If you are looking to SEO audit your website in 2023 then this will walk you through everything you need. This proven method we will show you here has also helped a lot of people increase their organic traffic by about 28%.
SEO audit for Mobile friendly website
Did you know that around 60% of Google searches are from mobile? Mobile SEO has always been crucial for website optimization, also Google uses a mobile-first algorithm which means that your mobile version of a website is indexed first. But how can you know if your mobile website is optimized for Google?
That is where we use Google’s mobile testing tool; all you have to do is visit www.search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly and enter your website URL. It will show you the mobile version of your website, and also it will tell you how you can optimize it if there are any problems.
Get Google to index one version of your website
Do you know that Google may index more than one version of your website?
It might come as a surprise to you, that a URL with “www” and without are two different things for Google, and the same goes for “http” and “https”.
While we humans might say these all indicate the same URL, Google does not see them as one URL.
So, a URL for example;
- http:mysocialinterests.com
- https:mysocialinterests.com
- www.https:mysocialinterests.com
- www.http:mysocialinterests.com
These different URLs are different websites in the eyes of Google, which is not good. To check if your website has this issue, type this different version of your website in the address bar, and see if your website returns the required version, it should be with “https” and without “www”, if yes, then you are all good, otherwise you just need to use “301” to redirect your URLs to the desired output.
Speeding up the website: important SEO audit factor
Website loading speed is a ranking factor, the higher the loading speed of your website the better-ranking chances it has. Even Google has confirmed that it is one of the ranking factors.
According to experts, your website should load within 3 seconds. You can make sure your website loads fast by cleaning up your website’s HTML; also, you can take help from Google’s Page Speed Insights.
The tool lists down the problems with your website which might be keeping it from loading fast. You can also run the speed test on different pages, rather than the homepage.
The test will show you the bottlenecks which are slowing your website down. You can also use the GT-Metrix website to see how your website is performing. Another important thing to consider is compressing your images. You can use tools like Kraken, or tinypng.com to compress the images.
Delete pages that you do not require
Did you know that your website can have extra pages that you might not need? There are chances that Google has indexed several of your unnecessary pages that you might want to delete.
You can use the command site: your-website-domain-name.com for example “site:mysocialinterests.com”, it will show you a list of pages that you might want to delete. Also, deleting those pages can increase your organic traffic.
The common types of unwanted pages might be:
- Archive pages
- Tag pages
- Category pages
- Search result pages
- Old pages that you might not want
- Pages with too little content
Eliminate the indexing issues
If you have a lot of posts and pages, then certainly you would want them to be indexed. If you index those pages, you can get organic traffic on those pages. You can use Google Search Console for that purpose.
Also, there is a tool called “screaming frog”, that tool crawls your web pages and lets you know if it cannot access any page. The screaming frog will also tell you all the pages you have put under no-index.
So make sure that you meant to put those pages under no-index. Such as your cart page, or maybe a payment processing page where you do not want Google to index them.
Check Organic Traffic
It is important that you keep track of organic traffic. Keeping track does not mean anything fancy. It just means that you should know whether in the past few months, your traffic increased or not.
You can check your organic traffic through Google Analytics, click on Acquisition > All traffic > channels. Visit organic search and see if your website has increased traffic. You also want to check how your website performed in the last 6 to 8 months.
However; if the numbers are not right, it is still okay, because if you are working on an SEO audit, and making everything better one by one, then it should definitely increase the traffic in the end.
Time to work on your on-page SEO
As we know that on-page SEO is a super ranking factor, but what you must do to make on-page SEO right? Every page should be well-optimized on your website. So it would be better to get rid of the pages that are not required.
After that start working on on-page SEO. Make sure to target the most relevant and important keywords for each page. Some best on-page optimization tips that you can use are;
- Make sure to have title keywords in your title and headings
- The introduction of the article should always have your focus keyword
- External links are very important, do not avoid them.
- Internal links are also very important to send traffic to inner pages, always include them.
- Use LSI keywords (keywords that are related to your subject)
Set up rank tracking for your keywords
Always track your rankings in search engines. It is important to know which position your keyword is ranking for in search engines. There are many tools that will help you with that. Once you know your keyword ranking position you can enhance your SEO strategy.
Check your backlinks
Backlinks are considered one of the most important off-page SEO factors, which is why you should always keep track of your backlinks. You can use any SEO tool such as Ahref or SEMRush to check what kind of backlinks you have for your website, how many backlinks your posts have, and what is the domain authority of the websites that are linking you.
Also, make sure to not just keep building backlinks with one anchor text, this is not a good practice. Another important thing to keep in mind is to disavow any backlink which is from a shady or a website which is not related to your content or website.
Fix broken links on your website
Having too many broken links on your website is bad for your SEO; also your website could get penalized by Google at any time. And also from a user’s perspective, it is not good.
Imagine you click on a link only to find out it is not working, feels bad right? Just like that Google feels bad too because Google wants to ensure the best user experience.
You can find the broken links via Google Search Console; there is an index report which helps you find out information about 404 pages. If you are comfortable using some SEO tool, you can use A Href, SEMRush or any other tool to get a detailed report of broken links.
Analyze your competitors
Another best technique in SEO audit is competitor analysis. Never underestimate the power of analyzing your competitors, there will always be someone who might be producing more content than you or coming up with creative ideas, and if you keep track of your competitors, you can also produce the same level of content, and upgrade your strategies.
Another important thing to analyze about your competitor is to check their keywords, and you can do that easily through any SEO tool like SEM Rush, or A Href.
So, if your competitor is ranking for the keywords you think are important; then you can also work for those keywords and get them ranked. Also, you must check what websites are linking to those top-ranking pages or keywords. In Ahref you can do it very easily.
Some common factors for a top-ranking page or post are;
- It is a long-form content
- It contains visuals and illustrations
- It gives proper reference to data and studies
- It is not very technical or full of jargon
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Keep your content engaging and readable
While we are focusing on other SEO factors, it is fairly important that we also focus on the quality of content. All the content you write on your website should reflect quality. and we also see the quality of content in content audit, which comes under SEO audit. Let us see how we can improve our content.
Write short intros:
Keep your introduction short and engaging, nobody would like to keep reading intros, so make sure it is engaging but to the point.
Write small paragraphs:
Just like intros, paragraphs also do not need to be too lengthy, keep paragraphs sweet and short. It should not exceed more than 5 to 6 lines. Many people online just like to skim through content first, and once they like the heading, they stop to read.
Add engaging subheading:
Just like we mentioned above, people like to skim the content first, rather than reading every bit of it, so you can give them subheadings to scan your content. If you want them to stop scrolling and read your content, then you should create engaging subheadings.
Use visuals in your content:
An image is worth a thousand words, this is really true in blogging. If you have a piece of content, strengthen it with the help of visual content, like images, videos, gifs, etc. Not only will you be able to provide more information, but also readers will get more interested.
UX signal optimization
Did you know that Google’s algorithm Rank-Brain checks how users interact with your website? This directly tells us how important it is to optimize your website for users, the user interface of your website should be easy to navigate and should provide users with a good experience.
Also, your content should give people what they are looking for, they cannot come to a page where they want to read about digital marketing and end up reading something regarding how to sell pens. Some things that can help you with that are;
- Try to have a step-by-step guide
- Include tips and guides for users
- Show them what you mean by example and illustration
- Cite data from important sources
Your website architecture is important
How you design your website is very important too, if you go back in time and see how those HTML-based websites were in the past, you would see a lot of difference. There was no proper architecture, and even navigation was not very good.
Users are less likely to find their desired data from such cluttered pages, and it is also very important as a ranking factor. So, make sure your website is neat and functional.
To make your website functional and with good architecture, make sure your website has an easy navigation system, and your page hierarchy should not be complicated.
For example, a user should not have difficulty finding your homepage even if he is browsing and in the middle of some page. A general rule is, it should not take around 3 to 4 clicks to reach from the homepage to any other page.
Skyscraper strategy
Finally our last but surely worth-it technique is the skyscraper technique or strategy. Have you ever seen that inside your niche there are many competitors who might have written the best content on the same topic or keyword you want to rank for?
This is very common since the market is diversified, and you would see there are tons of websites trying to rank for the same keyword. So, the skyscraper technique helps you outdo those results by creating even better pieces of content.
Just search the keyword that you are trying to rank for, and see the top 10 results from Google, and after scanning all those results and their content, create a comprehensive piece of content with even more information and better structure, better images and everything, and your content might actually rank!
You can use any tool for SEO audit, such as SEM rush, Ahref or any other tool such as Hike SEO.
After that, you can start promoting your published post. Share it on your social media channels, and with your newsletter subscribers.
We hope this article was helpful, and now you know some very important things about SEO audit, and how to use or enhance SEO strategy in your favour. Follow these tips, and if you like this article, do not forget to share it in your community with your friends!
We wish you the best of luck!
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