How to Perform an Effective SEO Audit in 2024?
Nirav Upadhyay
25th Jan, 2021
SEO Audit for a website is as important as effective SEO. Do you want to know what, why, and how you can do an SEO audit to become a search engine’s favourite? Read this SEO audit guide to find more about website auditing.
Companies focus primarily on SEO for ranking highest on people’s choice search engines.
But, the search engine algorithms change frequently, especially Google’s, which in turn affect your web ranking.
Google adds on more factors to weigh the ranking of websites. This implies an ever-growing need to keep your website and content updated to maintain and improve search engine ranking.
Now, how can you know what is good for your website’s search engine ranking, and what is not? A short technical SEO audit can help to escalate your organic search engine rankings thus, making you a step ahead in the competition.
What is SEO Audit?
SEO audit is to analyze your website for shortcomings in search engine ranking and produce quantifiable results. Every time there is an update in the search engine algorithm it becomes important to do a technical SEO audit of your website.
However, if you take advice from a top SEO agency, you must frequently do an SEO audit to stay up to date. The best way to do it is to hire SEO experts who can assist you to identify the high and lows of your website.
Tools for Good SEO Audit
When it comes to doing a noteworthy SEO audit, you cannot go ahead and perform it manually. It requires expert assistance as well as some advanced auditing tools. Here are a few tools to use and acquire insightful results:
? Robotto
?? How To Do an SEO Audit?
Now, as you have understood what is website auditing, which tools to use and why your website requires SEO auditing in 2024, it is time to learn how to do a website SEO audit. To help you understand what you need to improve, we have created this SEO audit checklist for 2024.
1️⃣ Expel Low-Quality Pages
Low-quality pages are a big NO for ranking higher in search engine results.
The question is how will you know which page is of low quality?
The overall quality of your website or a certain page is determined by your readers. If your audience is not liking a section of your website then it is of “low quality”.
Google Analytics is the most efficient tool to know the audience’s retention number or bounce rate. And, once you have found out, you can either eliminate the page or reincarnate the content.
2️⃣ Acknowledge the Content Gaps
The motive of your website is to offer informative content to readers and that is exactly what the search engine algorithms look for. If you are successful in producing content that brings quality to your audience, you are already beating your competitors.
The best way to get good content ideas for your niche is to follow what your competitors are publishing.
Another thing, adding facts makes the content-rich, but you must impart better readability, and no grammatical errors to ensure no content gaps.
3️⃣ Do Backlink Analysis
Backlinks are the next critical thing after good content for your website. It is undoubtedly better to have more backlinks as search engines consider it as a ranking factor.
However, do not promote spammy backlinks like casino websites or other gaming sites. It can adversely affect the SEO of your website.
Google Search Console is an SEO audit tool that can help you find out the ”bad backlinks and eliminate them. If you are not sure, you can pull it off by yourself, then it is better to hire SEO experts who are experienced with search engine jargon.
4️⃣ Understand Technical Lows
Website ranking on search engines not only involves content and backlinks, it incorporates technical optimization of the website. Every good SEO audit checklist pdf will cover technical auditing of a site, but what exactly do you need to do?
You need to cover a few basic things like:
? Improve loading speed
? Remove unnecessary plugins
? Review the code of your site
? Fix broken links & 404 pages optimized
? Do a speed test, and make your site faster
If you do not want to be a part of the technical labyrinth, you can get in touch with an SEO agency that has technical heads to fix your website in no time.
5️⃣ Review On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the easiest SEO audit package for you to take your business to the highest search engine ranking. It includes optimizing the existing content on web pages and improving it for better results.
Keywords are included in on-page SEO, so when you audit the website, you can know which keywords to use. SEO experts know the correct use of long-tail keywords and call to action words, which can make your site stand out.
6️⃣ Structured Data
As the name consist, this term belongs to structure your content in order to understand well for Google. Structured Data is kind of new and trending term in search engine optimization. Normally, it takes time for Google to understand any website’s content and sometimes Google may misunderstand the business, so it can affect your online presence.
Must-Have Structured Data For:
? Website Home Page
? Breadcrumb Menu
? Blogs & Other Content
? Products & Services
Structured data is a practice to give a clue or hint to Google by perfectly structured your website content. This will help businesses to rank higher on SERPs. Basically, it is a classic format to optimize all the page information that Google easily understands.
In order to achieve the best out of Structured Data, one should follow Structured Data Guidelines.
7️⃣ Robots.txt & XML Sitemap
Robot.txt and XML Sitemap both are page optimization techniques. Robot.txt used to control which pages should be accessible for search engines. Basically, all kinds of websites have Robot.txt to determine healthy pages for search engine crawlers.
XML Sitemap is a constructed data of your website which contains important page information. A sitemap is the most useful data for search engines, so it must submit your website’s XML sitemap to Google Search Console. You should list only important web pages of your website in a sitemap that Google should know about.
8️⃣ Responsive & Mobile Friendly Website
Does responsive and mobile-friendly website plays a major role in search engine optimization? A Big Yess, but How? As we all are concordant on a point that around 60% of the internet traffic comes from mobile devices. People love to scroll all kinds of web information on their smartphones that’s why Google takes it seriously.
Basically, the ultimate goal of Google is to give the best appearance to its audience as per appearance and content-wise. So, Google automatically down such websites that fail to offer responsive layouts for different sizes of mobile screens.
Things to consider for Mobile Friendly Website UI:
? Design a Responsive Website
? Use Fast Breadcrumb Menu
? Create an AMP version of Your Website
? Keep Text & Button Sizes Larger
? Try To Optimize Website Speed
? Use a Responsive WordPress Theme
To test whether your website is mobile-friendly or not, use Google Mobile-Friendly Tool. If you’re looking for a mobile-friendly website, then you should understand using the AMP version of web pages.
9️⃣ Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) For Fast Mobile Browsing
AMP is one of the best ways to optimize web pages for mobile devices. Google introduce AMP, especially for a fast mobile browsing experience. It encourages social media link sharing options that enable lots of web traffic.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) load 2X faster than ordinary HTML pages, that’s why AMP helps your website to rank higher. Website speed is the deciding factor in search engine ranking, thus, AMP can help your website to rank higher.
What are the alternatives to AMP technology?
? Fully Implemented With HTTP/2
? Content Delivery Network (CDN)
? Progressive Web Apps
Facebook also launches Instant Articles to serve faster blog pages and interactive data for publishers.
? Secure With HTTPS
HTTPS clearly indicates that a website has a security certificate and the searcher can trust the website. An HTTPS enabled website always have an advantage over non-secure HTTP websites. Website URLs start with HTTPS perform better on search engines because they are secure for the audience.
1️⃣1️⃣ Voice Search Optimization
As per the Google reports, “More than 27% of the online global population is using voice search on mobile devices in 2020”. After Covid-19, this figure is increasing due to contactless and hands-free technology. In concise, people love to speak “Hello Google” and ask anything instantly.
When the audience using voice search, so it must to business owners to optimize their website content as per the voice search. You should learn how voice search works and how to make the best out of it.
Example: If you’re searching for an SEO agency for your website SEO audit, then it’s there are two possible keyword search terms:
Organic Search: “Hire Best SEO Agency in USA”
Voice Search: “SEO agency near me”
Voice search mostly relies on short keywords that define exact information, all you have to do is add such keywords in your web content.
1️⃣2️⃣ Featured Snippets Optimization
Featured snippets are logically rank at “0” and appear above all search engine organic results. When a search engine found something very accurate information about the search term or most relevant answer, then the search engine rank that particular web page on top of all results with some graphical interface.
You might be wondering:
How to optimize for Google’s Featured Snippets?
? Add Relevant Questions in Content
? Try To Answer Short & Factual
? Use Eye-catching Images
? Structured Your Answer Properly
Featured snippets elevate more visibility of your content as well as improves your web authority in terms of quality content.
1️⃣3️⃣ Optimize Images for Search Engines
Images and visuals have a great impact on the audience. And, the impression it leaves can be constructive or destructive, depending on the usage of visuals.
According to Google’s statistics, there is a high possibility that people look up something on the web through images. So, if your website has relevant and informative images, you can come in most image search results.
But, to be in the first few results, you must consider SEO auditing and optimize the images. You can use JPG images that are copyright free and are compressed for better loading.
If you’re looking for an effective SEO audit or want the best SEO audit services, then we are the best source. Auxano Global Services is the best SEO technical audit company having top-rated SEO experts. Our SEO audit services are fully customized for complete website SEO audits as per the project requirements.
Our Top-Notch SEO Audit Services:
✅ Easy & Detailed SEO Audit
✅ Targeted Keyword Research
✅ Technical Website Audit Services
✅ On-page Optimization
✅ Content & Inbound Link Audit
✅ Competition Analyze Tracing
One must hire the best technical SEO agencies such as Auxano Global Services to perform an effective SEO audit in 2024. Our technical SEO audit services are perfect for all kinds of industries. Hire SEO experts from our team to witness how SEO can grow your business. Contact us Now!
Conclusion
Now, you have understood the importance and simplicity of performing an effective technical SEO audit checklist 2024. There are only some things that you must keep in mind while analyzing websites with free SEO audits. It includes the on-page, off-page SEO as well as technical aspects of the site.
Although it may sound complex with the help of good SEO audit tools and a top SEO agency i.e. Auxano Global Services, you can easily make your site rank highest. Finally, keep a watch on the latest search engine algorithm updates and improvise accordingly.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is a website SEO audit?
What is the difference between a responsive and mobile-friendly website?
Do AMP pages rank higher?
How to do a website SEO audit in 2024?
Which is the best SEO audit company in USA?
Where can I go for more information about SEO audit?
About The Author
Nirav Upadhyay
Nirav Upadhyay is a Digital marketing Head at Auxano Global Services, a renowned Digital Marketing Company. He started his career as an SEO Analyst in 2006 and has been in the field ever since. He excels at Search Engine Optimization, SMM, SEM and Product Marketing. Alongside his work as a Digital Marketing Head, Nirav also contributes to publications such as Entrepreneur, Bloomberg Businessweek, CIO, Huffington Post, The Drum and TNW.