Tom Anderson Guitar Works SEO Audit and Analysis

Home Page - Key Words

1. Electric Guitar - A generic, yet critical SEO keyword. Designed to, at the very least, allow Anderson to be visible when searching for the term. While competition is heavy and the term is very saturated, it is critical that Anderson be associated with this keyword.
2. Custom Guitar - A more specific keyword that captures an essential aspect of Anderson's DNA. Making custom guitars is what Anderson does, differentiating them from the competition. This keyword is necessary to develop an online presence associated with quality and customer satisfaction.
3. Drop-top - Another specific keyword denoting one of Anderson's main base models. As customers customize, they must first choose a model to customize, the drop-top and drop-top classic being very popular. This should be leveraged as a SEO word for its unique, Anderson-only reference.

Home Page Recommendations

1. Images - Good use of high quality images, very stunning guitars
2. Navigation - Tab layout for site navigation is well placed, and thought out.
3. Aesthetic - Overall, the home page is not bad. However, the logo should be larger, this helps the viewer to get a handle on the 'brand image,' literally. A short blurb about the Anderson Guitar Works vision would be necessary to add on the home page as well.

Overall Site Recommendations

1. Siloing - Siloing could be better. While everything is in its proper place, the amount of siloing that is present is actually a deterrent. While everything is organized, it is troublesome to have to click on options and and then going back. This creates a back and forth action on the site, making users have a mundane experience. Spread out the options, keep the main silos and such, but don't have things in silos down to the very smallest options.
2. Customization - This is by far, the most important part. As a custom guitar brand, you should really have a guitar generator on the site. User should be able to go to the generator tab and shuffle through options, being able to see a produced image or graphic of what the guitar will look like. There are so many options, having a generator with pictures and descriptions can help customers learn and be excited about the product.
3. Minor Recommendations - Make sure that the picture representing the 'drop-top classic' guitar has a finish which shows off the flamed/quilted maple cap wood. The current image has a solid white finish, not showing off the maple caps discussed in the description. Make sure you have more photos of guitar finishes. Not all of the different types of finishes available are shown
4. 404 Message - Overall, a very good message, providing navigational links for users. However, drop the 'deleted page' problem cause. Ensure that pages are no longer available if they actually are deleted. Keep the message to error in domain.
5. Consistency - Ensure that all of the option available in the custom guitar page are discussed in the 'Anderson advantage' and 'tech tips' page.

Using SEO Tools

1. Keywords and competition - Anderson, at first glance, operates in the highly competitive electric guitar market. However, leveraging SEO keywords can go a long way towards differentiating Anderson as a premium, custom guitar builder. Even more so than other custom guitar manufactures. Anderson needs to leverage their competencies through SEO keywords in order to educate customers.
2. Optimize website - For the most part, Anderson's website is clean and usable. However, minor improvements can be made to make the overall user experience faster and more navigable. The amount of siloing creates a bloated feeling, bogging the user down in constant clicks to the next page.
3. Siloing - Use siloing well. The siloing is so intense that page after page has new options and areas. Constant clicking prevents the user from reading, looking, or watching.
4. Enrich media - Anderson harnesses and already uses high quality images to their advantage. However, this can be further leveraged if they were to supplement the images with text and explanation. For a custom guitar company, there are many different options and possibilities. Including with images, the type of wood, finish, or pick-ups can go a long way to helping customers understand what they are looking at.
5. Bolster pages with relevant words - Make sure that each page has relevant keywords in it. Words that search engines can identify and lend both credibility and relevance to the page(s). Pages aren't just places to include information about the company or product, but also areas for strategy. Including important keywords from the industry enables Anderson to be more known.
6. Effective links - While the links are all credible and useful, make sure that the links and link images are pleasing to look at. While a minor detail, looks lend a great deal of credibility to external links.
7. Mobile optimization - Again, the siloing problem is compounded on mobile sites as navigation is less efficient on mobile. While the site is optimized fine, the siloing issue makes the site harder to use. However, the custom guitar builder is not properly optimized.
8. Sitemaps - Leverage sitemaps for clear and constant communication between the site and the search engine.