How To Perform a Technical SEO Audit Step By Step
Technical SEO audit is fundamentally a critical step in checking the conformity of your site to search engine requirements and its usability. Some of the possible problems may be affecting your sites visibility and ranking on the search engine result pages (SERP), and once identified, you can resolve these and improve the ranking on the SERPs. As you will find here we will discuss how you can complete a technical SEO audit step by step.
Step 1: Crawl Your Website
The first step in a technical SEO audit is to perform a site crawl. This process identifies broken links, duplicate content, missing metadata, and other issues. How to Do It:
- Use tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider or Sitebulb.
- Enter your website’s URL and let the tool scan your site.
- Review the crawl report to pinpoint errors such as 404 pages, missing title tags, and duplicate meta descriptions.
Step 2: Check Your Website’s Indexability
Ensure that search engines can crawl and index your site. If your pages aren’t indexed, they won’t appear in search results. How to Do It:
- Use Google Search Console to view your site’s index status.
- Check for any URLs blocked by the
robots.txtfile or marked with a “noindex” tag. - Submit a sitemap to Google if it’s not already done.
Step 3: Analyze Page Speed
Page speed is a critical ranking factor. Slow-loading pages can lead to higher bounce rates and lower rankings. How to Do It:
- Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix.
- Analyze your site’s loading time and identify areas for improvement.
- Optimize images, enable browser caching, and use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to enhance speed.
Step 4: Evaluate Mobile-Friendliness
With mobile-first indexing, it’s essential to ensure your site is fully optimized for mobile devices. How to Do It:
- Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
- Check for issues like unresponsive design, font sizes, and clickable elements.
- Ensure your site uses responsive design principles.
Step 5: Assess HTTPS Implementation
A secure website (using HTTPS) builds trust with users and is a ranking factor for Google. How to Do It:
- Check if your site uses HTTPS by looking for a padlock icon in the browser bar.
- Use tools like SSL Labs to test your SSL certificate.
- Redirect all HTTP pages to HTTPS to avoid duplicate content issues.
Step 6: Identify and Fix Broken Links
Broken links create a poor user experience and can harm your SEO efforts. How to Do It:
- Use tools like Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, or Dead Link Checker.
- Review the list of broken links and update or remove them.
- Create redirects for pages that no longer exist.
Step 7: Optimize Site Structure and Navigation
A clear site structure helps search engines understand your content and improves user experience. How to Do It:
- Use breadcrumb navigation for hierarchical clarity.
- Ensure your site has a logical structure with internal links connecting related pages.
- Keep URLs short, descriptive, and keyword-rich.
Step 8: Review On-Page SEO Elements
Ensure that every page has properly optimized on-page elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, and headers. How to Do It:
- Check for unique and descriptive title tags under 60 characters.
- Write compelling meta descriptions within 155-160 characters.
- Use H1, H2, and H3 tags to structure your content.
FAQs
1. For how long should it take to execute a technical SEO audit?
The technical SEO recommended always must be done at least two every half of the year. However, if you have changed your site significantly or if you no longer see it ranking as high as before, perform one.
2. Is it possible to do an SEO technical audit without using SEO tools?
Some of these can be done individually while tools like Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights make work easier.
3. To which time does a technical SEO audit last or span?
The time required to complete this procedure depends on the size of web site you have. If it’s a small website, the audit can be conducted in several hours, while for large ones, it may take a few days.
4. What distinguishes technical and content audit?
A technical SEO audit is concerned more with the infrastructure of your site, that is, crawling, indexing, and speed. A content audit helps assess how useful your website’s content is to your target audience.
Conclusion
Technical SEO audit can be termed as a basic procedure, which should always be followed when managing different sites. By following the guidelines laid out in this article, the causes of the technical problems that might be affecting your site will be revealed and corrected. Scheduled site reviews, coupled with consistent optimization strategies, will place your site into its best standing and guarantee organic traffic.
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