What are the top 3 things you evaluate when contracted to SEO a website?

[StreetwiseReports]

As a freelancer, what are the top 3 things you evaluate when contracted to SEO a website for a client?

[NakulGoyal]

1. Keyword Research - Making Sure the right keywords are being targeted. Identification of Top10/50/100 Keywords, Current Rankings, Competition Identification, Analysis and Comparison.
2. Site Index-ability, Keyword Targeting, Content Quality & any architecture level issues.
3. Domain Link Profile, Strength, Social & other business initiativesand assets that can drive domain authority.

Dividing the above 3 points into On-Page (1st 2 Items) and (3rd Item)

I hope this helps.

[BenFox]

1. Keyword research - are they targeting the right terms?
2. Crawlability - are spiders finding their pages easily? This includes site architecture.
3. Content  - are the pages any good/optimized.

And as a bonus you can explain to them how they're going to need to do some linkbuilding

[RichFinnSEO]

Assuming this is an existing website, first I would take a moment to determine what had been done up till now; so onpage, backlinks, traffic, etc.;  Second I would evaluate the UX making sure things flow for when the user is interacting and not causing a high bounce rate or other issues; Third I would analyze the competition as to determine an appropriate approach for the client to move forward on.  With us we offer our advice as a consult and/or service, where they can then take the info somewhere else if they like, or have us perform the optimizations.  Additionally we look at this a bit more in depth when in a real scenario, we try to bring a whole picture approach bringing in brand identity, development, and technology to aid in getting the desired results. Hope this helps with whatever you are looking for.

Todd Richard