couldn't seem to agree on the SEO work itself. The reason was that they were looking for guarantees for very broad keywords. I am very careful in this area, because while I can guarantee a certain percentage increase in traffic or SERPs positioning, recommend appropriate keywords for particular pages or suggest content choices, they wanted pay per performance based on which keywords hit the Top Ten in Google; the keywords were so broad that you could drive a truck through the hole they created.
Needless to say, I declined to submit the offer with a guarantee, and I'm sure that since I didn't hear from them again, they chose the other guy. That's okay, because there is no way I can predict a Top Ten result for that kind of broad keyword. No one can. I'd rather not set myself up for disaster, and not getting paid!
- General and Vague Findings - Stating the obvious is mercilessly painful in any industry, but it truly applies to SEO. You cannot properly do research for a website with broad parameters resulting in broad results. Each and every website out there is as unique as the individual or individuals that created it. Every SEO analysis, just like every SEO project, should be customized and geared toward that company's specific needs at this very moment in time. Examples of vague findings would be "You're not in the top ten results for this keyword." Well, DUH! They wouldn't be looking for an SEO analysis if they were. If an SEO company dumbs down a report because they think you can't handle the findings, then run away twice, you silly person.
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