Why do you need SEO audit?

By Roman Berezhnoi November 21, 2019 2.08K views

Why do you need SEO audit?

An SEO audit is an effective way to identify internal and external errors on the website, unleash its potential, and activate further progress.

In this article, we will give you tips on how to audit your website by yourself, and show you some basic tools and services that will help you in the work. We also discuss the cases in which the instructions given here are enough, and when it is important for you to turn to specialists who provide professional SEO services.

There are basically two types of SEO audits. The superficial is one called “Express SEO audit” and the comprehensive or complete one is named “Full SEO audit”.

A full SEO audit should be carried out by a professional who can analyze, model, and search for non-standard solutions. It mainly answers the following questions:

  • how to raise long-tail keywords?
  • why the site was penalized by Google?
  • how to increase relevant traffic?

The full SEO audit requires experience. It covers all fields of site optimization: tech SEO, on-page SEO, off-page SEO.  Because it gives a more detailed picture of the site’s status, which helps to conduct full-scale optimization activities and opens great prospects for promotion with a SEO marketing strategy. In other words, it allows improving all things like UI UX design, marketing things on a website to boost a relevant traffic. The full SEO audit can include recommendations to provide significant changes on a website, like a redesign of a site, migration to another web platform, etc.

An Express audit of the resource:

  • gives a general idea of ​​the effectiveness of the project;
  • helps to identify gross violations that impede a better ranking;
  • helps to improve behavioral factors and increase conversion;
  • can be carried out independently according to the checklist.

In this article, we will only consider the Express audit as it can be conducted independently and for free.

WHAT DIFFICULTIES MAY ARISE DURING AN EXPRESS SEO AUDIT

Here is what you need when performing the audit yourself:

  • An analytical mind
  • Have a visual idea of ​​the process (you can study the case studies of other companies)
  • Following the emergence of new algorithms, optimization directions

Before proceeding to the first paragraphs of the audit plan, it is necessary to understand the principle of the search engines, what factors affect the crawling, how indexing is carried out. In general, immerse yourself in the backstage life of sites.

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SEARCH ENGINE

The search engine action chain includes: making a plan, collecting data, indexing, calculating, ranking, and evaluating the quality of search results. Let us dwell on some links in this chain.

How do search engines work

PLANNING

The preliminary stage during which lists are compiled. To get into them you need to place a link somewhere, mention the site or go to the browser where the search toolbar is installed. Also, it is a good idea to use Google Search Console.

DATA COLLECTION

When collecting data (crawling), the search robot moves through the generated list, collecting technical data. Of great importance is the interaction with the search engine. To quickly find the necessary documents, you need:

  • Install the robots.txt file responsible for managing the behavior of Googlebot and other bots;
  • embed the robots meta tag in the code of a web page – this will help search engines to express their wishes regarding the indexing of the page content and the links placed on it;
  • specify the encoding, server response code, document size in HTTP headers;
  • to work out the structure of the site – it distributes the priority between sections (clusters), on which data collection depends.

RANKING

At this stage, factors matter:

  • content quality
  • searcher intent and micro-moments
  • and a lot of signals

EVALUATION OF THE QUALITY OF SEARCH RESULTS

The search engine evaluates a quality of search results with using complex algorithms, which can only be guessed from the general theory of patents.

The main factor is the return to the search results, including with a change in the query – when the user has to change the query.
The search engine tries to determine which query matches your page best.
The search engine may match your page for other requests if it considers that a small part of the content on the page answers a user’s request.
Over time, the search engine accumulates an information about the page and can improve the rank for specific queries, regions, and a person.

WHAT EXACTLY TO ANALYZE ON THE SITE?

It is necessary to approach the site analysis in a way that affects the 4 metrics of effectiveness:

  • SEO (positions, traffic, semantic core)
  • technical (speed of indexing, loading, correctness of opening pages, code, links, quality of the index)
  • usability (behavioral factors – the number of views, returns, failures, time on the site, the use of the internal search function)
  • commercial (number of regular customers, orders, sales, calls, check amount, conversion level)

Main directions of SEO audit

Commercial metrics are an indicator of business success. They need to be monitored, but they do not depend on the SEO alone.

The Website usability affects both business metrics and SEO metrics. The tendency to create user-friendly resources motivates owners to fill websites with additional UI elements that simplify their use.

Traffic depends on technical indicators. The absence of 404 pages in the index is important. You need to get rid of them so that the index contains only extremely useful pages.

SEO audits involve the analysis of technical and SEO metrics. For us, for the first time, it’s enough to show the users we care. A convenient catalog, a “buy” button, a price list – all for comfortable “shopping” or searching for performers. Contact information, warranty and return data, feedback form – all for trust and peace of mind.

NECESSARY TOOLS FOR SEO AUDIT

As experienced web development and SEO company we recommend you use free SEO tools that have access to search engines data. In fact, these tools were created by search engines teams to help website owners.

Google Search Console. As you know, many people use Google to find content. Google Search Console allows to provide tech SEO audit, analyze pages SEO performance, find keywords. If you live in Russia, it would be better to use Yandex.Webmaster, because Yandex is more popular in Russia, Kazakhstan than Google.

Bing Webmaster Tools. It is also a great tool to provide a tech SEO audit (even Googlers use Bing to find tech SEO issues) and to analyze SEO performance in Bing. Many people think that Bing less popular search engine than Google this is why they should ignore it. But Bing generates valuable organic traffic in the USA and many other countries.

Also you can use any web tracking tool like Google Analytics to analyze website traffic and user behaviour.

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO AUDIT THE SITE

A website audit includes several types of analysis:

  • technical – analysis of technical factors (technical SEO)
  • external – analysis of reviews, external links, references to the resource on third-party sites (off-page SEO)
  • internal – audit of internal links and site content (on-page SEO)
  • semantic – analysis of the semantic core, keywords, and phrases
  • structure analysis – close attention to the convenience of the structure, how indexation is going, and what opportunities there are for optimization
  • Commercial – inspection of the site based on the consumers’ point of view

HOW TO MAKE A TECHNICAL SITE SEO AUDIT

These steps include the analysis of the website code, the page loading speed, the HTTP headers, the robots.txt files, the meta-robots, and the optimization for mobile devices.

IDENTIFY ERRORS IN HTML AND CSS

Errors in the HTML markup and CSS give an incorrect display of the pages. The consequences can be serious and could greatly affect your ranking.

Possible mistakes:

  • the use of a non recommended tag
  • non recommended characters in links
  • tag is not closed
  • the use of not required attributes

How to check:

Using HTML and CSS validators.

Based on the scanned code, the services generate a detailed report with errors found.

404 ERROR

The sites where users open a series of pages with an error 404 (not found) will not like visitors and will surrender their positions in the issue. Such situations may occur if:

  • the deleted (or moved) page is preserved in the search bot index – users get a link to it in the search results
  • when on the site itself there are internal links to the deleted (or moved) page
  • other sites link to the deleted page
  • There is a typo in the address bar

How to check:

Check by using the webmaster panel (google) and the free Xenu Link Sleuth service. It’s better to use several methods to reveal the maximum amount of broken links.

You need to get rid of the broken links according to the situation:

  • for moved pages – configure 301 redirects
  • for deleted pages via internal links – delete the link or fill the not found page with relevant content
  • for erroneous pages on external links – contact advertisers and inform them that their resource is not working

Similarly, other errors can be fixed (401, 403, 500).

If you make all things in the right way, Google will delete old pages from its index.

CHECK THE PAGE LOADING SPEED

Users hate pages with low download speed, so you must ensure that pages are load quickly .

How to check:

First of all, we recommend using services from Google. To check the speed of the pages, you can use the famous PageSpeed ​​Insights or install an extension called “Lighthouse”. For a more detailed check of the mobile version of the site and how your site is loaded on mobile networks (2G, 3G, 4G), use the online service for testing on mobile networks, Google, pagespeed insight, PingDom, GTMetrix, Webpagetest.org.

Plugin, Lighthouse

SEO audit tool Lighthouse

How to minimize the page load time:

  • reduce the size of the code CSS, JavaScript;
  • reduce the volume of pages;
  • compress pictures;
  • enable data cache;
  • get rid of unnecessary redirects;
  • reduce the number of server requests.

In some cases, you need to order the professional website development service to fix code, to set up a server and implement other recommendations. Nowadays, websites are built with modern frameworks, use a lot of tools to implement interactive features. That is why the role of full-stack developer in web development becomes important.

CHECK ROBOTS.TXT FILE

A robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which pages or files the crawler can or can’t request from your site.
To keep a web page out of Google, you should use noindex directives, or password-protect your page.

How to check:

Use the test tool in Google Search Console.

CHECK FOR DUPLICATES

When the webmaster creates new pages, or there are filters and sorting on the site, pages with the same content may appear in the search. Search engines do not punish for duplicating content. But it’s very important to index has a page with the correct URL.

How to check:

Use Google Search Console

WHAT ELSE TO CONSIDER IN AN INTERNAL AUDIT

  • Check the completeness of the content and meta tags (title, description);
  • Add unique titles to the headers;
  • Get rid of the garbage index or unnecessary pages;
  • Check comment moderation to ensure that the profanity does not fall into them and that prohibited topics are not touched.

EXTERNAL SITE AUDIT FOR FREE

This stage covers the analysis of reference profiles, donor IP-addresses, competitive sites.

REFERENCE PROFILE ANALYSIS

It is important to monitor the nature of the reference mass. For example, do not insert links to stores for adults in borscht recipes.

ANALYSIS OF SITES

Control of aggregators, link exchanges, and moderation of purchased links is necessary. Otherwise, your flooring may be closely intertwined with drugs for genital infections.

Conducting an external audit of the site, you must also pay attention to the nature of the anchor list.

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

We recommend SemRush and Ahrefs, which are the two optimal tools as of now that can help you with competitor analysis.

SEMANTIC ANALYSIS

At this stage, the semantic core, distribution of queries and their results are subject to audit.

Tools for working with semantics:

Google analytics, search tips, Key Collector, Rank

SEO ANALYSIS OF THE SITE STRUCTURE

The site structure is closely intertwined with its semantic core. At this stage, compliance with semantics, depth of nesting, and navigation is analyzed.

Possible mistakes:

  • The nesting level is more than 4
  • The structure does not correspond with the semantics
  • Persepam, which can cause the website to be banned.

Setting goals in web analytics contributes to a simpler independent SEO analysis of the site. To achieve quality but free auditing, you not only need to have the desire, but also the knowledge and will to analyze.

But if you need results (relevant traffic, conversions, leads, revenue), I recommend hiring SEO professionals who do the real SEO.

Read more about search engine optimization in Is SEO worth it for your business? Misconceptions and tricks. Cost of SEO. The real SEO

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