Simply put, an SEO Audit is the process of discovering flaws that may be preventing your site from ranking well in Google and other search engines. You'll be missing out on organic traffic if your site can't be crawled and indexed effectively, your content doesn't compare to your competitors, or you have poisonous links (to name a few common issues that an audit could reveal).
What are the benefits of getting a website / SEO audit?
You may start developing the correct digital strategy for your company by completing an SEO audit. This is because the audit allows you to assess your existing SEO efforts and website rankings, allowing you to take fast action based on your findings. A website SEO audit will help you identify any technical difficulties that are holding your website behind, as well as provide insight into what is missing on your site, from content and keywords to usability and coding.
What exactly is a website audit, and how frequently should one be performed?
Although there are no hard and fast rules for how often a website should be audited, most developers and marketers agree that doing so once or twice a year will maintain your site in good form. Nothing stays motionless on the internet. As search engines update and enhance their algorithms, for example, SEO evolves, and some of your material may no longer perform as well as it once did. Worse, it may be slowing down your website. It's easy to believe that if your website is generating inquiries and receiving a lot of traffic, everything is OK. However, it's possible that it's not performing to its full potential. If you don't address these difficulties, your website will eventually plateau or lose traction. As a result, your competitors will have an advantage over you.
What Is The Best Way To Conduct A Website Audit?
A website audit is a complete analysis of your website that will assist you in identifying all factors that are hindering or assisting your site's search engine visibility. Site audits demand a number of tests in order to provide detailed data that you may review in order to acquire insight into your present website issues. A professional web audit takes into account all of the aspects that can affect your website's success, including yours, your customers', and Google's.
How to Conduct a Site Audit Inspection for SEO
Even if your website is well-optimized, it is likely to have some issues that must be addressed. These include technical SEO difficulties, slow page speed, duplicate content, broken links, and anything else that could be preventing your website from receiving the traffic (and conversions) it deserves. A site audit is the initial step in identifying any flaws with your website.
What is the most effective technique to do a site audit?
A manual site audit takes a lot of time and effort to complete. Even for seasoned SEO specialists, doing a site audit is a difficult undertaking - especially for older, larger websites. An audit tool is necessary when a website includes thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of pages and resources, but a manual component is still required for an effective audit. Fortunately, there are a variety of SEO tools available to make website audits even easier. Examine the material on your website. Your website's content is critical. Visitors can learn more about your site by reading the text, which is accompanied by visuals and illustrations. Content is vital not only for providing information, but also for SEO purposes. The keywords used in page content and blog posts transmit important signals to search engine bots; the keywords used and how well they are employed communicate a variety of signals, including whether or not your website is trustworthy. Is it updated on a regular basis?
Technical review of the website
Checking the technical features of your site is another popular section of a general website audit. This is a website health check that will tell you what needs to be fixed on several elements of the site. It will look for crawl failures, ssl codes, and other technical details like website load speeds. Some tools can assist you in this endeavour, but you must first determine which technical parts of a website audit it will examine.
An evaluation of the user experience on a website
After users find your website, UX – or user experience – is critical to keeping them there. It is vital for all websites, but it is even more important for e-commerce sites. This type of audit identifies the sections of your website that aren't up to par and may be generating problems for your visitors and, as a result, preventing conversions. You should always be searching for ways to improve the user experience on your website.
Checklist for a Website Audit
Selecting a site auditing tool
These tools make looking over your website with a fine-tooth comb and catching the spots that need to be changed or enhanced a lot easier. We have our own Website Audit tool, but there have been a slew of new ones since we started. Ahrefs has its own version, SEMRush has its own auditor, and there are other niche-specific tools like Screaming Frog and Sitebulb that specialise on auditing. ### Using the programme to run your website address (URL). After you've completed your free trial and have your paid tool set up and ready to go, you'll need to run your URL through the tool. After you've decided on a premium SEO tool, you'll be able to use the site auditor to enter your website's URL. ### Handling technical issues An SEO audit is similar to a technical website audit. It examines a bigger picture, detecting flaws that will have a detrimental impact on your site's SEO performance. When most individuals hear the phrase "SEO audit," they immediately think of technical difficulties.
Errors in the crawl
This error indicates that the page cannot be crawled and indexed by search engine bots. This indicates that it is failing to drive traffic to your website.
Status of HTTPS
This indicates whether or not your site's security certificate (SSL) is current. If it is, your URL will begin with https://; otherwise, it will begin with http://. This is crucial for security, not just for you but also for visitors to your site.
Status of the XML sitemap
For search engine crawlers, a sitemap is required. This indicates that your website is properly formatted. The time it takes for a website or a page to load We are impatient, therefore when we arrive at a website that takes a long time to load, we simply leave. Your final report will display page and site loading times, which will obstruct user experience.
Mobile-responsive
In comparison to a PC, around half of the individuals who visit your site will be using a smartphone or tablet. What is the mobile responsiveness of your website? You can find out by conducting a website audit.
Images with flaws
Not only can information be broken, but graphics and images can as well. It's possible that you're unaware that a picture isn't loading or how it's affecting your website.
Robots.txt (robots.txt) is a text file that
You may not want all of your pages to be indexed, but are the ones that are being indexed correctly? This section of the audit will tell you all you need to know.
Links that are broken
Finding broken internal and external connections is critical because there's nothing more frustrating than clicking on a seemingly interesting link only to discover it no longer exists.
SEO issues
There is undeniably some overlap between what are called "technical concerns." There are two types of SEO concerns: on-page SEO issues and off-page SEO issues. In actuality, all of these concerns might have an impact on SEO in some way. Although the website technical audit covers many SEO concerns, there are other areas of SEO that must be reviewed because they are not addressed in step 3. An SEO audit will uncover information such as: Meta descriptions and title tags that are duplicated, short, lengthy, or missing Image alt text or title text is missing or duplicated. Missing Code for Google Analytics The presence or absence of H2, H3, and other headings Internal links and anchor text that aren't optimised
Conduct a website audit for user experience and design.
The overall simplicity and accessibility of your website is vital not only for search engines to find it, but also for your customers to be able to utilise and interact with it. Many SEO site audit tools will examine the design and overall user-friendliness of your website (UX). Both of these factors influence how people engage with your site, how you connect with them while on the page (e.g., using a live chat or text-enabled app), how long they stay on your site, and whether they become paying customers.
Website content
Great content isn't just about SEO, however it does play a role in converting visitors to consumers. Businesses frequently cut corners when it comes to content, which has a detrimental impact on your site's performance. The importance of strong content in SEO, as well as actually converting users on your website, cannot be overstated. It's not the place to scrimp and save. A comprehensive site audit will reveal which pages are ranking for your target keywords — and which pages aren't. It will also identify any pages with “duplicate” or “shallow” information.
Review the checklist
After the audit is completed, you'll receive a report and analysis that may include a number of surprises and shocks. All you have to do now is update your website and work through the faults and ideas for improvement. Most products will generate an online report for you to check off, along with basic advice on how to resolve the errors. Raven allows you to construct a checklist that your team or client may fill out, allowing you to check off tasks as they are performed, or to select a specific site audit KPI and incorporate it into a report that allows for historical progress tracking.
Website audit FAQ
What does a website audit entail?
A website audit usually entails examining various areas of its performance, including technical factors such as loading speed, user experience features such as usability, and marketing aspects such as conversion optimization.
How do you conduct a website audit?
You may either do your own website audit using a variety of audit tools or hire a specialised organisation to perform it for you. In most cases, the latter will yield better and more detailed findings.
What exactly is a website audit?
This entails looking over the webpage and assessing its quality. This will draw attention to elements of the website that could be enhanced in order for it to meet its goal. What is the purpose of a website audit? A website is never truly completed; it can always be improved in some way. Regular website audits are essential for staying ahead of the competition and ensuring that your website's technology does not become obsolete.
How often should a website be audited?
Although there are no hard and fast rules for how often a website should be audited, most developers and marketers agree that doing so once or twice a year will maintain your site in good form.
How do you perform an SEO audit on a website?
• Title tags and meta descriptions that may be duplicated, short, long, or absent as a result of an SEO audit • Image alt text or title text that is missing or duplicated • Google Analytics code that is missing • The existence or absence of H2, H3 headers, and so on • Internal links and anchor text that are not optimised
Conclusion
Conducting regular site audits is critical when it comes to optimising your website. You can stay on top of your website maintenance by recognising any problems as soon as they appear, before they become too difficult to deal with. This way, you can correct any issues one at a time while also ensuring that your website is SEO-friendly.
