Your website’s ability to bring in new clients and money depends on your ability to get things rolling. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know right away what you need to work on.
That’s why you need to make sure you do a thorough SEO site audit. An audit will reveal all of your site’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to make the necessary adjustments.
SEO audit services are essential for every website that is aiming to rank higher in search results and is consistently focused on bringing new visitors to their website through organic search results.
What is an SEO Audit?
You can think of an SEO audit as a checkup on your overall SEO effort. You can find out where you stand and where you can make changes by taking an assessment.
The point of an SEO audit is to find places where your campaign is weak. An audit helps you figure out where your campaign is weak and how those weak spots hurt how well your site does.
An SEO audit will provide you with a list of items to work on in order to improve your site’s search engine optimization. It’s a great way to improve the performance of your website and get better results for your campaign.
What is the right time for an SEO audit?
When launching a campaign, it is prudent to conduct an audit to ensure that it is properly configured for success. You might also want to look at your SEO every three months.
SEO takes time to show results, so keep that in mind. If you check it every three months, you can see if there are any problems or changes and make the necessary changes.
When you start your SEO audit, you might be unsure of what to focus on. Here are 10 things you should look at when doing your audit.
1. Google Analytics Code
It’s important to keep track of how well your website is doing. Google Analytics does this, and all you have to do to get started is add a small string of code to each page you want to track.
If a page doesn’t have that tracking code, you won’t be able to see any statistics about it, such as the number of visitors, how long people stay on the page, and other performance metrics.
When you do this for each page, Google Analytics also functions as a comprehensive index of your entire site. This allows you to see the number of pages, their contents, and more in a single convenient location.
Once all of your pages have Google Analytics, you can move on to the next step of a site audit.
2. The file named “robots.txt”
If a page’s robots.txt file has instructions in it, Google and other search engines might not be able to index it.
This means that pages containing this file and those instructions will not be indexed by Google, but they will appear in your Google Analytics account if you are tracking them.
If the number of pages you see in Google search results is different from the number you see in Google Analytics, check your pages for robots.txt files that may be blocking Google’s crawlers.
3. Keywords
A key part of SEO is keywords. They decide when your site will show up in a search. You should look at the keywords you use when you do your SEO audit for 2023.
First, look at the keywords you use on your website. Long-tail keywords are the best type of keywords for your campaign. These are search terms with at least three words.
A long-tail keyword is something like “SEO company in Los Angeles” This keyword will bring in leads who are looking for SEO company in Los Angeles. In the same way, other long-tail keywords help you get more qualified leads who are looking for your business.
When you do an SEO campaign audit, you should look at your keywords again. If most of your keywords are short-tail keywords with only one or two words, you may want to change your approach. If you use long-tail keywords in your campaign, you can get more valuable leads.
You should also make sure that your long-tail keywords bring in good results. If keywords are bringing people to your page, you might want to switch them out for keywords with more value.
You should also use keywords in the titles and meta descriptions of your pages. This will help your pages rank higher for those keywords when people search for them.
4. Branded keywords
Now that you’ve made sure all of your pages can be indexed, it’s time to look for branded keywords. Therefore, you should research combinations of your brand name and the product or service you are promoting.
Once you have the results for your company, check to see what pages are there.
If some pages are missing, you may have gotten in trouble with Google for some reason. Note any obvious missing pages, because you’ll need to work on them later.
Using the command “site:[yoursite]” shows all of the pages that Google has indexed, so this is a good way to check for Google penalties.
Google still puts you up against your competitors when you only use brand-name keywords. So, if you have a page that shows up when you type “site:,” but it doesn’t show up when you type in a brand name, you probably got a Google penalty.
5. Page speed
Search engines like Google use site speed as an important ranking factor. People hate having to wait for pages to load slowly. If it takes too long for your page to load, you could lose leads to your competitors.
Google also likes sites that load quickly. They want people to have a good time on their site, so it needs to load quickly. People will leave your pages if they take too long to load, so you’ll want to speed up your site to make sure your visitors have a good time.
So, how do you figure out how fast your website is?
You can find out where your page could be optimized to load faster by using Google PageSpeed Insights.
If you choose to use this tool, you will have to make changes to the back end of your site on your own.
You can also pay a digital marketing company like 1Solutions for services that will make your pages load faster. With this option, you can focus on running your business while your digital marketing company helps speed up your site.
6. Lists of pages
When Google crawls through your site, it “reads” your content and puts your pages in an index. Indexing is important if you want your page to show up in search results. If your pages aren’t indexed, they won’t show up in search results, which will hurt your SEO.
Check to see if any of your pages have been inadvertently blocked by Google during your SEO audit.
You should look at the index status report in Google Search Console. In this feature, you can see how many of your domain’s pages Google has crawled. If you see that the number of pages doesn’t go up, it’s likely that some of your pages aren’t being indexed.
You can search your site when you check your pages to get a list of indexed pages. You can also add “robots.txt” to the end of your URL to see pages that are not indexed or are not allowed. It will look something like this: http://www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt.
With this trick, you can see which pages are indexed and which ones aren’t. It’s an easy way to get your pages indexed, which will help your SEO.
You can also go to Google and type in the following command:
site:[yourdomain]
For example, if you type “site:1solutions.biz” into Google, you can see every page that Google has indexed from 1Solutions.
After compiling your data, check to see how many more pages your site has than Google.
Unless you use the robots.txt file, they should be the same.
7. Mobile-friendliness
Mobile-friendliness is a key part of your SEO strategy. 61 percent of people are more likely to buy from mobile-friendly sites, so it’s important to make sure your site is mobile-friendly.
Google uses an indexing method that puts mobile first. This means that sites that work well on phones will show up higher in search results.
Using a responsive design is one of the easiest ways to make your site mobile-friendly. A responsive design makes sure that your website can be used on any device. Your website will look good on desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets.
This gives your audience a good time and makes it easy for them to look around your site. Check that your site is mobile-friendly when you do your SEO audit for 2023.
8. Be safe
Before beginning your SEO audit, you should ensure your website’s safety. People don’t want to go to sites where their personal information could be stolen. In the same way, Google doesn’t rank sites unless users can feel safe on them.
Check that your site is encrypted with HTTPS when you audit it. This is a sign that the site is safe. So long as you have that label, your site will be safe for your visitors, and Google will let it rank.
9. Competitors
After you’ve done your SEO audit, you should look at your competitors to see how you compare to them.
If dozens of your competitors already rank for a certain keyword, you may want to change your targeting strategy to focus on keywords that will give you better results.
This is also a chance to find keywords that you may not be ranking for right now.
When you do your SEO audit and look at your competitors, you should also look at the content they have. Content has a big effect on how well your SEO works, and it also helps your site get more leads and do better in the search results.
You can find out what kind of content your audience likes best. By doing this, you can see how your content stacks up against those of your competitors. You should also use this time to look at the content of your competitors to come up with ideas for your own.
By looking at the sites that are competing with yours, you’ll have a better idea of how to make your site stand out and do better in search results.
10. Getting better at voice search
Voice search is becoming more and more popular as a way for people to do searches. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you should check your site’s content to make sure it works well with voice search.
The first step is to make sure your content is easy to understand. If someone is going to read your content out loud, you should make sure it is easy to understand. Look over your content to make sure it is clear and easy to understand.
Also, make sure you give your audience the information they are looking for. If someone asks, “What’s the best way to cook a turkey?” Your writing should directly answer that question.
You have a better chance of being in the featured snippet if you give your audience useful and direct information. This is a block of text that shows up at the top of the search results.
You want to get the featured snippet, also called “position zero,” because voice search devices pull information from these featured snippets. When you optimise your content, you make it easier for voice search to find your site.
11. Errors
When you do an SEO audit, you should crawl your site to look for mistakes.
You can use a tool like Screaming Frog to crawl your site. This helps you find mistakes on your site so you can fix them and make your site run better.
You can start by finding pages that Google hasn’t crawled yet and fixing any errors that are stopping it.
Also, look for broken pages that give a “Error 404” message. This happens when pages are deleted or when the URLs change. By making redirects for these links, you can keep people from getting error messages.
By fixing mistakes and blocking pages, you can help visitors find the information they need and keep them on your site longer. Your hard work will lead to better SEO for your website.
12. Broken links
Any link to a page that no longer exists is a “broken link.” Broken links, also known as “dead links,” happen when you remove a page from your website without using a redirect.
There are a lot of broken links on the Internet. When you see an error message that says “404,” it means that a link no longer leads to a page. If you have a lot of broken links on your site, you’re no longer giving users a good experience, which means your traffic and conversions will slowly go down.
It’s also possible that you’ll drop down in Google’s search results, since Google wants its users to have a good time when they search.
If you find broken links, fix them or get rid of them as soon as you can.
13. Duplicate content
When making content, you don’t want to make the same thing twice. When you have duplicate content on your page, it lowers the page’s authority and hurts your SEO rankings.
You’ll need to use canonical link tags to stop this from happening. Pages with these tags are “master copies.” By using canonical links, you can help organise your site and make sure that your most important content is indexed first.
14. Low-value pages
When you make content, you want to make sure that your pages have original, helpful, and relevant content. It should include the right keywords and be about the subject at hand. If you want your site to work well, you need to get rid of the pages that don’t add much value.
If a page doesn’t have enough content, you should add more or send it to a URL with more content. To do this, remove the low-value pages from the index and put your attention on the high-value pages. When you take low-value pages out of the index, people can still visit them, but they don’t slow down your site.
15. Other things that happen on-site
This last thing takes time because it has so much in it. On-page SEO ranking factors include things like title tags, headings, meta descriptions, and more.
Each of your pages should have a unique title, heading, and meta description with keywords that describe what it is about. Every page you have should focus on a different set of keywords. If they all focus on the same keywords, Google won’t know which one to show in search results.
That can be bad for a business trying to grow online, so it’s even more important to do an SEO audit on your site regularly to keep it in top shape.
It may take a lot of time and work, but it’s important for the online success of your business.
Take Away
You can make a better campaign for your business with the help of an SEO audit. It will help you figure out how to make your SEO campaign work better. At 1Solutions, we’ve been optimising SEO campaigns to get better results for our clients for over 12 years.
If you want a company that gets good results, you don’t have to look any further than 1Solutions. Our team will help you do an audit of your SEO campaign so you can get better results.
Contact us right away so we can do a full audit of your website and help you make more money on the Internet.
