SEO specialists understand the value of routine audits, but it may seem like a difficult job for many of us with only a basic understanding of SEO. However, it’s becoming more crucial to comprehend this in the modern realm of digital marketing. In this blog, we will give you information about what is SEO audit and how to do an SEO audit.
What is an SEO Audit?
An evaluation of a website’s search engine friendliness in various areas is done through an SEO audit. A Search Engine Optimisation audit’s primary objective is to support website optimisation so that it ranks higher in search engine results. SEO audits are crucial for many reasons, mainly because Google frequently modifies its algorithm to reflect emerging technologies and search trends.
Although many tools are available to help you conduct an SEO audit on a website, the best strategy is to either follow a guide, like the one you are reading right now, or hire an SEO Auditor to handle the task for you. This is due to the fact that it enables you to evaluate your present Search Engine Optimisation efforts, regardless of how numerous or infrequent they are, and act immediately in response to those insights.
How Important is an SEO Audit?
Assessing a website’s overall health is critical to guarantee its internal and external usability. The sitemap, anchor text, and even social media platforms should all be the subject of an internal inquiry. Load time is significant, and an exhaustive assessment will reveal warning signs you must address.
Making sure you don’t get penalised by Google for doing something that might harm your site’s rating is one of the reasons why doing this is so crucial. Many minor details can cause this; if you’re not an SEO specialist, you might do it without realising it.
SEO Audit Tools
There are a lot of tools available that can assist you in conducting an efficient audit, which is fortunate for the majority of us who aren’t SEO specialists.
The two most used tools that will help you out are
- Google Analytics: This is required for any internet marketer working in any sector. It will provide you with key metrics for all types of metrics and will, in many ways, direct you towards improved SEO. In addition, it is a tool that can be continuously used to watch and track traffic.
- Google Search Console: Google provides a set of dashboards and statistics that you can use to track and resolve any problems relating to the visibility of your website on Google. This allows you to analyse site metrics like sessions, page views, and bounce rates, giving you a more detailed understanding of your overall performance.
How To Do an SEO Audit?
Now that you know what an SEO audit is and its importance, let’s get down to business. There are three parts to an SEO audit is there, such are,
- On-Page SEO Audit
- Off-page SEO Audit
- Technical SEO Audit
Let’s see those audits in detailed versions.
On-Page SEO Audit
You can control and optimise the site components that make up your on-page SEO audit, and content makes up a sizable portion of that. In other words, on-page SEO analysis is concerned with optimising website components that affect its SERP rankings.
Keyword Research
Keywords are the best way to increase the visibility of your work. Understand what content is presently ranking and what people mean when searching for a keyword before you start writing content with keywords. See what they are concentrating on with their content by visiting the websites of your rivals that are performing well on Google.
Do they rate for anything that you do not? Verify that your material also satisfies the users’ search requirements.
Then use the keyword research tools like Google Ads and ahrefs to search the high competition and low competition keywords in the keyword term, which you got by analysing the rival or the keyword for which high searchers have taken.
Keyword Usage
So now you know why people are typing a particular keyword. If you haven’t already, you must include it in your material.
You should incorporate terms into your title tag, meta description, body copy, and headers. I’ll simplify it. Start by including keywords in your headings where they naturally belong. For example, say that you want to persuade people to use your reasonably priced home repair services. It might be a good idea to begin that part of your website with a bold header that says what the website is providing.
Don’t overuse your keyword term in the content. Actually, that could harm your Rankings. If you read it aloud, make sure it makes logic. In order to help search engines understand the context of your website, you can use related keywords in your content.
Searching for keywords in the title tag and meta description would be best during your SEO audit. These can provide users and search engine crawlers with context for what your page includes because they appear in search results.
Your sites’ ranking in the SERPs can be improved by optimising these with keywords.
Internal Linking
Your SEO must make it simpler for search engines to discover the pages on your website. Internal linking is a significant component of that, so whenever you create new content, you should link to other sites on your website from within that new piece of content.
Internal links boost your website’s SEO by making it much simpler for search engine crawlers and visitors to locate specific pages. For example, if you have a page on your website listing your services and are writing a blog post about e-commerce services, you should link to that page.
By directing visitors to another page on your website, you are enhancing your SEO.
Off-Page SEO Audit
Off-page SEO comprises SEO components that you can indirectly influence but do not directly control.
Backlinks
Backlinks are connections that lead from one website to another, also called “inbound links” or “incoming links.” They are an essential component of search engine optimisation (SEO), and search engines use them to assess the credibility and relevance of a website.
A website that connects to another website effectively endorsing the information on that website. This recommendation tells search engines that the related website is a reliable source of data on the subject at hand. A website is more likely to rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs) for related keywords the more high-quality, pertinent backlinks it has.
You may score higher for the keywords that are most important to your company with the aid of backlinks. The more valuable traffic you can send to your website, the higher you appear in the SERPs for pertinent keywords.
Driving targeted traffic to your website can generate qualified leads for your company, leading to actual sales. As part of the SEO audit, you should be acquainted with both your own backlink profile and the backlink profiles of your rivals. Anyone who links to one of your rivals could also connect to you.
Technical SEO Audit
When auditing your technical SEO, there are many factors to consider, which can become quite challenging.
Starting out easily is ideal. A technical SEO assessment delves deeper into the code that powers your website. In addition to the ones I’ll discuss, there are many other technical SEO aspects you can audit, but starting with these can be helpful.
PageSpeed
How fast does your website load? Are your website’s pages loading fast enough for a satisfying user experience? Nowadays, most websites open in a matter of seconds, and searchers are accustomed to that. However, if it takes over three seconds to open, about half of the searchers will immediately go.
People will leave your website if it’s too slow and visit one of those that load quicker, which will raise your bounce rate and lower your search engine rankings. During your SEO audit, you can check your page speed using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool, which will show you how quickly your page loads on desktop and mobile devices and provide advice for resolving any problems.
Mobile-friendliness
Over half of all online traffic is now generated by mobile devices, which have seen an explosion in use in recent years. Additionally, people are using their mobile gadgets for much longer. As of 2018, users of mobile devices spend more time on their phones than on desktops, more than three hours per day on average versus just over two hours.
Most users now access websites and their material via mobile devices, so Google prioritises mobile-first when crawling and indexing new websites.
Final Thoughts
In final thoughts, an SEO audit is a valuable process that can help identify areas of improvement for a website’s search engine optimisation. By analysing a website’s technical aspects, content, and backlink profile, an SEO audit can provide valuable insights into the website’s strengths and weaknesses.
