The Complete SEO Audit Checklist
An SEO audit is a necessary component in your SEO strategy and today we are sharing our complete guide to conducting an SEO Audit including a checklist for on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO.
What is an SEO Audit?
An SEO Audit is the process of evaluating how well your website is optimised for search engines such as Google. It helps to identify any issues that are stopping your website from being seen in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Value of an SEO audit:
Before optimising a website and adding additional pages you need to make sure your ‘house is in order’ in terms of basic technical SEO, and on- and off-page SEO. Otherwise, once you complete all the optimisation and content additions your website may still not rank if it does not perform well technically. Giving yourself this initial head start will help your site work with you to improve rankings whilst you’re working hard on optimisation.
Vital SEO Auditing tools:
Before you get started with your SEO Audit you need to make sure you have access to the following tools:
Screaming Frog:
Screaming Frog is a website crawling tool that mimics how Google and other search engines will crawl your website, giving you insights into on-page SEO issues. This is a free tool but if you want to crawl over 500 URLs there is a paid option available.
Ahrefs (Paid and can be used for link audits):
Ahrefs is a tool that gives you insights into on and off-page SEO, like Screaming Frog, the tool crawls the website and stores the data in a user-friendly dashboard. Allowing you to optimise your website for improved SEO. This tool gives you a website check for free but to use its full capabilities you need to sign up for a paid plan.
Google Analytics:
Google Analytics is a platform that collects data about how users are finding and engaging with your website, including site visits, average time spent per user (session time), and traffic source (organic, direct, paid, social etc.,). This data is displayed in reports that provide you with insights. This tool is free to use.
Google Search Console:
Google Search Console provides information on how Google crawls and indexes your website. If Google finds issues with your website that is stopping it from being seen by your potential customers in the SERP, Google will notify you so you can fix it. Again, this is a free tool.
The SEO Audit Overview:
- On-page SEO Audit
- Off-page SEO Audit
- Analytics Audit
- Search Console Audit
On-Page SEO Audit:
On-page SEO refers to all the actions that can be taken on the website to increase the website’s ranking in the SERP. Therefore, the following is a checklist of how to carry out an on-page SEO Audit and identify any potential issues on your website. The on-page SEO audit involves a basic SEO audit, a technical SEO audit and SEO 101.
Basics SEO Audit:
Is the website indexed?
- To check type Site:[website] and it’ll show you all the pages on the site that are indexed
Google requires certain pages at a minimum to consider the website for ranking:
- Contact us
- Privacy policy
- Terms of service
- About us
SSL (site security) – this is a ranking factor:
- You should have this, if not action this immediately
Remove “s” from “https” – does this redirect to the https website?
- If it doesn’t redirect it means that you have duplicate content on the website
Mobile friendly test:
- Page speed – GT Metrix Grade
- (You want this to be below 3 seconds)
Technical SEO Audit:
Technical SEO refers to website and server optimisations that help search engine spiders to crawl and index your website more effectively.
- Sitemap
-
- [URL/sitemap.xml]
- [URL/robot.txt]
- You need to ensure you have both
- Thin content pages
-
- These are any pages that shouldn’t be indexed e.g. logins/author pages
- Duplicate content
-
- Use the tool Siteliner to check you site for duplicate content
- 404 errors should be changed to 410 errors (tells Google this doesn’t exist anymore)
- Broken links & 301 errors
- Check this with Screaming Frog
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- Check and fix all
On-Page Optimisation (SEO 101):
SEO 101 is what we use to refer to the basic on-page SEO that you need to have in order to rank in the SERP.
- Meta title & description
- Screaming frog shows missing ones
- Headers
- Focus on H1’s & H2’s initially
- Keywords
- Make sure that the Page title, meta description, headers, and paragraphs all contain the keyword or phrase.
Off-Page SEO Audit:
Off-page SEO is all the activity that takes place away from your website, namely backlinks (which is other websites which link back to your page), which contribute to where you rank in the SERP. The off-page SEO audit comprises of a backlink profile.
Backlink profile (Ahrefs)
A backlink refers to when one website links to another. A Backlinks profile is a collection of websites that link back to your website and details the types of link, quality and domain authority.
- How many do we have?
- Is there a strange ratio? If so, you might want to check and remove some of the backlinks as they could be spam
- Majestic SEO
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- Trust/citation scores in Googles eyes
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- 10-49 = average
- Trust flow should be no more than 2X citation flow
Analytics Audit:
Google Analytics:
- Check bounce rate – target of 20%-40% is great, <70% is ‘ok’
- Check acquisition inconsistency
- All traffic channels
- Organic or direct?
Search console:
- Check coverage for errors
- Submit sitemap if not already there
- Check for desktop & mobile errors
- Has Google taken any manual action against the site?
About Scarecrow Digital:
Scarecrow Digital is an international marketing agency specialising in the Tech, SaaS and Professional Services sectors. We help businesses grow by offering a range of services from SEO, Paid-ads and Content to the optimisation of processes, data, and communication.
We can help you stand out in your field.
Does this sound like something your business needs? Get in touch today [email protected]