How to Perform SEO Audit
SEO audit for small websites can be performed within 60 minutes and is not a long process. There are simple SEO auditing tools that one will require to perform SEO auditing. One needs to provide their undivided attention to perform SEO auditing without missing any crucial detail. So, how to perform an SEO audit, let’s get started.
Defining SEO Auditing
SEO auditing is used for diagnosing the performance of a website. It will help in improving the rank in organic search and performance. There are four components of a complete SEO audit.
- Off-page SEO audit
- On-page SEO audit
- Technical SEO audit
- Keyword research and competitor analysis
Significance of Performing SEO Audit
The prime motive of performing an SEO audit is to boost the ranking of the website in organic search and drive potential leads or traffic, which can help in improving the revenue generation.
Steps To Perform an SEO Audit in 60 Minutes
To perform an SEO audit and boost the organic search ranking of the websites, follow these steps:
Various Version of the Website:
Step 1 is to ensure that there must be only one version of the website that is accessible. If your website contains slightly different addresses, then an ordinary person might feel that all the sites are the same. Unfortunately, Google will look at it as separate websites.
Ensure that if you have several website URLs, then one of them must be browsable. Irrespective of whether the domain has www or not, it must have https protocol in the URL.
It helps in labeling the website as secure. The websites which are SSL encrypted will have modest Google ranking.
Automatic Website Crawling:
The second step is to scan the website and find all the website errors. Some issues that you might encounter while crawling are 404, Soft 404, etc.
See Also: Getting Google to crawl my site more
Even after removing the dead pages, the GSC report might still show 404 errors, but ignore it as GSC takes some time to understand that the website page has been deleted intentionally.
Perform On-Page Auditing:
By performing on-page SEO, one can get opportunities for optimizing the website, which can lead to conversion. Always consider page level and domain level while performing SEO page auditing.
Take ten pages from the website that attracts more organic traffic. These pages will mostly be category page, navigation page or the cornerstone content.
Perform On-Page SEO on these pages and concentrate on the URLs, keywords, Meta descriptions, title tags, body tags, and header tags.
Visit www.asmzine.com to learn more about on-page SEO.
Check the Loading Time:
The loading speed of a website determines the ranking, and it has been confirmed by Google. A website that loads faster will offer better conversion and smooth user experience.
If the website fails to load within 3 seconds, then the traffic will leave the site. There are several tools that one can use for optimizing the page speed. To increase the page loading speed; deactivate the unused plugins, compress the images and enable the browser cache.
Mobile-Friendly:
60% of the Google search is made through smartphones. If the website is not mobile-friendly, then you will lose more than half of your potential traffic. One can use the Mobile Testing Tool of Google for checking the mobile-friendliness of the website.
Analyze The Structured Data:
To perform auditing, one needs to do SEO analysis on the website on a more in-depth level. With the help of structured data, Google analyses the page content. Structured data helps to analyze various details like authors, star ratings, pricing, products, availability, etc.
Analyze The Site Architecture:
Users and Google appreciate simple and straightforward website architecture. Everyone prefers an organized and less complicated website because it makes navigation easier for the readers.
Site architecture helps the search engine to analyze the vital page of the website. Pages that are close to the website’s homepage are considered more important than the most in-depth pages.
If the website is an e-commerce site, then fixing and auditing the website structure is crucial as it affects conversion.
See Also: Magento eCommerce platform secrets
Perform Brand Search:
Quickly perform SEO keyword auditing for the brand name to check whether your website holds the rank 1. Several factors affect the ranking like generic brand name, a new website or Google considering any other brand name to be more appropriate.
Apply some link building and brand strategies and allow the website to climb up in the search engine rank. Look for the potential penalties by using the tool of Google Search Console.
Analyze Search Ranking And Organic Traffic:
SEO auditing is not complete without performing organic traffic analysis. The primary motive for SEO auditing is to increase the search engine rank and organic traffic.
Use Google analytics for performing this step to perform an SEO audit. Depending on the SEO efforts, the graph will look level, declining, or increasing.
Perform Backlink Audit:
Backlinks are essential to developing a strong ranking signal. According to the research, it has been analyzed that backlinks can affect the ranking, but not all types of backlinks will be equally effective.
Perform some backlink auditing to filter out the bad ones. You can use several tools like Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush or Majestic SEO. Look for the toxic links as they are from spamming websites.
See Also: 11 Best SEO Tools for Auditing Web Performance
Analyze The Competition:
Perform website auditing of the competitors to boost up your auditing game. Do not perform complete auditing on the competitor’s website but look for two things which are – keywords the competitors are using to rank their website and the keywords which they have, and your page doesn’t.
By using SEMrush, you can do a comparative study of the organic keywords of the website.
Analyze the keywords which are used by your competitors. Export the keywords into the spreadsheet and build the business or website around these keywords.
Website Content Auditing:
If the website has low quality or thin pages, then it will affect the ranking. Find the opportunities that can help in increasing the search traffic.
Look for duplicate content, underperforming content or thin content, etc. According to https://www.inc.com, the algorithms of search engines are designed for spotting thin content.
Track Position and Keywords:
SEMrush is a great tool that helps in monitoring the search engine result page rankings. It will not only help you to track the target keywords, but it will provide the keywords that are helping the website to rank.
Conclusion
These are 13 steps that one needs to perform with full dedication to increasing the search engine ranking. SEO auditing is an integral part of Search Engine Optimization. Free tools are available on the internet, which one can use to perform the SEO audit.