Your Ultimate Guide
Imagine you’ve prepared all the content, design and everything for your website. And you are so excited to run it live, that without thinking anything else you just post everything and feel your job is done. But, as the time passes you observe that the number of viewers on your content is very low, your pages are not ranked and no new potential leads are coming forth. And, that my friend, is a consequence of ignoring the most important aspect of website- Search Engine Optimisation!
Running periodic SEO Audits for your website tells the shortcomings that you need to work on and improve its ranking.
According to Ahrefs, 96.55 percent of content gets no organic traffic from Google. To make sure that you don’t fall in this category, here is your step by step guide. (Along with the necessary seo audit tools) However, before we get into it, let’s explain what an SEO site audit is and why it’s necessary.
What are SEO Audits and why are they essential?
An SEO audit is basically your website’s health report. It is a comprehensive analysis of a website and its search engine ranking. The Audit helps you identify issues that could be dragging down your rankings, whether they’re technical problems, content issues, or off-page factors like backlinks. Regular site audits are the best way to stay ahead of that 96% of the population, ensuring that your site continues to perform well in search engines. And also that you’re not losing valuable traffic due to unnoticed problems.
SEO Website Audits can help detect various potential opportunities like:
- Content refresh opportunities
- Technical SEO issues, like site speed issues, and mistakes in your website’s code, content.
- Areas where competitors are outranking you
- Ways to improve UX by improving load times and mobile accessibility for the optimal customer experience
- Target keyword implementation, including titles and meta descriptions.
- Whether you’re ranking for your chosen keywords and where you’re showing on the SERPs (search engine results pages.)
- Updating your content to align with algorithm and webmaster guideline changes
- Backlink quality
If you think about SEO, it’s not only about adjusting keywords and updating pictures- it’s much more than that.
Don’t panic! We are here to take you through this whole journey in a very easy way. Explaining each type of SEO Audits with the tools you can use, is nothing but everything served on a platter.
How technical SEO improves the website?
The technical SEO is the backbone of your website’s performance. It is like the management team that takes care of everything that happens backstage. It involves bettering all those things that help the search engine crawlers index and rank your website in an effective way.
There are certain steps involved that are important while handling technical SEO and you cannot afford to ignore those:
- Crawl Your Website
Start by crawling your website- it means, go through the technicalities of your website(like it would appear to the actual crawlers). To help you with this step, tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console are at your service.
This process will give you a detailed overview of your site’s structure and help you identify technical issues like broken links, duplicate content, and crawl errors- server issues, DNS errors, robots.txt files etc. These issues can seriously affect your site’s performance if left unaddressed.
- Check Website Speed
Site speed is a critical factor for both user experience and SEO. Thanks to the decreasing attention span, a slow website can drive users away and hurt your rankings. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to test your site’s speed and get recommendations for improvement. Compressing images, utilising browser caching, and minimising codes are just a few ways to boost your site’s speed. - Mobile-Friendliness
With Google’s mobile-first indexing, having a mobile-friendly website is more important than ever. With increasing use of mobile phones, you have to make sure that your site works perfectly well on it as well. Use Sitechecker’s mobile friendly test tool to check how your site performs on mobile devices. Make sure that your website is responsive i.e. it adjusts to different screen sizes and provides a perfect user experience on all devices.
How on-page SEO helps in page audit?
On-page SEO, as the name suggests, is all about optimising the content that is present on your website page. This involves the quality of content posted, usage of relevant keywords and HTML source code of your pages.
Under On-Page SEO, you can mainly focus on these things to make sure that the user doesn’t get disappointed from your website.
- Analyse Content Quality
Content is king, but not just any content. It needs to be high-quality, relevant, and optimised for search engines. The main aim while writing the content for your website should be satisfaction of user intent. It should be in a way that the user does not find any need to go through any other different sites to know more about that topic- everything should be covered in your blog. Such should be the depth!
Make sure to review your content to ensure it’s addressing the needs of your audience and is free from errors. Don’t forget to optimise your title tags, meta descriptions, and headers to include your target keywords naturally. Remember, content should be engaging and informative—never keyword-stuffed. - Keyword Optimization
Keywords are the bridge between what people are searching for and the content you provide. It is a very important factor in your On Page SEO journey. Using the relevant keywords- primary, secondary, long tail, latent semantic keywords, etc. is extremely necessary. Make sure your content is targeting the right keywords by using tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs.
Avoid keyword stuffing. It’s a request. This is because it can lead to penalties and negative consequences. Instead, focus on naturally integrating keywords into your content- in a pretty organic way. - Internal Linking Structure
So, Internal links are basically hyperlinks that connect one page of a website to another page on the same domain. These are important for guiding users through your website and helping search engines understand the structure of your site.
Audit your internal linking strategy to ensure that it’s logical and user-friendly. Make sure that important pages are easily accessible and that there are no orphaned pages- as this could lead to various errors- 404 or 410.
How off-page SEO helps in SEO audit?
Off-page SEO focuses on external factors that affect your site’s rankings. Unlike On-page SEO, which deals with improving things directly on your website, Off-page SEO involves activities done outside your site to boost its authority and reputation online.
It involves things like backlinks and social signals- Social Media and Content Marketing, Engagement and reviews, etc.
- Backlink Profile Analysis
A strong backlink profile is essential for SEO. Use tools like Ahrefs or Moz to analyse your backlinks and ensure they’re coming from reputable sources. Look out for toxic backlinks that could harm your site’s reputation and remove them if necessary.
This is because having backlinks from random sites just to increase the quantity will badly backfire on your website. Also, another important factor is Diversity. Having diverse backlinks in your profile is the key- Aim to have links from a variety of sources rather than relying on just a few. - Social Signals
With the social media craze going up in the skies, you cannot ignore the importance of its influence on your website and content. Though the direct impact of social signals on SEO is debated, there’s no denying that social media plays a role in driving traffic and building brand awareness.
Analyse your social media presence and ensure that your content is being shared and engaged with across platforms. Make sure to follow the trend and engage with your audience. Social signals can indirectly influence your SEO by increasing your site’s visibility and driving traffic.
User experience (UX) Audit
Coming down to another important factor in SEO- User Experience (UX). It focuses on how easily and pleasantly users can interact with your website. And if they are happy, you are good to go. Good user experience helps keep visitors on your site longer and can improve your search engine
It involves factors like structure and placement of your content, dwell time- how long a visitor stays in your site, readability of content and other features like this.
- Navigation and Structure
Your website’s navigation should be easy to use. It should not leave users confused, making them bid goodbye to your site as soon as they land on it. A well-structured site not only helps users find what they’re looking for but also helps search engines index your content more effectively.
Make sure to audit your site’s navigation to ensure that it’s user-friendly and that all important pages are just a few clicks away. - Bounce Rate and Dwell Time
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page, whereas dwell time refers to how long a visitor stays on your site. Both metrics are important indicators of user experience. Google Analytics is a great tool to monitor these data and identify pages with high bounce rates. The golden combo is- Low Bounce Rate and High Dwell time. Improving your content, adding good elements, and optimising your page load times can help you achieve this feat. - Content Readability
If your content is confusing and very unrelated to the topic, how can you expect the visitors to stay? You must make sure that your content is easy to read and understand, and it keeps users engaged. Tools like Hemingway or Grammarly to ensure your content is clear, concise, and free of errors.
One tip I would recommend while writing content is to break up large blocks of text with headings, bullet points, and images to make your content more digestible. People look at big paragraphs and get scared, and just leave. You wouldn’t want that, would you?
How to do reporting and analysis?
An SEO audit isn’t just a one-time task—it’s an ongoing process that requires regular monitoring and improvement. You cannot expect a strategy that worked a month ago to give you the same results today. Trends are ever changing, and keeping up with them is extremely important. There is always a scope for improvement.
Create an SEO Audit Report
Documenting your audit findings is crucial for tracking your progress and implementing changes. There are various visualisation tools like Google Data Studio, Excel and Power BI that can help to create a comprehensive SEO audit report.You can include your findings and recommendations in it.
Implementing Changes
Once you’ve identified areas for improvement, prioritise the changes based on their impact. Follow the hierarchy and start with the most important issues, such as fixing broken links or optimising site speed, and work your way down the list.
Continuous Monitoring
As mentioned above, SEO is not a one time task. Regular audits and continuous monitoring are essential for maintaining your site’s performance. Use tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to keep track of your site’s health and make necessary adjustments and changes as and when required.
It doesn’t matter how great your website looks—if it’s not working in a SEO friendly way, it won’t attract the visitors, leads, and conversion rates you need to thrive. Remember to do your audits regularly (at least twice a year). And if your organic traffic is falling, that’s a good time to do an audit and check for common issues.
