Last Updated on September 28, 2018
Is there something that is holding back your website from getting high ranking on search engines? If you have not performed SEO audit of your site yet, you may be missing out on rankings your site truly deserve.
SEO is one of the vital things that people look after when launching their website. Other may optimize the content but often we don’t pay much attention to it. So be honest here, when was the last time you checked that everything was fine and you were getting right results if we talk about online authority and traffic? If its bee more than a few months, it is surely time that you take another look. SEO rules change very often and so your site may not be complying with the present SEO practices.
Here we will show you how to use your site SEO audit to know the errors that hurt your search engine rankings. We will also share some tips and tools that will help you to do your sit audit so that you can fix the errors and get your website ready for increased leads, traffic, and sales.
What is an SEO audit?
A site SEO audit is like health check for your website. It permits you to check how the web pages look like in search results so that you can find and fix the weaknesses. An SEO audit serves to be the best way to know and implement improvements in order to help people find your site when they search over the net.
Well optimized, relevant websites get more amount of traffic and then you can easily use content and other marketing campaigns to turn your visitors into customers.
Here is the step by step SEO audit process that can help you to boost your site’s performance in search engines and make your online presence known:
Website goals
The very first point in an SEO site audit is to know the objective of the site. Why it was created and what does it establish for the website owner or webmaster? Website may be created to spread brand awareness, generate demand for the products and services and promote/sell them. Here are some website objectives to look at:
To create brand awareness
A site that ranks high on search engines and maintains the position gets better traffic, more popularity and profit.
To generate traffic
SEO generates direct traffic to your site when you optimize it with relevant keywords. You also get quality traffic through search engines and so it is important that your site performs well.
To market products and services
Brands use SEO for marketing their products and services so be it a site that just displays your services or an e-commerce one, SEO can help to build customers, increase overall sales and generate revenue.
Keyword analysis
Keyword analysis is the most crucial part of SEO. Without knowing your targeted keywords, you will not be able to do right SEO. So, look for the keywords that are popular yet unique, target the keywords which are relevant to your site, follow and know the keyword trends. Also, it is crucial to verify whether you are targeting right keywords, the pages you wish to map with particular keywords are right and if the quality of keywords is intact.
While it is vital to know your plus and minus it is also necessary to be aware of your competitors. Regularly evaluating their plans can help you to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Compare your keywords and understand your competitors.
On page analysis
Next in your SEO audit checklist is to know the on-page technical errors that may be hurting the site experience and search engine performance of your site. You need to consider a few things in this regard like how fast is your loading time, is the site mobile friendly, what are the keyword density and proximity, is the site indexed properly, are there any sitemaps available and if so, in what format, is the content original, what about metadata, are there any 404 errors, is your website architecture efficient for SEO, is the URL structure SEO optimized and are the internal links used in the right way. So, verify all these things and apply the fixes as required.
Two popular tools that can get you going include Google Search and Pingdom Tools.
Page level analysis
Then there is page level analysis. Find if the keywords targeting any specific pages are properly optimized. Some of the handy tips in this regard can be:
- If the main keyword is included in title
- If the keyword is there in Meta description and heading tag
- If there are proper internal links
- If the primary keyword is optimized within first few sentences
- If the first image on the page contains ALT tag of target keyword
- If the URL is optimized well
Analyzing the content
Content as it is said is the king and thus a crucial part in your audit process. Analyzing the site content will help you to optimize it for the online platform. It is vital to align the content with your present content strategy so as to get the best results. Focus on finding whether your content is original and unique, if it is useful for the readers, if it is engaging and accurate, is free of any spelling and/or grammatical errors and if it is better than the competitors.
Understanding user experience
The next is analyzing user experience. It is crucial to know if or not your site visitors are interacting with your site the way you wanted it to be. This kind of analysis can help you to identify your site’s errors like user friendliness, design, content etc. Some important areas to focus on include bounce rate, goal completion, exit pages, average time given on site, return traffic and branded searches.
Analyzing the links
This is one of the best ways of boosting your site performance and this is done by analyzing the links present. This in a way helps to determine the strengths and weaknesses of internal and external links along with knowing the anchor text from web pages. Once you recognize the problem areas, then you can easily work on finding its fixes. You can check for:
- Relevancy of links
- Links targeting
- Referring domains
- Anchor text
- Link authority
Ahrefs and Majestic are the popular tools that can help you in link analysis.
Final words
Now that you know how to carry on an SEO audit for your site, how about evaluating it right away? Always keep a look on the site’s health and optimize it accordingly for best results. Surely this list can give you an idea as to how you can make your site user friendly, interactive and well performing. Hope you now know what to do and how to go with SEO site audit.
