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How To Do An SEO Audit?
By NIIT Editorial
Published on 05/11/2021
8 minutes
The hardest part of conducting an SEO audit is knowing where to start. Often, even after audits are completed, implementing actions takes a long time. Usually, the client does not feel the need to take any action even after SEO audits results. Audits do not have to be hundreds of pages long. Not just the technical person but the non-technical ones must be wary of specifications and the result-driven approach of an SEO Audit.
An effective SEO audit communicates a prioritized list of actions and justifications that clearly explain how you can improve organic search results. It's that simple. In this article, you'll learn how to audit your site, identify and prioritize any issues that could hold back your site's performance. We will walk you through the audit process step-by-step in this guide.
You would understand the steps you should take to increase organic traffic. You can learn all about it in a digital marketing pg or advanced course or look for certified digital marketing training.
How to Conduct a Technical SEO Audit
It is necessary to make constant changes to SEO fundamentals guidelines. When a major search engine updates its algorithm, you must adapt your fundamentals of SEO accordingly. Usually, technical SEO experiences have fewer changes than generalist SEO basics, which is good news. After all, neither search engines nor readers are going to change their minds about slower speeds suddenly.
As a result, you will see the average acceptable speed decline. If you want to be competitive in SEO, your site has to be faster. If you’re going to be mobile-friendly, your website has to be responsive. It will only become more critical over time, even for data analysis.
Website Crawling
Website crawl is an essential part of the SEO audit. This specific method can help you identify issues such as duplicating content, low word counts, unlinked pages, and excessive redirects.
For instance, your site has 32 pages with very few words. Once these pages are reviewed, you can decide whether you need to add more content or not. It provides a glimpse into how the Googlebot is crawling through your website and performing data analysis.
Perform A Manual Search On Google
You can determine the performance of your website of SERP with the help of a few Google searches. By doing this, SEO experts can choose from where to begin the technical SEO audit. The expert would look through:
- The % of your pages that are in relevant search results?
- When searching for your website by name, does it appear first?
- What is the overall ranking of your site?
Using a "site: root domain" search, you can see the crawled web pages.
Make Sure There Is Only One Version of Your Site Available
Search engines receive mixed signals about crawling when you have multiple "versions" of a website. Essentially, they don't know which is the right one. The SEO ranking of your site will be adversely affected if search engines don't even know how to show your site to prospective visitors. There may be a conflict between a mobile and desktop version or a duplicate "HTTPS" version and a non-"HTTPS" version.
There is debate in the SEO community on the impact of HTTP vs. HTTPS on a site's SEO. Following the switch to HTTPS, some sites using AdSense saw a decrease in revenue. According to Google SEO, SSL-unprotected websites are going to be deprecated in the future. Google is taking even steps to make out which sites have SSL protection and which do not. Chrome marks the no SSL protection with the "Not secure" pages sign.
Check Your Site's Technical SEO On-Page
There are many things to check when you are evaluating your site and crawl results. Take your time! Check duplicate pages, headers, and titles first. Some seemingly unrelated content will likely appear in your crawl if you have published content with similar themes.
The idea is to find duplicate content. A tool like Copyscape can assist you in assessing identical content-related technical SEO issues. Every SEO expert recommends this, and you can learn about them in an advanced digital marketing course or training.
The Meta Description
Although meta descriptions don't directly affect rankings, they are still essential because it is the first thing users see in the search results. A meta description should be engaging, be interesting, and give a sense of what the user can expect on your web page. In recent months, Google has increased the description limit from 160 to 320 characters, giving companies more freedom to add words and entice their potential consumers.
A Clear Hierarchy
Organize your content and create a clear hierarchy on the page. All your service pages, for example, should be located under your "services" tab. You don't want users to scroll through four levels of pages to find best-selling products. Google can quickly analyze and index the site if the pages are in order. It makes information finding for products on Google much easier for the users as you are employing a user-friendly approach for your visitors.
Link Management Both Internally and Externally
The SEO rankings of sites with logical hierarchies have improved. To make sure visitors can navigate your site intuitively, you need to check your internal and external links.
It is possible for pages to be deleted or moved, leading to broken links and frustrated site visitors. Xenu Sleuth and Integrity can help you identify broken links on your website. You cannot do it manually. However, integrity is only compatible with Apple’s Mac. Here is what you need to do post downloading a computer program for broken link identification.
- Once you have downloaded a specific computer program, enter your URL and click "Go."
- After that, the tool will start testing all the links found on your site and display the results.
- You can see a snapshot of links and how many of them are broken in the results.
You may wish to view the results as a link, page, or flat view based on your site's size, data analysis, and several links to understand the results better. You would want to change the links marked in red with the "404 not found" label. It could harm your technical SEO.
Google scores differently to determine the clicks from internal and external links, although both improve your SEO. You can learn about it by pursuing a Pg course in advanced digital marketing or opting for digital marketing training. Speaking of which, do explore NIIT’s Full Stack Digital Marketing Programme, which assures learners associate level jobs in the industry with a CTC of Rs.3LPA. Apply now!
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