So you have a website that is not doing too great in the search engines, and you have just now heard of search engine optimization but don’t know where to start. Welcome to the party! Or say you’re an SEO beginner who is taking on some websites to optimize — where should you begin? Here is a basic assessment checklist of what you should investigate about the site before diving in and doing any of the actual work.

1. Check the age of the domain

Why? The older the domain, usually the more authority it has and it has a greater chance to rank higher for the same keywords as a younger domain. If the domain is more than a few years old, you know you’re on a good track and should get results faster than if the domain was just registered.

How? Use whois.sc search or a free quick tool on SEOmoz.

2. Is there a canonical issue with the domain?

Does http://yourdomain.com redirect to http://www.yourdomain.com ?

Why? http://yourdomain.com should always redirect to http://www.yourdomain.com OR the other way around. You don’t want two different domain names (with and without www) to be on your site.

How? Just type in both domain names and see if it redirects. If it does not, you can set up the redirect in your hosting control panel, or do it in .htaccess file depending on the server, or just contact your hosting support/admin and let them know about it, if you’re not technically proficient. You can also set a preference just for Google in your Google Webmaster Central account – but it’s best to set it up on your server to serve all purposes, not just Google.

3. Check for ‘pre-existing’ conditions

Why? You want to see if any previous SEO work has put any kind of hindrance or penalties on the website.

How? If the site has been around for a while, just do a few Google searches for your brand and few of the keywords you SHOULD undoubtedly rank for to see if you do come up as #1 or close to it. That way you can get a quick check how the domain has performed in the past and if it suffered any penalties at all.

4. Is the site search engine friendly?

Why? Obviously, if it is not, it will make your work that much harder and you should look to change it up or rebuild it entirely from scratch.

How? Review the source code of the site. This is the only thing that search engines see. Do you see the content, navigation, links, etc. in the HTML code? If not, there can be multiple explanations:

  • Is the site in Flash?
  • Does it use frames?
  • Does it use javascript for parts of the content or navigation?

Ideally all the text and navigation should be in HTML, and if it’s your site you should really look to change the site structure to HTML/CSS. But if you run into a client or developer who just doesn’t buy it or insists on keeping it the way it is, there are few compromises that you can do:

  1. For a Flash site, you can suggest to restructure the site as HTML with Flash elements added in to keep the flair they’re looking for.
  2. Another compromise can be to build the HTML version of the Flash site to run behind the Flash, but that would mean the developer would need to worry about updating and maintaining two separate websites.
  3. For javascript dropdown navigation, you can use or suggest many free CSS menus that are available online and do pretty much the same thing as JS, but are search engine friendly. Or you can redo the JS navigation where it’s a combination of HTML and javascript,  i.e., the URLs are inside the HTML and javascript is only used to move them as needed.
  4. For other javascript functions that hide the text within javascript from the HTML source, make sure that the actual content/text is within HTML and then you can use javascript to only move/animate that content as needed. But if the content is within javascript, the search engines cannot see it.
  5. Frames just need to be removed. Nobody uses frames design anymore, and if your site is one of the dinosaurs it just needs to be rebuilt. Having one frame within a page for certain functionality is OK, but I’m talking about if your site is built entirely in frames and you cannot see any content in the source code because of it.

5. Has the site been previously optimized?

Why? If it has, then possibly you will need to do less work. Although, most of the time you would probably still need to redo what was done previously if it was done improperly.

How? Some of the quick things to check for are:

  • Title tags – are they different for each page? Do they contain keywords?
  • Does a Meta Description exist?
  • Is there interlinking within the content of the page that uses keywords?
  • Are keywords used at all/enough times within the content of the pages?
  • Is there a logical navigation structure that uses keywords?

6. Check the URL structure of the site

Why? The URL Structure must be search engine friendly. Google has a very informative article on the URL structure, which you should follow.

How? Change the URL structure to remove characters such as “?”, “=”, “&”, etc. If you have a dynamic website, make sure a sound URL structure is a requirement from the beginning. You will see many dynamic e-commerce sites use something like this for a product page: domain.com/product.php?id=2343&color=23489. That’s an example of a really bad URL. Instead, use product names and keep the pages as close to the root domain as possible – for example, domain.com/video-games or domain.com/video-games.html. Using keywords inside the URLs can help as well, but it’s best not to make them too long. Also, use dashes “-” to separate the words.

7. Check for broken URLs

Why? Having broken URLs means you’re missing out on link juice or potential traffic. It can also cause confusion from the visitors that may not bother with your site if the URL they clicked on is broken.

How? Register your site in Google Webmaster Central. It’s a good idea to do this anyway to help your site get indexed, so kill two birds with one stone and also use their tools to see if they found any broken URLs. If there are, make sure you 301 redirect those to matching pages or to the homepage.

8. Run a crawl check on the site

Why? Obviously your site needs to be easily crawlable, and there are some great tools available that will give you a quick overview and suggest how to fix issues.

How? You can use Google Webmaster Central to point out any obvious issues. But also there are other tools available that go in deeper: SEOmoz, Raven SEO Tools, and SEO Book have some great tools that will scan your site and will point out anything that may be wrong with it.

9. Run a backlink report

Why? You want to see how many links are pointing back to the site, which anchor keywords are being used, and the quality of the links you’re getting (PageRank, Link Juice, etc.)

How? The quick and free way is to use Yahoo Site Explorer. If you want to a nice report complete with anchor text and/or link juice, you can use the SEOmoz Linkscape, Raven SEO Tools, Majestic-SEO, or some others that are available. I personally like Link Research Tools, which goes really in-depth.

10. See which keywords the site is already ranking for

Why? This should factor in your keyword research. If you’re already ranking on page 2 and 3 for certain keywords, it should be easier to get those keywords to page 1.

How? SEM Rush is a great tool for this. It will show you what you rank for and can suggest keywords that are related. You can also run this report to see what your competitors are ranking for.

The above is just a start-up list of things to do before you even get to some of the more in-depth SEO research, on-site changes and link building, but you should check all these things and MORE, whether you’re starting SEO for your own site or taking on a new project as an SEO.