Summer is on its way and so we thought it was time for a quick review of your website.

Anyone who knows us will tell you we have a site analysis process we follow to check websites on over 100 different parameters. That's over 100 things we look for that can affect rankings and conversions on a website. But more of that in a moment.

In the next three minutes we're going to take just five of those 100+ elements so you can understand the importance of them and apply better principles to your website.

1. Broken Links?
How many broken internal links does your website have? Whether they are misspelled or pages have been removed it's important to clean them up, as search engines loathe broken links. So check your internal links are all working and all content pages are in place.

2. Linking to Iffy Sites?
Are the sites you link to still there and are they trustworthy? If your website links out to other websites then now is the time to check them - Google makes it very clear that linking to bad sites or bad neighbourhoods can have an adverse effect on your site's rankings.

So you want to check:

a/ Their website is still live and active and
b/ The website is genuine and of good quality.

3. Keyword Overkill?
Including relevant keywords people search for into your site copy is a basic part of SEO but are you making sure that the repetition of keywords in your content is acceptable - or are you keyword stuffing? (This implies over-using keywords in your pages.) Have a think about this because an over-use of keywords can cause a site problems and of course not using them at all in your site copy will leave you in the wilderness.

4. Can I find the same content you have on other domains?
When you look at your website is there anywhere I can find the same content elsewhere online - either on another site or your website?

If so you are effectively duplicating content, and search engines will not value your site highly for this. If content is being replicated with similar navigation on another domain you own then you run a more serious risk that one (or more) of the domains will be ignored or penalised. For more on duplicate content click here >>

5. And finally to use another notion from Google: "Don't be Evil"
Ask yourself this - is there anything you're doing right now to your website in an attempt to improve search rankings that you would not feel comfortable explaining to a competitor or even to Google? Hidden text? Hidden Links? Keyword Stuffing? Ask yourself this and answer it honestly. If the answer's YES and you know you are doing things you shouldn't, then you are probably taking unnecessary risks with your business. With so many legitimate ways to help promote a website leave behind anything you suspect to be underhand.

Summary:
So there were FIVE TIPS to get you going on your website. Whilst it's only a small part of the analysis we do for clients, we hope it's been useful to you

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