SEO Automatic Report for http://www.wolf-howl.com
| Overview | • 2 Notable Issues | • 8 Worth Reviewing | • 13 Correct Items (or are they?) |
Meta Information
| Title Tag I believe the title tag is probably the single most important "on page" ranking factor there is. 
Okay - You have a title tag, but what does it say? is this something that people are searching for? Is it your business name? Is your city and state included? Is it - gasp - "Home"? Your title tag becomes the "headline" of the small portion of your page that shows in the search results. Most search industry professionals agree that the title tag is still one of the most important ranking factors. Don't forget that the title tag ALSO entices users to click on your result. If you don't fully understand the Title Tag, including what it does, where it goes in your code, where it shows to users, etc. then you should give my original Title Tag Tips a quick read. Discuss this topic or ask questions
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| Description Tag The description tag is what the visitor will read in the search results when deciding whether or not to click on your listing.
Your description tag is what people will read in the search results before deciding whether or not to click on your link. Think of it as a two line classified ad and maximize every word.
Read these Description Tag Tips and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Does it compel users, and is it a good description of what users will get when they arrive? Below, is what you are showing people in your SERPS.... Discuss this topic or ask questions |
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| Keyword Tag The keyword meta tag is NOT actually a critical factor for ranking at this time. HOWEVER, I left it marked critical because I want it to stand out. 
Your page has no keyword meta tag at all. If it was left out intentionally, I guess that's your call, but if I were you, I'd add some. Keyword meta tags were all the rage many years ago, but as people began stuffing and abusing them, the search engines started to devalue them, and today, they're almos entirely ignored. However, I believe that could turn around again, and it only takes a minute to add 5 - 10 relevant phrases to your keyword tag. Make the batch of keywords completely unique for each URL, and try not to duplicate more than 50% of them with any other page. If you can't come up with unique kw tags for a page, then why do you have a different URL? Admittedly, I'm in the minority among SEO's that think it's still worth the effort. |
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| H1 Header Tag The H1 tag is arguably the most important tag to have after the title tag, since it's the headline for the page.
You have no H1 tag. Nearly every page needs a headline to let the search engines know what it's about. People also respond well to headlines, so put your page headline inside an H1 tag. The only type of page that doesn't need a keyword rich H1, would perhaps be a compilation of subjects, such as a table of contents, where there are many different headlines. In a case like that, I'll usually recommend skipping the H1 and using all H2's for the headlines. Read my article, Header Tag Tips for more info. |
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| H2 Header Tag If you have a page long enough for multiple headlines, you want to be sure you're only using one H1 tag, but you can use an H2 tag or more all you want. This is what you are using for your H2 tags on your page. Are they subject relevant, or are they meaningless headlines that are replicated thousands of times across the web? Your H2 headlines should be specific to a subject that you would like this page to be ranked for, and making them link to other relevant areas of your site helps too. Discuss this topic or ask questions |
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| Image Height & Width Tags If you specify your height and width in your code for images, the page will load faster, leaving space for the images to fill in as they complete. 
Some images are missing height and width attributes.This means the page can't be fully rendered until these images have been downloaded, and that makes your site feel slower to users. Is it a big deal? Well, that's up to you. I don't think so, unless you have multiple infractions, or large individual file sizes too. However, like meta keyword tags, it only takes a few seconds to put 'em in, so don't be lazy! |
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| Images Expires headers If you use "image expires" in your header, then browsers will cache the images until a specified date, speeding your load times for returning visitors.
Your site is not using "expires" in the headers for your images. An expires tag can help speed up the serving of your webpages for users that regularly visit your site. There are far more important things you can do, but if your site is really almost perfect, then go learn more about it by reading section 14.9.3 - W3c and implement. I'd also like to point out that this is typically one GIANT pain in the neck to have to deal with, due to so many different server configurations, and restricted access to your different config files, so might be worth ignoring entirely. |
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| Robots Meta Tag The Robots Meta Tag is a command issued to visiting search spiders.
These are the commands you are issuing to the search spiders. Do you know what each of them mean, and are they necessary?
Discuss this topic or ask questions noodp, noydir |
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| Robots Meta Tag The Robots Meta Tag is a command issued to visiting search spiders.
These are the commands you are issuing to the search spiders. Do you know what each of them mean, and are they necessary?
Discuss this topic or ask questions noodp,noydir,noarchive |
Miscellaneous:
| robots.txt The robots.txt file must be present on your domain, or you're going to generate 404 errors when the search engines look for it, which they all do. Good Job - Your site uses a robots.txt file. Are you using valid syntax, and can you confirm correct allowing/blocking for the robots? Are you referencing the location of your XML sitemap there? |
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| XML sitemap file XML sitemaps tell the search engines exactly where every page on your site is located, and the importance you place on each. Good Job - Your site has a sitemap.xml file. Has it been submitted through Google Webmaster Tools? If so, would that be to your own Google account or your SEO firms? Did you know that you can validate multiple accounts for one site? Don't risk losing access to your Google WMT data. Get your own Google account and validate your site. |
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| URL Canonicalization The search engines do see subdomains (including www.) as entirely separate domains, and it's up to you to ensure that all incoming requests get 301 redirected to the www version to prevent possible duplicate content issues.
Good Job - Your URL is exactly the same with a 301 redirect, either with or without the www. Whomever set up your site paid attention to details, however, you STILL may have a problem that this tool cannot detect. Why? Because, although your domain has a 301 redirect in place for the www version of a page, we're unable to tell if you might have other URL's that show the exact same content. This usually takes place on the home page, but has been seen elsewhere too. The worst offender, in my experience, are sited hosted on a Windows server, where adding /Default.aspx (or similar) after the domain.com brings up multiple versions of the home page. This one is definitely worth learning more about, and a single fix of your home page can make a world of difference! Go watch this Matt Cutts video on canonicalization to see some recent changes and a proposed solution for 2009. |
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| Nested Tables Pages that contain tables inside other tables make the page load slower, since the web browser is forced to find the end of the table before it can display the whole page. Good Job - Your page does not use nested tables, which speed up your load times and optimizes the user experience. That happy visitor might even be a search engine! |
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| Inline Styles In-line styles or CSS styles are those which are applied to just one single element.
You do appear to be using inline styles. Is this a WordPress site? If so, it's likely just the sidebars, and not an issue. Using nested tables does needlessly add repetitive code, and it's conceivable that the page might rank better by moving to an external style sheet. It depends on the extent of your table use, and your developer can tell you more about cost. to be a bug here, and it's incorrectly reporting the existence of tables. sorry - we're on it. |
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| Inline Javascript Having too much code in a page makes it load more slowly. Instead of placing code in-line, move it to an external file that you can then call as an include to speed it up.
Your page does seem to be using inline javascript in your code. It might be something minor, like a category drop down menu, or it could be a larger issue. To get this to "pass" you could move all javascript to a single included file. That would speed page loading if the script is used repeatedly throughout your site. Doing this might also make your code easier to maintain. You developer should also examine how many scripts there are and how large they are, to determine if there might be any value for you to remedy. It may even just be something small like Google Analytics, which you wouldn't even worry about unless you're an obsessive perfectionist. I only mention it here because its worth examination. |
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| Favicon Favicons are the branded logos/icons that appear in the address bar next to your URL.
Your site appears to be calling for a favicon, but have you added code in your header to tell the world that you've got one? Even more important though, can you actually see your favicon showing here? If not, then something's wrong, and your file is probably missing. |
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| Favicon Method To show a favicon, some sites just drop in an .ico file and let Web browsers find it on their own. Instead, there's code that should be put in your header. The correct code for a favicon isn't in your header. Not only should you have a favicon, but you should tell ALL spiders and browsers that it's there. go read this for more info.
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Image attributes
| ALT Tags for Images The ALT tag was originally designed to help sight impaired visitors "see" what an image was.
Good job - At least some of your photos have ALT tags. Now, do they accurately describe each photo, or are they spammy sounding? Discuss this topic or ask questions
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Links
Compression
| Total Page Size Maintaining a total page size of under 125k is my own preference, and the individual object sizes can be seen below.
1.1 MB - Your page is (in my opinion), TOO LARGE. You should use lower resolution photos, or consider various methods of compression, or just cut out some of the unneeded fat. If you're over 500k, you should make it a higher priority, but it's probably still not a big deal unless you get much higher than 750. Remember, I'm nitpicking here... |
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| HTML Size (uncompressed) This is the size of all code on your web page EXCEPT...
54.37 KB - Even without your images and scripts, your uncompressed web page is leaning large at over 50k by itself. Faster load times are better - can't this get cleaned up? This issue goes hand in hand with HTML compression too.Good steps to reduce HTML size include using CSS layouts, external style sheets, and moving javascript to external files. Secondary steps to reduce HTML size include reducing HTML white space and shortening HTML comments too. You can move this pretty low on the priority list unless your page is really large. |
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| HTML Compression Status Compressed pages load faster,and your users (and the search engines) will thank you for compressing them before delivery. Wow, you're actually delivering compressed pages. That's pretty good, and your host is doing a nice job for you. It's definitely something to investigate before you ever consider changing hosts.
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| Compression Ratio Some servers will compress the files before serving, making them load faster. This certainly isn't critical, but the more competitive your environment, the more these little things can add up. 20% - Congratulations, this is the percentage of your compression.
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| HTML Size (compressed) Compressing just your .html files alone likely isn't necessary, but it might be something to consider if your pages are way too large. |
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| x-cache Header This shows whether or not your site is serving cached pages or not. Caching saves bandwidth and speeds up load times by serving static versions of your dynamic pages.
It doesn't appear that you're caching pages, but just like compression, it may not be necessary in your case.When a site is driven by a database, a cached page can be served to your visitors as static html, and will eliminate time spent querying the database. the down side of caching is that frequent visitors may not see your newest content, so you should use caching cautiously. By itself, this is not a huge issue, and unless you have thousands of daily visitors it's likely not worth figuring out. On the other hand, combined with load time issues can affect your organic rankings AND even your Google AdWords Quality Score too. Every little bit helps, and if you're in a competitive environment, trying to shaving hundredths of seconds off your 1/4 mile, and looking for potential sources of improvement, I'd look into this closely. |
