Most of us use SEO as a way to rank higher on search engines, and they are not exactly wrong to do so. In fact, it’s a good thing. That said, SEO is more than putting yourself higher on search engines; it’s about optimizing the website to make sure it stays that way. You’re not only doing it to please search engines, but to make sure users are just as happy with their experience.
SEO audits are essential to make sure this happens for you. By regularly performing these audits, you can improve the performance of your site, keeping up with Google’s algorithm and changes. This way, you can always be one step ahead of your competition, being one step ahead of the other 1.88 billion business websites out there.
1. Optimizing Your Title Tags
Title tags are the clickable titles that appear when someone performs a search on Google and other search engines. Optimized correctly, they can influence your click-through rates (CTR) and search rankings, which is why you need to shine the spotlight on them. You should keep their length at around 60-70 characters to avoid truncation and use your primary keyword in them. Make sure they are unique because Google tends to send duplicates lower.
2. Checking for Crawlability and Indexability
Search engines need to crawl and index your website properly because if they fail to do so, your pages won’t appear in the search results. During your SEO audit, make sure to look at robots.txt to make sure key pages are not blocked, but also check for no-index tags on pages you want to be indexed. Make sure that your sitemap.xml is also current and that you have no 404 errors on your website. If the crawlers can get through your content without any roadblocks, ranking your content becomes easier.
3. Assessing and Fixing Website Speed
An average of 53% of visitors will bounce off your website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load the page. This is why your SEO audit should also look into the time your website currently takes to get your users where they want to be. If it turns out that your website speed is slow, then you should try tactics such as optimizing current images, reducing unnecessary coding, and enabling browser caching. Fixing this during your SEO audit not only improves your SEO ranking but also increases UX enough to raise the conversion rate.
4. Optimizing Your Local SEO
If you’ve been putting more focus on your global SEO, then your audit should also cover your local SEO. This is particularly important if you have a local business, with most of the clients near your area. Update your GMB to ensure that your business data are correct, and stay consistent across different directories. If you notice that people are not leaving reviews and ratings, your audit should focus on whether you have enough CTAs on your website. Check your local search terms during the audit and make sure that the content and tags are optimized for your area.
5. Analyzing User Interaction
Perhaps one of the most important things that you should look into when performing an SEO audit is how the visitors interact with your website. A bounce rate of around 60% shouldn’t be too concerning, especially if the number of people returning also looks good. That said, if it goes past 80%, you should put it on the priority list. Google has begun looking at dwell time as well, so it’s worth checking it out as well.
6. Ensuring Mobile Friendliness
Almost everyone nowadays uses their smartphones to look things up, since it’s easier to take a phone out of your pocket. Seeing as Google uses mobile-first indexing, a website that has not been optimized correctly might not rank as high as other similar platforms. During your SEO audit, make sure that your website has a responsive design that can adapt to all types of screens. Heavy scripts should also be reduced to improve mobile speed as well, and the most successful pages feature touch elements (e.g. buttons and links).
7. Optimizing On-Page SEO
When performing an SEO audit, you should also check that your on-page SEO is on point and properly structured. Keywords should be placed in headings, content, and alt texts, but not in a way that it stuffs the text. Internal linking can improve navigation and keep visitors on your website for longer, all while improving website crawlability. Don’t forget to add meta descriptions to your pages that are rich in keywords, as it can improve your ranking. During the audit, ascertain they are under 160 characters, as they can get cut off after that.
8. Analyzing Your Off-Page SEO and Backlinks
Off-page SEO is just as important to check as on-page SEO, because many of your visitors may come to your website via backlinks. Whether they are part of guest posts or a social media campaign, they need to look clean and authoritative. Use specialized tools to analyze the backlink quality, and check whether or not you have broken or spammy links leading towards your website. Since Google frowns upon this, you should fix them during an audit so you can avoid potential penalties.
9. Ensuring Content Quality and Relevance
Google and other search engines don’t just look at technical aspects such as how many keywords you use or how many links are pointing to your site. It also looks at whether or not your content is considered valuable and relevant to your readers. During your SEO audit, you should evaluate your website for thin or duplicate content, removing the weak ones. If your old posts feature outdated information, update them so they stay relevant. User metrics could be very helpful during an audit to see what works and what doesn’t.
Final Thoughts
SEO audits are not just an afterthought; they should be a regular process to ensure your content remains optimized and evergreen. By evaluating and addressing the areas above, you should be able to stay one step ahead of your competition at all times.