A website audit checklist is one of the most critical factors in driving your website's SEO plan to be successful. One of the most important goals of following a website SEO audit checklist is to boost your Google search rankings. Thus, this will enable you to increase the traffic on your website.
Website audits include many website components and can improve your SEO strategy. These types of website audits include; Your site performance audit -which gives you a detailed technical audit report- search engine optimization (SEO), user experience (UX), website content, design, and accessibility. In this post, seobase explains how to check out your website SEO audit checklist, and gives you a deep insight into the best site audit tool that you have to use to have a healthy and SEO-friendly website.
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First, you must understand how your website is performing. This should provide some basic information you can review later to check how things have improved. You must set up Google Analytics and check the official Google Analytics documentation. In the GA4 dashboard;
First, navigate to Reports
Then, select Acquisition
Next, choose the Traffic Acquisition section
After that, set a date range if you want.
Finally, click on the "Organic Traffic" label.
So, why is it crucial to explore your website's Google Analytics reports and understand your current?
It's essential to explore the answers to these questions:
Are there normal seasonal trends in traffic?
Are some traffic channels growing or declining? If so, can we identify changes in our marketing behavior that could have caused those changes?
Which pages are the most popular on the website?
Avoid Duplicate Website Indexed Issues
Unfortunately, search engines can index 4 versions of your website under different URLs, as follows:
But the good news is that you can fix this problem by adjusting your website settings and forwarding rules to ensure all four versions resolve to one.
It doesn't matter which of the previous versions you choose. What matters is consistency. In addition, this ensures that the audience will reach the same link. Therefore, choosing one version to use and ensuring that all internal links reflect this is essential.
To test your current configuration:
First, replace "example.com" in the list above with your root domain. For example, “seobase.com”.
Next, type each of the four shapes into your browser.
If your configuration is correct, they should all resolve to the same version.
Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
It is essential to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly for two main reasons:
Although the percentage of users who search or browse the Internet on mobile devices previously exceeded 50%. However, since 2017, it has constantly been increasing.
In 2018, Google moved to mobile-first indexing. As well as prioritizing the mobile experience of the web page over the desktop experience.
Google has a simple free tool to test URLs for mobile-friendliness. Moreover, you can find out how compatible your website is with mobile phones using the seobase site profiler tool, as the tool provides you with a detailed technical audit report on everything related to your website analysis.
Improve Your Website's Speed
A critical factor to watch out for on the website audit checklist is page load times, which must be monitored and constantly improved. Speedy loading of website pages provides a better user experience.
Thus, this gives Google the necessary trust in your website to rank it at the top of the SERPs pages.The 2021 Core Web Vitals update focuses on the user's experience of how speedy the webpage loads.
Also, the Core Web Vitals update prioritizes the visual stability of webpages as they load and the actual time it takes for web page segments to evolve interactively.You can run your website URL through Google's PageSpeed Insights tool. It is a practical, simple, and free tool to check your website pages' loading time.
To apply the website audit checklist correctly, you can speed up your website in two methods:
Method 1: Optimizing images, using caching, and using a content delivery network.
Method 2: A better hosting provider (web hosting is an area where you often get what you pay for)
Fix Indexing Problems Using Google Search Console (GSC)
You can use the free tool Google Search Console to check whether your web pages are crawled and indexed.To check for any indexing issues, do the following:
First, open up Google Search Console.
Next, go to the pages.
Then, scroll down and open the not indexing pages.
In this step of the website audit checklist, you can see details about the crawling and indexing status of your website pages that Google is aware of and any errors.You might find some of these URLs may have been excluded from indexing deliberately, and that's fine. However, you may also see URLs in the Not Indexed section that have been excluded because of an error.
Here is the time to step in and fix those mistakes. Then, you can request indexing from Google. It may take Google a few days, and they will solve the problem and index your pages immediately, still free from errors.You can complete this step of the website audit checklist after following the previous steps, and then you can apply the following:
Click the link below the bar chart labeled "View data about indexed pages."
Next, you will see a list of indexed URLs with a maximum of 1,000 links.
Care must be taken when including content for indexing as content is too low quality to be indexed by Google. Low-quality content may hurt your ranking. At the very least, more of Google's "crawl budget" will be wasted indexing low-quality, low-value pages, as Google has pointed out before.However, you shouldn't get rid of those pages. But you must add a no-index tag to exclude it from pages indexed by search engines. Potentially low-quality pages that are indexed by default might include:
Archive pages for categories or tags
Numbered archive pages
Not relevant pages to search engines, such as the privacy policy page or user login page
Fix Broken Links and Stop 404 Errors
Broken links negatively affect the user experience, as the users may need help finding what they want quickly and give a wrong impression of the website.
Therefore, it is an essential element on the website audit checklist. It is beneficial for the health and order of your website to resolve any broken links causing the "404 Page Not Found" error message to appear.
Applying the same steps for indexing Google Search Console pages we used in the previous two steps, apply them, and continue by clicking on the non-indexed pages to view the different reasons for excluding specific URLs.
If you see a Not Found (404) message in the list of causes, click this report to see the list of URLs that lead to 404 error messages. Once the issues are fixed, use the "Validate Fix" button above to ask Google to recrawl These URLs and see if the errors are resolved.
Analyze Backlinks (Disavow Toxic Links if Necessary)
Backlinks still contribute to your site's visibility on the search engines, and no one can deny how much they affect your site's ranking in SEO. It could be a priority on the website audit checklist. However, it is essential to be aware that not all backlinks are of equal value.On the other hand, having too many SEO backlinks pointing to your website from websites can negatively affect your website, in case those links are spam or toxic.
Notably, having a few unwanted backlinks in your public profile is normal and nothing to worry about as long as they're on a reasonable toxicity level. Also, you can use the seobase backlink checker tool to help you analyze your website backlinks finding the nofollow and dofollow backlinks. In addition, you can check the backlinks' toxicity and how can they harm your website through the detailed report from the backlink checker tool.
Write Valuable Content that Gives Users What They are Looking for
Valuable content is a priority on the website audit checklist. Content is king! Google ranks pages that offer the best user experience at the top of the SERPs.
Thus, creating valuable content enriches users' experience as it answers audience questions. At the same time, it will boost your website ranking, which is the purpose of following the website audit checklist.
Search engines pay close attention to the time a user spends on your website after clicking a search query. In addition, users frequent other sites after completing their session on your website. If this happens, Google may consider this to indicate that the content you provided needed to be more adequate and good and provide real value to users.
In addition, you must be sufficiently aware of the search intent and pay close attention to what the user may want or intend from the keyword he used in the search.
Improve On-Page SEO for Your Most Important Content
In this step of the website audit checklist, choosing the critical pages to apply the steps is vital; you will see the difference later. Those pages may be like this:
Blog posts targeting keywords important to your business
Pages that can boost your business if they attract more traffic
Pages that already have a strong search presence but can reach a higher level
To apply this step of the website audit checklist, you need to perform the following steps to a page to improve on-page SEO:
First, make sure your pages are optimized for your target keywords. You can use the seobase keyword explorer tool to find the right keywords.
Next, add your target keyword or key phrase included in the page title and the first paragraph of your content.
Then, include internal links to other relevant content on your website.
Next, include external links to trusted sources of relevant information on other websites.
Later, make sure your content is easy to read using short sentences and paragraphs. In addition, a well-structured content structure uses sub-headings that follow a clear hierarchy.
Finally, include photos, charts, graphics, and video wherever possible.
Website SEO Audit checklist: Conclusion
Performing a complete website audit by following these website audit checklist is complex, and it cannot be easy to prioritize website optimization over non-professionals. In addition, conducting a website audit can take time, effort, and a lot of resources for companies. You can benefit from the expertise of seobase to complete a full audit of your website through us. In addition, the possibility of enjoying all the SEO services and online SEO tools we provide to improve your site on search engines.
