What is an SEO audit? How to do an SEO audit of your website?
An SEO audit examines all the factors that may affect the ranking of your website on search engine results pages or SERPs. Technical SEO performance includes on-page and off-page SEO, as well as technical SEO optimization.
In the last few years, Google has made a variety of changes to its algorithm in order to decide which sites should be shown on the SERP. Recent ranking factors, such as page speed, include the AMP Project, which aims to improve the overall user experience across multiple platforms.
How to do an SEO audit?
Good to go! Once you have a good grasp of SEO audits and check your SEO, let’s get started. There are three parts of an SEO audit mentioned earlier:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
To begin, let’s talk about your on-page SEO audit.
SEO audit part one: On-page SEO
A large portion of your on-page SEO audit consists of elements you can control and optimize, including the content. By definition, on-page SEO audits examine the elements of your website that affect search engine rankings.
Keyword research
Keyword strategy and research is the best way to rank your content. When creating content with keywords, you must know what is currently ranking and what people really mean when they use the keyword. See what your competitors are focusing on with their content on their websites that rank well on Google. Do they rank for anything that you don’t? You should also make sure your content satisfies the search intent of your users.
See what comes up when you search for your keyword in Google. How are other top-ranking sites attracting visitors? There are keywords that start with “what is. ” However, the searcher is really looking for the word “how”. With some research, you can uncover these subtle but crucial differences.
Keyword usage
That’s why you’re able to understand why users type a certain keyword. If you haven’t already, you need to incorporate it into your content. Use keywords in your headers, body content, title tag, and meta description.
You should begin by including keywords in your headers where they naturally belong. Tell people about your affordable home improvement services and why they should use them.
You might want to start the affordable home improvement section of your website with a bold header that tells them why they should hire you. Your content can contain the keyword “affordable home improvement services” when appropriate. One thing that should keep in mind while creating content is keyword stuffing. Make sure to check your keyword density.
This may negatively affect your SEO. If you read it out loud, make sure it makes sense. To help search engines understand your page’s context, you should use related keywords in your content. You can find related keywords using tools like KeywordsFX, LSI graph, and even Google autosuggest.
While conducting your SEO audit, you should also look for keywords in the title tag and meta description. Users and search engine crawlers can see what these links contain in the search results as they show up in the search results. With keyword optimization, you can boost the ranking of your pages on search engines.
Internal linking
Optimizing your SEO means making it easier for search engines to find your site’s pages. It’s also crucial to include internal links when creating new content, meaning that you should include links to other pages on the site within the content you create. Linking internally makes it easy for search engine crawlers (and users!) to find pages on your site, boosting your SEO. Link to the page on your website listing your services if you’re writing a blog post about financial services. This will help your SEO and drive traffic to another page on your site.
Sitemaps
A sitemap provides search engine crawlers with a method to find the pages on your site, which is also an important component of on-page SEO.
HTML and XML sitemaps are two types of sitemaps you should have. There are links on an HTML sitemap to every page of your site, so users and crawlers alike will be able to find pages without internal links.
Search engines rely solely on XML sitemaps. XML sitemaps help search engines find new pages to crawl. You can create a sitemap using a plugin if your website is powered by WordPress.
If you cannot use a plugin, you can create an XML sitemap online. Google Search Console allows you to submit XML sitemaps for crawling.
The process can get a little technical, so if you don’t have a lot of experience with XML sitemaps, you might want to partner with an SEO expert.
SEO audit part two: Off-page SEO
Off-Page SEO consists of elements you can influence but do not directly control.
Backlinks
In off-page SEO, backlinks – or links from other websites to your site – play a key role. By including a link to your site on one of their pages, a site with a good rating passes some of its value to yours. It increases the value of your pages, and it increases the potential to get people to click the link on the other page and land on your website. You can rank better for the keywords that matter most to your business if you have backlinks. You can get more valuable traffic to your site by being higher in the SERPs for relevant keywords.
Your business can generate qualified leads and sales by driving traffic to your site for targeted keywords.
In addition to your backlink profile, you should be familiar with those of your competitors. A link from a competitor could potentially point to you. You can check your backlinks with Ahrefs, Moz, and Ahrefs free backlink checkers, and see where your competitors and you are getting links from.
SEO audit part three: Technical SEO
When auditing your technical SEO, there are lots of things to consider, and it can get pretty complicated. Keep it simple. Technical SEO audits delve deeper into the mechanics of your site. In addition to these ones, you can audit many other technical SEO elements, but focusing on them can help get you started.
Page speed
Are you able to load your website quickly? How quickly do your website’s pages load in order to provide a good user experience? Searchers today expect websites to load within a few seconds.
If your site takes longer than three seconds to load, around half of the searchers won’t wait. People will go to those faster sites if your site is slow, increasing your bounce rate and hurting your search engine rankings. When you perform your SEO audit, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check your page speed, which will provide you with data on the loading speed of your page on mobile and desktop devices, as well as suggestions for fixing any problems.
Mobile-friendliness
Are all of your website’s pages mobile-friendly? Can your website be accessed from a desktop and a mobile device? The usage of mobile devices has exploded in the last five years, and they now account for over half of all web traffic.
Also, mobile devices are getting more and more attention. The average mobile user spends over three hours a day on their phone, compared to just over two hours on a desktop. Whenever it crawls and indexes new sites, Google now concentrates on mobile-first because this is where the majority of users view sites. A person using a phone will see the desktop version of your website with parts cut off, and the text may not be readable.
The situation is really not good. If you don’t have a mobile version or a site that adjusts according to the size of the screen of a user, you’re going to lose that valuable traffic to other sites.
Site security
Do you have a secure site? The security of your site impacts your SEO ranking. Google has confirmed this as well. On some browsers, you may notice that there is a message that says either secure or not secure next to the URL. Any user who enters their information into your site could have their information stolen if the site isn’t secure. Secure websites encrypt and protect user information.
You can use it to improve your site’s ranking and to convince users that your site is trustworthy. Wouldn’t you feel safer entering your credit card information on the secure website rather than the unsecured one if two sites sold similar items online?