We – mofd agency – have a lot of experience under our belt. And we want to share it, so you can have a deeper understanding of what an SEO audit is and why you should consider having one. In this step-by-step guide, we will walk you through the process of conducting a thorough SEO audit to identify areas for improvement and boost your website's visibility online.
From keyword research to technical optimization, our guide covers every aspect of an SEO audit, ensuring that you leave no stone unturned. We'll show you how to analyse your website's performance, uncover hidden issues, and implement the right strategies to make your website more search engine friendly.
By following our proven SEO audit framework, you will be able to optimize your website for higher rankings, improved organic traffic, and increased conversion rates. Dive into this comprehensive guide and unlock the secrets to an effective SEO audit today!
An SEO audit serves as a comprehensive evaluation of your website's health and performance in terms of search engine optimization. It is an essential step in understanding how your website is currently performing and identifying areas that need improvement.
During an SEO audit, you will gain valuable insights into your website's strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to address any issues that may be hindering its visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs). It provides a roadmap for optimizing your website, increasing organic traffic, and ultimately driving more conversions.
An effective SEO audit can help you uncover hidden problems such as duplicate content, broken links, slow page load times, or poor user experience. By addressing these issues, you can enhance your website's overall performance and ensure that it is easily discoverable by search engines and users alike. We’ve been there so many times – see one of the case studies where we skyrocketed organic traffic of a software house (along with crafting a rock-solid content strategy first).
A comprehensive SEO audit covers various key components that are crucial for optimizing your website's visibility and performance. Let's take a closer look at each of these components:
The first step in an SEO audit involves evaluating your website's structure and architecture. This includes assessing the organization of your website's pages, URL structure, and internal linking. A well-structured website ensures that search engines can easily crawl and index your content, leading to improved visibility in search results.
During this step, you should focus on identifying any issues such as broken links, orphaned pages, or excessive use of redirects. By fixing these issues, you can improve the user experience and ensure that search engines can navigate your website efficiently.
On-page optimization refers to the optimization of individual web pages to improve their visibility in search results. During this step, you should analyse factors such as meta tags, headings, keyword usage, and content quality.
Start by reviewing your meta tags, ensuring that they accurately describe the content of each page and include relevant keywords. Next, assess the usage of headings throughout your website, making sure they are properly structured and utilize relevant keywords.
Additionally, evaluate the overall quality of your website's content. Is it engaging, informative, and relevant to your target audience? By optimizing your on-page elements and improving your content, you can enhance your website's visibility and attract more organic traffic.
And as for meta tags – here’s a pro-tip with an example.
Even though this category is classified as 'minor errors' in SEO, it is actually very significant affects the traffic on the website – not only from the SEO perspective, but also (and actually – above all) from users' point of view. Why? Google believes that the best indicator of page ranking is whether it is useful to people and whether the pages contain valuable content.
Meta tags not only resonate with the title, but also have the potential to encourage Internet users to visit the given page sites. Often meta tags are auto-completed or not completed at all. It's a serious error – below we illustrate its essence – using a real-life example – two meta versions tags (and title tags & meta descriptions) of the British branch of the well-known concern – Pepsi.
In the example above, you can see the meta tag completed 'automatically' – it's rather not encouraging to enter the page, is not coherent (part of the text written in small caps), and does not inform users with specific content. The description does not show anything – that is, it is not known what information can be found on the site or that they are not properly arranged. Below is the same page – after changing the URL, title and meta.
As you can see – changing the meta descriptions allows users to specify what they will find on the site. It is clear, contains a CTA and useful links – in case someone needs to go to information about Pepsi MAX or another section.
Off-page factors play a significant role in determining your website's authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. During this step, you should assess the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to your website.
Evaluate the diversity of your backlink profile, ensuring that it consists of high-quality, authoritative websites relevant to your industry. Identify any toxic or low-quality backlinks that may be negatively impacting your website's search engine rankings.
Implementing a strong off-page optimization strategy, such as building high-quality backlinks and engaging in social media promotion, can significantly improve your website's visibility and organic rankings.
An interesting fact from our experience – one of our clients was experiencing a significant drop in domain authority. There were no toxic links found in the conducted audit. So, we had to dig deeper. It turned out that there was duplicate content somewhere on the Internet, and that it was set as canonical. In other words – someone copied the content and managed to convince Google algorithms that these copied pieces were the original texts, and the client’s content was considered as duplicated. Conclusion – it’s worth hiring masters for your SEO audit. Our services are an investment, not a cost.
Technical SEO focuses on the optimization of your website's technical aspects to ensure that search engines can crawl, index, and understand your content effectively. This step involves analysing factors such as website speed, mobile-friendliness, schema markup, and XML sitemaps.
Start by assessing your website's loading speed, as slow page load times can negatively impact user experience and search engine rankings. Optimize your website's code, compress images, and leverage browser caching to improve loading times. Numbers? Sure. When your site loads for longer than 5 seconds, there’s an 82% chance the visitor will leave before it loads. When the loading time exceeds 10 seconds, that chance increases to 123%. Just think of it in this way – how many times did you leave a website because you would rather not wait for it to load? Exactly.
Additionally, ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and responsive, as mobile usage continues to rise. Implement schema markup to provide search engines with additional information about your content, enhancing your website's visibility in search results.
Keyword research is a critical component of any SEO audit. It involves identifying the keywords and phrases that your target audience is using to search for products or services related to your business.
Start by brainstorming a list of relevant keywords and phrases that are highly relevant to your industry. Use keyword research tools to evaluate search volume, competition, and relevancy for each keyword.
Identify high-value keywords that have a good balance between search volume and competition. These keywords will serve as the foundation for your content optimization strategy, allowing you to create targeted, relevant content that attracts organic traffic.
Website performance and user experience are crucial factors that impact your website's visibility and overall success. During this step, you should assess factors such as page load times, mobile-friendliness, navigation, and overall user engagement.
Evaluate your website's loading speed, aiming for fast page load times to ensure a positive user experience. Test your website's mobile-friendliness using Google's Mobile-Friendly Test and make necessary adjustments to improve mobile usability.
Review your website's navigation and structure, ensuring that it is intuitive and user-friendly. Optimize your website's internal linking to guide users through your content and improve their overall experience.
By analysing and improving these key components, you can optimize your website for higher search engine rankings, increased organic traffic, and improved user engagement.
Conducting a thorough SEO audit is only the first step towards improving your website's visibility and performance. Once you have identified areas for improvement, it's crucial to act and implement the necessary changes. 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. Distinguish your business from the digital crowd to increase your ROI.
Create a prioritized action plan based on your audit findings, focusing on addressing the most critical issues first. Whether it's optimizing your website's structure, improving on-page elements, or building high-quality backlinks, each action you take will contribute to your website's overall success.
Regularly monitor the impact of your changes and make adjustments as needed. SEO is an ongoing process, and maintaining a proactive approach will ensure that your website remains competitive in search engine rankings.
Now that you have unlocked the secrets of an effective SEO audit, it's time to put your knowledge into action. Follow our step-by-step guide, and watch as your website climbs the search engine rankings, attracts more organic traffic, and drives increased conversions. Sounds like a lot of work and time to make it right? That’s cool, you can save time and money. Just drop us a line by using the form below. Our masters are ready to perform an SEO audit and help your business stand out in the digital crowd.
