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
-
Ranking impact: Traffic in website pages vs sub directory vs sub domain
Hi all, I need clarification on this. Not every time website main pages rank, some times even pages from sub directories or sub domains like blogs or guides; especially for branded keywords. I just wonder what happens when so much traffic is generating in sub directories and sub domains just because of limited landing pages in main website. Will this traffic be counted as traffic in main website as per Google? Traffic increase in main website really an ranking factor? Will the "brand + topic" related keywords' traffic is more for a website; will it ranking improves even for "topic keywords"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Old school SEO tools / software / websites
Hey Mozzers, I am doing some research and wonder if you can help me out? Before Moz, Hubspot, Majestic, Screaming Frog and all the other awesome SEO tools we use today what were the SEO tools / software / websites that were used for aiding SEO? I guess we can add the recently closed Yahoo! Directory for starters! Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | RikkiD220 -
Website Recovery
We have a client who is experiencing much in the way off duplicated content and broken, spammed inbound links. While we are removing and correcting everything using google webmaster, I'm hearing stories of websites not being able to recover from algorithms/penalties applied because of this. My client had around 250 inbound links to their website and over the space of 3 weeks mounted over 8,000 unethical links. Any information surrounding this issue would be much apprecited. Thanks Gary
Algorithm Updates | | GaryVictory0 -
Sitemap Question - Should I exclude or make a separate sitemap for Old URL's
So basically, my website is very old... 1995 Old. Extremely old content still shows up when people search for things that are outdated by 10-15+ years , I decided not to drop redirects on some of the irrelevant pages. People still hit the pages, but bounce... I have about 400 pages that I don't want to delete or redirect. Many of them have old backlinks and hold some value but do interfere with my new relevant content. If I dropped these pages into a sitemap, set the priority to zero would that possibly help? No redirects, content is still valid for people looking for it, but maybe these old pages don't show up above my new content? Currently the old stuff is excluded from all sitemaps.. I don't want to make one and have it make the problem worse. Any advise is appreciated. Thx 😄
Algorithm Updates | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Do panda/penguin algorithm updates hit websites or just webpages ?
If I have a website that been affected by the panda/penguin update, do bad links affect the entire site or just the page the bad link(s) are linked to? If it is the latter and penguin/panda actually affect webpages, not websites (as is the common reference/conception), then wouldn't simply creating a new URL, targeting this new URL, shifting meta-tags and restarting link-building efforts again (this time using the right quality strategies) be a really common-sense approach instead of the tediousness of the disavow approach that so many go down?
Algorithm Updates | | Gavo0 -
Organizing Website Content
Hey everyone! I am looking for some opinions on organizing website content. Here are two thoughts. I am open to alternative suggestions as well. Thanks for any consideration in this matter! **Aviation Supply Store Thought A ** **Helicopters Airplanes Rockets ** Helicopter engines Airplane engines Rocket engines Helicopter Fuels Airplane Fuels Rocket fuels Helicopter Accessories Airplane Accessories Rocket Accessories Aviation Supply Store Thought B Engines Fuels Accessories Helicopter Engines Helicopter Fuels Helicopter Accessories Airplane Engines Airplane Fuels Airplane Accessories Rocket Engines Rocket Fuels Rocket Accessories I simply chose aviation as an example. I'm just having difficulty deciding on how best to catagorize. Thank You!
Algorithm Updates | | APICDA0 -
Google new update question
I was just reading this, http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/220662 We have our official site, which has 200+ service pages, which we wrote once and we keep doing SEO for them, so they rank high all the time. Now my question is, how does Google handle the site freshness ? Service static pages or if we are adding blog items, then also they consider them as fresh site, right ? So, we dont have to update those service pages, right ?
Algorithm Updates | | qubesys0 -
Why bing is not indexing our website?
We are up almost a six month already, google indexed 46,900 pages. We have decent traffic and a lot of real external links to us. No single page has been indexed by bing or yahoo. I have submitted sitemap to bing's webmaster tool two weeks ago and still it is in Pending stage. here is our address: www.showme.com and here is site map: http://www.showme.com/sitemapxml.php What can be the reason of that? Thanks for your help. Karen Bdoyan
Algorithm Updates | | showme0