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Looking for a sample report (or even better, a process for generating a report) that would cover the most important SEO factors of a small business "brochureware" site. Your answer does not have to be a link to a report, it just needs to as completely as possible answer the question.

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There are a few different types of reports you might need for a client are you looking for a site audit, link building plan, or more of a progress report or are you looking for a checklist for yourself? – Joshak Nov 5 '10 at 18:20
@Joshak: Looking for a high-level analysis report that covers: competitors, industry, content, keywords, PPC, links, code-quality, <insert-high-level-factor> ...SEO RFP also return useful results, but not really for a QA style report, looking for more of a brief high-level report covering the most important factors. – blunders Nov 5 '10 at 18:29
@Joshak: Guess a site audit is what I'm looking for though, most have a lot of junk in them... here's an example: scribd.com/doc/19456638/… – blunders Nov 5 '10 at 18:32
@Joshak: +1 thanks! – blunders Nov 5 '10 at 23:31

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You can find here some resources.

I know it isn't exactly what you are looking for, but I think you can grab all material, clean up and make a summary report from there with what you want/need quickly.

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Thank you, you're right on both accounts, it's not what I'm looking for, but it does solve the problem. How'd you find that page? – blunders Nov 5 '10 at 21:31
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@blunders found that page a longe time ago, while googling for something related to flash vs SEO and best practices. It is not the best site in the world, but for these reports is fine. ;) – Dave Nov 5 '10 at 21:42
+1 Thanks, though it likely random chance, or that you'd seen the book -- but figured I'd ask. Congrats on being selected as the answer! – blunders Nov 5 '10 at 21:46
@blunders, yeah, it was just a random but lucky happening. Thanks for choosing. It's nice when we help others. See ya, dude. – Dave Nov 6 '10 at 0:20
Great find! Lots of good stuff here. – Lèse majesté Nov 6 '10 at 8:25
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I haven't seen any published checklists for site audits, but here is a good overview of the site audit process you could use to writeup your own.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-seo-site-reviews-stebbystep

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+1 but, problem with a checklist is that there's no weight place on the items, which is what matters. I could come of with 200-500 factors to check in an hour. But I have no idea how important they are at the end of the day, hence why I'm looking for more of a report. – blunders Nov 5 '10 at 19:09
For example, this was in the video: www.domain.com, is not the same as domain.com -- I in fact know a number of sites like this, and they still do fine SEO wise. So, is it a big deal, you would think so, but how do I know it is? – blunders Nov 5 '10 at 19:14
Really a checklist is just an easy way to check for all the most common issues. You won't find one that will work for every site. If you want a high level checklist it would be something like this "make sure there are no indexing issues (IE all the pages you think should be there are)" then make sure your content is focused (IE if your site is about oranges make sure it calls them oranges somewhere)" Make sure a good portion of your content is something people want to link to/share, and make sure you are promoting it well (if no one knows your content exists it doesn't matter how good it is. – Joshak Nov 6 '10 at 0:48
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I would use SEO Moz's Search Engine Ranking Factors minisite as a checklist to start. It's a survey that was taken by many top SEOs about what they think are the most important factors in SEO. Each factor is categorized and ranked according to importance, along with comments from experts. They also include negative ranking factors, or things you shouldn't do. Each ranking factor is specific enough that you should be able to figure out how to do it just from the description, but if not, a quick Google search should help.

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+1 Interesting, guess I just want a little to much... :-) ...even looking at the 2005 and 2007 version, any of those list could have 2010 listed as the date and I won't know why XYZ is #1. Plus, also got me thinking that there maybe a conflict of interest in such a survey, since title tag has gone from #1 in 2005 to #4 -- but I'm guessing it's still just as important, just hard to compete on only a title tag. Have you seen any attempt to sandbox Google and do multivariate analysis? I'd trust it more than a survey. – blunders Nov 5 '10 at 20:01
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Google changes their algorithm almost daily, so that could explain the variation from year to year. SEO isn't a static industry. I'm not aware of a public analysis like you're talking about. However, many of the SEOs surveyed will have conducted such analysis privately. Keep in mind that this wasn't an open survey, it surveyed some of the top 72 SEOs in the industry, so it isn't like these are just random internet webmasters. Many of those surveyed do SEO professionally and that's all they do. It isn't a scientific survey, but I feel pretty comfortable in saying that it's an informed survey. – Virtuosi Media Nov 5 '10 at 20:09
+1 Oh, well, anyway found it very interesting, thank you for sharing! – blunders Nov 5 '10 at 23:31
If you really want a good picture of how Google's algo works look at spam. Spammers pretty much spend their time trying to punch holes in it and test the limits of what is possible, join some black hat forums and look at what is ranking for keywords related to the spam emails you get. Most SEOs won't publish big tests that they've done although SEO Moz has been leading the charge recently in this area. – Joshak Nov 6 '10 at 0:55

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