There’s just too many questions, especially when it comes to search engines and internet marketing. As a strategically competitive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultant, it is my job to keep “time spent” to a minimum, when evaluating a potential sale. This theory should abide true for all of us, and as a SEO consultant or webmaster of any kind, not only should you have your business running successful, you must be successful  in all areas of your life — even if some of you have to pretend.

Provided here are a selected few, in which I’ve placed together to make a questionnaire. This is a client questionnaire — this questionnaire was created for you to hand out to potential customers. These questions will assist you in the overall SEO process, providing you with almost all of the information you’ll need in order to manage their SEO campaign, This is the same questionnaire I will be using in this new year of 2013.

Please don’t copy and paste this content anywhere else online. It can be copied and used in emails, and copied to be used for offline marketing, and that’s it.
1. Which website analytics tracking system do you use (If Any), and can we gain access to it?

Web analytics are the key to measuring the current level of SEO success (or lack thereof). They’re also the key to determining whether any future SEO implementation is helping to bring more targeted traffic. Therefore, it’s critical for me to have access to this information regardless of the level of SEO service I’m providing. If you use Google Analytics, it’s very simple to add new users to the account and in most cases it’s fine to provide report-only access (rather than admin). Along with Google Analytics, I also ask for access to your Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) account. These days, if you have Google Analytics access, you can usually add the same website to your GWMT account as well, which makes the process easier.

2. What’s the purpose of your site and who is your target audience?

Some of you will try to cop out: “Well, the purpose of our site is to sell our product.” And your target audience? ”Umm … anyone with a credit card?” Not very helpful. If you don’t have a good handle on who the people are who are buying YOUR PRODUCTS, how will I be able to help you bring those people to your website?

3. Are there any other domains or sites that you own or control, or that you used to use instead of the current domain? (PLEASE list them ALL.)

This information is important so that if needed, I will be able to gain assess to any duplicate content issues. I need to know whether that other site I found that is using nearly the same content as yours, is owned by you, or if someone scraped yours. I also need to know if you’re using multiple domains as an SEO strategy (so I can smack you!). I added this one to my questionnaire when I kept finding doorway domains or other sites that my clients *forgot* to tell me about. Even those who really do forget or who purposely don’t tell me about their additional domains aren’t getting away with anything. I usually end up finding them during my website audit process. So if you’re a client, do us both a favor and come clean from the start. This will save us all some time down the line! (And I was just kidding about smacking you.)

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