Conducting an SEO audit on your website is an essential first step towards achieving better search engine rankings. It will help you to understand how your website is currently performing in terms of SEO and where further improvements could be made.
10 things to look at when doing an SEO audit
An SEO audit is a thorough analysis of a website to determine how well it is optimized for search engines. Although there are many different elements to this, here are ten things to look at to get you started.
- Titles and descriptions
How detailed and descriptive are the page titles and descriptions? These should ideally contain keywords that are closely related to the content that is contained on the page.
- Permalink structure
Does the website use an optimized permalink/URL structure? An example of an optimized permalink would be www.yourwebsite.com/services/search-engine-optimization-services, whereas an un-optimized address would be something like www.yourwebsite.com/category-2/7744
- Content
Does the content on the website contain keywords? Is the content unique? Both of these things are extremely important in terms of SEO. Search engines want to provide searchers with search results that contain high quality, relevant and unique content.
- Images
Images should contain descriptive keywords within the file name and should be compressed to a file size that is suitable for the internet in order to minimize page loading times.
- Internal links
Internal links within your website should be considered when doing an SEO audit. Pages that you want to rank well should have a number of internal links and should be linked to from the homepage of your website.
- Broken links
It is important to check for and remove any broken links on a website since these create a bad user experience and can have a negative impact on search engine rankings.
- Page loading speed
Search engines love websites that load quickly since it provides a better user experience. It is therefore worth ensuring that your website is optimized in this respect, for example by compressing images and removing any unnecessary code from your pages.
- Website structure
The structure of a website is extremely important in terms of both SEO and user experience. Does the website have clearly defined categories that groups related content together? Are there ‘about’ and ‘contact’ pages?
- Off-page factors
As well as on-page factors it is also important to consider things like the number of backlinks that are pointing to the website and the importance and diversity of those links.
- Social media
If the website has related social media accounts then it is important to also do an audit on each account. You should look at factors such as the completeness and accuracy of account information, how often the content is updated and the level of interaction on the account.
Look to a professional if you want to conduct a thorough SEO audit
If you want to conduct a thorough SEO audit on your website then it might be best to seek the services of a professional internet marketing company. The world of SEO can be a complex and confusing place, therefore if you have little previous SEO experience but are serious about improving the ranking of your website then seeking the advice of a professional expert certainly makes sense.
