The path of a thousand optimizations often begins with a single step — the SEO audit. An in-depth SEO audit is the first step for most SEO practitioners when signing a new client or joining an in-house a new firm.
That’s where the SEO audit comes into play.
“Where you want to be is everywhere people are searching for you “— your products, services, or the subjects you know a lot about. An SEO audit is your blueprint for how you’ll finally get there. That means boosting your exposure in the search results of Google and other search engines is crucial.
An SEO audit will expose flaws with any site’s SEO so you can remedy them and start ranking where you belong.
Do you know the most critical aspects of a website you should be assessing?
Is your SEO audit as thorough as it might be?
Well, we’re here to assist you to obtain the higher rankings, traffic, and conversions you seek.
What Is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is a process of finding issues or flaws that might hinder your site’s position on search engines like Google. In order to conduct an SEO audit, there are several components that must be taken into consideration:
- Ensuring that Google crawls, indexes, and renders your site appropriately
- Checking for on-page SEO issues on your website
- Investigating potential problems on other websites that connect to yours to improve your off-page SEO
- Ensuring a positive experience for visitors to your website (for both mobile and desktop users)
- Optimizing your content for keywords
- Your website should be scanned for duplicate or thin material.
- Establishing and keeping detailed reporting for monitoring the functioning of your website
Why Are SEO Audits Important?
Your website and business will benefit significantly from an SEO audit. It helps you avoid:
- SEO traffic is being lost owing to a lack of site health.
- Competition from competing brands might result in missed sales opportunities.
- Having your website indexed incorrectly (so that search engines can’t locate it)
- Getting penalized by Google because of bad backlinks.
An SEO audit might uncover issues preventing customers from visiting and purchasing from your website.
SEO Audit Tools You Might Need
SEO auditing is a lengthy process, and there are a few tools you’ll want to play around with before we get started. Is a complete redesign of your site necessitated by an SEO audit? It isn’t necessary, but it will significantly speed up and improve the procedure overall. They’re also (for the most part) completely free, which makes them all worth a closer look. To help you with your SEO audits, we’ve compiled a list of the top tools available:
- Google Page Speed Insights: Knowing how fast your website loads and getting advice on how to improve it.
- Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool: The Rich Results Test or Schema Markup Validator may be used to check if your structured data has been applied appropriately.
- Google Analytics: Optimize your website based on user statistics and trends.
- Google Search Console: Use Google’s search engine to see how your pages rank.
- SERP Simulator: See how your article’s title tag and meta description will appear in Google search results.
- Copyscape: To catch plagiarism, search the internet for copies of your work.
- Screaming Frog: To improve your search engine optimization (SEO), do a thorough crawl of your website(Free for first 500 pages).
We can now begin the process of analysing your website and increasing your organic traffic as your tools are ready.
Your SEO audit checklist for 2022
While completing your SEO audit for 2022, you may question where to begin. For your audit, consider this SEO audit checklist.
1. Google Analytics tracking code
It is critical to monitor the performance of your website. Google Analytics offers just that, and getting started is as simple as pasting a few lines of code into any website you wish to monitor.
Stats such as the number of visits, average time spent on the site, and other performance indicators are all unavailable without the tracking code.
To get the most out of Google Analytics, you should do this for every page on your site. Because of this, you can see how many pages you have, what they are, and more.
When all of your pages have Google Analytics installed, you may go on to the next phase of a site audit.
2. Robots.txt
Using a robots.txt file with precise instructions may prevent Google and other search engines from indexing a website.
Google will not index these sites, but if you’re using Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see them in your account.
Robots.txt files may be preventing Google crawlers from seeing your sites if you detect a difference between Google search results and Google Analytics.
3. Keywords
Keywords are an essential aspect of SEO. They determine how often your site shows in the search results. You’ll want to examine the keywords you’re aiming for in your SEO audit for 2022.
Ensure you’re employing the right keywords when writing content for your website. Long-tail keywords are the greatest form of keywords for your campaign. Keywords of three or more words make up this group of keywords.
Your keywords should be revisited during an SEO audit. If you have many one- or two-word long-tail keywords, you’ll need to reconsider your SEO approach. Using long-tail keywords in your campaign can help you generate more qualified leads.
If you’re using long-tail keywords, you’ll also want to make sure they’re producing results. If keywords are bringing visitors to your site, you may want to think about replacing them with more valuable ones.
Titles and meta descriptions should also include keywords. Your pages will rise in the search results for those keywords due to this.
4. Branded keywords
Now that you have confirmed that all of your pages can be indexed, it is time to look for branded keywords. So it would help if you searched for terms that incorporate your brand name followed by your product or service.
You may have been penalized by Google if there are missing pages on your site. The command “site:[yoursite]” shows all of the pages that Google has indexed, which is why it works to check for Google penalties. Because you’ll need to work on it later, take note of any missing pages.
Branded keywords aren’t enough to get you ahead of the competition. A page in the “site:” command but not for a branded term indicates that Google has penalized you.
5. Page speed
Search engines like Google use site speed as a ranking factor. Websites that take a long time to load annoy many people. Having a website that takes too long to load might cost you leads.
Google prefers websites that load quickly. They care about the user’s experience; hence a fast-loading website is necessary. To keep your visitors happy, you’ll need to ensure that your pages load quickly enough so that they don’t abandon your site.
There are several ways to measure a site’s speed.
Google Page Speed Insights allows you to assess the performance of your website and identify areas for optimization.
To utilize this tool, you will have to perform the backend updates to your site yourself.
6. Indexed pages
In “reading” and indexing your pages, Google crawls your site. For your page to show in the search results, indexing is essential. A lack of indexing means that your sites will not appear in the search results, which will impact your search engine optimization (SEO).
Verify that Google hasn’t mistakenly blacklisted any of your pages during your SEO audit 2022.
You’ll want to verify your index status report in the Google Search Console. The amount of pages Google has crawled from your domain is displayed in this feature. The number of pages on your site may not be rising, which indicates that some of your pages may not be getting indexed.
You may search your site for indexed pages when you verify your pages. You may also examine which pages are not being indexed by typing “robots.txt” at the end of your URL. Your robots.txt will look like this: http://www.yoursite.com.
In order to see which pages are indexed and which ones aren’t, you may use this simple method. Using this method, your pages will be more quickly indexed, which will benefit your SEO efforts.
7. Mobile-friendliness
Any SEO plan must consider how users will access a website on their mobile devices. Since 61% of consumers prefer to shop on mobile-friendly websites, making your site mobile-friendly is essential.
Google’s indexing strategy is geared toward mobile devices initially. As a result, search engine results for mobile-friendly websites will be ranked higher.
Using a responsive design is one of the simplest methods to make your site mobile-friendly. Responsive web design means that your website will display correctly on whatever device a user may be accessing. Your website will look great on devices, including desktops, laptops, and tablets.
Providing an excellent experience for your visitors and making it easier to navigate your site is a win-win. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly while conducting an SEO assessment for 2022.
8. Security
You must ensure that your website is safe while performing an SEO audit in 2022. Information security is a major concern for web users. On the other hand, Google does not rank websites unless they are safe for consumers.
Check to see if your site is secured using HTTPS during an audit. This indicates that the site is secure. If you get that classification, your site will be safe for your visitors, and Google will enable your site to rank well.
9. Competitors
After completing a competitive analysis, it is essential to do a thorough SEO audit.
Rethinking your targeting approach may be necessary when you see that many rivals are already at the top of a specific term.
It’s also an excellent opportunity to discover new keywords for which you’re not presently ranking.
When doing an SEO audit for 2022, you’ll want to look at your rivals’ content. The quality of your content has a significant influence on how well your site performs in search engine results, allowing you to attract more visitors and rank higher.
For example, you can observe which posts attract the most attention. Determine how your material stacks up against the competition by doing this. You may also use this time to look at what your competitors are doing to develop new ideas for your company.
The more you know about your competitors, the more you’ll be able to differentiate your site from theirs in search engine rankings.
10. Voice search optimization
The usage of voice search is fast increasing in popularity among internet users. If you want to stay on top of the game, you should do a voice search content audit of your website.
Making sure that your material can be read is the first step. Because your information will be read out, it’s important to ensure that it’s understandable to the listener. Make sure your material is brief and easy to understand.
Do not forget to provide the details your readers are looking for. The best technique to roast a turkey should be addressed clearly in your article if someone asks about that topic.
In order to be in the highlighted snippet, present your readers with helpful and straightforward information. This is the first paragraph of the list of search results.
In order to improve your site’s performance in voice search results, you should optimize its content. Featured snippets, or “position zero,” are what voice search machines utilize to gather information. You want to get there.
11. Errors
When doing an SEO audit, it’s critical to crawl your site to find issues and make necessary fixes.
Screaming Frog is a good option if you want to crawl your website. Your site’s performance will increase as a result of this information.
Start by finding pages that are not currently indexed and correcting problems that prevent Google from indexing them.
When a page is destroyed, or its URL is changed, this occurs. To keep your audience from receiving error messages, you need to set up redirects for any of these URLs. Additionally, keep an eye out for “Error 404” error messages that indicate a malfunctioning website.
You’ll be able to keep people on your site longer if you correct errors and prohibited pages. Your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) will benefit from your efforts.
12. Broken links
Any link to a page that no longer exists is considered a broken link. If you delete a page from your site without a redirect, you will likely see broken links (also known as “dead links”).
Any time you encounter an error message stating “404,” a link no longer connects to a website on the Internet. There will be a steady reduction in traffic and sales due to a poor user experience caused by numerous broken links on your website.
When it comes to search engine rankings, it’s feasible that Google will penalize your site since it wants to make its users happy.
Replace or delete any broken links as soon as possible if you discover them on your site.
13. Duplicate content
You don’t want to repeat yourself while you’re writing material. Duplicate content weakens your page’s authority and degrades your SEO results, so avoid it.
Using canonical link tags will help you avoid this problem. Tags like this one indicate “master copies” of the content. Using canonical links will aid in the organization of your site and ensure that the essential material appears at the top of search engine results.
14. Low-value pages
When you generate content, you want to make sure that the information on your sites is unique, accurate, and timely. Relevant keywords and a focus on the subject at hand are required. Low-value pages must be removed if you want your website to function correctly.
Pages that lack substance should have their material beefed up, or they should be redirected to URLs with more information. De-index your low-value pages and concentrate on your high-value ones to accomplish this. Your site’s speed is unaffected when you remove low-value pages from the index.
15. Miscellaneous on-site factors
Since it involves so much, this final item takes a long time to complete. Title tags, headers, meta descriptions, and more are part of on-page SEO ranking considerations.
Each of your pages must have distinct titles, headers, and meta descriptions that describe the content. To ensure that Google knows which of your pages to show in its search results, you must ensure that you have targeted a different set of keywords on each page.
Performing a monthly SEO assessment to keep your site in tip-top shape might be terrible for a company attempting to expand its customer base online.
Your company’s online success may require a lot of time and work.
Summing up
Doing an SEO audit is a must-do before beginning any new project or launching a new website to ensure long-term success.
Fixing difficulties that hinder your site from performing to its full potential may be accomplished by detecting faults as fast as feasible. Auditing additional parts of your site are possible, but these first measures will give you a good idea of your site’s health.
References
