Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm -- just look at the
history of Google's 2011 algorithm updates
chronicled on this very blog to get a little snapshot. In fact, they
announced 40 algorithm updates in February 2012 alone, followed by
another 50 in March. And while Google freely talks about their
overarching goals with these updates being to weed out lower-quality
websites that don’t satisfy searchers with quality content, there is
still some secrecy behind
exactly how Google evaluates a website and ultimately determines which sites to show for which search queries.
That said, there are a number of tools out there -- some free, some
paid -- that help you to look at your own site the way that Google sees
it. These tools are critical to your
organic search strategy
because they allow you to focus on the elements of your site that
Google deems important. In this post, we’ll walk through 6 such tools
that all help you analyze your site like a marketer ...
and a Google bot!
1) Webmaster Tools
Perhaps the best way to understand the way Google sees your site is to ask Google.
Google’s Webmaster Tools
is novice-friendly with robust resources explaining the fundamentals of
Google search. Plus, it's free and works for mobile sites! For example,
the Google Friendly Site is a great starting point for anyone needing a
primer on how Google views pages. It succinctly explains a few of the
basic parameters involved in Google’s search algorithms. Take a look:
With this tool, you're able to see exactly which keywords Google is
seeing when it crawls your website -- the list you see above is just a
snapshot. If you’re not seeing the keywords you anticipated, you know to
start creating more quality content around the keywords you're
targeting. You can also see how many search queries and click-throughs
each of the keywords is receiving. If you're not seeing the rankings and
CTR you were hoping for, this tool provides excellent tips to help you
improve -- just don't expect them to reveal
all their secrets.
Another great feature of Google Webmaster Tools is its breakdown of
errors in its Diagnostics section. You can monitor your site for malware
and crawl errors, both essential for conquering the SERPs. Malware can
get your site blocked, and crawl errors will stop search spiders in
their tracks, literally making parts of your website invisible to the
search engines. This easy to read list allows publishers to see which
links are not working as they should, giving them the opportunity to
address the problem. This site, for example, has only one web crawler
error found by Google:
Furthermore, Google’s
Fetch as Google
tool, allows you to see a particular URL as Google sees it, which is
critical when troubleshooting for poor SEO performance. The information
returned can help you modify the page in question for better
optimization, and can even help you isolate problematic code when you
believe your site's been hacked.
2) Screaming Frog SEO Spider
The
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
is a search marketer's best friend. Designed specifically for the
SEO-minded, this program crawls the websites you specify examining the
URLs for common SEO issues in an attempt to make site optimization
easier. This program simplifies and expedites an otherwise time
consuming process -- especially for larger websites -- which would
otherwise take hours or days to manually evaluate.
The Java program is fairly intuitive with easy to navigate tabs.
Additionally, you can export any or all of the data into Excel for
further analysis. So say you're using Optify, SEOmoz, or RavenSEO to
monitor your links or rankings for specific keywords -- you could simply
create a .csv file from your spreadsheet, make a few adjustments for
the proper formatting, and upload it to those tools. You’ve just taken a
few minutes to compile massive amounts of data that may otherwise have
taken hours, or even days!
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see a handful of images
that are missing alt text, which means that these images aren’t going
to be recognized by Google. That means they’re serving no purpose other
than adding aesthetic quality to the page. Adding appropriate ALT tags
to each image not only enables visitors to understand what an image is
meant to display in the event of a loading issue, but
Google can now “see” the image.
You can also filter images to see large files (over 100KB) and those
with alt tags over 100 characters, which are not recognized as easily by
Google.
Screaming Frog can also easily analyze titles throughout your site.
The screenshot above shows three headlines which are longer than the
suggested length for SEO purposes. If a website is filled with lengthy
titles, it is more likely to be ignored by Google and other search
engines. This quick snapshot gives a publisher or SEO manager a quick
reference as to where changes can easily be made to help optimize the
page.
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider LITE version is available free, but
with some limitations -- you can only scan 500 URLs per website, and you
don't have full access to configuration options and source code
features.
3) Check My Links Broken Link Checker
A link building campaign with a broken link is a huge bummer.
Check My Links Broken Link Checker
can help ensure the accuracy of links -- whether external or internal
-- of a webpage, giving a publisher or editor the opportunity to make
corrections before the page is live.
Think about a site like Wikipedia, for example -- they must have tons of links! Actually, through a combination of
internal and external links,
a single Wikipedia post on Kiefer Sutherland has 599 links. Within
moments, Check My Links scanned all of the links, finding just five that
were broken.
The site highlights all the good links in green, and those which are
broken in red, making it easy to spot the ones that don’t work or are no
longer active. Check My Links also takes it one step further with a
quick keystroke so you can see the broken URL, making it easier to
recognize the error. Being able to see the erroneous URL makes it easier
to replace it with an active link.
Check My Links Broken Link Checker is not only a great tool to ensure
the accuracy of your page, but it’s also free, so even the most
budget-conscious startups can take advantage of this tool.
4) SEOmoz PRO Tools
SEOmoz PRO Tools
is designed for small and large businesses alike and can help
publishers better understand their Google rankings. Be forewarned that
it can take up to 7 days to get the full report, though, so this isn't
good for the SEO in a pinch.
With SEOmoz, you can see where each page ranks as well as see how
Google crawls your site. The full web crawl report takes a look at a
variety of components that are essential in Google search, including the
URL, title, and meta descriptions. It also looks at a list of common
SEO errors. The Excel report helps you quickly recognize where errors or
missing elements are stumping Google.
The crawl diagnostics added to the dashboard help you to visualize
exactly which errors are critical. It also tracks all changes that are
made, helping you keep track of what needs to be done to help Google
find your site. The critical areas can then be broken down into smaller,
targeted areas. Each of these warnings can easily be fixed to help
Google find the URLs.
Additionally, you’re able to link up to three competitors in order to
see how they compare in their optimization efforts. The side by side
comparison gives great insight into your strengths and weaknesses, as
well as your competitors’. It’s like snagging a rival team’s playbook,
giving you inside information on where opportunities lie!
SEOmoz PRO Tools offers a free 30-day trial, but subscription fees
are $99 a month afterwards. SEOmoz also provides its subscribers with a
vast array of resources including access to webinars, videos, and
guides.
5) HubSpot's Page Grader
A paid tool that comes with a HubSpot marketing software subscription,
the Pages tool
helps you, well, measure how effective the pages on your website are.
The tool both evaluates the SEO performance of each page on your
website, and provides actionable advice to improve underperforming
pages. On this page, for example, we would know that our meta
description needs to be fixed so the correct information is being pulled
into the SERPs, but the rest of our meta data is a-okay.
Along with evaluating on-page optimization, the
Pages tool
tells helps you track inbound links and keywords -- you can see not
only what keywords each individual page is ranking for in Google, but
also what other external or internal pages link to that page. This helps
paint a more robust picture of how well your off-page SEO is faring,
and how your link campaigns contribute to an individual page's ranking
in the SERPs.
The Pages tool even goes one step further, letting you drill down
into each individual link on a page so you can learn which ones are
helping your SEO and overall marketing strategy the most. For example,
this tool not only gives you an overall link grade, but even tells you
which links are sending traffic your way -- because inbound links are
important for both SEO
and lead generation!
6) HubSpot's Marketing Grader
If you’re wondering if your website and social media efforts are making the grade,
HubSpot’s Marketing Grader
is an excellent free tool. As its name implies, this tool gives your
website and up to two of your competitors a grade based upon how Google
views the site. It allows you to differentiate between B2B and B2C, and
take a look at your social media activity, as well. It’s a pretty cool
tool that also offers tips on how to improve your score -- and thus,
your website and marketing.
In addition to looking at how you are
using analytics to measure your marketing success, Marketing Grader gives you a grade based upon 2 key areas of the sales funnel:
The Top of the Funnel (TOFU): The top of the sales
funnel examines the efforts made to bring visitors to the website. It
looks at content creation, optimization, and promotion skills.
The Middle of the Funnel (MOFU): The middle of the
sales funnel takes a look at how well your conversion tactics are
working. It looks at landing pages, conversion forms, email marketing,
and social media.
You can see here that these two competing websites are nearly
identical, except in one very important aspect: One is failing to bring
visitors to its site. Neither is overly adept at converting visitors,
and both are doing a fair job at measuring their success (or lack
thereof).
One of the best features of Grader is its top tips to help increase
scores. It’s like getting a math tutor to help with your calculus
homework. Not only does it provide you with easy (sometimes no-brainer)
ways to increase traffic, but it also offers credible evidence as to why
it’s important to do so.
With Google’s increasing focus on building keywords into robust,
quality content, it's important to understand where how your page
content is performing. As you can see based on the results
Marketing Grader
returns, this website needs to ramp up its content to improve SEO.
Likewise, it needs to be savvier when it comes to adding alt tags to
images to help Google recognize what the image is about.
Another epic fail can be seen below, as this website doesn’t include
unique page descriptions. Although Google doesn’t recognize page
descriptions as part of its search algorithms, they are important in
helping drive traffic. The content placed in the page descriptions is
what Google uses to populate the brief summaries you see under URLs on
SERPs. If you don’t provide page descriptions, it defaults to the first
few sentences of the page content -- which can be either good or bad
depending on your page design. Google reads HTML code from the top down,
so if you’re using a column-based layout, for instance, content
appearing in a sidebar may come before the main content area, leaving
you with a random list of words as your page description in the SERPs.
Yikes.
Marketing Grader
uses its own algorithm to rank sites, and this one only got 3 out of 10
-- an indication that it needs to work much harder to get Google to
recognize it, drive traffic, and ultimately increase conversions.
Luckily, this tool not only identifies your site's problems, but gives
you tips on how to improve it. HubSpot’s Marketing Grader app is also
free and ridiculously easy to use, whether you're an SEO newbie or
veteran.
While you'll never get a look behind the Google curtain to learn
everything they know (or don't know) about your site, by leveraging SEO
best practices and getting the most out of tools like those listed here,
you can greatly increase the chances that your website will show up in
response to the right search queries.
This is a guest post written by Tom Demers. Tom is a co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM, a search engine marketing firm specializing in pay-per click campaign management, search engine optimization services such as SEO audits, and content marketing services such as guest posting.
