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
-
Training - How Google Crawls & Indexes Websites
Hi Does anyone know of any online training resources/webinars/training UK based that will cover the following for SEO: Why monitoring how search engines crawl and index content is important and how this can improve your SEO performance Using Google advanced operators to evaluate website indexation How to use log file data to gain insight into how search engines crawl and index content Techniques to control how search engines crawl and index content How search engines deal with JavaScript, common frameworks and SEO considerations I'm trying to develop my technical knowledge - I have always been more focused on content/KWD research/optimisation. Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Searching for Compelling Hard Data on why B2B Websites Should Be Responsive
I am being asked to provide hard data in support the migration to a responsive website for a large B2B website. I have searched for any case studies showing before/after comparisons - no luck. I can easily show: Current data on desktop vs mobile visitors, their bounce rate, pages per visit, etc. Google Analytics Benchmark data - really compelling stuff there! In the past year, 100K visitors have come to the site from mobile devices. GWMTs shows the client not receiving mobile impressions for important keywords, All the close competitors have gone responsive. In APAC regions, mobile is more widely used than in the USA. BUT, I can’t show that making this expensive and time-consuming transition will result in more revenue. The client is a financial services software company, with a 2-3 year sales cycle. Has anyone seen data to support this transition? Thanks everyone! Have a great long weekend.
Algorithm Updates | | RosemaryB0 -
Question: About Google's personalization of search results and its impact on monitoring ranking results
Given Google's personalization of search results for anyone who's logged into a Google property, how realistic and how actually meaningful/worthwhile is it to monitor one's ranking results for any keyword term these days?
Algorithm Updates | | RandallScrubs0 -
New Website Old Domain - Still Poor Rankings after 1 Year - Tagging & Content the culprit?
I've run a live wedding band in Boston for almost 30 years, that used to rank very well in organic search. I was hit by the Panda Updates August of 2014, and rankings literally vanished. I hired an SEO company to rectify the situation and create a new WordPress website -which launched January 15, 2015. Kept my old domain: www.shineband.com Rankings remained pretty much non-existent. I was then told that 10% of my links were bad. After lots of grunt work, I sent in a disavow request in early June via Google Wemaster Tools. It's now mid October, rankings have remained pretty much non-existent. Without much experience, I got Moz Pro to help take control of my own SEO and help identify some problems (over 60 pages of medium priority issues: title tag character length and meta description). Also some helpful reports by www.siteliner.com and www.feinternational.com both mentioned a Duplicate Content issue. I had old blog posts from a different domain (now 301 redirecting to the main site) migrated to my new website's internal blog, http://www.shineband.com/best-boston-wedding-band-blog/ as suggested by the SEO company I hired. It appears that by doing that -the the older blog posts show as pages in the back end of WordPress with the poor meta and tile issues AS WELL AS probably creating a primary reason for duplicate content issues (with links back to the site). Could this most likely be viewed as spamming or (unofficial) SEO penalty? As SEO companies far and wide daily try to persuade me to hire them to fix my ranking -can't say I trust much. My plan: put most of the old blog posts into the Trash, via WordPress -rather than try and optimize each page (over 60) adjusting tagging, titles and duplicate content. Nobody really reads a quick post from 2009... I believe this could be beneficial and that those pages are more hurtful than helpful. Is that a bad idea, not knowing if those pages carry much juice? Realize my domain authority not great. No grand expectations, but is this a good move? What would be my next step afterwards, some kind of resubmitting of the site, then? This has been painful, business has fallen, can't through more dough at this. THANK YOU!
Algorithm Updates | | Shineband1 -
With regards to SEO is it good or bad to remove all the old events from our website?
Our website sells tickets for various events across the UK, we do have a LOT of old event pages on our website which simply say SOLD OUT. What is the best practice? Should these event pages be removed and a 301 redirect added to redirect to the home page? Or should these pages remain in tact with simply SOLD OUT on the page?
Algorithm Updates | | Alexogilvie0 -
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 -
Linking to authority / competitor website!? Yes or No?
Here is the dilema .... People say, don't be afraid to link to authority website! What if an authority website in particular niche is actually competing with you in the Search, but you do have a review profile there? Is it ok to link to that profile ? Should I include a no follow tag ? Another case : some other authority high ranked website competing in search with mine directly has a profile page for my company, but this authority website has blocked Google bot to crawl the profile page all the reviews there !? Can I still link to that page and will this be appreciated by Google ? Am I passing PR and link juice from my website to those direct comeptitors / authority websites ?
Algorithm Updates | | montauto0 -
Question about Local / Regional SEO
Good Morning Moz Community, I have a local SEO/regional SEO question. I apologize if this question is duplicated from another area on this forum but, a query of the term Regional SEO showed no results, as did similar queries. Please preference this entire question with "Knowing what we know about the most recent changes to local search" I know what has worked in the past, my concern is Now. Working with a heavily regulated client that is regional, mostly East Coast US. They are in Financial Services and state licensing is a requirement. They are licensed in 15 states. Obviously, it would look foolish, in this day in age, to Title Tag individual pages with local modifiers and have numerous pages covering a similar topic with not much difference than localized modifiers in front of the keyword. I've never found that SE's can understand broad regional terms such as New England or Mid Atlantic or Southeast or Northeast, if someone knows different please share. Aside from an exact match search. The client does have 7 offices in various states. Perfectly matching and consistent listings in G Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local was step one and all their locations are now in those services and there are many more smaller local citation listings are in the works. We have also successfully implemented a plan to generate great reviews from actual customers, for each location, they're receiving a few a day right now. Their local places listings, where they have physical locations, are doing very well but: 1. What would the community's suggestion be on generating more targeted traffic in the 8 states where they have no physical location? 2. The client wants to begin creating smaller blogs that are highly localized to the states and major population centers that they do not have a physical location in. There is an open check book to dedicate to this effort however, I do a lot of work in this industry so I want to offer the best possible, most up to date advice, my concern is that these efforts will have two results: a. be obscured by the ”7 pack" by companies with local brick and mortar b. would detract from the equity built in their existing blog by generating content in other domains, I would prefer to continue growing the main blog. 3. As a follow up, it has been documented that Google is now using the same algorithm for local, personal and personalized, that being the case, is there any value in building links to you Places page? Can you optimize your Places page by using the same off site techniques as you would traditionally? Sorry to kill you with such a long question on a Sunday 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | dogflog1