Website analysis report

PROGEAR

Website Analysis Report

Prepared by:

TechMaza Infotech

July 27th 2012


Contents

TECHNICAL WEBSITE ANALYSIS........................................................................................................................4

1. Footer Links...........................................................................................................................................4

2. XML Sitemap.........................................................................................................................................6

3. Page Not Found.....................................................................................................................................8

4. CSS of Top Navigation & Image Slider...................................................................................................9

ON PAGE ANALYSIS........................................................................................................................................10

1. On-Page Content.................................................................................................................................10

2. Navigation...........................................................................................................................................11

3. Breadcrumbs.......................................................................................................................................13

4. Images.................................................................................................................................................14

5. Internal Linking...................................................................................................................................15

6. HTML Sitemap.....................................................................................................................................16

7. Pagination...........................................................................................................................................17

8. Social Sharing......................................................................................................................................19

LINK ANALYSIS................................................................................................................................................20

1. External Links......................................................................................................................................20

TOOLS FOR ANALYSIS.....................................................................................................................................21

2. Google Analytics..................................................................................................................................21

3. Google & Bing Webmaster Tools........................................................................................................21


TECHNICAL WEBSITE ANALYSIS

1. Footer Links Best Practices: Footer Links are usually present at the bottom of the website. They are extremely important from an SEO perspective because they provide the crawler with more entry points to inner pages of the website. Targeting keyword rich keywords footer links in the footer links helps improve the site from an SEO perspective.

Observation & Impact: We have observed that the current footer does not have links to significant pages on the site. The following screenshot illustrates the same –

Source: http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/

Recommendations: In the current footer, we recommend adding links to the key sections on the site. For e.g. links to the pages of all brands can be placed in the footer. Additionally, links to the top category pages can also be incorporated. This is beneficial from a usability perspective as users will be able to navigate to a different section at any point of time during their visit. Furthermore, this is also recommended from an SEO perspective as additional links in footer will ensure that the crawler has multiple entry points to access the inner pages of the website. For instance, consider the following example of footer section of a site –


Source: http://www.rei.com/

From the above screenshot it is evident that the footer has links to all the important pages on the site.

Furthermore, we recommend adding a no-follow attribute (rel=’nofollow’) on the W3C widgets placed in the footer.

This will ensure that we do not pass any link value to an external website.


2. XML SitemapSitemaps are essentially lists of all the pages on the website, which facilitate the search engines and users to move through the website. The two kinds of sitemaps that are usually implemented are XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps. XML sitemaps are primarily meant for the search engines as a reference and lists all URLs for a site. It allows the webmaster to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.

ObservationXML Sitemap: Existing XML sitemap on the website has no priority or frequency defined. The following Screenshot illustrates the same –

RecommendationsXML Sitemap: An XML should be created including additional information about each URL such as change frequency & priority allowing search engine spiders to crawl the site more intelligently . The ‘changefreq’ attribute specifies how often the page is updated, and therefore how often crawlers should visit the page to ensure up-to-date data. The priority of various URLs present on the XML sitemap can be tweaked. The priorities should be tweaked according to the importance of a page with respect to the site. The following table provides a generic guideline that can be followed while creating an XML sitemap –


The tweaking of values of attributes – ‘priority’ & ‘change frequency’ will be taken care at our end. We will also submit the optimised XML sitemap to Google & Bing Webmaster Tools


Type of Page Priority Change FrequencyHome Page 1 DailyCategory Pages 0.95 DailySub- Category Pages 0.9 Weekly

Final Product Pages 0.85 Monthly

3. Page Not FoundBest Practices: One of the primary ways to impact your websites ranking factor is broken links. Essentially, broken links can leech vitality from your most cherished landing pages and affects the trust that your website has established with search engines.

Observation It is observed that currently, URL http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/news//Under_Armour_2.html has no page and returns error “No such category with named 'Under Armour 2.html'”. This page is available comes under Information -> News when you click on Read More.

RecommendationsThe News Page can be used for presenting fresh blogs but it returns error and has no content at the moment, also the error “No such category with named 'Under Armour 2.html’” should be fixed as soon as possible.


http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/news/Under_Armour_2.html

4. CSS of Top Navigation & Image Slider Observation & Impact:

We have observed that the top image slider &left image slider on the home page is implemented using JavaScript and CSS. However, if a user has disabled JavaScript on the browser, the user will be able to see the navigation and images as follows.


Recommendations: It is recommended to use HTML 5 and CSS 3 to implement image sliders along with current JavaScript.


ON PAGE ANALYSIS

1. On-Page Content

Best PracticesContent is the most important on-page factor that search engines look for when evaluating the value of a website. Websites having a lot of informative, unique content are always valued highly by search engines. Moreover, it is also very important to add fresh content to the website periodically. The content of a webpage should ideally include at least 3-4 instances of a keyword relevant to that page.

Observation & ImpactHome Page Content

Currently, the home page has adequate content that is relevant to the business domain. However, we have observed that the keyword density is relatively low.

RecommendationsMore unique, keyword rich and relevant content should be placed on the Home page. This will help improve the site from an SEO perspective.

2. Navigation

Best PracticesThe Navigation should include links to the top category and sub category pages of the website. This helps in building a stronger theme for the website and also provides additional entry points to the search engine spiders to crawl through the website.


Observation & ImpactThe top navigation does not include sub-category and product level pages under the respective category or section. The following screenshot illustrates the same –

Source: http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Canterbury

RecommendationsTo improve user behavior and crawling we can add links to the sub – category pages by including a ‘Secondary Navigation’ on the website by providing a mouse hover or drop down to main categories.

Please find below the screen shot illustrating the same –


Source: http://www.skins.net/index.aspx

This will help us build a stronger theme on the website. Furthermore, such an implementation will ensure that the inner pages are easily accessible from home page. This will also provide additional entry points to the search engine spiders to crawl through the website.


Main Category

Sub Categories / Secondary Navigation

3. Breadcrumbs

Best PracticesBreadcrumbs or a breadcrumb trail is a navigation aid used in user interfaces. It gives users a way to keep track of their locations within programs or documents. Breadcrumbs provide a trail for the user to follow back to the starting or entry point. In terms of an SEO perspective, the breadcrumbs give the spiders more entry points in the site.

Observation & ImpactBreadcrumbs are not present on the site. The following screenshot illustrates the same –

Source: http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Women_All_Products

RecommendationsBreadcrumbs should be added to the site. The anchor text used in the bread crumb navigation should be modified so as to include the most relevant keyword for a page to link to the particular page. This will provide information about the complete trail and the landing page of the website that the user is on. Also, it will provide the crawlers more number of entry points to crawl through the website.For Example – Progear Sports Apparel – Home > Women All Products > Canterbury_Cold_Gloves


http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Women_All_Products/Canterbury_Cold_Gloves

http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Women_All_Products

http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/

Image is missing on this page

4. Images

Best PracticesImages are very important if the website is a shopping cart, it because sometimes you images speak more than your text or content on product page. Images are crawled and positioned in search engine optimisation by their presence and by the ALT attribute text.

Observation & ImpactImage not present in most of the product pages of the website. The following screenshot illustrates the same –

Source: http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products/Armour_Fleece_FZ_Hoody

RecommendationsMissing images on the product pages of website should be fixed, this may be an error due to some

CSS linked to Image files.


5. Internal Linking

Best PracticesContent based internal links, linking to other pages of a website is extremely important from an SEO perspective. Internal links help increase the number of entry points to a site for a crawler. Internal links are also extremely important to create relevant themes around a site.

Observation & ImpactSome content pages like Home Page and Why Choose Us contains link in a URL. The following screenshot illustrates the same –


RecommendationInstead of using direct URL (HTTP://WWW.PROGEAR-UK.CO.UK/SPECIAL_OFFERS) it can be used as some text that is linked to the target page using tag “<A HREF></A>”. Also in place of email address of Sales ([email protected]), Contact Us text can be used to link Contact Us Page for Sales Contact.


Internal Server Error

Blank Page / No Content

6. HTML Sitemap

Best PracticesSitemaps are essentially lists of all the pages on the website, which facilitate the search engines and users to move through the website. The two kinds of sitemaps that are usually implemented are XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps. An HTML site map is visible to the user and is also useful from point of view of navigation.

Observation & ImpactSome Pages mentioned in Sitemap has no data or return 505 errors.

HTML Sitemap: The HTML sitemap is present on the site. However, the current site map contains only links. The following screenshot illustrates the same –

Source: http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/sitemap

RecommendationsAn updated HTML sitemap needs to be added on the site, wherein the top category and sub-category pages should include a two line description of each page. This will ensure that the current page does not only contain links, but also contains adequate content which is highly recommended from an SEO perspective.


We have observed that ‘FEATURED PRODUCTS’ link in the Sitemap returns a blank page. Also the page ‘LINESAVE SUPPORT LINK’ returns 505 internal server error. It is recommended that these errors are fixed in order to avoid any issues in the future.

7. Pagination

Best PracticesPagination is a way of organising or numbering a large amount of data within a webpage to make it more manageable and user friendly. Although it is good from a usability perspective, it is not completely an SEO friendly method as dividing products across multiple pages could diffuse link value to all those pages instead of maintaining & preserving it within the first-page.

Observation & ImpactLet us consider the example of the ‘BEST SELLERS’ section. Following is a snapshot of the same


RecommendationsWhen the user lands on this page - the URL is - http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products.

Now, when the user clicks on option ‘2’ to go to the next page, the URL changes to http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products/?sortmethod=name&page=2

When the user goes further to the next page i.e. ‘3’, the URL changes to - http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products/?sortmethod=name&page=3.

This continues every time a user moves on to the next page.

Now, this hampers the overall SEO value of the site because the link value for the appropriate page gets distributed amongst all these URLs as opposed to getting attributed to the first-page i.e. http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products

Therefore, it is critical to resolve this issue as we may lose out on the SEO value for the main page.

Recommendations

This can be resolved by placing html tags rel='next' & rel='prev' in the following manner on the main page - http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products, the following tag should be placed in the <head> section of the page -

<link rel="next" href="http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products/?sortmethod=name&page=2" />

The above tag indicates a search engine spider that the next page i.e. http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products/?sortmethod=name&page=2 is related to the main page and is a continuation of the same.

Now, on the page ‘2’ i.e. http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products/?sortmethod=name&page=2, the following tag should be placed -

<link rel="prev" href="http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products" />

<link rel="next" href="http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products/?sortmethod=name&page=3" />

This indicates the spider that page ‘2’ is a continuation of the previous page and it also indicates that it is related to the next page ‘3’ i.e. http://www.progear-uk.co.uk/Men_All_Products/?sortmethod=name&page=3

Similarly, tags should be applied to all other pages within the category, to avoid this issue.

This tells Google that all these paginated results are part of a larger set and treat these pages as one; as far as attribution of the link value is concerned.


Pagination (e.g. 1 | 2 | 3 etc.) would make news stories more navigable (should use rel=“next” / rel=“prev” tagging)

8. Social Sharing

Best PracticesFor users, social bookmarking can be useful as a way to access a consolidated set of bookmarks from various computers, organize large numbers of bookmarks, and share bookmarks with contacts

Observation & ImpactIt has been observed that there is no social sharing widget or icon available on any section of the website for user to share the product with their friends or contacts at Social Bookmarking or Social networking websites.

RecommendationFollowing screenshots shows how social sharing icons are present on a shopping cart and can be implemented for sharing website on various social network platforms.


Social Sharing

Source: http://www.jdsports.co.uk/product/nike-terry-shorts/19028/?cm_re=HomeMain-_-Product-Row-3-_-19028

LINK ANALYSIS

1. External Links

Best PracticesLink building is often mentioned as the trump card for Search Engine Optimisation. Therefore it is a necessity rather than an option to gather more links. Links from external sources to a particular page are like votes of trust for that page. The quality of an external link is not only determined by the anchor text used but also by the content surrounding the anchor text. The anchor text should ideally be the most generic, traffic-generating keyword and links should be built from relevant sources.

Observation & Impact: We have observed that the domain, http://www.esurv.co.uk/has 118 incoming links recognised from 37 different domains.

Recommendations: Considering the competitive nature of the business domain; building more quality one-way links for the website is highly recommended. We will build such external links to the various pages on the website through various link building activities.


TOOLS FOR ANALYSIS

2. Google Analytics

Description(Priority: High)

Description: Google Analytics is an analytical tool provided by Google for webmasters to track traffic coming to their websites from any source. It helps them analyse the sources & keywords that bring the most traffic as well as keywords which generate maximum conversions. Funnels can be created to track the user’s navigation through a website and various statistics can be derived to improve the user experience. Installing Google Analytics is one of the basic steps of an SEO setup for a particular website.

Observation & Impact: Currently there is a Google Analytics account for the website. However, the tracking code used is a traditional tracking Google Analytics code.

Recommendations: It is recommended to setup asynchronous Google Analytics code on the website. The asynchronous code has following benefits: • Faster overall page load time. • Improved collection for short visits to rich media or script-heavy pages. • Collecting (and retaining) user clicks that occur before the tracking code loads.

The asynchronous code should be placed at the bottom of the <head> section of your webpage just before the closing of the head tag.

3. Google & Bing Webmaster Tools (Priority: High)


Description: Google Webmaster and Bing Tools is another analytical tool provided by Google and Bing to webmasters to make their websites as "Search Engine-friendly" as possible. Keyword as well as link statistics can be obtained from this tool which helps map keywords to particular pages and also lets webmasters know how many external links have been identified by Google, Bing and the sources of these links. This tool also allows webmasters to submit an XML sitemap to Google, Bing which helps the search engine spiders crawl the website systematically.

Observation & Impact: Currently there is no Google Webmaster or Bing Tools account tag present on the website.

Recommendations: It is recommended to setup a Google and Bing Webmaster Tools account for the website.


Website analysis report

Education

current footer

additional links

external links

footer links best practices

external website

page analysis

link analysis

inner pages