SEO

Comprehensive SEO Audit: A Complete and Methodical Guide for Digital Marketing Interns

An SEO audit is a standard procedure that’s done to give users an improved insight into the website. This procedure can help you get an improved ranking on a search engine results page (SERP).

So how can you do your website SEO audit in the best possible manner? The following steps can help.

Step 1: Prepare the browser

You need to do only 2 things to complete this step, in particular.

  • Disable your browser cookies.
  • Change the user agent to a Google bot. You may use a user-to-agent switcher for this purpose of yours. A user-to-agent switcher is available as an extension for Firefox/Chrome that can be installed in a matter of seconds. Use that for this purpose of yours.

Step 2: Check the primary site URL of the homepage

3 things must be done in this step for an efficient completion of the task.

  • Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and pay special attention to the homepage. What’s the first impression that you are getting from it? Be true to yourself and answer.
  • Check the title tag. If you can improve, do it.
  • Check for URL redirections. Meaning, say you want to browse lerablog.org/, but you were redirected to something else like lerablog1234.org/. If you see issues like that, FIX IT without further ado.
  • Check for canonical URLs. The Canonical URL checker tool can come in handy for you.

Step 3: Check your site’s global navigation system

5 steps and that’s all…

  • Temporarily disable Javascript.
  • Check the working of the site’s global navigation system. Indexing problems will appear if it doesn’t work the way it should. Your fixes should take shape on the basis of that.
  • Are all links in HTML? Ensure.
  • Make sure that all your page interlinking is done in the perfect order. A small error here, and a small error there can lead to a faulty navigation system; something capable of hurting your site a lot in the long run.
  • Re-enable Javascript.

Step 4: Check the site’s category and the subcategory pages

Think of your website as that of a canal. There’s a home page that serves to be the main landing page of your website. Others are category/subcategory pages.

All of these pages are interlinked with one another. All of them are more than capable of improving your ranking on a SERP. So do not ever ignore your site’s category and subcategory pages.

Anyway, here are your steps:

  • Ensure that the content of your site’s category/subcategory pages are relevant to your website.
  • Note the number of extraneous links on the category/subcategory pages. There should be a limit of around 150 links, in particular.
  • Try and improve the anchor text (if you think it’s not good enough).

Step 5: A thorough check-up of the homepage (landing page) SEO

You need to check a few things, in particular, to ensure that your homepage SEO is as fine as a feather.

  • Check the title tag of your home page? Do you think it can generate a good number of clicks in the long run? (Refer to Step 6 for more information).
  • Is your meta description optimized enough for more click generation? [Refer to step 7].
  • Did you use at least one H1 tag on your page? If you did, did it fulfill the best SEO practices?
  • Did you use subheadings (H2, H3 and so on) properly?

Check these things in detail. Solutions are bound to follow once you are aware of the problems.

Step 6: Optimize homepage title tags

The title tag can make a major difference in your SERP ranking. So pay special attention to it.

  • The length of the title should be around 55 characters (in particular). Try to turn this rule into a personal thumb rule of yours to benefit in the long run.
  • Try your best to put the name of your website at the beginning of the title.
  • Last but not the least, don’t forget to place a high volume keyword in the title itself. It can give you positive results in the nearly foreseeable future.

Step 7: Check your homepage meta descriptions

It’s true that meta descriptions don’t have a direct hand in influencing your page ranking on a SERP. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay much heed to them. In fact, you MUST pay special attention to them because they can help to generate more clicks in the long run.

So keep these things in mind while optimizing meta descriptions during your SEO audit:

A meta description should ideally:

  • Have one keyword.
  • Have total characters (including space) below 160.
  • Be relevant and right to the point.
  • NEVER be deceptive.

Step 8: Check the blogs of the site (if any)

Blogs can honestly make all the differences in the world to determine your ranking on a SERP. So never ignore them in any way whatsoever.

Here are your steps:

  • Note down the format of the title tags (of each individual blogs, in particular). Are they up to the mark? If they aren’t, fix it ASAP.
  • Analyze meta descriptions as closely as possible. Is it too long? Does it have the presence of complex characters in it? If it does, fix it as soon as possible.
  • Finally, check whether the content is indexable or not. If it’s not, it might signify a problem.

Step 9: Check whether the content of your website is plagiarized from anywhere else or not

Plagiarized content can penalize you badly on major search engines. So beware of the same in the best possible manner.

You can check plagiarized content within the blink of an eye, thanks to the trusted and reliable website tool, Copyscape. You won’t get it free, but the expenses are definitely worth the money.

Step 10: Test the loading speed of your website

It’s a pretty well-known fact that the loading speed of a website can definitely affect its ranking on a search engine results page.

The faster it is, the better it is.

You may use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool for this purpose of yours. The tool is exceptionally simple to use. Just enter the site URL in the designated section, and the tool will do the rest of the job on its own.

The PageSpeed Insights tool will give your site a speed score out of 100. Your speed assessment should be entirely based on the outcomes.

Note: Anything above 60 (out of 100) is good for your website SEO. So try to achieve the same on your “PageSpeed Insight” test.

Step 11: Check the structured data (if any) of the site

Structured data can play a humongous role in improving your site visibility. It can help to generate more clicks on your page on a search engine results page.

You may include the following pieces of content in your site as a part of your website’s structure data to improve your site visibility on the World Wide Web:

  • Reviews
  • Events
  • Product information

Note: Use the structured data testing tool for testing your website’s structured data. Just enter the site URL and click on “fetch and validate,” and that’s it. The tool will do the rest of the job on its own. In case it detects any error with your site’s structured data, it will come up with a message to make you aware of the same.

Step 12: Check your site’s underperforming pages and remove them if necessary

This won’t help you rank better on a search engine results page, but it would definitely help to prevent your site from getting dragged down on the World Wide Web as a result of these poorly-performing pages.

  • Find out the pages that are performing the worst on your site. The free Google Analytics tool can come in handy for this purpose of yours.
  • If you think you can improve these pages in future, keep them, and plan accordingly. If you think they are just a waste of space, remove them without any further ado. This would definitely benefit your site a lot in the long run.

So that sums up everything we wanted to tell you through this article. It’s time we sign off finally for the day. Hope you had a good and useful read.

Contributed bywww.learnpick.in

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