What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit refers to an analysis of a website’s performance, visibility, and its current ranking in the search engine industry. That way, you will know the relative strengths, weaknesses, and areas of necessity for improvement. The purpose of this audit is to make improvements on the technical, on-page, and off-page factors to improve the organic search engine traffic.
Why is an SEO audit important?
A website plays the most important role when we talk about brand recognition. However, there are many times when your website is not ranking or performing well on Google, so to understand the technical aspects (vulnerabilities and loopholes) of the website’s SEO, we need to perform an SEO audit.
However, while performing an SEO audit, you need to know a number of things. An SEO audit provides us with all the issues present on the web pages, and by fixing those issues, we can improve search engine ranking. So here is a quick step-by-step guide to performing an SEO audit on the site and individual pages.
Let’s start with an SEO audit strategy.
An SEO audit is essential before improving a website’s rank in search engines. Before starting to do an SEO audit, we need to structure it to achieve our desired goals. We can get better insights by performing the right audit. Some of these include getting an insight into your competitors, analyzing keywords, improving the site’s technicality, and many more.
Here is How to Complete an SEO Audit in 4 Steps:
- Technical SEO Analysis
- On-page SEO Analysis
- Off-page SEO Analysis
- Competitor’s SEO Analysis
Technical Analysis
The primary focus that we need to analyze is how the website works to make sure that Googlebot can index and crawl our webpages correctly. Technical SEO analysis helps us get better accessibility and indexability for the website.
Analyze your website with these major technical factors:
How many pages does Google crawl?
If Google is unable to crawl and index most of the pages on our website, it means a lot of content has been wasted and lacks potential. This intensive crawling and indexing exercise can greatly boost our site’s visibility and ranking on search engine result pages. Keeping the website up-to-date and optimizing it helps achieve and sustain such a level of indexing. To view pages:
- Go to Google Search Console:
- Search and select your website property:
- Go to the ‘Indexing’ section and Pages
You’ll find issues related to “Crawled – currently not indexed” and “Discovered – currently not indexed“.
Pages with low page speed
A seeming increase in the number of web pages with low page loading reduces the quality of user experience, increases bounce rate, and search engine positions. This is because any page with a slow speed never reaches the customer destination.
Mobile-Friendly Status
The SEO process heavily relies on mobile-friendliness as one of its key components. Your website must be cross-compatible with mobile sites and devices, as this makes it more likely to abide by SEO guidelines and increase its ranking on the search engine results page.
To verify whether a website and its pages are mobile-friendly or not, go to Page Speed Insights and then hit the analyze button.
Pages blocked by robots.txt
When optimizing technical SEO factors, it is advisable to follow the primary pages/posts not allowed by robots.txt. To enhance the website’s presence, it is best to use Google Search Console and review the robots.txt file for the blocked pages to address and fix them.
To check status of robots.txt file:
- Go to Google Search Console:
- Search and select your website property:
- Go to the ‘Settings’ section and under crawling you will see the latest status.
Pages that contain both noindex and nofollow tags
Before diving into a technical SEO audit for a website, it’s important to check for any ‘noindex’ and ‘nofollow’ tags on the web pages. These tags can really get in the way of search engines crawling and following a page, which can hurt the site’s visibility. So, take the time to evaluate those pages and remove these tags, which can really boost a website’s SEO performance.
To view pages:
- Go to Google Search Console:
- Search and select your website property:
- Go to the ‘Indexing’ section and Pages
You’ll find issues related to “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag:.
Canonical Tag Errors
Verifying canonical tag errors is another important technical SEO factor. This is very helpful in making sure that the desired version of the page is the one indexed by search engines rather than an irrelevant page. How can we achieve this? We need to check the validity of the canonical tags in the HTML source code for corrections that could help improve the website’s ratings and visibility in the search engine.
Pages with Ajax and I-Frames
Never ignore pages with Ajax and I-Frames. Make sure these elements are accessible by search engines by specifying the correct content type and not framing content from other sites.
Server Issues
If the website has a high number of server issues, we need to take a special look at all errors such as 3XX, 4XX and 5XX and fix them. These issues should not be avoided at all costs.
On-Page SEO Audit & Analysis
Once we have completed the technical aspects of the website, we need to begin analyzing the on-page SEO factors. On-page errors are related to content and webpage structure.
Individual Webpage Issues
As the name suggests, individual page issues mean understanding the structure and content of every page. When we talk about ranking individual pages, content does play an important role. Therefore, it is important to write content with a suitable structure, keeping in mind the user experience. This will not only improve your SEO ranking but also increase the number of traffic and leads.
Analyze and fix the following issues on the individual pages:
Meta tags and page attributes:
Meta tag optimization is all about ensuring that the quality of meta titles and descriptions is not compromised and that they fit within the ideal word length. Do not use the same meta titles and descriptions on multiple pages or create titles and descriptions that contain less than 55-60 meta title and 155-165 meta desc characters.
- Find and optimize pages with no meta titles.
- Find and optimize pages with no meta descriptions
- Find and optimize pages with duplicate, short, and long page titles.
- Find and optimize pages with duplicate, short, and long meta descriptions.
Page Optimization and Guidelines:
Explore the page optimization guidelines to meet what users are looking for. These guidelines include things like heading tags, mobile usability, alt tags, HTTP content, and more. Sticking to these tips will help your page rank better in search engines.
- Find and optimize pages with missing H1 tags.
- Find and optimize pages with strong and bold tags.
- Find and optimize pages with I-frames.
- Find and optimize images with a missing alt attribute.
- Find and optimize pages with HTTP content on the HTTPS version.
URL Optimization
URL optimization involves search engine bot satisfaction and classifying the site’s structure. It is, therefore, advisable to observe URL optimization to ensure that the website is among the best performing.
- Optimize URL parameters.
- Never add a session ID to the URL.
- Avoid too many subdirectories.
- Avoid URLs that are too long.
- Avoid questionable URLs.
For Content Issues:
With On-page SEO analysis, we have to work on the content analysis that accomplishes SEO requirements. The goal is to produce or examine content that is universal and speaks to a broad audience. From an SEO perspective, unique and user-friendly content can index faster.
- Things to consider while working on content:
- Find and optimize pages without text or paragraphs.
- Find and optimize pages without proper keyword optimization.
- Find and optimize content that appears on several pages.
- Find and optimize duplicate content.
- Find and optimize pages for the same keywords.
- To write excellent content, you must work on writing lengthy articles that target LSI keywords. Moreover, optimize the content with related images.
Off-Page analysis
The first two steps are all about how the search engines will perceive the website. However, the off-page analysis is all about how powerful the website domain is. The off-page techniques all depend upon how willing you are to rank your website through off-page skills. Off-page analysis is important for having information or a preview of how the particular brand or website is performing on the web.
To learn more about the off-page SEO status of a website, conduct a backlink audit using tools like Ahrefs, SEranking, and SEMrush. Here are the factors you should take into account:
Total Backlinks:
This means the total number of links pointing to a website’s domain. Search engines use these backlinks to grade sites, assessing their popularity and authority. The greater number of high-quality backlinks means that it will help boost the site’s ranking in search engines.
Referring Domains:
Referring domains are the sum total of the backlinks that link up to a website. The more relevant and topical authority the referring domain has, the more helpful the link becomes.
Anchor Text:
Anchor text means the actual, visible text that is clickable within a hyperlink. Secondly, the anchor text serves a valuable purpose by providing search engines with an understanding of the content of the linked page.
Relevancy:
Backlink relevancy plays a major role, as the quality of backlinks determines their impact. Not all backlinks are equal, though. Those from a website with similar content and niche to the target website are more valuable than those from some irrelevant website.
Domain and Page Trust:
Domain and page trust basically measure how reliable a website seems to search engines. The higher these trust scores are, the better it is for the site—showing that it has quality content and can rank higher on search results. Things like acquiring quality backlinks and being active on social media can also help boost those domain and page trust ratings.
Let’s examine the process of building backlinks.
The first step shall be building trust. When we talk about Google, trust is an important factor in establishing a favorable ranking. By practicing white hat SEO techniques, Google establishes a favorable amount of trust in your website.
Here are things you need to consider while creating backlinks:
- Build backlinks from relevant sites.
- Build backlinks from high-trust flow sites.
- Build backlinks from high-citation flow sites.
- Build backlinks from high-PA DA sites.
Competitive Analysis
After organizing everything, we can begin the competitive analysis process. So, in this step, we will have to utilize time for keyword research. This will undoubtedly aid us in identifying the competition.
Here is how to do a competitor analysis:
We can use various SEO tools to search for keywords. We use the SEMrush, Ahrefs, and SEranking tools to analyze the competitors.
Identify main competitors:
You can determine the main competitors in SEO by evaluating website positions, the quality of the content, and the number of backlinks.
Web Structure:
A good website structure is absolutely essential to position in SEO, and that’s why we need to look at the structure of one of your main competitors. Analyze their URL hierarchy, page titles, description tags, headings, and content, and apply them to your own website.
Keyword Trends:
Once we fetch the competitor’s organic keywords list, we also have to determine the relevant keywords that can further escalate our website’s traffic. We shall look for keywords that people are more likely to search about.
Content Quality:
Quality content means users can stay longer and marketing success. Evaluate content quality and its relation to the target audience.
Backlinks:
Examine the backlinks directing to your competitor’s website and contrast them with those pointing to yours.
Content Gap Analysis:
Content gap analysis is the process of discovering what topics your competitors have covered that you haven’t yet. These gaps will let you know how to align your next strategy to attract more people to your site.
Analyzing competitors’ SEO techniques:
To understand your competition’s SEO strategies, start with the above steps. Next, you can match them up with your website to benchmark your SEO efforts and fine-tune your performance. Don’t forget to update yourself on the SEO trends to remain competitive.
If we want to beat your competitors, we need to make sure that the website is aligned with the SEO audit checklist.
How to Do an SEO Audit for Free?
An SEO audit is a smart move for any business. You can easily check your website’s SEO status for free with tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and SEMrush (for up to 100 pages). These tools give you useful info about how your site is being crawled and indexed, the content on your pages, any technical stuff that needs fixing, and your backlinks. This all helps you boost your SEO ratings.
Free vs Paid SEO Audit
An SEO audit is essential when it comes to SEO strategies and techniques. We get different insights from free vs. paid audit tools. As it is clear from the name, a free audit only checks a few data, or we can say a lesser number of parameters/factors checked, in contrast to a paid SEO audit. For example, a free audit may not identify more serious issues, such as server or tech issues that negatively affect your site’s performance.
Key Takeaway
SEO auditing helps determine the loopholes in your site, and it will ultimately help you improve other things as well. Auditing will help you improve the website, increase the traffic on the search engine, and increase sales. However, these methods can surely help you in a website audit; always make sure to use white hat SEO techniques because it will only hamper your site’s ranking.
