An SEO audit is done for the marketing purpose. To look into all the factors that affect a website’s ranking in search engines. It creates the beginning of an implementation plan that will produce measurable results. An Audit is done on a regular basis, to check if the previous issues are resolved and no more issues have emerged. The main motive of an SEO audit is to keep your SEO strategy strong and updated. If your website is not well optimized then you are losing a huge number of traffic and potential customers.
According to a survey, 75% of users don’t even move to the second page of SERPs. This clearly represents how important is SEO ranking for your page. Following is the checklist for your SEO audit to help you improve your SEO ranking-
Test if your page is mobile friendly-
Around 60% google searches are done from mobile phones. Check if your website has any issues while working on the phone. To do so, you can use a new upgrade in Google’s Search Console. Head over to the “Mobile Usability” in the sidebar and test whether your website is mobile friendly.
If there are any pages detected with issues while working on a phone, it will lay the pages out. Click through to see what the problem is and what is the solution to it. After fixing the problem, validate them yourself and get them validated by Google.
Check your page speed-
Google offers you the PageSpeed Insights tools to check your page loading speed. Optimizing your page speed is one of the best moves to take. If the tests show your page has a lower loading speed, then there are multiple steps you can take. Remember, your page speed can directly impact your conversion rate and user experience.
Use an on-page SEO audit to improve content-
Making on-page changes can deliver huge results with limited inputs. On-page changes can lead to an increase of about 32% in traffic.
What you can do to make these improvements is use tools. One such tool is MarketMuse, which will help you balance out your content between SEO concerns and actual content.
If opting for a tools is not the best choice for you, then make sure you follow the below points:
- Your content is segregated in readable paragraphs and is written for humans.
- It has information that will prove beneficial for the consumers.
- The content contains good headers, images and alt text.
- Your content should deliver a good user experience and should initiate conversations.
- The content should not have any grammatical or spelling mistakes.
Optimize your internal links-
Backlinks do get all the limelight but Internal links are also essential. Internal link optimization can boost your traffic by 40% and it requires only a little work.
You can use Google Search Console’s link tab to do so. Your goal is to add the internal links that are relevant. Simple thing to keep in mind is, they should connect your pages. Make sure you are adding these links to the relevant cornerstones.
Google indexes-
There are multiple versions of your website indexed on Google. These many versions can hold no difference for you and me, but not the same goes for Google.
Fixing the redirecting of these versions is super easy, just use 301 redirect to fix it.
Structured Data Errors-
These errors can hold your website back. A number of pages on your domain can benefit from including structured data. You can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. It will tell you exactly where these errors are. Take all the possible actions to rectify these errors. Again, the results of fixing this issue are impactful in the best way.
Optimize your backlinks-
Many experts have claimed that around 75% of SEO is driven by backlinks. It is not about the number of backlinks you have, now the context matters more. Google believes in making sure that the site that is linked to you is of similar context and authoritative.
Buying links from link farms can no more act as a solution to the troubles you are facing. Building authentic backlinks is the only solution you can now opt for.
Create a more flat architecture for your website-
Your website architecture is the way your pages are organized on your site. This helps Google find and index your pages and it tells Google which page holds the most importance.
Keeping a flat architecture means it should take a maximum of 3 clicks from your homepage to any page. A developer is the best option to do so.
Fix technical errors-
Duplicate content, indexation issues, alt tag issues and broken images are still more prevalent than you think. Crawling your website is one of the go-to ways to find these errors. There are multiple crawling tools available that will save your time, you can use Screaming Frog (linked below).
Analyze organic traffic and keywords-
Knowing the keywords that work for your audience will help you focus your energy on the shortlisted pages. Minor keywords help the majority of websites get traffic, keywords are not always the ones you think they are.
Conduct a thorough analysis of the traffic driving keywords using Google Search Console or some tool. These keywords are known as high-value keywords.
Tools that are best for your SEO audit:
Your SEO audit should provide you with the insights to create a more result oriented action plan. It should be comprehensive, easy to understand and cover all the aspects that can possibly affect your website visibility. The output of a SEO audit should provide you with an accurate roadmap that is easy-to-follow.
For more articles on SEO here’s one we recommend as your next read Optimization of Page Speed to Improve User Experience
