Just like you need regular health check-ups, your website needs them, too! If your website is losing traffic, dropping on the SERP, or just not performing well overall, an SEO audit should be in your future.
In this blog, Senior Digital Marketing Strategist Monique De Leon, will explain why you need to perform regular SEO audits and walk you through a checklist to make sure you hit all of the important points so your website can shine again!
What You’ll Learn
- What is an SEO Audit?
- How to Prepare for an SEO Audit
- Step-By-Step SEO Audit Process
- Create Your Own SEO Audit Report
- Implement Recommendations
What is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is a regular check-up of your website’s SEO. By staying up to date on how well your site is performing on search engines, you’ll be able to identify and solve minor problems before they turn into big ones.
Typically, an SEO audit checklist would include the following aspects of your site:
- Keyword usage
- User experience
- Mobile-friendliness
- Indexing and crawability
- Site architecture
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Backlink profiles
- Competitor benchmarking
My Expert Insight on SEO Audits
SEO is constantly changing and evolving. What worked a few years, months, or even weeks ago might no longer be what will get you to the top of the SERP.
That’s why I recommend regularly performing an SEO audit on your website. Checking things like your site’s indexing, crawlability, on-page SEO, keyword usage, backlinks, and more will help you get the most out of it.
How to Prepare for an SEO Audit
Preparing for an SEO audit is fairly straightforward. The most important thing is to select software or a tool to help you conduct your research. Here is a list of our recommendations:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that every digital marketer should use. It collects valuable and accurate data and gives you access to reports that show your site’s engagement, monetization, acquisition, and more. The best part? It’s completely free!
SEMRush
SEMrush is another popular tool for collecting and analyzing data. It can help you find gaps in your keyword usage and backlinks, as well as run a site audit for on-page and technical SEO and other research.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another popular SEO tool. It can help you identify and fix a variety of issues with your site to keep it performing at the optimum level. This tool flags all possible technical SEO issues, gives recommendations on how to fix them, shows you key data visually through charts, and more.
Before you decide on which tool to use, it’s important to follow an SEO audit checklist. This will help streamline your process while ensuring a comprehensive and systematic approach to your site’s check-up.
It will also help you analyze past data. If all of your audits are done in a similar manner, it’ll be easy to see where you are improving over time.
Step-By-Step SEO Audit Process
Now that you know what an SEO site audit is, why it’s important, and tools to help you, let’s talk about the process of completing one successfully.
Step 1: Technical SEO Audit
The first step in a successful SEO audit checklist is to analyze your site’s technical SEO. Be sure to look for things like:
- Crawlability and Indexing: Ensuring that your pages are properly indexed will make it easier for Google Search Console to navigate your page successfully.
- Site Speed and Performance: Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or SEMrush will analyze your site speed and give you tips on how to improve it.
- Mobile-Friendliness: Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can tell you if your site is mobile-friendly, which is incredibly important in a world where up to 59% of web traffic comes from a mobile device.
Step 2: On-Page SEO Audit
Next up is your on-page SEO audit. This is the type of SEO that most people think of when they think of SEO. It includes things like:
- Keyword Optimization: Be sure to analyze your keyword usage and density. Keyword stuffing is a thing of the past. You want to make sure that your keywords are strategically placed throughout your titles, headers, and content.
- Content Quality and Relevance: Always check for duplicate content and thin pages. Be sure that all of your content is fresh, relevant, and provides quality or value to your readers.
- Meta Tags and Descriptions: Meta titles or tags and descriptions are incredibly important! Ensure each page has a unique meta tag to improve your crawlability and ranking.
Step 3: Off-Page SEO Audit
The next step in your SEO website audit process is your off-page SEO. This includes analyzing:
- Backlink Profiles: Backlinks are great – as long as they’re quality ones! Monitoring the quality and quantity of your backlinks will help you identify and disavow toxic ones sooner.
- Social Media Presence: Ensure consistent branding and linking across all platforms, including your site’s social media. This will help to improve your activity and engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
Step 4: Local SEO Audit
Don’t sleep on local SEO! The next step to audit SEO should include checking things like:
- Google Business Profile: Your Google Business Profile can be super helpful as long as you use it correctly! Make sure your profile is complete and accurate. You should also encourage reviews and manage your ratings to weed out inaccurate ones and learn from the others.
- Local Citations: Verify the accuracy of your local citations across any directories you might be listed in. Be sure that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) is all the same across the board.
Step 5: User Experience (UX) Audit
The next, and maybe the most important, step is to analyze your user experience. Look into things that could provide a negative experience, such as:
- Site Navigation and Structure: You’re going to lose visitors if your site is hard to navigate. Establish a clear and logical site structure that makes it easy for your users to find what they need.
- User Engagement Metrics: Analyze KPIs like bounce rate, session duration, and page views. Armed with that information, implement site improvements that will enhance your user experience and encourage visitors to stay longer.
Create Your Own SEO Audit Report
Once you have all of your data, it’s time to create your SEO audit report! Your report should be easy to read and informative for anyone interested in learning from it.
The first step in this process is to compile all of your findings into well-organized sections. Highlight the critical issues and areas of improvement. You can also point out what part of your site is performing well and celebrate a job well done.
Next, provide actionable recommendations based on your data analysis. Pointing out a problem is great, but providing a solution is even better. Once you’ve done that, prioritize the necessary improvement tasks based on their impact on your site’s SEO performance.
Next Steps: Implementing Recommendations
After your SEO audit is complete and your report is prepared, it’s time to act on implementing your recommendations.
Create a Timeline
Create a timeline and plan for implementing your changes. Taking on a task of this size is easier when you have a well-documented plan in place to guide you through. Go back and look at that prioritization list you prepared in your initial report for help creating a timeline.
Once your timeline is in place and you’ve started making changes, be sure to monitor your progress so you can measure the impact of your improvements. If things aren’t improving after a certain amount of time, it might be a good idea to consider a different approach.
Set a Schedule
One of the most important things to remember about SEO site audits is that they are not one-and-done. You should perform them regularly to ensure that you are doing all that you can to improve your site.
Set calendar reminders, either monthly or quarterly, to remind you to perform your audit. Always follow your SEO audit checklist and document your progress and changes. Following the same procedure over and over will give you the best chance of success.
Keeping up with the latest SEO news and developments will also help you stay on top of the SERPs. After all, how can you please the algorithm if you aren’t up to date on its changes?!
Improve Your SEO Strategy with Ignite Visibility
Ready to put your best SEO foot forward? Ignite Visibility is the perfect place to turn for help!
Our experts have been helping businesses across the country maximize their digital assets by improving their SEO, crafting quality content, and creating cohesive and successful digital marketing campaigns.
We can help you:
- Discover off-page, on-page, and technical SEO issues that may be harming your site
- Clean up old backlinks
- Create a bank of valuable content
- Boost you to the top of the SERP with an all-inclusive content marketing strategy
Are you ready to improve your digital marketing presence? Schedule a call today!
