Run it through the following 20 point fitness assessment to find out:
Is your site fully search engine compatible? Are all your pages being indexed by the major search engines?
Do you track your visitor statistics on a regular basis? Do you use the information provided by your visitor statistics to improve your site?
Is your web site accessible to visually-impaired visitors? Does it meet the international standards set down by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)?
Do you know which sites and search engines provide you with the most traffic? Do you use this information to increase your traffic further?
Do you track the source of all reported errors in your site statistics and fix them promptly?
Do you know which keywords your site was found for in the search engines? Have you conducted keyword research to determine what search terms your target markets are looking for so you can optimise for them?
Does your web site HTML code validate to W3 standards? Do you check for validation regularly?
Do you measure your visitor sign-ups and conversions on a regular basis? Do you tweak your landing page copy to increase the conversion rates?
Is your site navigation intuitive and are your visitors following the navigation paths you intended?
Do you encourage feedback from your site visitors and provide an obvious way for them to provide such feedback?
Are there at least 250 words of text on your home page to satisfy search engines?
Does your site contain a visible, text-based site map to aid user navigation?
Do you have an ongoing link building campaign running to secure more incoming links to your site and improve your site's link popularity score?
Does your site have a high percentage of repeat visitors? Are the majority of your visitors staying on your site for more than a minute?
Do your search engine referrals and site traffic figures grow each month?
Unless you can answer yes to all the questions in the above checklist, your web site is not working hard enough for you and needs a workout. Get to it!
About the Author: Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimisation experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimisation and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
Other Articles by Kalena: If you need to go back to basics, then check out Kalena's article on 10 Easy Steps to a User Friendly Website. This article was authored in 2003 but it still holds true today.
