An SEO audit is a process of evaluating a website to see how search engine friendly the site is. The main goal of an SEO audit is to help you optimize a website to achieve higher rankings.
The 4 Parts to Every SEO Audit
A good way to organize an SEO site audit is by splitting the SEO procedure into 4 categories.
- Technical Problems: It relates to technical problems with your website.
- XML sitemaps
- Load Times
- Http vs Https
- On-Page SEO Problems: Anything to do with your content or something on your website.
- Missing page titles
- Missing meta tags
- Duplicate Content
- Thin Content
- Off-Page SEO Problems: Anything to do off your website that could be holding back from ranking on the first page.
- Spammy links
- Backlink Profile
- General Problems: These are problems that aren’t related to either technical on-page or page problems. These are general things you want to check on any website you are working on.
- Analyzing organic traffic
- Review “low hanging fruit.”
SEO Audit Checklist
After knowing what to focus on in your SEO audit, create an SEO Audit checklist. The advice of a 2021 Award-Winning SEO agency called Clickshare is to conduct an SEO audit following the next steps.
1. Check for Multiple Versions of the Site
First, make sure that ONLY one version of the site exists. According to Google, HTTPS versions of websites are the most secure for users, and this is why Google promotes content from HTTPS websites.
Examples of non-secure website versions are
- http://efba.us
- http://www.efba.us
Examples of secure website versions are
To fix websites with HTTP versions (nonsecure versions), the best way is to get in touch with your Web hosting company, go on the live chat or email and tell them that you want this version of your site to be the main. They should be able to set that up for you without any issues whatsoever.
In addition to receiving a slight ranking boost in Google, when you use an HTTPS version, it also helps increase the conversion rate of your website as when you have an HTTPS website what you actually have is a little padlock symbol that shows in the browser and what it does is to help build trust with your website visitors.
2. Check the XML Sitemap
XML Sitemap: A sitemap is a URL on your website that list out all the pages on your site.
To check what pages of your site are 404, indexed, non-indexed, etc, an excellent tool to use is Google Search Console or Screaming Frog. Pages such as my account, cart, and checkout are usually set as non-indexed and it’s fine because these pages are only useful for the users, not for searchers of content. On the other hand, pages such as home pages, content pages, services, etc should be indexed to leverage SEO.
With Google Search Console, the procedure to find non-indexed pages is as follows.
Once you fix those issues, if your site has any, just go ahead and click “validate fix” at the top. Google will then record that page and make sure it is actually indexable.
What Tools Can You Use for An SEO Audit?
The best SEO site audit tool in the market is Screaming Frog because it gathers key onsite data to allow SEOs to make informed decisions based on findings: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/
