What is an SEO audit? | GFC Tech
What is an SEO audit?
Running an SEO audit on your website is crucial to understand how search engines rank your website.
Read more on the value of an audit here.
Your website is the hub of your online brand. It's vital to make sure everything is working properly. Your website is an evolving digital asset that doesn't stay static for long periods. Your website is updated and/or removed frequently. Audits should be conducted on a regular basis. Websites should be audited at least three times per year. This allows you to identify and fix any problems as they occur.
This audit is designed to identify any foundational issues that could affect organic search performance.
Boost your technical SEO first
Auditing technical SEO can be very complicated. There are many things to take into consideration. It is best to start simple.
Does your website load quickly? Is your website loading fast enough to provide a great user experience?
Searchers have become accustomed to websites loading in a matter of seconds. If your site takes more than three seconds, half of searchers will not wait. People will abandon your site if it is slow. This can increase your bounce rate and lower your ranking in search results.
Are all pages on your website mobile-friendly?
Is your website mobile-friendly?
This seems like an inexplicable question, given the growing use of mobile devices. It would be reasonable to assume that all websites are now mobile-friendly, but this is not the case.
Websites that are not optimized for mobile devices may be penalized and lose traffic.
Is Your Website Safe?
A message appears at the top right of your browser next to the URL. It might be something you noticed. Anyone who enters information on your site can be harmed if it isn't secured.
Checking to make sure your site is running on HTTPS is as simple as manually entering the various non-HTTPS iterations of your site domain--www.site.com http://www.site.com--and making sure they've all been 301 redirected to the HTTPS iteration.
Broken Links?
Search engine crawlers (and humans) find internal links much easier. You will get an SEO boost by allowing search engine crawlers to locate pages on your website.
Broken links or images within your website can cause a 404 error. If a page links to content that has been removed from your site, it will result in a 404 error.
Site audit tools can identify all 404s on your site. After identifying them, it is easy to fix them by determining the importance of each link in your linking structure and user experience. Are you looking for a page that no longer exists or is available at a different URL? It is a good idea for high-traffic pages that used to link to this page to 301 redirect to the new URL. Or, at minimum, redirect back to your home page.
Make sure your meta tags are optimized
A meta title and meta description are the two main components of meta tags. These two factors help Google determine the content on the page it is crawling and they are one of the most important Google considers when ranking pages. They are also used to promote your content by helping users who search for it in search results.
Use your vertical-specific keyword research to write or rewrite meta tags. Make sure they are optimized for search terms that you want them to appear.
Alt Text Every image on your website must have an alt text. This is not only for SEO, but also to make your website more accessible. Because visually impaired people will not be able to see the meaning of the image.
A concise, succinct, but detailed meta description will help you attract more visitors to your site via search engine pages.
Your Site's Content
It can be difficult to audit your content because you have to evaluate the quality of your work and the best on-page factors.
This means you will need to double-check grammar errors.
Be sure that your content meets the search intent of users.
See what results appear when you search for your keyword on Google. What other sites are ranking high that make people click?
Videos and images can be used to create a mood, show a product, or direct visitors to specific areas on your pages. You should include enough video and images where they are needed, while keeping a good balance between text content and photos.
Look at the websites of your competitors that rank well on Google to see what their content is about. Are there any keywords they rank for that you do not?
Optimise your content
Target keywords should appear in the URL, title, title, H1 (the headline for your post), H2 (a subhead within the post), meta title (see Step 6), and meta description (ditto). If possible, ancillary keywords should be included in H2s as well as in the body copy. It will be easier to optimize every element of a new piece. You can update pages that you already have, but you need to do your best. For example, it wouldn't make sense to modify a URL to optimize for a keyword.
Identify Thin Content
Content that does not meet the user's needs is called "thin". A blog post of 300 words explaining complex concepts would be considered thin. It's impossible to write 1000-2000 words per page on your website. If your pages aren’t well-written, they won’t be able to rank high in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Panda, an update to the Google algorithm in 2011, targeted sites with low-quality content.
Thin content can lead to many SEO problems, such as high bounce rates and wasting crawl budget. It is important to remove or block search engines crawling/indexing any thin content. You can solve the problem of thin content by grouping pages according to keywords or topic. Then consolidate the information on one high-authority site or the highest authority page in your bundle.
Fix your site structure and improve user experience
Many websites have a confusing structure. Content is often linked in haphazard ways, and the user journey is filled with dead ends and strange paths. This can frustrate your visitors and make it difficult for Google to index.
Your website structure can be described as an architectural plan for a building. It also considers the links that you have placed in your menu. These links are used by Google to index a website and create a map
You can improve the website structure by doing one or more of these things:
- Improve the website menu
- Modify the location and style of internal links on your pages and blog posts
- Check out the website footer for any changes
Optimizing your menu is a great way to improve user flow. It's simple: people use your menu to navigate through your website. Google indexes pages first by crawling your menu.
Next, you need to add your content. You will need to group related content together and optimize the placement of links within the content. This will improve the user flow. Although this may take some time, optimizing user flow across your content can be one of the best ways to increase revenue. This is because people who are reading your content are already interested in your site.
The website footer is the final step. This is your final call to action. It is easy to optimize these links and they can have an impact on the website structure.
Are your Sitemaps optimized for search engines?
Sitemaps are another important aspect of on-page optimization. They allow search engine crawlers to locate pages on your website. You should have HTML and XML sitemaps.
HTML sitemaps contain links to all pages on your website and can be used to help crawlers and users find pages that may not have internal links.
XML sitemaps can only be used by search engines. Search engines find new pages with the help of these sitemaps.
A plugin can be used to create your sitemap if your site is WordPress. You can also create an XML website map online if you don't have access to a plugin. Once you have created an XML sitemap you can submit it online to Google Search Console for it to be crawled.
Your Backlinks
Off-page SEO is a crucial component. Backlinks are links to your site that come from other websites.
As part of your SEO audit, you should be familiar with both your backlink profile as well as the backlink profiles of your competitors. You could be linked to by anyone linking to your competitors.
A site that has a strong reputation online will include a link to your website on one of its pages. This is a way for them to pass some of the site's value to you.
Backlinks can help improve your rank for keywords that are most important to you business. Your site will receive more traffic if you rank higher in the SERPs of relevant keywords. Traffic to your website for targeted keywords can lead to qualified leads and eventually sales for your company.
Conclusion
Audits are a routine procedure that should be done on a regular basis. It is basically a "health check for your website." After an audit is completed, the actions identified can be used to start your online strategy.
If you want expert help with your business's SEO audit, contact our experts at https://gfctech.co.uk/surrey-seo/