Are you unsatisfied with your website performance? Did Google penalize your website big time? If yes, then maybe it’s time to perform a technical SEO audit on it. Conducting an SEO audit helps to estimate how search engine friendly your website is as per the genuine SEO practices. Not only does it enhance your website but it also lets you know what you are doing wrong.
Although the process can be executed by you without any concern as such, it’s always better to take professional assistance. That’s because they have sound knowledge regarding the entire subject and that’s an important entity to follow when you are performing a technical SEO audit.
SEO audit is just not limited to google penalties but other elements that tend to affect your website outcome. However, it can be retrieved by following a technical SEO Audit Checklist. Let’s see how to run an SEO audit on their website.
How to do an SEO Audit? Follow the Technical SEO Audit Checklist
For a technical site audit, one needs to follow certain parameters. If you remain consistent with these factors then it will take less time to execute the entire task. Here, we have mentioned each for you below
1. Improvise Your Content
Outstanding content is the backbone of your rankings in particular. Similarly, any problem with the content itself can be a blunder. You need to keep note that each portion consists of desirable keywords and information.
In addition to that, you also have to be extremely considerate of the presentation. The better you execute these tasks, the better you are going to be in the long term. You have to stay focused on almost everything.
- Be it content optimization, formatting, or headlines, everything has to be monitored in a definite manner. We have come up with some of the elements one can follow to improvise your content.
- Your home page should be brief but informative. This means that it should be greater than 150 words with a portion constituting your content.
- Similarly, your landing page must also contain well-executed and quality efficient content portions.
- Keywords should not be forceful or stuffed at any part of your content. Also, try adding long-tail keywords for much better results.
- The information on your content should be precise and must meet the requirement of the searcher.
- It should also have the correct format with the inclusion of good readability, decent images, proper content distribution, and H tags.
- Add catchy headlines to attract users towards itself. Also, the content should be more informative and less distractive (advertisements).
2. Provide Classic Website Structure
Do not complex your website structure. That’s because it is again one of the crucial points of all. Keep it simple yet elegant. You can further improvise it by increasing the links on it. However, try to keep it less than 200.
Also, the structure should further comprise vertical link structures. This involves combining home page with category pages, category pages with subcategory and product pages, product pages with the related category pages respectively.
Similarly, it should follow a horizontal linking structure where the category page should be linked with related category pages and the product page should be linked with related product pages.
Interlinking is always a better way to improvise the website structure. Thus, try to interlink your pages and content within the relevant places.
Avoid using footer links rather than proper navigation. Also, make sure that it does not get combined with pages containing optimized anchors.
3. Say No to Technical Issues
Websites tend to go down due to different scenarios including technical issues. Thus, you have to particularly monitor each of the factors listed below.
- Each redirect must contain a 301 except for landing pages. That’s because it should use 302 and not 301. Try to ignore redirects like 307,302, meta refreshes, and Javascript as they are irrelevant in nature.
- Make use of JavaScript for content and link delivery. Check for errors like 4xx,5xx errors, or pages that cannot be accessed. Both of these can be executed by various technical SEO audit tools.
- You should also monitor the XML sitemaps for various factors like structures, placement, and protocols respectively. Also, try including absolute URLs rather than relative URLs.
4. Concentrate on On-Page Optimization
It is pretty obvious that when it comes to ranking and improvisations, On-page optimization is an important factor to consider. Now, there are various factors that should be considered while improvising and concentration on the on-page optimizations. This includes the following
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Place the Target Keyword Within First 100 Words Of Your Content
The most profound way to make your website reach high levels is by placing the primary keyword or the target keywords within the first 100 words of your content.
That’s because when the keyword is placed more into the initial portion of the content, google identifies it and ranks it accordingly.
This is a way by which Google understands how relevant your content is to be exact. Which is pretty fair because why would the target keyword fit in the middle of content? Hence, make sure to keep the keyword in proper places and target keywords within 100 words of the content.
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Include Primary Keyword in H1 and Subheadings in H2
Similarly, the primary or target keyword should be placed in H1. That’s because it gets easy for Google to understand the page structure.
Keep in mind that the title tag must not exceed the length of 60 characters to be exact. If you try to add more than the stated characters, it gets eliminated from the item list.
The subheadings should be under H2 with the placement of the primary keyword once under the H2 tag. This is a prevalent step towards a better on-page optimization.
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Suitable Frequency of Keywords
The keyword frequency, on the other hand, should not be too much or too less. This means you should use target keywords a few times but not overstuff it all over the content.
However, make sure to place it where it actually goes. This doesn’t mean you will randomly start placing the keywords everywhere. That’s not going to help for sure.
Just be particular with its placement and input it a few times in your content where it actually goes.
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Add External or Outbound Links
Another suitable factor for on-page optimization remains using external or outbound links inside your content.
That’s because it is easy for Google to understand what exactly your website covers.
On comparing websites with external links and without external links, it was seen that the one with external links was ranked higher than the ones without it.
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Optimize the Meta-Descriptions and URL
Although this will not influence the rankings directly, they could help you build CTR for sure. Make sure to incorporate catchphrases on your meta-description but keep it under a length of 160 characters.
You can always observe competitive websites and check what they are doing and how they are doing for meta-description optimization.
The URL you include in your content should be smooth, short, and static. It should further require objective key phrases. Do not make it complex or ugly for the users as it may result in their loss of interest.
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Page Source Meta Tags and Meta Robots Tag Use
The information that you observe on the SERP ( search engine related page) by the search engines is actually page source meta tags.
They would let you know exactly what content will one be able to acknowledge on clicking the link. Although this will not affect the rankings, in particular,it will definitely influence the search engine result pages click-through rate.
Meta robot tags are again relevant for providing instructions for content translation. Furthermore, it is also helpful to know index or non-index images/pages, follow or unfollow webpage links.
5. Make Sure to Keep Your Website Mobile Friendly
It is pretty obvious that we rely more on our cellphones rather than any other devices. Thus, making your website mobile friendly is definitely one of the many factors one needs to consider.
On estimating the search result it was observed that around 60% of the search were from mobile phones. As a result, Google has come up with a new algorithm called a mobile-first algorithm.
This basically means that Google indexes and crawls the website as per the mobile version. It emphasizes more on the desktop version than the desktop version.
6. Analyze the Keyword
Keep in mind that the keywords you input into your content should be relevant and must go with the content. If you select a proper keyword, the performance of the website will enhance and it will rank better.
Hence, keyword analysis is an important part of the SEO audit. The more high-value keywords you include in your content, the better it is going to be in the long term.
For the best technical site audit, it is always recommended to reach the SEO Dubai team with the best outcome.
7. Make Use of Technical SEO Audit Tools
It is always best when you get a helping hand for executing a task. Just like that, when you use SEO audit tools, it helps to make the work quicker and easier. Thus, for such scenarios, you can take help from certain technical SEO audit tools. Here we have mentioned some of them for your below
Semrush
It is one of the best auditing tools that help in various scenarios. Basically, it can help to know the organic keywords, competitor research, PPC keywords and backlinks of the competitor websites.
The tool is extensively used to know strategies, budgets, and ad copies of the competitor. It can also help in completing website audit and position tracking. Semrush is also known for making an ad campaign and knowing keywords for SEO or PPC.
GTmetrix
If you want some help with site speed, then GTmetrix is the one to choose. Nobody likes a website that runs sluggishly. The tool is pretty effective for improving the website ranking and website crawling.
It will also help you know the exact reason why you are suffering from a slow speed in the first place.
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is an essential SEO audit tool that helps you to provide information about on-page, technical condition, and link of a website.
Besides, it will also help you to know about crawl errors, sitemap status, indexed pages, and structured data errors.
WooRank
WooRank is certainly excellent for digital marketing companies and SEO agencies. It will provide you a better insight into on-page and off-page SEO. You would further be able to analyze broken links, backlinks, and problematic web pages.
They will also let you know about different tactics by which you should be able to enhance the visibility and ranking of a website.
8. SEO Metrics of Google Analytics
- Organic Traffic: The number of user traffic you get when your website ranks on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) without any payment is called organic traffic.
- Keyword Rankings: Keyword Ranking stands for ranking of relevant keywords to attract a considerable number of user traffic towards the website.
- Backlinks:The process of linking a web page to some other page is known as backlinks. It influences the ranking of a page and pages tend to rank higher with backlinks.
- Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is known as the number of visitors who opened your website but did not reach any other webpage and closed it.
- Pages Per Session: Pages per session is known as the total number of pages a visitor is visiting on your website.
- Average Page Load Time: As implied by the name itself, the average time taken by a page to load on a particular website is known as Average Page Load Time.
- Organic Clickthrough Rate (CTR): ClickThrough Rate is the total number of visitors that click on your website once it appears in the SERP or Search Engine Result Pages.
The guide mentioned above is absolutely sufficient to execute SEO audit for beginners.So this was the complete guide by which you should be able to know how to do an SEO audit in brief.