Every good SEO strategy should feature regular audits of your website. In this post we talk about what an SEO audit typically includes. Let’s roll!
Technical SEO
This looks into the design and build of your website.
Crawling and Indexing
These two components are the foundation for successful SEO. Crawling is how your site is being read by Google and indexing is adding your web pages to Google or any search engine’s database.
Google Search Console (a free tool from Google!) is your go-to for this information. Things to check are how many of your pages are being indexed by Google – is it the same number as your total site pages?
Ensure all your important pages are crawlable – this involves looking through robots.txt so if you’re less technically focused, leave it to the experts. As part of this you also need to ensure all your tags are correct and your site has no orphan pages. There are plenty of tools available to help you evaluate the crawl factor of your website. All your important pages must also be indexable, which involves looking through meta robots tag on the web pages.
Site Accessibility
Can users – and robots – easily access your site? Does it load quickly, especially on mobile? An accessible website will encourage more click throughs and improve your ranking. Check out www.webpagetest.org to check your site speed. Slow page load speeds, 404 errors or long server response times are a few of the common accessibility issues that can be found in an SEO audit. Resolving them is crucial to SEO success.
Site Structure & Design
A good user experience is essential to improving your SEO. Is your site easily navigable? Is it mobile friendly?
Site Security
Providing users a secure website experience is not just a nice to have anymore. Sites with HTTPS are upweighted in ranking. It is important to ensure that all components of your website have HTTPS and also the websites linked via canonical and other page tags.
