SEO Audit(An Actionable Checklist)

SEO Audit or SEO website audit is the best way to know about all the mistakes you are doing for which your ranking is not increasing in SERP. By doing SEO Audit you can find out all the things you are not implementing on your website which your competitors are doing. 

What is an SEO Audit?

SEO audit is the process of checking each and every aspect of your website and fix if any issue is there to rank higher in SERP. An SEO site audit is checking all the things which Google takes to consider when ranking your website. Ther are some SEO audit tools out there, which you can use and do a free SEO site audit for your website.

How to do an SEO audit?

So, there are many steps that you can follow to perform a good free SEO audit on your website by yourself without spending any money.

Check Website UI and UX

Most of the people can think that how can UI and UX come under technical SEO audit? 

But the thing is when anyone comes to your website from Google SERP page and if your UI and UX is bad which will give that guy a bad experience, so may eventually bounce back. Some times people focus more on UI about there design of the website but they forgot to optimize the website for proper UX.

When it comes to UI which is the user interface, the design should be good and the color you use should be smooth. You should use good quality images and videos to boost your ranking. Like UI you should have to give equal importance to UX. For example, you should use a proper menu bar, sidebar which will help the user navigate on your website form one place to another easily. It’s better if you use a search bar on your website which will definitely increase your UX.

Check Website Speed And Mobile-Friendliness

When it comes to ranking your website better in SERP, website speed and mobile-friendliness plays a big role in it. For instance, if your website speed is not that good and it takes ages to load completely then the user will get bad experience and he will bounce back and may not come again to your website. So check your website speed and fix if there is an issue that is causing your website load slow. 

Nowadays mobile-friendly is the top parameter to rank top on Google SERP. Just because according to some survey more than 50% of the people now using their phones to surf the internet. It is the most priority after Google came up with the update on March 26, 2018, that it will rank a website as a mobile-first indexing rule. 

Before this update, Google used to rank your website by taking consideration of the desktop version of the website but after the update, Google now sees the mobile version first. If the mobile version is good then only Google will rank your website.

For checking the website is mobile-friendly or note go to – Mobile-Friendly Test

Check How Many Versions Of Your Website Ranking?

As you may know, if you have too many URLs for a single page then that will show as an error in the Alexa tool. The same way if you have many URLs for your website like with www, without www, with https, without https. All the URLs may be the same according to us but all are different according to Google. If you have too many URLs then Google will face difficulty in ranking them according to Backlinko.

So, if you have too many URLs for the home page then redirect all the pages to one single page. 

Check If All Your Website Pages Are Indexed Or Not?

Check if all the pages you want to index are properly indexed or not. For example, you should compare all the pages you have added in your website sitemap to index with all the pages indexed in Google. If there is a difference in the numbers then you should fix the issue. 

How to check how many pages indexed in Google?

Just add “site:” before your website URL, and it will show you all the pages indexed from your website. 

Check Brokenlink And Fix

In your website check all the inbound broken links and also all the outbound broken links. And also check if there are any internal broken links and fix them. If you have changed any of your webpage URL then there is a chance it will show in internal broken links or inbound broken links, fix them ASAP. Likewise, if you have given a backlink to any other website but they have deleted the page for any reason then it will show as a broken link. You should fix these types of issues. 

Check Your Content Quality And Targeted Keywords

As they say “Content is the king”.

When it comes to rank any website or practicing proper SEO, content is the most important factor to take into consideration. Make your content 10x better as compared to your competitor. Check all the top 3-5 website which are ranking for the keyword you are targeting. And check their content and try to write a better in-depth content compared to them. Write an in detail actionable content that should be according to user intention.

Your content should be unique, it should not be any spin content. Don’t use copied content on your website it will harm your website ranking.

Using an SEO tool, you can check all the keywords you are ranking for. You can check in Google search console also all the keywords for which you are ranking.  And by taking your main targeted keyword you have to add related keywords and LSI keywords to your content. It’s better if you add more and more question in your content. The main purpose of adding questing as keyword is anyone coming to Google is coming for the answer to there question.

Check You Traffic

Analyze all the organic, social, and referral traffic to your website. If you are not getting good traffic then you should take some action to improve your traffic.

For increasing Organic traffic:- How To Increase Organic Traffic Using Google Search Console?

Update Or Delete Out-Dated Pages

Check thoroughly your website for any out-dated content for which you are not getting any traffic. If it is relevant then update the content or else you can delete the webpage permanently. If you have a piece of content with some old stats then it’s better to update the content with current stats. 

Analyze All Your Backlinks

Use tools like Ahref or Semrush to check all the backlinks you got for your website. If there are any irrelevant backlinks or backlinks form a website with a very high spam score then you should consider disavowing all those backlinks. If by mistake you create any irrelevant or bad backlink then for sure Google will penalize your website in the future.

Focus More On On-Page SEO

You may already know On-Page SEO is most important when it comes to better ranking on Google SERP. You should use your main targeted keyword in title, description, in content, as alt tag of images. Use your main keyword a few times in the first 100-150 words. Use proper keywords in content with good LSI keywords.

Competitor Analysis

Do competitor analysis to check all the keywords your competitors ranking for, take all those keywords and try to add in your content. You can do competitor analysis by using Ahref or Semrush. You can also check from which all websites your competitor got backlinks, and you can pitch them for backlinks. 

Optimize For Featured Snippet And People Also Ask

If you can get a place in Featured Snippet and People also ask section of SERP then your organic traffic will increase exponentially. You can get featured in these places by optimizing your website properly for mobile, optimizing your website loading speed. For getting featured here you have to write small and precise answers for the questions used in the content.

Conclusion

This is an actionable SEO audit checklist, which you can try. And let me know about your take on this.