How to Perform an SEO Audit on your Website
An SEO audit of your site is one extremely effective way of maximising your site’s potential without breaking the bank
No matter how smoothly you believe your website is running, how well you believe it represents the ethos of your company, offers clear and concise ordering and generally provides excellent ease of use, there are undoubtedly areas where there is considerable scope for improvement.
An SEO audit of your site is one extremely effective way of maximising your site’s potential without breaking the bank. While obtaining the help of experts is, of course, recommended, there is no reason, given the swathes of modern online tools (many of them free) that you cannot achieve incredible results going solo. Before we take a look at how you can get started on your SEO audit with minimal fuss, let’s make it clear just why an SEO audit is so important.
No matter the size, shape and sector of your business, an SEO audit – when carried out effectively – will provoke a significant boost in your online traffic, helping your site outcompete your rivals when it comes to Google’s all important rankings in relation to relevant search times. Via your audit you will be able to understand just where your website is underperforming, what is working for you, and where you are being let down. The beauty of doing this yourself is that nobody knows your business better than you do, so you will likely be best placed to interpret the findings and action any necessary changes. If you need any technical advice and support along the way, then so be it.
Let’s take a look at some of the available tools and how they are best implemented for your thorough site audit.
Google Analytics
There is scarcely an SEO audit that is done without the help of Google Analytics. If you keep up with your SEO you may already have Google Analytics as its applications in this field are many. You can perform a detailed analysis of your current traffic and yield a whole load of useful data about your site’s stats, seeing how things are changing over time and helping you to pinpoint any useful patterns, whether negative or positive, helping you to understand where things need to change. It is a vital tool for working out your SEO strategy going forward.
Screaming Frog
Naming your company Screaming Frog is one big vote of self-confidence. A scream out into the abyss that ‘we are blooming amazing!’ To be fair, they’re not wrong and Screaming Frog is an exceptional tool in any SEO Audit.
Their built in SEO Spider crawls through your site to check for SEO prowess. Screaming Frog is thus able to identify broken links. You can bulk export the broken links and URLs to send to your developer to get them to sort out the mess. Google Search Console is another tool that can achieve this if you’d rather. In addition Screaming Frog will help with another fundamental part of any SEO audit, which involves sorting out meta data and page titles.
You will be able to find duplicates or titles that are too short or long. If you already have Google Webmaster Tools, this is another option for this job. Screaming Frog will also generate useful HTML sitemaps that allow you to configure URLs to an advanced level as well as plan any changes to the architecture of your site.
The beauty of the two main tools mentioned (Google Analytics and Screaming Frog) is that they can work together to gather user data including bounce rates, conversions and landing page hits and measure their efficacy.
Don’t forget
Your SEO audit can get bogged down by the detail, but don’t forget to double check for duplicate content, ensure that you are mobile friendly, research and pinpoint the best keywords for SEO content and optimize for speed wherever possible. The latter can be greatly helped by using a caching plugin.