As you will have noticed I put up a box on the top right a while ago offering a free SEO assessment (from a top UK SEO no less… self proclamation is it really needed or worthwhile?). Well, we have got to the stage now where I am getting about two or three enquiries per day for this; thank you! Every person who submits a request gets a personalised assessment back. Some are brief and some are somewhat longer (depending on my current time pressures), but all of them should add some insight and value to the SEO situation for the site concerned.

There were two reasons I started this service. The first was to keep myself fresh (you know what I mean) and ‘with it’ with new sites and situations to look at and analyse. The second was to, maybe, get some paid assignments out of it too. This is when the initial assessment is greeted with a ‘let’s talk further’. I am pleased to say that I have hit the mark with both of these goals so far.

So what has changed? Well, I would like to open these out a bit and maybe once a month use a particularly good (or bad) situation and write about it publicly. The good news here is that the public ones will be quite in depth (the ones that usually have a fee attached if the person/company wants me to go a lot further) and this (public) assessment will now be free. This will only be by agreement (if you ask for an assessment you won’t now suddenly find me dissecting your site in a live post) and also I will make sure the version that appears here is a little bit more truncated that the one you will get. Hey, we might even do some live video or screen cam ones.

Now, here comes my get out. If this takes off too much I may have to rein back on the amount that I can do and be more selective. But let’s see how it goes.

If you would like me to give you an SEO assessment overview of your site, just send your detail via the contact form. You never know you might be the first one to get an extended assessment for free and make it on to the site too.

P.S. as the name of the site suggests this site is (meant to) concentrate on the UK SEO scene. So, please don’t be offended, but I do ask for the sites submitted to be UK based (doesn’t need to be  hosted in the UK, but needs to be administered in the UK). However, if you have a site outside of this region and you think (or know) I couldn’t resist to delve further on the SEO side you are welcome to submit it and give it a try!

It goes into some detail about some of the user testing and eye tracking Google are doing. The post looks at some of the differences that have occured since Google introduced universal search into its search results.

Also, if you look at the search results heatmap you can see how important the top two entries are in Google’s search results. Also, you can definately understand why Google puts more and more sponsored results above the search results as well as to the right. It must be ever so tempting for them to lessen their quality guidelines to allow more and more ads to make their way to this sweetest of spots.

Lastly, if you don’t already, this is a good time to branch out into picture and video search engine optimisation. You are missing a big win here and youe definately are if any of the search terms you would like to be listed for have an inherant visual element (just like ‘how to tie a tie’).

P.S. if you want to do some of your own (not eye but mouse pointer) heatmaps and user tracking, visit ClickTale. They have a fantastic tool that allows you to see a Flash movie of how your visitors have interacted with your site (what they click on, how long them spend on the page, where their mouse goes, etc.). The entry version is free and I would highly recommend having a look.