Website evaluation questions-what to ask a client
-
I am looking to make a list of go-to questions when I talk to clients on the phone. What are some good questions that would help me evaluate their website/internet goals?
-
Some questions that can be on the list:
-
How dose he (the client) measures success out of SEO? What are the SEO KPIs and targets ? ( with those you can really get a very good feeling on what type of client you have or you will have). You can also elaborate based on the answers and drill down to understand better their view. Leave room for your proposals and other better KPIs that you can propose.
-
What keywords he would like to target ? (in order to have a good starting point for your keyword research session)
-
In his view, what are the main competitors and why ? (starting not only with rankings but also with content, UX and social exposure)
-
What SEO efforts have been done on the website so far ? (really important one - you will probably need a list and dates for changes in order to have a clear assessment of the project)
-
Dose he track and monitor the site ? if yes, with what tools ? (GA, WMT, SeoMoz etc). Ask for access if possibile (sign and nda if needed)
-
Ask more about the current tracking: dose the client have goals and tracking events setup in Google analytics. Dose he review the feedback from those tools and what decision did the client take so far based on this feedback. Dose he uses event tracking - when, why.
-
Separate chapter about Domain Authority - Link building. Any activities done so far ? Try to see if he knows the trends with link building as you can provide a lot of support about the topic - it's a dangerous topic and you need to be in the driver seat.
-
If not clear, ask about the monetization channels of the website. What is the website income: sales, Saas, adsense, baners, partnerships - it's only for branding etc. At the end of the day you will need to help him reach those targets: income, visibility , exposure etc.
Just a few random ones - Hope it helps
-
-
Here some: Timetable/Competitors/Budget/Demographics/What is or isn't working/CMS or not/Analytic data if any
-
My favourite is always "Why do you want a website?" or "Why have you got a website?" if they already have one.
It's amazing how many people have absolutely no idea what they want to achieve by having one. I find that helps get them in to a more result driven mindset, which works well with our approach.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Any risks involved in redirecting low quality Infringement website?
Hi all, Recently we have over taken one of the websites (with Trademark Infringement )who been using our domain name in their domain. That website got no traffic or backlinks. Is there any risk involved in redirecting that website to our website? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
What would be the right website hosting solution for a global brand with multiple TLDs?
Hello everyone, we are preparing a global we strategy for our customer, who wants to focus on many local markets. They are present with their products in over 60 countries on all continents and they can cover 7 languages easily. They also own the TLDs in each main country. Our priority is to be not only found in Google, but also in all major local search engines, which are popular in each country. Our main concerns with this strategy are: How do we host the website locally for each country, so local search engines recognize the website as a local website? Also, is it that important? Is cloud hosting the right solution for this? We would have different server locations for each TLD/language. Surrounding countries would at least get a fast connection and download rate, if the server is located nearby. If yes, can you recommend any companies doing cloud hosting? Is it also wise to additionally redirect the user to the local server based on his/her location? Is there a risk of duplicate content or being recognized as a link spamming site (for having links to each other from different domains of the same site, the content will be in different languages, though) just by using this solution? We would, of course, keep the content separated by domain to avoid duplicate content. Any comments and ideas would be highly appreciated. Thanks, Wojtek
Algorithm Updates | | webeeline0 -
Do panda/penguin algorithm updates hit websites or just webpages ?
If I have a website that been affected by the panda/penguin update, do bad links affect the entire site or just the page the bad link(s) are linked to? If it is the latter and penguin/panda actually affect webpages, not websites (as is the common reference/conception), then wouldn't simply creating a new URL, targeting this new URL, shifting meta-tags and restarting link-building efforts again (this time using the right quality strategies) be a really common-sense approach instead of the tediousness of the disavow approach that so many go down?
Algorithm Updates | | Gavo0 -
Website Penalised | Tips On Recovery?
Hi, I think my website http://rollerbannerscheap.co.uk has been penalised. There are too many over optimised anchor text links with our target keyword 'roller banners' in them. People have linked to our site using our company name 'roller banners cheap' (which also contains the keyword used in my anchor text link building) resulting in too many match links. For a couple months now I have; Added fresh content to the website on a weekly basis, alt tagging images, internal linking and generally making each post very useful. Built a few more external good quality links to try to dilute the over optimised anchor text links. Added more content to the home page. At the moment I am trying to rank for cheap roller banners because I am already on page 1 for that and it seems that keyword hasn't been penalised. Can anyone please advise or recommend what I can do to recover from being penalised or help rank the new key word? I am really stuck with this now and would really appreciate the help. Lewis
Algorithm Updates | | SO_UK0 -
Does it impact over ranking of any website if their same content being used some other external sources
Hi Moz & members, I just want to make sure over website www.1st-care.org , does it impact over ranking this website if the same content (of about us or home care services) being used some other external sources or local citations places. Do those published same content create any ranking drop issue with this website's and making its content strengthen week? . As I was on 9th position in Google.com before, now it has slipped to 29th position. WHY? is there content issue or anything else which i am not aware.
Algorithm Updates | | Futura
See the content used:
Home page content
About us page content Regards,
Teginder Ravi0 -
Video SEO: Youtube, Vimeo PRO, Wistia, Longtail BOTR Experience and questions
Obviously Video SEO is changing, Google is figuring out how to do it themselves. We are left wondering… Below we have tried to explain what we have learned and how the different sites work and their characteristics (links to graphics provided) Our problem is: We are not getting congruent Google site:apalytics.tv Video filter results. We are wondering how duplicate content may be affecting our results… and if so, why will Youtube not be duplicate and prevent your own site SEO efforts from working. Is Youtube special? Does that include Vimeo too? We see our own duplicate videos on multiple sites in Google results, so it seems it is not duplicate related…? We’d appreciate your experience or add to our questions and work as a community to get this figured out more definitively. Thanks! We’ve tried four video hosting solutions at quite a cost monetarily and in time. 1.) Youtube, which gets all the SEO Juice and gets our clients on to other subjects or potentially competitive content. Iframes just don’t get the results we are looking for. 2.) See Vimeo Image: Vimeo PRO, a $200 year plus solution that allows us to do many video carousels on our own domains hosted on Vimeo, but are very limited in HTML as only CSS content changes are allowed. While we were using Vimeo we allowed the Vimeo.com community to SEO our content directly and they come up often in search results. Due to duplicate content concerns we have disallowed Vimeo.com from using our content and SEOing our content to their domain. However, we have many “portfolios” (micro limited carousal sites on our domains) that continue to carry the content. The Vimeo hosted micro site shows only three videos on Google: site:apalytics.tv During our testing we are concerned that duplicate content is causing issues too, so we are getting ready to shut off the many microsite domains hosted at Vimeo. (Vimeo has an old embed code that allows a NON-iframe embed – but has discontinued it recently) That makes it difficult if not impossible to retain SEO juice for anything other than their simple micro sites that are very limited! 3.) See Wistia Image: Wistia, a $2000 year plus solution that only provides private video site hosting embedding various types of video content on one’s site/s. Wistia has a free account now for three videos and limited plays – it’s a nice interface for SEO but is still different than BOTR. We opted for BOTR because of many other advertising related options, but are again trying Wistia with the free version to see if we can figure out why our BOTR videos are not showing up as hoped. We know that Google does not promise to index and feature every video on a sitemap, but why some are there and others are not and when remains a mystery that we are hoping to get some answers about. 4.) See Longtail Image: Longtail, Bits On The Run, (JW Player author) a $1,000 year plus like Wistia provides private hosting, but it allows a one button YouTube upload for the same SEO meta data and content – isn’t that duplicate content? BOTR creates and submits video sitemaps for your content, but it has not been working for us and it has been impossible to get a definitive answer as I think they too are learning or are not wanting the expose their proprietary methods (which are not yet working for us!) 2O9w0.png 0eiPv.png O9bXV.png
Algorithm Updates | | Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.0 -
Organizing Website Content
Hey everyone! I am looking for some opinions on organizing website content. Here are two thoughts. I am open to alternative suggestions as well. Thanks for any consideration in this matter! **Aviation Supply Store Thought A ** **Helicopters Airplanes Rockets ** Helicopter engines Airplane engines Rocket engines Helicopter Fuels Airplane Fuels Rocket fuels Helicopter Accessories Airplane Accessories Rocket Accessories Aviation Supply Store Thought B Engines Fuels Accessories Helicopter Engines Helicopter Fuels Helicopter Accessories Airplane Engines Airplane Fuels Airplane Accessories Rocket Engines Rocket Fuels Rocket Accessories I simply chose aviation as an example. I'm just having difficulty deciding on how best to catagorize. Thank You!
Algorithm Updates | | APICDA0 -
What is considered duplicate content in an ecommerce website that offers the same product for retail and wholesale purchasing?
I have an ecommerce website that offers retail and wholesale products which are identical, of course with the exception of pricing. My concern is duplicate content. If the same product is offered under both the retail and wholesale category, and described identically, with the exception of price, metadata and a few words, is that considered duplicate content and would both pages be disregarded by the robots? Is it best to avoid the same description for that one product under the two separate categories? Thanks for all your help!
Algorithm Updates | | flaca0