If you want to
optimize your website more thoroughly and efficiently with better results,
undertaking an SEO audit is necessary. The process helps you get feedback and
an analysis on the progress of your search engine optimization efforts and
allows you to correct the problematic areas of your SEO strategies. Performing
an SEO audit to your website at least twice a year is ideal. This will ensure
that your website is up-to-date and you are not wasting your SEO efforts on
strategies that do not yield positive results to your website ranking. An SEO Service Company can provide a more thorough SEO audit if you find it difficult
to do it yourself. Below are some of the basic steps in SEO auditing that you
need to periodically perform on your site.
Preparatory Step: Crawling your site
The first thing
that you need to do before performing an SEO audit is to crawl your website.
This will give you the information on whether or not the search engine is able
to access and index your site. You will need crawling tools in order to access
the database of the search engine like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Some of these
tools are paid software but using free crawling tools like the Google Webmaster
Tool and Bing Webmaster Tool will suffice if you are not too concern about
getting a very in-depth data. Search engine optimization Atlanta also uses its
own tool in performing a reliable SEO audit on your site to ensure its efficient
SEO performance. By crawling your website you will be able to identify which of
your web pages are not being indexed by the search engine because they are not
included in the search engine databases.
Step 1: SEO Audit on your site accessibility
Performing an
SEO audit on your site accessibility to the search engine is crucial because
without access to your site, the search engine is unable to index your web
pages. Your SEO audit should include the following:
·
Check the robot.txt
Webmasters often
use the robot.txt to prevent the search engine from crawling a particular web
page on their site. Perform an audit whether you have mistakenly added the
robot.txt to important web pages on your site. Look for this code that blocks
all crawlers on your web page:
User-agent : *
Disallow: /
Alternatively
you can also use the Google Webmaster tool to look for specific URLs on your
site that block the search engine crawlers.
·
Check for 404 errors
The 404 error can give the search engine
the signal that your website URL is not found and will prompt it to remove your
website from its database for being considered as a dead page.
·
Check the XML sitemap
The XML sitemap is an important aspect of
your SEO elements as it directs the search engine what pages on your site to
crawl. Make sure that all of the web pages of your site are included in the
sitemap and that you are following the proper sitemap protocol that should
comply with this sitemap format:
1.
Begin with the <urlset>
tag as opening and </urlset> as the closing tag.
2.
Specify the namespace within
the opening tag.
3.
Add the <url> entry for
each of the webpage URL as the parent XML tag.
4.
Include a <loc> child
entry for every parent <url> tag.
·
Perform a web design audit
This involves
auditing your website structure including its uptime and loading time. Search
engine spiders usually find websites as unattractive to crawl when it takes
longer to load. In order to improve your website loading performance try to
avoid using heavy JavaScript and Flash. Website design Atlanta can help develop
quick performing web pages with efficient loading time such as developing a
flatter web design that will be ideal if you want to perform your website
better for SEO.
·
Check for web pages indexed by the search engine
The easiest way to perform this SEO audit
is to use this command on the search bar:
Site:enter
your website url
The search result will show the number of
pages on your website that are indexed by the search engine. The closer the
number of the search results to the number of the actual web pages on your site
provides a good indication that your web pages are crawled by the search
engine.
Step
2: SEO audit for on-page optimization
·
Check for URL structure
Check if your URLs are well formatted for
SEO. It should use the URL structure below to allow the search engine to index
your site more effectively:
Do not use numbers on your URL format and
use one keyword for better optimization. It is ideal to keep the URL limited to
255 characters maximum.
·
Check for appropriate textual formatting
Make sure to use variations in your text
format such as using bold and italicized words as well as H1 and H2 tags.
·
Audit your textual content
Audit the content for grammar and spelling
errors and review if it delivers a high quality and fresh content. Make sure to
check for duplicate content and make a regular posting schedule to maintain the
freshness of your website content.
·
Auditing your image content
Using images makes a web page more
attractive to the search engine as well as to your readers. Make sure that your
images are defined by the alt tag and must be posted at an appropriate size for
better viewing.
·
Make a link audit
Check your site for broken links and remove
them. Your internal links should come from high ranking websites and make sure
that you are using not only keyword anchor text but the full page title and
non-keyword anchor texts as well. You can always find affordable SEO services
company that can perform a comprehensive link audit to your site.
Step
3: SEO audit for off page optimization
·
Check for quality backlinks
In order to have quality backlinks to your
site, you need to choose linking to reputable sites with high search results
page ranking. Audit your backlinks and ensure it has nofollow link and check
for spammy links as well.
·
Check your links to social media
Social media SEO can be a strong backbone
in structuring your SEO efforts. Your social media presence and social media
signals are important SEO marketing assets thus make sure that you have audited
your site for its presence on the social media community.
·
Audit your website popularity
Your website traffic will tell you about
your site popularity and the number of sites linking back to your website is
also indicative of your website popularity. Use analytic tools to evaluate your
website ranking as well as to audit what sites are linking back to your web
pages.
An SEO audit will give you more
opportunities to find the loop holes in your search engine optimization
strategies. It will give you a better way of re-defining your SEO efforts by
evaluating your SEO progress. You can identify a better SEO measure to improve
your website ranking and performance on the search engine by using useful
analytic tools to employ better and effective SEO strategies.
