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If your website isn't ranking, there could be crucial SEO points you are missing out on. Conducting an SEO website audit can help you find and resolve your site's issues. Consistent SEO upkeep is crucial for a website to rank higher on SERPs. However, performing SEO audits requires resources. A thorough SEO audit can pinpoint the weakest points and eliminate the errors that could affect your site's ranking.
In this blog, we will discuss seven necessary technical website audit steps to improve your website rankings.
What is an SEO Audit?
In simple words, an SEO website audit is the process of evaluating a website for search engine rankings. It identifies the technical and other errors that hinder your website from ranking well and opportunities that can help you improve your visibility. Here are some crucial areas usually a website audit covers:
- Indexing
- User-experience
- Site structure
- Keyword research
- On-page
- Off-page
- Backlink profile
How To Do An SEO Website Audit: A Step-By-Guide
A website SEO is a comprehensive analysis of a website that evaluates its ability to perform in search engine results. It's a strategic tool that emphasizes strengths, weaknesses, and potential opportunities for improvement. A website audit is crucial to determine your site's performance, and if you don’t know how to do it, you can hire a website audit agency.
Here are some critical steps to perform a website audit.
1. Crawl Your Website
The first step in a website audit is crawling your website using an SEO tool. SEO tools like semrush and SEO Frog can present a detailed overview of your website structure and highlight errors like broken links, duplicate content, missing meta details like titles and descriptions, and slow page speed.
2. Check For Indexing Issues
Using Google Search Console, you can verify how many website pages are currently indexed. Compare index pages with your website's total number of pages to find the discrepancies. Non-indexed pages signal deeper issues, such as improper use of tags (e.g., Noindex) or sitemap problems.
3. Analyse On-Page SEO Elements
The third important step in a website audit is evaluating on-page elements. Evaluate your website's on-page efforts, such as meta tags, headers, keywords, URLs, etc. Ensure all these elements are optimized for search engines and align with your keywords. Here are some crucial
on-page elements :
- Content-Quality - This is one of the most critical steps of an on-page website audit. Evaluate its relevancy, uniqueness, readability, and engagement metrics. Update the outdated and create high-quality content whenever needed. Look for the opportunity for content updates and ensure your content is aligned with the target keywords.
- Title tags & Meta descriptions - Ensure title tags and meta descriptions are updated for all the pages.
- Headings - Check that all the headings are used correctly, the H1 tag is used once per page, and the H2 and H3 headings organize content effectively.
- Images - Check all the images have descriptive alt texts for accessibility and additional keyword optimization opportunities.
4. Analyse Off-Page SEO factors
Your technical website audit efforts are a waste without off-page analysis. Off-page SEO factors play a crucial role in website authority and rankings. Use Ahrefs and Moz tools to analyze your backlink profile. Look out for spammy links that affect your site's reputation. Explore the opportunity to gain high-quality links from reputable sources. You can hire a website audit agency, they will suggest the proper steps to gain high-authority links.
5. Monitor Keyword Rankings
Keyword tracking tools help you track keywords' performance on SERPs. You can also find opportunities to improve your keyword ranking by optimizing your existing content or targeting new keywords. Keyword research tools like SEO optimizers, SEO rankings, and AI keyword generators provide various opportunities to discover untapped keyword potential.
6. Evaluate User Experience
Monitor your website's performance by analyzing site speed, mobile friendliness, and user experience. Structure and design play crucial roles in your website's performance and ranking. Review your site's navigation to ensure it's intuitive and logical. The loading speed should also be reviewed using tools like Google Page Speed Insights. Slow page speed can hurt both UX and rankings. Improve these factors to optimize site functionality. Ensure your device is optimized for mobile and desktop devices, ensuring a seamless experience across different screen sizes. You can hire a website audit agency if you need to learn how to audit a website. They will guide you through all the necessary steps and conduct a thorough website audit on your behalf.
7. Create An SEO Audit Report
You can compile an SEO audit report based on the steps you have conducted for a website audit. Mention all the issues you have identified and the actions recommended for each. Prioritize these actions based on the impact and convenience of the search engine.
Conclusion
Every website needs improvement after a specific time. A technical website audit helps you identify the critical issues and steps to fix them. Though SEO website audits require a lot of resources, you can easily manage them if you have a structured algorithm and know what and why you do it. If you are less experienced in this field, you can partner with a website audit agency like Digitech India. We will audit your website regularly and fix SEO issues to improve visibility and achieve better rankings.
