Onsite auditdoc

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
Call : 800-506-0398 • 7227 N. 16th St., Suite 270 • Phoenix, AZ 85020
http://www.pinnaclecart.com/
Conducting Onsite Audits
How to Audit Onsite SEO Issues

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
The SEO audit includes:
● Logical Document Structure
○ Title tags
○ Meta descriptions
○ Headings Content
○ Images
○ Links
● Base Pages
○ About
○ Contact
○ FAQ
○ Privacy
○ Terms
○ Shipping
● Accessibility (Section 508)
○ Forms
■ Labels
■ Tabindex
○ Alt Attributes
○ Title Attributes
● Status Codes (200, 404, 301, 302, 500)
● Duplicate Content
● Micro formats
○ Schema
■ Product
■ Breadcrumbs
○ Open Graph
○ Google
■ Author/Publisher
● Page Speed
○ HTTP Keep-alives
○ GZip Compression
○ Browser caching
○ Image Optimization
■ Spritemaps
○ Minify & Combine
● Social Media
○ Thank-you pages
○ Header & Footer
○ Comments
○ Pinterest
○ Facebook
○ Twitter
○ LinkedIn

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
Logical Document Structure
All HTML Documents should be logically organized, consistent and
relevant to the search queries the document is meant to serve.
● Title Tags:
○ Title tags must be under 66 characters, with primary keyword(s) in close proximity to
the very beginning of the tag content.
● Meta Descriptions:
○ Meta descriptions must be under 156 characters, contain relevant keyword(s) and
contain a call to action.
● Headings:
○ All headings, without exception, should reside as in-content items. Template items that
are repeated across several pages must not reside in a <h> tag.
■ Example:
● “Leopard Print Area Rugs” – Correct
● “Categories” - Incorrect
○ Headings have a parent-child relationship. There is no H2 tag without an 1 taHg before
it, likewise, there is no H3 tag without a prior H1 and H2 tag. H2 is a subsection of the
primary subject, H1, H3 is a subsection of H2.
○ It’s possible for long-copy(long pages) to contain multiple H1 tags. This content must be
separated from the other content by an <hr> tag to signify a thematic change in
content.
○ H1 must be consistent with the <title> tag
● Images:

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
○ Non-content images should never reside within a <img> tag. Images that only aid
design/layout should be CSS backgrounds
○ All images within <img> tags must, without exception, contain an alt attribute to
concisely describe the image, using keywords when necessary.
○ All images must have a set width and height attribute to prevent browser reflow. The
height and width attributes must reflect the actual height and width of the image.
○ Images must be optimized for page-speed
○ All images should be optimized for best page-speed. In photoshop use File>Save for
Web & Devices. JPG’s usually work at 61% compression.
○ Images with a limited amount of colors may be optimal as PNG-8 without transparency.
Within Save for web & devices, reduce the scope of Palette while retaining the images
original look.
● Links
○ Any and all links to mailto: or tel: in the href attribute should have a rel=”nofollow”
attribute
○ All links, without exception, should have a title attribute that concisely, within 66
characters, describes the destination page and is consistent with the destination <title>
tag
○ All phone numbers must be contained within a link using <a href=”tel:+18008885555”
title=”Call 1-800-888-5555” rel=”nofollow”>(800) 888-5555</a> for mobile compatibility
○ All links, with a priority on internal links, must link to a 200 status code and never to
404, 500, 301 status codes. 302 status codes may be linked to only when linking to
content areas that are not to be crawled such as an account administration area.
○ Outbound links that link to non-reputable or potentially non-reputable websites, or
potentially temporary content must contain a rel=”nofollow” attribute.

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
Accessibility (Section 508)
"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful." – Google.com
● Forms
○ Labels
■ Form labels must contain a “for” attribute corresponding to it’s <input>
counterpart ID. Example:
● <label for=”name”>Name:</label>
<input type=”text” id=”name”>
○ Tabindex
■ All input, select, textarea tags must contain a tabindex attribute beginning with
1 to signify the order form elements will be selected when a user presses the
TAB key on their keyboard.
● Alt Attributes
○ As an accessibility feature, all images must contain an alt attribute. Alt attributes must
be set and must identify the image concisely using keywords when possible.
● Title Attributes
○ As an accessibility feature, all links must contain a title attribute. Title attributes must
concisely (in under 66 characters) describe the destination page.

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
Base Pages
Real companies have real helpful support pages. They can be an
indicator of legitimacy and a source of useful, optimized content.
● About
○ We want the best about us page of all time, inclusive of available images, video, press,
social media integrations and at least 3 paragraphs with 3 headings
■ Example
● Who are we?
● Our mission statement
● Our commitment
● Contact
○ Contact pages must be the best possible contact pages available.
■ Contact pages include:

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
● Address
● Phone number(s)
● Google Maps widget (if applicable)
● A brief paragraph tag explaining for inviting contact
● One or more clickable mailto: links without @ - Use the actual email
address and deal with the spam off-site.
● FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
○ Include as many questions & answers as possible. Use logical headings for both the
contents of questions and answers.
○ Cover even seemingly obvious questions & answers
○ Include shipping/product questions/answers that are even clearly answered on other
areas of the site.
○ Make the FAQ comprehensive
● Privacy & Terms
○ Real websites have privacy & terms.
○ Privacy policies are required by any website that collects data
● Shipping
○ Any website that ships products should have a comprehensive, descriptive shipping
page outlining any and all caveats, policies, and methods with regard to shipping.
Status Codes
Bad Status Codes are a clear indicator of a bad user experience with
dead-ends in place of destinations.

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
● Internal Links
○ Every link within a websites internal navigation should point to a 200 status code unless
a 302 status code is being used specifically to block search engine spiders from crawling.
Linking to 404 or 500 status codes is completely unacceptable. Linking to 301 redirects is
poor practice and is not optimal for page-rank.
● Inbound Links
○ Inbound links from search engines or referring websites should never point to 404 or
500 errors.
■ When unable to modify external link, provide a 301 redirect to the most
substantially-similar page
● 301 status codes (Permanent redirects) are to be used in every event of a page moving
permanently to another URL.
○ When a URL is no longer in use, use 301 redirects to instruct google where this content
as moved, and where to credit Page Rank to.
Duplicate Content

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
Duplicate Content can divide and conquer your website
● Resolve duplicate content issues
Duplicate content or the same content showing for two different URL’s may divide your efforts,
or PageRank, without the proper use of the mechanisms used to prevent duplicate content.
Duplicate content can happen when an existing website shows exact duplicate pages of the
same content on different URL’s, when content has been taken from another source or when
multiple domain names display the same content.
○ Canonical
■ Use canonical link elements to instruct Google to the preferred URL for
particular pages content.
■ Canonical link elements done incorrectly can be dangerous and cause problems
for the entire website
○ 301 Redirects
■ Slightly better than canonical link elements is the 301 redirect. Google looks at
any change to a URL as a potentially different page
● Example
○ http://www.pinnaclecart.com
○ http://www.pinnaclecart.com/
○ These URLs are seen as completely different locations by Google
and if they are not resolved properly using canonical link
elements and/or 301 redirects, they can divide your page rank.
○ Stolen Content
■ Content that has been plagiarized or stolen from another content source
without proper citation is not optimal and may actually count as a vote for the
original content publisher rather than useful content for your website.

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
Microformats
Semantic web is the future of the internet, providing higher-quality
search engine results & faster answers for users.
Microformats can make it easier for users to find information on the web and help search engines
“read” and contextualize content better.
● Schema.org
○ Schema is Google’s preferred collection of schemas (microformats/rich-snippets).
Schema provides a structured data format in the form of HTML element attributes that
google can crawl through and better “understand” what it’s “reading.
■ Specifically, the most beneficial microformats today are
● Breadcrumb microformats that outline site structure
○ Breadcrumbs can result in more links from google to your
interior pages. These will allow users to click on specific sections
of your website directly from google and may help with Googles
Sitelinks.
● Products Microformats that outline a product ‘s details
○ Providing structured data for a products specific details can
result in better placement in search results and possibly a
much-higher click-through-rate from the search engine results
page due to the placement of Ratings, Price and a product-
image thumbnail, drawing users attention. Providing this
information on a search engine results page is obviously better
for a user and will likely drastically help search rankings.
● Open Graph

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
○ Open Graph protocol is Facebook’s collection of rich objects (microformats). This will
help you to control how the way your links are displayed on facebook, which may
increase your odds of gaining positive social metrics, referrals and social syndication.
○ In addition to facebook, Open Graph protocol is the preferred microformat of the
Microsoft Bing search engine.
● Google
○ Author & Publisher rel attributes
■ The author & publisher “rel” attributes can drastically help improve click-
through-rate from search engine results pages by adding a thumbnail of your
Google+ profile photo directly on the search engine results page, drawing more
users’ eyes.
Page Speed
Fast is better than slow. – Google.com
Page speed may be one of the most important technical metrics for an ecommerce website. The advent
of mobile devices has brought even more importance to the speed of pages. Several comprehensive
studies have been publicized demonstrating the importance of even a few milliseconds of page speed.
Meanwhile, most non-optimized websites have page-speed issues that cost several seconds.
● HTTP Keep-alives
○ Enable HTTP keep-alives in order to keep the tunnel of information that is passing files
from the web server open rather than constantly opening and closing for every file.
● GZip Compression
○ GZip is a loss-less file compression that is compatible with browsers. With GZip enabled,
text files will be compressed prior to transfer from the web server to the client.
● Browser caching
○ Browser caching is possible by instructing the users’ web browser to cache, or keep,
static content such as images on the users’ computer and to serve them from there. This
prevents these large files to be constantly downloaded on every page as the user
browses the site, drastically improving the users’ experience.

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
● Image Optimization
○ Images are usually the largest assets served up by website, usually causing the largest
impact on page-load time. Optimizing images or substituting can substantially reduce
the load time of your pages.
○ Spritemaps
■ Spritemaps is combining multiple design-specific images (We don’t spritemap
in-content images) in an effort to reduce overall file-size and reduce the amount
of HTTP requests required to convey a design.
● Minify & Combine
○ Minification is the act of removing all spaces and line-breaks from a document. In
extreme cases, minification will alter code (shortening variable and function names) in
an effort to further reduce file-size.
○ Combining files is combining multiple stylesheets in to 1 style sheet and/or combining
multiple javascript files into 1 javascript file in order to reduce the amount of non-
concurrent HTTP requests made to the server.
Social Media
Social Media is the new Link Building
● Social Media
○ Thank-you pages
■ Thank you pages are a great place to keep selling. Thank you pages normally
exist after a user has executed a favorable action. Ask your users to join you on
your social networks or otherwise, keep selling.
○ Header & Footer
■ Because of the importance of social media, we recommend putting social media
icons, which act as both a place to get links and social clout as well as social-
proof or trust that your website is legitimate, prominently in the header and
footer.

Pinnacle Cart, Inc.
○ Comments
■ Not all websites have comments enabled, but we do recommend it. Using social
features like Facebook’s comment widget can help allow your users to engage
both on your website and socially with one action.
○ Pinterest
■ If you sell products, you’ll want to use Pinterest to allow users to “bookmark”
your products or otherwise save them to their boards on Pinterest. Pinterest
links are good and they will provide traffic. At the moment we recommend NOT
using the price tags version of Pinterest pins (The pins that contain the items
price) due to studies that indicate the price tag limits the social exposure of
pins.
○ Facebook
■ All online companies should have and be building a facebook page. This will help
you more in the future than it does now. Facebook is known to not provide
much in the way of direct-conversions, but it does have a certain value with
regard to brand. Now because Microsoft and Facebook are working together
and both seem to be interested in creating search engines.
○ Twitter
■ Some niches do much better on facebook than they do on Twitter. Its
recommended that all online companies build and customize a Twitter page
that at least syndicates content from Facebook.
○ LinkedIn
■ LinkedIn works best for business-to-business operations and is largely used for
job opportunities and as a place for “online resumes”. Regardless, we
recommend all online companies be at least syndicating content to a linkedIn
page that has been customized.

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