You might have heard many digital marketers saying that they need to optimize their websites. But, how can they identify their business requires website optimization. The answer is SEO Audit, the process of evaluating the health of a site to prevent spam and offer recommendations for reliable site optimization.
Some tools like Google Bots give more power to SEO audits. Each one has its specific crawl settings and inspects multiple areas that may affect the site’s performance. You might be wondering it is very technical and takes weeks to complete. Well, absolutely not! It only takes a few hours to audit your rankings, content, backlink profile, or anything that could be an obstacle in your search performance.
Searching for a smooth, simple SEO audit process? This guide has got you covered! We will walk you through the step-by-step process of performing an SEO audit to find issues that could be hindering your site’s performance and suggest ways to boost your rankings.
What is SEO Audit and Why it is Important?
SEO audit is the process to check issues that might be holding your site back from ranking higher on search engines like Google. If you find out your site isn’t crawled or indexed properly, your content doesn’t stand out from competitors, and you have bad links, you can take relevant actions to fix those issues and build a solid marketing strategy.
Here’s why you should perform an SEO audit:
1. You have a new SEO client and need to put together growth tactics.
2. You bought a domain and need to figure out further steps to improve organic search performance.
3. You witnessed a decline in your site’s organic traffic and need to find out why
4. Part of your ongoing SEO plan includes consistent audits that help you identify and fix issues.
Tools Required for SEO Audit
There are a few tools you will need to make the process of SEO audit as smooth and easy as possible. Let’s have a closer look at them:
1. Google PageSpeed Insights
2. SERP Simulator
3. Google Analytics
5. Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool
6. Copyscape
7. Screaming Frog
8-Step SEO Audit Checklist
- Understand How SEO Fits into Your Marketing Strategy
Until and unless you know what SEO will do for your business, it is impossible to review the performance. It is best to reach potential customers when they are looking for useful alternatives to make things easier.
Source: Google
Here we’ve taken an example of Zapier. Every time the company partner with another firm they create an integration page for each possible integration. It enhances rankings because partners are motivated to link to their integration page. You can also build SEO strategies around this to increase your organic search and chances of business success.
- Crawl Your Site
Google will certainly use a crawler to examine the structure and SEO setup of your site while seeking several components that will position your site’s rankings. Thus, it is wise to crawl your website by yourself. We suggest Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider tool to configure your crawler to behave like Google or any search engine you’re focused on.
- Look for Indexing Errors and Technical Issues
Fundamental technical SEO issues are still very common in 2021 and one way to figure out these issues is via SEO audit. Find unnecessary pages, duplicate content, broken links, too short/long meta tags, no index tags, and other issues using a tool like Screaming Frog.
- Remove Low-Quality Content
Google doesn’t emphasize on frequency or volume of content as a ranking factor. So, it means just putting more content doesn’t show good results, instead use an authoritative and credible approach to bring significant traffic to your site.
Content Pruning is the process to remove unnecessary content or pages that don’t serve your business purpose. And nothing could be a better place than Google to begin. Look how many pages Google has indexed and if the number is offensive, start pruning.
- Find Speed and Mobile Page Issues
Loading speed and mobile page display issues are quite simple to navigate and can have a direct impact on your bottom line. After the advent of RankBrain, bounce rates can also affect rankings.
Source: Pingdom
You can use a tool like Pingdom’s Website Speed Test to check the loading speed of your site. Simply, enter a URL, select the location, and start the test. Now it’s time to test the mobile-friendliness of your site. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, type your URL and run the test.
- Fix Structured Data Errors
There is a plethora of web pages on your domain that could be beneficial from an SEO perspective, including testimonials, product pages, upcoming event announcements, brand descriptions, and more.
Source: Google Structured Data Testing Tool
Use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to find out errors with your site’s structured data. Simply, enter the URL, tap on run test and you will have a list of errors for the domain you typed.
- Evaluate Keywords and Organic Traffic
Start with an in-depth analysis of keywords that have been generating traffic to your site. If you’ve connected Google Analytics with Search Console, you can get the result within it. Just open the acquisition breakdown and go through an organic search.
Source: Google Analytics
This will provide you with an overview of key pages on your site for organic searches. Further, you can cross-reference these outputs within the queries breakdown within Google Search Console.
- Improve Your Backlink Strategy
Backlinks are a crucial element of SEO and still one of the key ranking factors. But now the time has changed and only quality content matters these days. Google only cares if the site links to you fall in the same category if the site links to you are trustworthy and if it delivers useful information to the audience.
Let SEO Experts Help You Conduct SEO Audit Successfully
Now is the time to kick off your SEO strategy and eliminate all SEO technical errors. At eSearch Logix, we provide top SEO services in India that can help recognize issues and jump-start to fix those with impeccable tools and tactics. We thoroughly understand the severity of the issue and put maximum effort to resolve it timely. Contact us today!
