Last week, Google released their SEO Report Card, designed to identify opportunities for SEO improvement within Google and to share SEO best practices with the industry.  The report card measures the main pages of 100 Google sites against common optimization categories, assigning a grade for each.

We agree that scoring pages can be a good way to aggregate feedback and flag issues. We asked Razorfish’s SEO team to give Google’s report card a grade, based on its potential usefulness to companies with many websites. Our SEO team was unimpressed — zero As or Bs were handed out. Here’s a sample response, and a chart of all responders’ grades below:

“Google has outlined a basic approach but does not clearly define where emphasis should be placed to maximize value. There are dozens of tactics not addressed in this document that may be affecting their level of organic success.

Though they are self deprecating in their approach to pulling back the curtain, I think they might mislead some people about what is important in SEO. They discuss not having proper keywords in place, but they don’t do a good job specifying how to source keywords or the value of ranking for certain keywords. I mean, regardless of its title tags, the Google Keyword Tool ranks #1 for the top search terms for keyword research. On the one hand, yes, they’re not using some best practices, but on the other, SEO can’t be reduced to a checklist and not all sites are created equal. Some require one or two changes to show improvement while others need the full gamut of techniques.”

We want to hear from you so share your grade with us.

Have an idea for QuickPoll? Email us at razorfishsearch@razorfish.com