[mathias]

I work for a firm who has until now outsourced all of our web dev needs. Now that we have the ability and costs have gotten out of hand, we're taking the show in-house.

Next week, I'm headed to our web guys' office for some "training" for a few hours. I figure since they created the site, any insight they have is beneficial. My biggest question to them is what state our site's SEO is in. How do I approach this? I have an idea, but thoughts on good pointed questions to ask to get to the bottom of the matter would be great.

What are you guys doing these days to technically appraise a website's rank and stats?

[seoranter]

Hey,

I hate to link from my first post *but* there's a typical SEO audit in a fairly decent place, it seems relevant:

seorant.blogspot.com/2008/04/t-mobile-uk-seo-audit.html

Hope this helps!

[mddv]

Well a good seo guy would keep records of what has been done. e.g. what links have been submitted to websites/directories, what paid promotions have been carried out, what keywords have been researched, what keywords are they targeting, webpage seo techniques, what pages have been seo optimized. etc.

[arsholdings]

I would use rank checker on SEOBOOK.com. plug in all your targeted keywords, and findout where you currently are. it will track google, yahoo, and live (really the only three that matter)

[IgotDreams]

Mathias, mddv is right. A good SEO company should be reporting frequently and communicating. We run monthly reports in which we track our customer and that of their major (ranking not industry) competition.

we report on;

- current traffic (plus top 10 competitors for 3 major keywords we are chasing) and report the difference from the last month
- multiple keyword rankings on 3 major search engines, currently and the difference from last month
- link popularity (plus top 10 x 3 keyword phrases) as well as differences
- Google backlinks (plus top 10 x 3 keyword phrases)
- plus various other reports

for you it is simple, ask them for your website traffic stats. It will have a history. You should see increase is search engine traffic, and more of your keyword phrases bringing in traffic. Also they may be using Google Analytics. Ask for that.

For the new guys, make sure they are doing this;

- building new topical pages
- increasing link popularity
- tweaking and modify pages
- increasing traffic
- increasing ranking for the words you want. Once you get those spots (spot 1 & 2) then move onto the next set of words, although you can chase multiple sets, some have priority.
- reporting

if you decide to take your team in house, them you may consider hiring a consultant to come in and teach your management team on how to set goals and read reports.