SEO Audit: A Step-by-Step Approach to Improve Business Rankings on Search Engines
Millions of people search on Google every day to find what they need, and they expect to have their questions answered quickly. This is why they only click on the sites that rank highly on these search engines. The best way to make sure that people can find your website when they search for something related to your business is to optimize your site for search engines so that you can be rewarded with higher rankings.
SEO audits are a vital tool in an SEO manager’s toolbox. They provide you with a detailed analysis of your current SEO status and help you identify potential problem areas that need to be addressed. SEO audits are ideal for businesses looking to increase their visibility on search engines like Google and Bing, as well as YouTube.
They’re also great for businesses that want to improve their overall performance in terms of traffic generation, leads, and sales conversion rates. There are different types of audits, including link audits, keyword research audits, site speed audits, mobile optimization audits, usability audits, and more. You can either do it yourself or hire reputable SEO auditing services to do it for you. There is no one-size-fits-all auditing solution as the dynamics of every business are different. But some underlying themes are common.
In this post, we’ll go over the process of conducting a basic SEO audit and provide some tips on how you can improve your results.
Start with Keyword Research
The first step in conducting an audit is to identify what keywords your website should target. Start by looking at your site’s existing content and try to determine which keywords are attracting visitors right now. This will give you an idea of what people are searching for when they find your website through Google or another search engine. Analyze what makes their site rank higher than yours using tools such as SEMrush or Moz Keyword Explorer.
Using Data Analytics
Use Google Analytics and look at data from previous months and years to see how much traffic each page gets as well as how long visitors stay on each page (this will help you determine what pages need work). Run an A/B test with two different versions of each page to find the best one. Google Analytics helps reduce churn rates and understand the behavior of the target audience. It also helps to devise people to make target profiles of their website visitors so that they can make better decisions.
Check Website Optimization Level
On-page SEO when they’re trying to rank for a specific keyword. But you should be performing regular checks on your site to make sure everything is in order. Analyze the current status of your website’s optimization level, including its user experience (UX), content quality, design/layout (D&L), etc., by using free tools like Google Search Console or Moz Open Site Explorer. Identify any existing issues that could affect your rankings, including broken links. Broken links can frustrate readers and lead to a negative perception of your site. You should also need to look at title tags and meta descriptions and make them catchy.
Check Google for Indexation Issues
When you have a website, it’s important to make sure that it is correctly indexed by Google. By doing so, you won’t miss out on potential customers. Your business website will not appear on search results if it is not indexed properly. Fortunately, checking whether or not your website is indexed is a relatively easy process. You can use Google’s tools to check for indexation issues. If you find any problems, you can then take steps to correct them.
Several tools help webmasters identify and correct indexation issues. These include the Fetch as Google tool, the Index Coverage report, and the Crawl Stats report in Webmaster Tools. The Crawl Errors report in Webmaster Tools gives an insight into the errors encountered by the Googlebot when crawling a site. The Fetch as Google tool helps verify if the google bot can get a URL on the site, while the Index Coverage report shows you the pages that Google has indexed from your site. SEO audit services can help fix all sorts of indexation issues.
On-page SEO checks
As an entrepreneur or marketer, it is important to consistently perform on-page SEO checks. SEO audit reports can help them to devise their strategies going forward. On-page SEO simply refers to the optimization of the structure of the website and website’s content.
This includes checking for duplicate content, broken links, missing images, and other issues that could be plaguing your ranking. Several free and paid tools can assist with on-page SEO checks like Google’s Search Console. These tools help to locate and correct issues on a site so that a business maintains its rankings and gets more visibility.
A thorough audit includes a review of your previous content on the websites, such as videos, articles, blog posts, etc.) It also includes a review of external links that refer back to your domain. It is also an analysis of competitors’ ranking and keywords. Other things to keep in mind for on-page SEO include using keywords in your URL and optimizing them. Also, make sure to use a keyword in your title tag.
Remove Duplicate Content
Duplicate content can have negative consequences for a person’s website. Duplicate content is a big no-no for SEO. Not only can it get you penalized by Google, but it can also make it difficult for your site to rank well. Google algorithms love unique content and reward those that publish original content as it adds to their ecosystem.
Always remember to use a plagiarism checker. These tools will compare your content to other websites to see if any of it is duplicated. You can also use a website crawler to scan your website for duplicate content. This tool will crawl through your website and find any identical. Once you have identified the duplicating pages, you can either remove the content or rewrite it so that it is unique.
Check Website Loading
A slow website can hurt SEO rankings as site speed is a big ranking factor. People nowadays don’t wait and simply leave the site if they find it taking forever to load. If your website is slow or not fast enough as the competition, you will lose out on a lot of traffic and business. Google Page Speed Insights tool is a great way to check your website’s loading speed and improve it. This tool will give you a score for desktop, and both mobile devices, as well as give suggestions on how to get better. Another thing to keep in mind is that not all images are created equal. Bad quality images can slow down a site. This is why you need optimized images. Optimize images to ensure that your images are properly sized and compressed.
You also need to minimize HTTP requests. Reducing the number of requests your website makes will help to speed up loading times. Also, use a content delivery network as it will help to speed up loading times by caching static files closer to your visitors. Enable compression as compressing your website’s code can help to reduce file size and improve loading times.
Conduct a Full Content Audit
SEO can be the make-or-break for a website. The more content you have, the more improvement in organic traffic you can realize. However, simply creating more content is not enough — that content must be engaging, relevant to your target audience, and be of high quality. If you want to see any real results, you need to give them a reason to read your content and come back again. You also need to include a Call-to-Action that is subtle and creative. Conducting a full content audit is one of the best ways to determine which areas of your website need improvement to boost your SEO rankings. This will help find out gaps and remove content topics that are doing poorly and add those that can increase the chances of conversions. This will help you to identify and fix any on-page issues that are preventing your website from ranking as high as it could.
During a content audit, you will need to:
- Check for broken links and missing images
- Verify that all titles and meta descriptions are keyword-rich and accurate
- Ensure that all content is well written and easy to read
- Fix any formatting errors
- Remove any duplicate content
- Check for spelling and grammar mistakes
- Add alt text to all missing images
About the Author
Jonathon David is a highly experienced SEP Optimization consultant with a reputable SEO Auditing Services in San Diego, Search Berg. He helps businesses improve their rankings through quality SEO Audit Reports that help businesses make insightful decisions and lead to more conversions.