How Compatible Is YOUR Site With Search Engines?

By Kalena Jordan   

Remember those little quizzes you used to see in magazines with headlines like: “How Compatible Are You and Your Partner?” or “Are You Dating Mr Wrong?”. Well, we thought it might be fun to create a 10 min quiz for you to test the compatibility of your site with search engines.

Your total score will give you an idea of whether your site is destined for a “high ranking honeymoon” in the engines or headed towards separation from the indexes. Pens ready? Here we go: 

Q1. The Home Page of your web site consists mainly of:

a)      Graphics

b)      Text

c)      A mixture of text and graphics

d)      Flash files

Q3. The content of your site includes:

a)      Text based on internal sales copy

b)      Text containing keywords and phrases you think are relevant

c)      Text containing keywords and phrases based on search engine research

d)      Little or no text

Q4. The images used throughout your site:

a)      Use ALT IMG tags containing relevant keywords

b)      Don’t use ALT IMG tags at all

c)      Use ALT IMG tags that don’t contain keywords

d)      You don’t know

Q5. Your Web Site was hand submitted to how many engines?:

a)      The top 10 search engines & directories

b)      The top 10, plus regional engines in your target markets

c)      None - submission software was used instead

d)      You don’t know

Q6. The links to internal pages within your web site are:

a)      Graphic buttons

b)      Text links

c)      Graphical text links

d)      Text links containing keywords

Q7. Your web page URLs are mainly:

a)      Static URLs 

b)      Query-string free dynamic URLs (NOT containing "?", "&" etc)

c)      Query-stringed dynamic URL’s (containing “?”, "&" etc)

d)      You don’t know

Q8. You track the following to your site:

a)      Number of visitors only

b)      What search engines they came from

c)      What search terms they used to find you

d)      All of the above

Q9. You track your ranking in the search engines by:

a)      Conducting manual searches

b)      Using rank querying software once a week or more

c)      Using rank querying software once a month or less often

d)      You don’t track your rankings

Q10. What is your site’s link popularity like? :

a)      There are less than 10 external sites linking to yours

b)      There are 10-100 external sites linking to yours

c)      There are over 100 external sites linking to yours

d)      You don’t track your link popularity

Q11.When your search engine rankings slide, you:

a)      Don’t notice

b)      Re-submit your site to all engines

c)      Re-optimize your site content and resubmit to all engines

d)      Re-optimize your site content and wait for the engines to re-index your site automatically

Q12. Of all your web site traffic, search engines provide:

a)      Less than 10%

b)      Between 10 and 20%

c)      More than 20%

d)      You don’t know

Points for each question range from 0 to 3. Results are :

Q1 a)1, b)3, c)2, d)0;

Q2 a)1, b)2, c)3, d)0;

Q3 a)1, b)2, c)3, d)0;

Q4 a)3, b)1, c)2, d)0;

Q5 a)2, b)3, c)0, d)1;

Q6 a)0, b)2, c)1, d)3;

Q7 a)3, b)2, c)0, d)1;

Q8 a)0, b)1, c)2, d)3;

Q9 a)3, b)0, c)2, d)1;

Q10 a)1, b)2, c)3, d)0;

Q11 a)1, b)0, c)2, d)3;

Q12 a)1, b)2, c)3, d)0;

Add up the total points and scroll below to see how compatible your site is. 

Score of 12 or less – Oh dear. There is virtually no chance of finding your site at the top of the search results, because you haven’t made your site technically compatible with search engines at ALL. To give your relationship with search engines a chance, you need to make some changes, FAST! If you don’t know why your site is incompatible, or need step-by-step help to reverse the damage, request a Search Engine Compatibility Review.

Score of 13-20 – Lack of attention to your search engine relationship has cost you traffic and your rankings are poor or non-existent. You have one or two of the elements in place to make your site search engine compatible, but you really need ALL of them to improve your rankings and increase the number of visitors to your site. With 81% of Internet consumers relying on search engines to find web sites, it is vitally important that you keep the search engines interested in your site by ensuring it is compatible with their algorithms and indexed by their robots. If you need help to make your site more search engine compatible, request a Search Engine Compatibility Review.

Score of 21-29 – You are aware of the importance of search engines and have tried to make your site at least partly compatible. You have probably achieved a few listings for your site on the major engines, but could be doing a lot better with a little extra effort. Spend a few days tweaking your site content to make it as attractive to engines as possible. Stop re-submitting your sites to engines as it won't help. Conduct a little keyword research to ensure you are targeting the right keywords and phrases, integrate these into your pages and wait for search engines to re-index the site. Consider hiring a SEO specialist to boost your rankings and get more traffic. The engines won’t pay attention to you if more compatible sites come along so do it NOW before the honeymoon is over.

Score of 30-36 – Congratulations! You have taken many or all of the steps required to achieve a high ranking on the search engines and are reaping the rewards in resulting site traffic. You keep your site content search engine friendly, target the right keywords and you aren't accidentally spamming the engines with resubmissions or rank queries. Your efforts to make your site search engine compatible are sure to keep them infatuated with your site for a long time. Keep up the good work!

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Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia and New Zealand, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business Web Rank, Kalena manages Search Engine College, an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing subjects.