Learn How To Do An In-Depth Technical SEO Audit In 10 Steps
The SEO audit is a process for assessing your website’s performance against best practices for organic search. A Technical SEO audit is a vital part of any digital marketing plan! That helps you identify potential areas of improvement to boost your visibility and traffic.
Performing a technical SEO audit can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. In this post, we’ll show you how to do a technical SEO audit in 10 steps.
1. Crawl Your Site
The first act in any technical SEO audit is to crawl your website with an SEO spider tool. That allows you to pinpoint and fix any broken links or other errors that could prevent your website from getting indexed by Google. Moreover, checking all resources is also vital. You want to see that all images and videos presented on your site are visible, show high-quality, etc.
2. Check Your Website’s Structure
This point is not solely about user-friendliness. If your website has navigation gaps, it will be difficult for search engines to crawl and index your content.
Once you’ve crawled your website, look at your site’s structure. Ensure your pages are properly linked together and have a logical flow to your site navigation.
3. Analyze Your Titles And Meta Data
Your titles and metadata are critical for on-page optimization. Of course, meta components might be almost identical to the content, which is how it should be.
Still, make sure your titles are unique and descriptive! Your meta descriptions must be compelling and include relevant keywords.
4. Evaluate Your Content
Your website’s content is another #1 significant factor in SEO. When auditing your content, ask yourself:
- Are my content pieces well-written and free of errors?
- Is my content relevant to my target keywords?
- Is my content engaging and likely to convert?
- Does my content include relevant keywords and phrases?
- Is my content easy to share on social media?
Estimating that all alone is challenging, but there are free tools that will help you with that. For instance, some free web browser apps can count the keyword density. Some apps also analyze the text’s clarity and readability.
Noticing issues must not appear as a problem — look at that as if that is a new regular task. And you may improve your content instantly by creating SEO-optimized text blocks.
Those are like recaps of your content, but they are keyword-infused to the maximum. That will work until you find a more comprehensive and elaborate solution.
5. Check Your Website’s Speed
Your website’s speed is a critical ranking factor! So, you’ll want to ensure your site loads quickly. There are a few ways to check your website’s speed, including:
- Google PageSpeed Insights;
- GTmetrix;
- Pingdom
Your website must have the capacity to handle thousands of simultaneous visitors. Moreover, the site’s speed changes critically during advertising processes.
In addition, be attentive to the TTFB component. TTFB stands for Time to First Byte and measures how long your browser takes to receive the first data byte from the server. And if that time is longer than 600 ms, be ready to work on speed extra hours because that is a fail.
6. Check For Mobile-Friendliness
In 2022, it is critically vital to have a mobile-friendly website. Google now uses mobile-first indexing, which means your website will be ranked based on the mobile version of your site.
You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to check if your website is mobile-friendly. Just enter your URL and Google will analyze your website and tell you if it is mobile-friendly or not.
7. Check Your Website For Duplicate Content
Duplicate content can hurt your SEO in several ways. For one, it can dilute your keyword targeting. If you have several pages with identical or similar content, Google may not know which page to index. As a result, your pages could end up competing for the same keywords.
In addition, duplicate content can make it difficult for Google to crawl and index your content. If Google crawls one page of your site and finds duplicate content, it may not bother crawling the rest of your pages. As a result, your website could be missing out on valuable traffic.
There are a few ways to check for duplicate content on your website, including:
- Use Google Search Console to find duplicate title tags and meta descriptions.
- Use SEO Spider to crawl your website and find duplicate pages.
- Use a plagiarism checker like Copyscape to find duplicate content on your website.
8. Check Your Website For Broken Links
Broken links are bad for SEO in several ways. First, they can hurt the user experience. If a guest clicks on a broken link, they will see a page that doesn’t exist. And they will not attempt to find the needed content again — they are more likely to tap on another site instantly.
Second, broken links can prevent Google from properly crawling and indexing your website. If Google crawls a page with broken links, it may not bother crawling the rest of your pages.
Finally, broken links can hurt your website’s PageRank. Google may view your site as low-quality if you have several broken links.
The promptest actions to take here are:
- Use Google Search Console to find broken links.
- Use a link checker like Xenu’s Link Sleuth to find broken links on your website.
9. Check Your Website For Security Issues
Security is a critical ranking factor for SEO. If your website is not secure, Google will penalize it accordingly. There are a few ways to check for security issues on your website, including:
- Use Google Search Console to find security issues.
- Use a security scanner like Sucuri SiteCheck to find security issues on your website.
- Use a website monitoring service like Site24x7 to find security issues on your website.
10. Recrawl After Fixing The Issues
Once you’ve fixed all the issues on your website, it’s important to re-crawl your website. That will help Google reindex your pages and update your rankings accordingly. Here are some ways to do that:
- Use Google Search Console (yet again, as Google tools are versatile);
- Use the SEO Spider website crawler to recrawl your website.
- Use a website monitoring service like Site24x7 to recrawl your website.
Final Words
These are just a few things you should check for during a technical SEO audit. By doing a thorough audit, you can be sure that your website is in tip-top shape and ready to rank well.
But remember to do an audit systematically! Constant improvements and updates are necessary for sustaining your website’s success
