No matter if you love every bit of search engine optimization or hate it, nothing can change the fact that it’s imperative to perform a search engine optimization audit of your website. You can use these SEO tools for performing audits and crawl websites:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- SEMRush
- Screaming Frog
- Copyscape
It’s completely up to you whether you want to spend more or less time on the audit. Below mentioned are five important steps when auditing your website:
Accessibility
It is absolutely one of the most significant steps to conduct an SEO audit. If search engines and users are not able to access your website, you are not going to make much growth. When analyzing your website’s accessibility, you want to locate pages which are accidentally blocking web crawlers. Start out by answering questions — Is your robots.txt file limiting search engines from crawl your site? Are there any robots Meta on your site which is by mistake blocking search engine crawlers? Are there any URL errors and have you created an XML sitemap? Along with answering these questions, you should use a tool such as: Google Page Speed to better understand how your website is performing.
Indexability
Get started by taking these important steps. First one being, search for your website domain to see how it looks on Google and ensure it has not been penalized. See how many pages are indexed, search those keywords which relates to your business and select various pages of your website and search for the copied content.
On-Site Optimization
Let’s start by analyzing the URL of each page — Is the URL user-friendly and to the point? Does the URL include keywords which relates to the content of website page? Have you shunned the use of excessive parameters? Does the URL use hyphens to separate words? Along with this, you should also analyze each page of content on your website. Search Engine Land does a magnificent job of breaking down the connection between content and search engine success.
Off-Site Optimization
The things you do off your website plays an essential role in your search engine rankings. While there are many aspects, there are three that deserve your attention. First, backlink profile should be quality-focused rather than quantity. While you can only control this to a certain degree you want as many high quality websites linking to your website as possible. Second, a website’s authority is more essential. Your job is to establish a strong brand as this confirms to search engines that your content should be ranked at the top. Third, social engagement plays a big part when it comes to search engine rankings. Emphasize your time and efforts on the social platforms with the largest reach — Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram.
Competitive Analysis
SEMrush is truly one of the top competitor analysis tools for internet marketing professionals. Even the free version enables you to capture helpful data. It shows you where you position in regards to competitors while also giving you insights you will be able to use to your advantage.
