Free SEO Audit Checklist

Check	Instructions	Observations	Recommendation
Screaming Frog	Potential custom filters to include: snippet of GATC to make sure they're tracking every page YouTube embed snippet to see what videos they're embedding to see how they're using iframes pageTracker._trackPageview to see if they have remnants of GA's traditional tracking code
GWT	All errors
Crawl Test	Mozbar > SEOmoz Tools (wrench icon) > Crawl Test or http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test
Find out keywords site is ranking for	SEMRush or Keyword Spy
How many pages are indexed by Google?	Search for [site:yoursite.com] in Google GWT: Google Index > Index Status
When you do a site: search, does the homepage come up first?
Does the site have index bloat?	Check ratio of pages indexed/pages getting org traffic
Do they have any specific crawl issues?	Mozbar > SEOmoz Tools (wrench icon) > Crawl Test or http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test
Does the site have mirror sites?	reverseinternet.com
If the site uses mirror sites to reduce server load, are the mirrors noindexed?	Mozbar >Analyze Page > Page Attributes
Does the site have an xml sitemap (or sitemaps with an index)?	Four quick ways exist to diagnose if an XML sitemap exists: 1. Check the robots.txt file (located at http://domain.com/robots.txt) 2. Do a site:domain.com inurl:sitemap.xml search in Google. If nothing is returned, then no sitemap exists. 3. Look at /sitemap.xml or use the SEO Site Tools Chrome extension. 4. Paid: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html
Does the xml sitemap follow proper xml protocol?	http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html
Do they need a sitemap generation recommendation?	Tools: http://gsitecrawler.com/ (Windows) http://www.intelli-mapper.com/index.php/purchase (Windows) http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ (Online) http://peacockmedia.co.uk/integrity/ (Mac) http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html (Paid but cheap) Screaming Frog: Screenshot of steps - http://screencast.com/t/MaDq1Eyn
Are their sitemaps clean?	Run through Screaming Frog: Mode > List > File Format: SiteMap (*.xml) Sitemaps should only have URLs that resolve to 200 status code and shouldn't contain low-quality pages, like paginated content, search results pages, etc.
Are URLs duplicated in the sitemap?	Screaming Frog: Mode > List > File Format: SiteMap (*.xml) If the number of URLs crawled is less than the number of URLs you entered into Screaming Frog. SF tells you how many you entered when you browse to the sitemap.xml file and load it into SF. But SF automatically dedupes a sitemap, so if you have fewer URLs you have duplication in the sitemap and should export a new sitemap from the final list of clean URLs (Export > Sitemap).
Is a link to the site's xml sitemap or sitemap index in their robots.txt?	Add as a line item to robots.txt file: Sitemap: http://www.your-site/your-sitemap-or-sitemap-index.xml
Have they submitted sitemaps to Google and Bing?	GWT: Crawl > Sitemaps BWT: Crawl > Sitemaps
Do they have all sitemaps they should? Web, mobile, image, video, news	site:yoursite.com inurl:sitemap.xml GWT: Crawl > Sitemaps BWT: Configure my site > Sitemaps Google resources about the five different sitemaps: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=20986&parent=8476&ctx=topic
Does their sitemap have more than 50,000 links or > 10MB unzipped?	Open the sitemap in Chrome and search the page (Ctrl/Command-F) for "http" - this will show you the number of both http and https URLs in the sitemap. Look in the upper-right corner of the browser.
Does the site have separate sitemaps for the main categories/sections of the sitet?	Advantage here is the level of detail you suddenly get on indexation is dramatic. You could instantly find, for ex, that TVs were indexed at a 95% rate while video games were indexed at a 56% rate. This is information you can use and act on. Read more about this from an awesome post on AJ Kohn's blog: http://bit.ly/fRMXKs Recommended file names: * sitemap.tv.xml * sitemap.digital-cameras.xml * sitemap.video-games.xml Can also break down category and product pages: * sitemap.tv.category.xml * sitemap.tv.product.xml * sitemap.digital-camera.category.xml * sitemap.digital-camera.product.xml
Does the site have an RSS feed?
Have there been dips in crawl?	GWT: Crawl > Crawl stats BWT: Crawl > Crawl summary
Do they have query parameters being indexed?	GWT: Crawl > URL parameters
Are there errors in their robots.txt file?	http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml A great resource on robots.txt: http://tools.seobook.com/robots-txt/
Are they excluding pages they shouldn't in robots.txt?	Use "Is this page blocked by robots.txt?" bookmarklet by Tom Critchlow, which you can get here: http://bit.ly/UbwfpW http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml SEOmoz Crawl Test (Checking Blocking G, B, Y columns)
Are there pages/directories they should include in their robots.txt?	Look for weird directories in SEOmoz Crawl Test, Screaming Frog, or GA: Behavior > Site Content > Content Drilldown
Are they excluding pages they shouldn't w/ noindex?	SEOmoz Crawl Test (http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test)
Are there any pages with a nofollow tag?	Isolate pages with nofollow tags in SEOmoz Crawl Test or Screaming Frog
Does the site block cart pages?	Look at robots.txt and use MozBar to check for noindex tags (Analyze Page > Page Attributes)
Does the site offer print pages?
If the site offers print pages, do the print pages use CSS or unique URLs?
If the site offers print pages with unique URLs are these pages blocked by the search engines?	Pull up a couple and look at MozBar: Analyze Page > Page Attributes
Does the site use a revisit-after tag?	Screaming Frog: Meta & Canonical tab This is fictional. None of the big search engines have ever honored it. It won't hurt the site, but it will make you look like an SEO neophyte.
If the site is a blog, does it use a plugin to ping the search engines to let it know it's updated?	http://pingomatic.com/ https://seesmic.com/ (formerly ping.fm)
See if your site is redirecting Google IPs	Enter the URL into translate.google.com and see if it redirects. More from Googler John Mueller here: http://bit.ly/google-translate-trick GWT: Crawl > Fetch as Google
Does the site have page titles that are too long?	Use this tool (http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html) or in Excel, set column width to 520px, set columns to wrap text, and font to Arial 12pt. Type in your title, and bold the main keyword. If the line breaks, your title tag will truncate.
Are conversion (thank you) pages noindexed?	If not, this could create tracking issues.
Are URLs SEF friendly?
Do the URLs use query parameters?	Query parameters follow a ? in a URL and are separated by &'s if there's more than one (e.g., www.yoursite.com/your-landing-page?src=google+local&sort=low-to-high&index=no). These can create duplicate content.
How does the site (both content and navigation) look/function when you turn off CSS, JavaScript, and cookies?	Web Developer Toolbar
Do all of the navigation links work when Javascript is turned off?
When you view the cached version of the homepage, does all the content show up?	cache:url
When you view the cached version of the homepage, are navigation links present?
When you view the cached version of the homepage, do links show up that aren't visible on the page?
Is any content being pulled in with iframes or from an external source?	Screaming Frog: Create a custom filter that contains "
How is the site's overall speed performance?	http://gtmetrix.com/ https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/ - lots of recommendations (also recommended by DistilledU) Kissmetrics infographic on page load time: http://bit.ly/UjcDAn
What are the page speeds of their top 10 landing pages?	Speed Tracer Chrome plugin, Yslow Chrome plugin (recommended by DistilledU b/c it includes server response time and download time and makes recommendations) Use this custom report to look at page load times of top organic landing pages: http://bit.ly/15g530d (H/t to @Dan_Shure for his collaboration in coming up with this custom report.) "Amazon study that showed a 1% decrease in sales for every 0.1s decrease in response times." http://bit.ly/UjazZ6
How does their homepage's page speed compare to their top competitors?	Create videos comparing site against competitors: http://www.webpagetest.org/video/
Are images optimized for fast page load?	Page speed tools, Web Dev Toolbar Do a Screaming Frog crawl of just images (Configuration > Spider > Check Images)
Are JavaScript and CSS linked to external files?	Should avoid inline and embedded CSS as much as possible..Also, JS files are pulled sequentially, so these should be combined where possible.
Are JavaScript and CSS minified to reduce load time?	Desktop apps: JSMin, YUI Compressor, Google Closure Compiler Web: Google Closure Compiler (http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/home)
Does the site leverage caching well to minimize page load time and reduce HTTP requests?	https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/best-practices/caching
Is Flash used for important elements?
Do images have ALT text?	ScreamingFrog: Advanced Export > Images Missing ATL Text
Are there 404 pages?	ScreamingFrog: Response Codes GWT: Crawl > Crawl Errors > Not found
Trend of 404 pages?	GWT: Crawl > Crawl Errors > Not found
Are 404 pages serving the correct header response?	GWT: Crawl > Crawl Errors > Soft 404
Trend of soft 404 pages?	GWT: Crawl > Crawl errors > Soft 404 (A soft 404 is a not found page that delivers a 200 response code instead of directing visitors to a 404 page.
Are any of the 404 pages significant or indexed?	Pull top x organic landing pages into Excel (I recommend the Excellent Analytics Excel add-in, but you can also export from the GA site), then either pull into Screaming Frog (Mode > List) or use SEOTools Excel plugin to get status codes for each page. Note: Will need to add hostname (domain) to URIs from GA first b/c both SF and SEOTools needs a full URL, e.g., http://www.yousite.com/blog/, not /blog/.
Are pages in the site pointing to 404 pages?	Screaming Frog: Mode > List > Enter 404 pages > Look at Inlinks column
Do they use a custom 404 page to reel visitors back?
Are there 500 error pages?	GWT: Crawl > Crawl Errors > Server error Screaming Frog SEOmoz Crawl Test
Trend of 500 errors?	GWT: Crawl > Crawl Errors > Server error Screaming Frog SEOmoz Crawl Test
Are there errors for mobile?	GWT: Crawl > Crawl errors > Mobile tab
Is the site using 302 redirects?	Screaming Frog: Response Codes SEOmoz Crawl Test
Are 301 redirects set up properly?	Screaming Frog: Response Codes SEOmoz Crawl Test http://www.seologic.com/webmaster-tools/url-redirect
Do any pages have meta refreshes?	Screaming Frog: Meta & Canonical tab > Meta Refresh SEOmoz Crawl Test
Does the site use AJAX pages?	Currently, if you implement the window.history.pushState() JavaScript fucntion (part of the 'HTML5 History API'), you will be able to create an AJAX site that is crawlable. pushState() accomplishes this by changing the path of the URL that appears in the user's address bar. This makes it so search engines are able to execute links and read content encoded in JavaScript. Cf:http://www.distilled.net/store/u/my/technical/ > Crawling & Indexing
If site is using AJAX, is content in AJAX being indexed?	Search for snippets of text from the AJAX content wrapped in quotes in Google/Bing.
Are headers images?
Is page copy in images?
Is the site cloaking by cookie detection?	Change user agent to Googlebot using MozBar (Firefox only - Settings > Set User Agent > Googlebot) or use the User-Agent Swticher for Chrome extension: http://bit.ly/VzEFZg. Is the page different from before?
Is site currently being developed?
If so, is the dev server excluded via robots.txt or password-protected?
Are there PDFs on the site?	site:yoursite.com filetype:pdf
Is content in PDFs also in HTML?	Search for snippets of text from the PDF.
Does the site have malware?	GWT: Malware http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=mysite.com Replace "mysite.com" with your domain in the URL.
Has the site been hacked?	SEMRush or Keyword Spy Run a scan and look to see if site is suddenly ranking for spammy keywords
Is the website in a bad neighborhood?	https://www.majesticseo.com/reports/neighbourhood-checker
Does the site use infinite scroll?	Turn off Javascript. There should be static links to paginated content. Ex of it done well in Mashable. http://bit.ly/11j0d0g
Is the site organization intuitive?	Bing Webmaster Tools' Index Explorer is a great way to visualize a site's architecture (Dashboard > Reports & Data > Index Explorer). You can see the root-level pages and directories and then drill down to see subdirectories. Find report by going to Reports & Data > Index Explorer.
Does every category and subcategory have a clear purpose?
Does the URL structure follow the category/subcategory structure as you drill down?
Are key organic landing pages close to the homepage?	1. Pull organic landing pages from GA: Acquisition > Keywords > Organic > Landing Page (or pull using Excellent Analytics plugin) 2. Run Screaming Frog and export crawl (screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/ATKBFL3tZHKw) 3. Pull both tabs into the same Excel document and do vlookups to pull in Level (which tells you how many clicks the page is from the homepage, if you stated the crawl with the homepage). Great video from Mr. Excel on how to do vlookups if you're a newbie: http://bit.ly/VEd8Wy. Top landing pages should ideally be three or fewer clicks from the homepage.
How many category pages does the site have?	GA: Behavior > Site Content > Content Drilldown BWT: Reports & Data > Index Explorer
Are there too many category pages? Not enough?	GA: Behavior > Site Content > Content Drilldown BWT: Reports & Data > Index Explorer A good litmus test is to see how many pages are in each directory. You don't want directories that are too thin or too bulky.
Are pages targeting competitive head terms more than two clicks from homepage?	Pull SEMRush, GA Organic Keywords, and GWT Search Queries reports (Search Traffic > Search Queries) - with landing pages and search volumes, then filter for terms with fewer than three words
Does the site use faceted navigation?	Examples of faceted navigation: http://bit.ly/XMCfu5
If it's not using faceted navigation, should it?	If a site has a lot of product pages paginated, this could be an indicator that the site should use faceted navigation.
If the site uses faceted navigation, does it create duplicate content issues?	Look for query parameters used by faceted navigation (if it's parameter driven) and see if they're listed in GWT's URL Parameters report (under Crawl)
Does site use breadcrumbs?
If site uses breadcrumbs, do links point to canonical versions of the page (i.e., ideally, pages w/o query parameters)?
If site uses breadcrumbs, do breadcrumbs follow organization of the site?
Does the navigation have a reasonable number of options?	There is anecdotal evidence that having more than 7 options in the main navigation is counter-productive.
Do category pages have followed links to sub-category pages?
Do sub-category pages have followed links to product pages?
Have they experienced a decline in inbound links?	ahrefs.com: Enter URL, scroll down to Backlinks graph (screenshot: http://www.screencast.com/t/FEA8vmPREC)
Are they overoptimized?	OSE, Majestic
What is ratio of homepage to deep page linking?
Does it appear they've been buying links?	Dr Pete's link profile doc: http://mz.cm/Pt19gr
Where have most of their links come from?	Link Detective: http://www.linkdetective.com/
Does the site have links in their xml sitemap that weren't captured in the Screaming Frog crawl?	Pages found in the sitemap that aren't in the Screaming Frog crawl are most likely orphaned pages b/c the spider couldn't get to it. Very Important: You shouldn't select "Ignore robots.txt" under Configuration > Spider in SF to preserve the restrictions a search engine spider will face. Steps to compare the two lists (with a screenshot that explains everything): 1. Import xml sitemap into Excel (PC only). If on a Mac, run the sitemap through Screaming Frog (Mode > List > Select File > Sitemap > Navigate to xml sitemap file), run the crawl, and export the list of URLs into an Excel document. 2. Move the sitemap csv into the same Excel workbook as the Screaming Frog crawl (right-click on tab at bottom of worksheet > Move > Select SF workbook > choose where you want to move it). 3. In the cell next to the first URL from the sitemap, enter this formula: =IF(ISNA(MATCH(B2,'SF Crawl'!A:A,0)),"Orphan","OK"). Screenshot with thorough instructions: http://www.screencast.com/t/V6z7bphD
Do they have a DMOZ link?	Search for yourdomain.com site:dmoz.org SEO Site Tools Chrome extension: External Page Data
Do they have a Yahoo Directory link?	http://www.domaintools.com/: Site Profile tab
Do they have any links from Wikipedia?	site:wikipedia.org link:client.com -filetype:jpg
What linkable assets do they have?
What are their most linked to pages?	OSE: Top Pages tab Majestic: Pages tab GWT: Search Traffic > Links to Your Site > Your most linked content Searchmetrics: Social > Social Links > Social Spread
Does that coordinate with top organic pages?	GA: Acquisition > Sources > Search > Organic > Landing Page
Do they have a strong internal linking structure?	GWT: Search Traffic > Internal Links
Do blog posts and content pages interlink a lot?	Good examples: SEL, seoroundtable.com, outspokenmedia.com
Does the logo point to the canonical version of the homepage?
Are there any pages with too many links?	SEOmoz Crawl Test (Too Many On-Page Links column)
How many links do they have on their homepage and top pages?	SEO Site Tools > Suggestions AND Page Elements Mozbar Analyze Page > Page Attributes (Warning: They produce very different results.) Screaming Frog: Internal tab > Outlinks http://rapid.searchmetrics.com/en/seo-tools/link-tools/outbound-links,50.html Xenu Lnk Sleuth http://www.domaintools.com/: Site Profile tab > Links (Internal and Oubound) http://urivalet.com/ (Internal and outbound - under HTTP header info)
Do they have broken links throughout the site?	Screaming Frog: External tab > Status Code = 404, 410, 500 Xenu Link Sleuth
Are there broken links on the page?	Check My Links Chrome add-in: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojkcdipcgfaekbeaelaapakgnjflfglf http://www.iwebtool.com/broken_link_checker Link Checker Firefox plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkchecker/
Do they have too many links on a page?	BEST: SEOmoz Crawl Test - actually tells you which pages have too many SEO Site Tools > Suggestions AND Page Elements Mozbar Analyze Page > Page Attributes (Warning: They produce very different results.) Screaming Frog http://rapid.searchmetrics.com/en/seo-tools/link-tools/outbound-links,50.html Xenu Lnk Sleuth http://www.domaintools.com/: Site Profile tab > Links (Internal and Oubound) http://urivalet.com/ (Internal and outbound - under HTTP header info)
Does the site have an HTML sitemap?	http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html
What internal pages do they link to the most?	GWT: Search Traffic > Internal links
Does logo link to homepage?
What is the quality of outbound linking?	Screaming Frog: External tab
Do they have microsites?	Check reverseinternet.com, if you're not sure.
If they have microsites, are they interlinking with the same terms the main site is ranking for?	Pull backlinks for each from your tool of choice (GWT, OSE, Majestic, Ahrefs), and use a pivot table to evaluate backlinks
Do they have a link network?	Pull backlinks for each site, pull into a pivot table, filter to only look at links to and from their sites. If you are unfamiliar with how to use pivot tables in Excel, check out this blog post I wrote: http://selnd.com/VVK2q9.
Does the site have a resources/directory/links page that's really a link exchange?
Are their images optimized for SEO?	Check alt tags in Screaming Frog crawl or SEOmoz crawl
Are their images optimized for download?	Check file sizes (Screaming Frog: Images tab, export, sort by size)
When you search for brands they rank for in Google web search in Google Images do they come up?
Do they host their images on another domain?
Do they have visibility for image searches?	GWT: Search Traffic > Search Queries > Filters > Filter by images (screenshot: http://www.screencast.com/t/rH9vfqpAlnyK)
Are there page titles that surpass 70 characters?	GWT: Search Appearance > HTML Improvements Screaming Frog SEOmoz Crawl Test
Are there descriptions that surpass 155 characters?	GWT: Search Appearance > HTML Improvements Screaming Frog SEOmoz Crawl Test
Are page titles optimized?	GWT: Search Appearance > HTML Improvements ScreamingFrog SEOmoz Crawl Test
Do descriptions have powerful CTAs?	GWT: Search Appearance > HTML Improvements ScreamingFrog SEOmoz Crawl Test
Are they missing page titles?	GWT: Search Appearance > HTML Improvements ScreamingFrog SEOmoz Crawl Test
Are they missing descriptions?	GWT: Search Appearance > HTML Improvements ScreamingFrog SEOmoz Crawl Test
What is the quality of their calls to action?	Evaluate homepage, category pages, and product/content pages
Does the site have ads?
If the site has ads, how many are above the fold?
If the site has ads, are they relevant to the site?
Do any of the blink, move, or play videos/sound automatically?
Is the page you're checking adequately optimized for the keyword(s) you're going after?	SEOmoz's On-Page Analysis Tool: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/new
Are pages keyword stuffed?
Does the site have paginated content (multi-page articles, results pages)?
How does site handle pagination? Noindex, canonical tag, rel prev next?	Should not be using canonical tags for pagination, unless it's a view all page. And if you're going to use a view all page, make sure it doesn't suffer significant latency (geek speak for it's slow).
Are paginated results getting organic traffic?	This usually isn't ideal.
Do they have content duplicated over their different sites?
Are there canonical issues with the homepage?	GA: Behavior > Site Content > Pages > Page Title, then click on homepage title to see if there are multiple URLs receiving significant traffic for the same title from different URLs. (Ignore URLs with low visits.)
Are there canonical issues with the rest of the site?	ScreamingFrog: Directives > Filter: Canonical. Export to Excel and check for rows where the Canonical 1 != Address column. Filter out all of the matching canonicals b/c they are just self-referencing canonical tags. Pay attention to rows where they don't match to make sure these canonical assignments make sense. Behavior > Site Content >Pages > Page Title, then click on a bunch of titles to see if there are multiple URLs receiving significant traffic for the same title from different URLs. (Ignore URLs with low visits.) GA: Search content for /index\|/default
Are https pages indexed? Are they dupes of the non-secure versions?	site:yourdomain.com inurl:https
Are trailing slashes creating duplicates?
Is there duplicate content within the site?	Screaming Frog: Hash (Apply conditional formatting to column to catch duplicates) SEOmoz Crawl Test
Is there duplicate content with other sites?	Search for snippets. Ask the client if they have registered any other domains and check for duplicate content there. Use http://reverseinternet.com/ to find related domains. Use your favourite domain registrar to search for domain names that contain the client's brand name or common misspellings of their name under various TLDs. Check the content there and the WHOIS record for those domains. Let the client know if they should register any of these domains.
Has the site been scraped?	If the content has been scraped, you should file a content removal request with Google: http://bit.ly/yB77Dd
Is there duplicate content between subdomains?
Do they have duplicate page titles?	GWT: Search Appearance > HTML Improvements
Do they have duplicate meta descriptions?	GWT: Search Appearance > HTML Improvements
If ecommerce site, are product descriptions unique?	Search for snippets of text from product descriptions wrapped in quotation marks
Does the site offer user-generated content (e.g., reviews, ratings)
If the site uses ratings, is it getting rich snippets?	GWT: Search Appearance > Structured Data or do a search for a term the page gets traffic for You can find out the keywords by searching for your landing page and then clicking on it to see the keywords in this custom report: http://bit.ly/SwC2di. It's already filtered for organic.
Is content organized, using headings properly?	A site should use H1, H2, etc. over custom CSS classes to format content.
Is content well written?
Does content use proper grammar?
Are titles well written?
Are there misspelled words?
Do pages contain ads?	You want to make sure a significant proportion of content above the fold is unique (not ads, not template and boilerplate content)
Do they have a blog?
If they have a blog, do they have an RSS button?	An RSS button makes it easy for visitors to connect with you - esp useful for sites with tech-savvy target audience.
If they have a blog, have they noindexed category and tag pages or provided unique content to these pages, like an intro paragraph?	It's standard fare to noindex, follow category and tag pages. However, adding a solid paragraph to them and only including snippets of posts can make them effective landing pages.
If site has an RSS feed(s), is link to RSS feed nofollowed?
Are they tracking rankings?
If so, are they missing keywords?	Can find new words to track from GA, GWT, SEMRush, and Open Site Explorer or Majestic anchors
What percentage of organic traffic is (not provided)?	GA: Acquisition > Sources > Search > Organic
Do the keywords they're ranking for and getting traffic for make sense by category?	Take keywords from GA, SEMRush (or Keyword Spy), and GWT and filter by category, subcategory - look at keywords OR copy URL and do text to columns OR tease out categories and subcategoriess and look at keywords in giant pivot table that looks at keyword, cat/subcat, keyword volume, ranking (if applicable), visits (if applicable)
How many keywords are they ranking for compared to their competitors?	Run all through SEMRush, Keyword Spy, or Searchmetrics
How do their rankings compare to their top competitors?	If they're using a rank tool, use that. If not, pull keywords from SEMRush (or Keyword Spy), create a pivot table to compare
Do homepage and money pages show up for branded searches?	If not, the homepage or money page(s) might have been penalized, like if a weaker page starts coming up instead of the page that used to to get the traffic.
Do they have landing pages ranking for the same keywords?	1. Do a site: search Google for important keyword phrases 2. Check GWT: Search Traffic > Search Queries 3. Check this custom report from GA: http://bit.ly/SdmffR. Click on keywords to see if more than one landing pages is attracting traffic. Just keep in mind some visits are lost to the dreaded (not provided).
If the site offers site search, are there opportunities they should be going after?	Compare keywords from Site Search (Behavior > Site Search > Search Terms) against organic keywords and keywords from SEMRush/GWT
Do you need to manually check rankings?	http://hidemyass.com/ Not the perfect proxy solution but an extremely good one at the price. Great for seeing exactly how rankings appear from different locations on the fly or running systems as though they're from another IP address in a different location. Source of analysis: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2156235/78-Resources-For-Every-Internet-Marketers-Toolkit
Are they bidding on keywords?
If they're bidding on keywords, are there any keywords that convert like wildfire that they should consider competing on for organic?
Has the site had any significant drops in organic traffic?	GA: Acquisition > Keywords > Organic
If the site has experienced drops, are they seasonal?	GA: Acquisition > Keywords > Organic --> Compare to Previous Year
If the site has experienced drops, do they correlate with any major algorithm changes?	My SEO gcal: https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=hv5ke5r6teb3272qtqohepsa0c%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York
What tools are they using for tracking?	BuiltWith Chrome Extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dapjbgnjinbpoindlpdmhochffioedbn
Are they tracking conversions?
Are they using ecommerce tracking? (See more checks at the bottom of the list.)
Is their analytics tracking code missing from any pages?	Screaming Frog: Configuration > Custom > Enter GA code (e.g., UA-335449-7)
Do other sites have their GA code on them?	GA: Audience > Technology > Network > Hostname
Do they have subdomains?	reverseinternet.com Search in Google: site:clientdomain.com -inurl:www GA: Audience > Technology > Network > Hostname
If the site has subdomains, does GATC include _setDomainName() method?	Throw _setDomainName into a custom filter in Screaming Frog (Configuration > Custom > Includes: _setDomainName).
If the site has subdomains, are they including hostname in content reports?	If not, the site should include hostname in the content reports (so content reports read www.mysite.com/my-page instead of /my-page). Screenshot: http://www.screencast.com/t/juJ4RnFk (Note: If you add a hostname filter, make sure you update your goals!)
If so, is GATC set up properly?	No dot before domain in _setDomainName method, hashing isn't turned off ROI Revolution post: http://www.roirevolution.com/blog/2011/01/google_analytics_subdomain_tracking.php
Do they have PPC campaigns showing up in organic results	Check for campaign parameters in organic landing pages (Acquisition > Sources > Search > Organic > Landing Pages), i.e., s_kwcid, ppc, and cpc.		Acquisition > Sources > Search > Organic > Landing Pages), i.e., s_kwcid, ppc, cpc, keyword, adgroup, etc.
If the site offers site search, are they tracking it in their analytics?	GA: Behavior > Site Search > Usage (Make sure site search isn't using AJAX - iow, you stay on the same page when you search - or hard coding search terms into URLs, e.g., www.mysite.com/search/query.
If so, does their site search appear to be effective?	GA: Behavior > Site Search > Overview > Results Pageviews/Search (Is it taking too many pages to find what visitors are looking for?) and Time After Search (Are they sticking around after searching?)
Are they using asynch?	Search page source code for "gaq"
Is site is using asynch, are pages on the site still using traditional?	Screaming Frog: Configuration > Custom > Enter snippet of traditional GATC, e.g. "pageTracker._trackPageview"
Are they using annotations?	Admin > Click on profile link > Assets > Annotations
Have they set their homepage in GA?	Admin > Click on profile link > Profile Settings > General Information > Default page Don't need to set this if the default (home) page is /. If it's something like /default.php or index.html you should enter that, like you see in this screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/gd5Idd6u
If running Google AdWords campaigns, is your AdWords account linked w/ GA?	Instructions: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033961?hl=en&topic=1308612&ctx=topic
If running Google AdSense campaigns, is your AdSense account linked w/ GA?	Instructions: http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2495976&rd=2
Do content reports contain utm parameters?	If using GA, navigate to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages and apply this advanced segment:http://bit.ly/1dkmO6M. GA strips these out. So if you see them in your content reports, it means that Google isn't recognizing them (or giving credit to the campaign/source/medium you've assigned). This is usually b/c the person tagging the links didn't include at minimum utm_source and utm_medium. These two parameters are required. All others are optional in that they will still work even if you don't use them, contrary to what Google's URL Builder (http://bit.ly/17ShSlO) says. That said, I would also always include utm_campaign to assign a campaign name.
Does the site use a third-party cart? If so, do they have cross-domain tracking in place?	Use this resource to troubleshoot: http://bit.ly/16t0lSf.
Does the profile use filters correctly?	Filtering out internal traffic, forcing URLs to lowercase (to prevent duplicate URLs b/c of varying cases)?
Should the domain use URL rewriting?	If you have a site that has lots of versions of the same page (e.g., tons of different versions of a login page), you can use URL rewriting to consolidate these. You just have to make sure that if a goal URL or goal funnel uses one of these URLs that you update the goal setup.
Does the site have excessive sampling? If so, is it b/c they have more than one website in a property?	See this post for more details. http://bit.ly/1z1bgL8
Does site use campaign parameters on internal links?	Read this post to see just how badly this can trash your account: http://bit.ly/1bQBYNc. Use events for internal links, campaign parameters for external.
Do any pages use meta refresh? (This will artificially lower bounce rate.)	Screaming Frog: Meta & Canonical tab > Meta Refresh
If the site runs email campaigns, are they tagging URLs that point back to their site with campaign parameters?	If not, traffic from desktop apps (Outlook, Mac Mail) and webmail using SSL (e.g, Gmail) will show up as direct. Only webmail not using https will show up, but they will be buried in referral report, not email. And without campaign tagging, nothing will show up in the new Email Channel (Acquisitions > Channel > Email).
Does the profile use event tracking? If so, are they naming category, action, and label as they're intended?	Category: Should be broad categories of events, e.g., download, outbound, video, comment, white paper, banner, form, link, ad, live chat, resource, and widget (to name a few). Action: Should be verbs, such as click, play, download, log in, submit, bookmark, etc. Label: Should provide more details about the actual event, much like a title.
If they're using event tracking, are they using events as goals?
Does the site use custom variables? If so, are the being scoped properly?
Do custom variables share the same slot?	If so, make sure you don't have, for ex, a vistor-level CV sharing a slot with a session- or page-level CV. For ex, let's say you have a visitor-level CV (e.g., member = yes) that shares a slot with a session-level CV (e.g., clicked a social button) ... if visitor logs in and is registered as a member but then clicks a social button (if you're tracking this engagement as a CV), s/he is no longer a member; that person is now just someone who engaged w/ a social button. Check Audience > Custom > Custom Variables and click on each of the 5 keys (aka slots) to see what you're tracking. Here are two good posts with lots of ex's of ways you can leverage CVs: http://bit.ly/1eJacmU and http://selnd.com/1eJak5V.
If site uses ecommerce tracking, is the tracking code on all conversion pages?
If site uses ecommerce tracking, are there JavaScript or server-side programming errors before the _trackTrans() method keeping it from firing?
If site uses ecommerce tracking, does the code have currency symbols or or thousands separators in code?	Commas will be converted to decimals, so 112,345 becomes 112.34. Zoiks.
If site uses ecommerce tracking, do their products or store ID use apostrophes?	If they're using single quotes in their ecommerce tracking code, this will cause a problem b/c you can't have single quotes inside single quotes. E.g., .g., ‘Annie’s Funky Shoes’ should be “Annie’s Funky Shoes”. See this screenshot for more details: http://screencast.com/t/r5cL2LWp7Q6D.
If site uses ecommerce tracking, is it international / use multiple currencies?	If so, GA now supports multiple currencies (finally!). Read more here: http://bit.ly/X9YSWw.
Does the site have a YouTube channel? If so, does it track it in GA?	What it tracks: * Visits to your channel page * Searches done in your channel * Views to your playlists * Basically, anything under /user/Annielytics What it doesn't track: Visits to individual videos :((( Setup: Create new GA account. Then go to Video Manager > CHANNEL SETTINGS > Advanced > Enter UA account ID at the bottom of the form (Although you can add it to an existing account, you shouldn't. It will be buried in your data.)
Does the site use shopping feeds?
If they're using shopping feeds, what engines have they submitted to?
Do their feeds have all the required fields filled out?
Does the shopping feed use existing categories?
Does the feed include images?
Is the feed in one of the acceptable formats?	Google: http://support.google.com/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=160567
Is the feed being updated regularly?
Does the feed use custom fields?
Do product descriptions have unique copy?	Saarch Google or Bing for snippets of copy in quotations
Do product variations exist on unique URLs?
If so, are canonical tags used to prevent duplicate content?
Are there any problems with their conversion cycle?
Do they have a mobile site?	Navigate to the site via your smartphone, or as a smartphone in your desktop browser using Chrome's mobile user-agent emulator found here: http://bit.ly/1nSyCAA If the site looks exactly the same with no different formatting, then there is probably no mobile site.
Are all conversion and engagement goals / events configured in GA?	GA > Audience > Mobile > Overview > Check mobile conversion rates for various configured goals GA > Behavior > Events > Overview > Add Mobile Traffic Segment & Remove All Sessions Segment If important goals or events are not set up properly, configure goals in GA admin panel and/or add event tracking code to relevant pages.
If they don't have a mobile site, do they need one?	Look in GA to see if user engagement metrics such as bounce rate and conversions are down significantly for mobile users. Keep in mind the nature of your audience and whether they would be likely to convert at a lower rate no matter how great your mobile site is.
If they do have a mobile site, what type of mobile site do they have?	Google supports 3 types of mobile site configurations: 1) Responsive Design - Google's preference. URLs and code for mobile are the same as on desktop, but CSS adjusts on-page elements to display it best for the size of each screen. You can tell if the code is the same by using "Inspect Element" and the mobile user-agent emulator listed in B6. Using this configuration, so special setup is needed. 2) Dynamic Serving - Mobile site URLs are the same as on desktop, but different HTML is served depending on the user agent. Again, to determine whether code is the same, use the mobile emulator in Chrome. 3) Separate Mobile Site - Accessing the site on a mobile device leads you to different mobile-only URLs. This usually takes the format http://m.website.com/ but it can use subfolders or different subdomains as well. If their mobile site doesn't fit any of the above configurations, you may have trouble with Google indexing and/or ranking for mobile searches.
Are any site resources like Javascript, CSS, & Images blocked for any versions of Googlebot?	If so, Google may be prevented from fully detecting your mobile site configuration, no matter which option is chosen.
If they use dynamic serving or a separate mobile site, do they use the Vary HTTP Header?	If different code is served depending on the user-agent, Google requests that the server send them a hint to crawl the page as Googlebot for smartphones in addition to desktop Googlebot. The way to send this hint is via the "Vary: User-Agent" directive in the server's response to a request. To see what this looks like, read Google's documentation here: http://bit.ly/WKeuHl
If they use a separate mobile site, are rel="alternate" and rel="canonical" tags implemented properly?	Every mobile URL should have a canonical tag directing to its corresponding desktop URL. For desktop URLs, there are two acceptable implementations: 1) Adding a rel="alternate" tag which refers to the corresponding mobile URL and includes the "media" attribute telling Google what screen size the mobile URL is meant for. 2) Adding rel="alternate" to each desktop URL's entry in the site's XML sitemap See examples of both implementations here: http://bit.ly/1xqm5FX
If they use a separate mobile site, are mobile URLs being indexed?	Do a search in Google for "site:m.website.com" Even if everything is done correctly with regard to canonicals and rel="alternate" and the mobile URLs show up in search results on mobile devices as expected, this search should return no results no matter what device is used to perform the search. If mobile URLs are being indexed, manually request removal from the index via Webmaster Tools.
If they use a separate mobile site, are redirects implemented properly?	Google's recommended course of action involves 302 redirects to corresponding URLs, though they also support similar 301 redirects or javascript redirects. Please note that javascript redirects may take longer to execute, leading to a higher bounce rate. Ensure that all redirects go from one URL to their closest corresponding mobile URL. A common mistake here is for all desktop URLs (including inner pages) to redirect to the mobile homepage. "Reverse" redirects are also necessary in case a mobile user attempts to share a link with a friend on a desktop. Mobile URLs accessed on a desktop should redirect to a corresponding desktop page.
Do they use the mobile site for tablets? Should they?	Use Chrome's User-Agent Emulator. Due to the larger screen on tablets, users tend to expect to see a desktop site rather than a mobile site. Unless your mobile site also has a version specially optimized for tablet screen widths, serve the desktop site to these users.
Is the site language oriented or geographically oriented? Directories (eg: yourbrand.com/es/ or yourbrand.com/de/) are a better solution for language targeting --with no geographic constraint-- and ccTLDs (yourbrand.es or yourbrand.de) for geographically segmented users.	Verify if the site is targeted to any users speaking a specific language or the target market is restricted to a geographic location. This will help you to define the best organization for the different versions. For example, if the criteria is only the language with no geographic constraint you may want to enable directories for them: yourbrand.com/es/ (for any Spanish speaker who can be in any Latin American country, Spain, etc.) or yourbrand.com/de/ (for any German speaker who can be in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc.) instead of yourbrand.es (that would be targeted specifically to Spain) or yourbrand.de (that would be targeted specifically to Germany). If the site is geotargeted and using generic domains, subdomains or subdirectories: Keep in to consideration ccTLDs are the ideal alternative, followed by subdirectories. Avoid subdomains or generic domains with parameters. Please read to see the pros and cons of the alternatives: http://www.stateofsearch.com/international-multilingual-sites-criteria-to-establish-seo-friendly-structure/	Always remember to decide what International SEO formula (ccTld, subfolders or subdomain) to use based on the general businesses objective and being aware of the technical needs of the site in general. For instance, if the site is an eCommerce with thousands of products, the subfolder option may be not the optimal, because of the replication of the products databases or the risk of dealing with a too big and complex database. In that case a ccTld or mix (part subfolder and stores in subdomains) are a better solution. Moreover, if the company is having or going to have a physical presence in the country targeted, it is always suggested to use the local ccTld, especially because of the "French Syndrome", which is how it is called the unconscious preference people have for sites with their own country domain termination.	In case the site use a subfolder architecture for International SEO, avoid IP Lookup redirection. It is a deprecated practice for multilingual/multicountry SEO. The main reasons are: 1) it is not so sure users from a country want to use the country mirror of your site; 2) some CMSs (i.e.: Joomla) tend to present the main sudomain URL (www.domain.com) as the home page of every language/country version of your site. This can lead to a not useful naturl link building, as all the link should go to the home page, which is theoretically targeting just one language/country; 3) Googlebot usually crawls from an US IP: with an IP Lookup redirection it would "see" only one version of the site.
Is the content of the international version of the site in the relevant language, correctly localized? (Eg: The content of the French version is in French language featuring prices in Euros, the Brazilian version is in Portuguese featuring prices in Real, etc.)	Content should be featured in the language of the target market. Keep into consideration that a language may change in dependance of the geographic area that is targeting, for example: Mexican Spanish is not exactly the same than Argentinian Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese is not the same than Portuguese in Portugal. Because of this make sure the content is not only translated but also localized and well targeted to its geographic market, with local terms, currency, etc.	Remember that a good translator translates into his own mother language, not the contrary (i.e.: an Italian translate from English to Italian, not vice versa). PRO TIP: use the translators also for well identify and localize the keywords you are targeting. This way you will discover linguistic peculiarities, as the love Italians have for using English wording for tech (i.e.: web hosting in Italian is web hosting and not "alloggiamento web", which is its literal translation).	Never use an automatic translator. Neither the Google Translate APIs. Apart from offering very bad translations, that is a deprecated by Google tactic.
Is the URL structure of the international version in the relevant language of the shown content?	Make sure that the URLs of the international versions are in the appropriate language and not in English by default. For example, the URLs for the Spain oriented site version should be in Spanish.
If the site is targeted to a specific country, is this specified in Google Webmaster Tools?	Geotarget the site version to its relevant geographic market in Google Webmaster Tools (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62399)	Remember that in Google Webmaster Tools also subdomains and subfolder can be geotargeted. NOTE: only generic name domains can be geo-targeted. Country Code Top Level Domain Names are automatically geo-targeted to their corresponding country. This is important because it is not so rare to see sites with ccTlds trying to open to International SEO and creating language/country subfolder of subdomains, which cannot be geo-targeted via GWT
If the site is targeted to a specific country, does it have a local IP of the country?	To verify the IP of a site you can use the Flagfox extension for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flagfox/ or the "Server Stats" tab in http://whois.domaintools.com/
Are the pages or sitemaps of the international sites including the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" annotations to specify their languages and geographic regions?	They should be use to specify the different versions languages and locations according to: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077	You can use Screaming Frog Custom Field in order to see if the rel="alternate" hreflang="x-X" is used on site or not, in every page or not.
Is the language of the international pages content specified in HTML doctype declaration?	The language of the content should be specified as described in http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/new-language-decl/qa-html-language-declarations
If the business is targeting too many countries with the same language (eg: you have yourbrand.com.mx for Mexican users and yourbrand.es for Spanish users) are each of the different site versions featuring original content?	If the products or services are the same make sure to differentiate them by localizing the descriptions, specifying areas of services, using titles with the location names, etc.
Are the different international versions of the site prominently linking to each other, giving users and search engines the option to find them?	Give search engines and users a way to find all of the international versions of the site. Make sure that the links to the different international versions are crawlable.	See recommendation in D2
Does the site suggests its appropriate version according to users language and location? If the site is geographically targeted are users suggested to visit the relevant site version for their location? If the site is language targeted are users suggested to visit the relevant site version for their language?	For example, if the site is geographically targeted and users in Spain are accessing the UK site version (yourdomain.co.uk) a non-intrusive message (not a pop-up) should be given informing that it exists another site version targeted to Spain (yourdomain.es) that might be better suited for them. This can be done detecting users IP addresses. On the other hand, if the site is language targeted visitors using a browser in Spanish who are accessing the English site version should receive a non-intrusive message inviting them to switch to the Spanish version if they prefer to do it. This should be displayed as an alternative for them only the first time they access to the site and save their preferences for future visits. Despite this there should be always the option to switch to any other version of the site as specified in a previous point.
Do the international site versions have links from their relevant locations? (eg: yourbrand.fr should have relevant links from France sites in French).	Verify and make sure to build links to each international site version from local sites (blogs, news sites, local communities, etc.) in their same language.
Which are the most popular search engines used for each of your international target markets? For most of the Western world might be Google but if you're targeting to Russia you might need to start focusing also in Yandex and for China you would need to work with Baidu.	Verify which are the most popular search engines used in the international locations you're targeting and make sure to align your optimization practices to make the most out of them, use their keywords, webmasters and tracking tools too, etc. You can use: http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries to check the top sites per country.	This is important also in Social Media, considered here as an outreach tool.
Are you targeting China and Russia?	In this case to choose the .cn and .ru ccTlds is somehow an obligation as both Baidu and Yandex are strongly biased to their respective Country Code Top Level Domain Names
Is the site using structured markup (e.g., schema.org, Facebook Open Graph, GoodRelations, microformats.org, XFN, etc)?	GWT: Search Appearance > Structured Data Screenshot of sample report: http://www.screencast.com/t/YzptQHgEame
Does the site have content that's rich snippet-worthy that schema.org supports (e.g., video, reviews, ratings, recipes, event, product, offer, etc)?	Schema.org: http://schema.org/docs/gs.html#schemaorg_types Here's a set of commonly used item types: Creative works: CreativeWork, Book, Movie, MusicRecording, Recipe, TVSeries ... Embedded non-text objects: AudioObject, ImageObject, VideoObject Event Organization Person Place, LocalBusiness, Restaurant ... Product, Offer, AggregateOffer Review, AggregateRating Reference: http://bit.ly/rc08C3 How to use: http://selnd.com/vXRHlC
Is the markup validated?	Google's Validator: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets BWT: Diagnostics & Tools > Markup Validator Facebook Debugger: http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
Does the site need microdata for local business?	http://microdatagenerator.org/
Are competitors using structured markup?	http://www.sindice.com/ Search for your keywords. Only sites that are using structured markup will show up in results, and the type of markup they're using is listed. (RDFA = FB Open Graph)
Do the rich snippets follow Google's guidelines?	http://bit.ly/SypKRq
What's your monthly budget?
How many active campaigns are there?	Number of campaigns should be proportional to the budget.
How many active ads are there?	Number of active ads should be appropriate for the number of ad groups running
How many active keywords are there?	Number of keywords needs to be appropriate for the daily budget
Is conversion tracking enabled?	Has to be enabled
Is the account connected to Google Analytics Account?	AdWords and GA track differently. It is very helpful to have both to understand the user and the success of PPC advertising.
Are Search and Display separated?	should be
Are you using negative keywords?	Negative keywords are an absoulte must, especially if you have broad and modified broad match keywords. Use negative lists to apply them to campaigns and adGroups in bulk.
Are there mobile campaigns?	Always separate mobile devices. Depending on your mobile traffic (consult analytics), you might want to start creating campaigns just for mobile devices.
Are ads A/B tested?	Every adGroup should have at least 2 ads running at all time to test and improve click-through-rate and conversions.
Are AdGroups themed?	All keywords should be united in adGroups under a very tight theme.
How many destination URLs take visitors to homepage?	Do not send paid traffic to your home page. Home pages are too generic and, as a rule, do not answer the query question. That said, test your home page performance for ads you think make sense to connect with your home page. You might be an exception to the rule.
What is your Cost to Sales ratio?	Take your cost, divide by sales and you get a percent. 30% is good. Higher is not very good and one of quick indicators that you need to make more money from your advertising. Be careful with this number if your PPC goal is brand recognition and awareness. When your goal does not translate directly into revenue, this metric is not as helpful.
What is your average conversion rate?	Average conversion rate is a quick indicator of the overall account performance. You will need to look at conversion rates for the campaigns and individual adGroups. If the average conversion rate is below 1%, you know that you have to investigate further and as quickly as possible.
How good is average Cost Per Click?	Average Cost Per Click (CPC) should be tolerable from the business perspective. You need to take into consideration cost per acquisition, goals of the campaign, etc. Divide CPC by average conversion rate and you will get cost per lead. Then, decide if it is acceptable.
How do your Impression Share reports look?	Figure out if you are losing impressions based on bad quality score or low budget. If you are, improve quality score and revise your budget allocations.
How many keywords have a Quality Score (QS) less than 4?	Has to be low. Ideally, you should not have low quality score keywords. In real life, you might be in a niche (payday loans, for example) where all keywords have low quality score.
What percent of keywords have a QS less than 4?
How many keywords have a QS of 4, 5, or 6?	Areas of improvement
What percent of keywords have a QS of 4, 5, or 6?
How many keywords have a QS of 7, 8, 9, or 10?	Your goal is to have all keywords in this range
What percentage of keywords have a QS of 7, 8, 9, or 10?	Best if it is 70% and above.
Do the videos on the company's website and YouTube channel come up in a brand video search in Google and Bing?
Do any video rich snippets come up in Google in a search for the company's brand name?
Do they have video markups from schema.org on all of their videos?	Check GWT: Search Appearance > Structured Data
Has the website submitted a video xml sitemap submitted to GWT and BWT?	GWT: Crawl > Sitemaps BWT: Configure my site > Sitemaps
If the site has submitted video sitemaps, are all of the site's videos indexed?	GWT: Crawl > Sitemaps BWT: Configure my site > Sitemaps
Is the site's video sitemap formatted correctly? (Must-read guide that covers all platforms)	http://www.distilled.net/blog/video/creating-video-sitemaps-for-each-video-hosting-platform/
Are all of their videos on one page?	This is sub-optimal. With rare exception, videos should be on separate pages with text on the page.
Are videos embedded?	Screaming Frog: Configuration > Custom > Enter a snippet of code from video embed (e.g., src="http://www.youtube.com/ for YouTube)
If videos are embedded, have they been transcribed?	https://www.speechpad.com/pricing
Is there keyword-filled content surrounding their videos?
Does the company host their videos on a video-sharing site, like YouTube or Vimeo?
Does the company use a video-hosting service like Wistia or Brightcove?
If the company uses a video-sharing service, like YouTube or Vimeo, are all of the videos from the company's video channel on their website, and vice-versa?
If the company uses a video-sharing site, do they have a link or button on their website pointing to their channel?
If the company is using a video-sharing service, like YouTube or Vimeo, do all of their videos have optimized titles and descripitions?	YouTube's Keyword Suggestion Tool: https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool
If the company is using a video-sharing service, are video titles compelling?
Are the videos tagged with relevant keywords?	The site should use these generously. Put most important tags first.
Are the tags mixed between common and specific keywords?	This is ideal.
Do tagged phrases use quotes?	If phrases such as "video seo" aren't in quotes, they will be tagged as video and seo.
If the company is using a video-sharing service, are video descriptions thorough?
Does the video or description have a call to action for people to comment on the video?	Video responses show YouTube that your video is popular and relevant.
Are there links to other videos in the annotations?	There's anecdotal evidence that YouTube favors videos that link to other YouTube assets within annotations.
Are the videos getting favorited and liked? Are the videos providing any incentive to like or favorite them?	Getting Liked and favorited helps with video SEO in YouTube.
Are videos being published regularly?	YouTube's alorgithm favors video channels that puplish content regularly. It also gives you more opportunities to have high ranking videos.
Is there a link in the front of the video's description?	It's best to start the video description with a link back to your website. Read more here: http://mashable.com/2010/04/16/boost-seo-youtube/.
If the site uses a video-sharing site, do its descriptions also have a link to their channel page, a subscription link, links to related content, or to sites/videos/channels/users referenced in the video, and links for social media?
Are the videos embeded with iframes?	In order to be indexed, it's best to embed content with HTML5, JavaScript, or Flash. Search engines aren't very good at crawling and indexing iframes.
Are the promotional videos focused on converting customer purchases > 30 sec, but still short and to the point?	If you’re aiming to convert consumer purchases off the back of your video, keeping it as short and to the point as possible is preferable.
Are the product videos coming off as overly promotional ads?	If you’re building commercially focused content, then it’s important to remember that product videos are not ads.
Are product videos on YouTube?	Product and commercially oriented videos tend to have a better chance of getting rich snippets on video-hosting sites, like Wistia and BightCove.
Are there keyword-optimized captions in the video?	Make sure your videos have captions
Do the videos have CNAME aliases, to make sure links are going back to a branded subdomain?	This way you can ensure any embedded content links back to you twice: once to reference the video file and once with an attribution link to a page which you can specify. You can read more about what Phil Nottingham has to say about this here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo
Are their social share buttons next to the video player?	Video-hosting sites like Brightcove or Wistia provide social sharing buttons as overlays or icons next to the player. Otherwise, just include social buttons next to the player you're using.
What CMS does the site use?	BuiltWith Chrome plugin http://www.woorank.com/en/ (get 1/week)
Does the site use a favicon?
Does the site have images > 20kb?	Screaming Frog > Configuration > Spider > Check Images or, from a full scan, go to the Images tab
Are there any design elements that are distracting?
Does the site offer site search?
Is the site search field in the upper-right corner of each page?	This is where user expect to find site search.
if the site uses site search, does the site search use a query parameter?	See an illustration of a query parameter: http://www.screencast.com/t/PI85pzjXxB
How is the user experience for homepage?
How is the user experience for cateogry pages?
How is the user experience for product/content pages?
Does the site use smiling heads for its images?	Using stock photography of good-looking, smiling models can make a site look generic and sterile.
Are there pages on the site that seem to be problematic?	You can use this custom GA report (http://bit.ly/TvtS4B) to sort by organic landing pages with high bounce rates and exit rates. (The report is already filtered to only include organic traffic.)
Does the site have anything on it that auto-plays (video, audio, ads)?
Does every page contain a distinguishing logo in the header?
If the site has a logo, does it link to the canonical version of the homepage?
Does the site have a tagline?
If the site has a tagline, is it compelling?
Does the site have an about page?
If the site has an about page, is it compelling and written in plain English?
Does the page have contact information that's easy to get to?
If the site has contact information, does it include a phone number?
Does the site have sitelinks for brand searches?	Example: http://www.screencast.com/t/lpuT5LMDp
Are competitors bidding on the site's brand terms?
Do they have reputation management issues?	Search for brand on review sites. I created a CSE for review sites: http://bit.ly/review-cse
If the site has gotten negative reviews, has the client responded to them? Offered compensation?
Does busienss get regular mentions in blogosphere?
Does business have mentions in industry online publications?
Do experts from business get interviews from publications?
Does anyone from the business participate in Q&A websites?
Does the domain itself get mentions online?
Do they have press releases pointing back to their site?
If so, do the press releases contain good links?

Free SEO Website Audit Checklist