You go to the doctor for your yearly check-up. You get your car inspected to make sure it’s safe a few times a year. And you brush up on the different tools you need to stay ahead of the curve at work on a regular basis. If all of these things are needed to keep you going strong, the same holds true for your website. And that’s where your SEO website audit comes into play.
An SEO site audit is imperative for a number of reasons. Let’s take a look at a few:
The SEO rules are always changing. Algorithms are constantly updating and shifting, meaning the approach to your website’s SEO strategy needs to update and shift with them. Moz has a great archive of the Google algorithm updates for you to stay on top of here.
Webmaster Guidelines should always be adhered to. And these change every now and again as well. See Google’s guidelines here and Bing’s guidelines here.
Your site content should be up to date. Your site content should never be outdated. The more outdated it is, the less compliant it might be. The more updated you are, the better.
Now that you know why it’s important to conduct an SEO site audit, it’s time to get started.
Your SEO Site Audit Checklist
Crawl your current site. This will help you identify any immediate issues that need to be resolved, including things like redirects, missing alt text, URL issues, or duplicate pages. The quicker you can identify and make these fixes, the sooner you’ll be able to improve upon your site’s SEO. Use a tool like Screaming Frog, an SEO site crawler that will tell you where you need to improve.
Run a check on page speed. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to discover ways to make the site speedier and more mobile-friendly. Page speed and how it responds across devices impacts your ranking with search engines like Google.
Determine the status of each page. As you take inventory of your website, determine what you’ll be doing with each page. Potential status categories could include Keep, Remove, Edit, or Repurpose.
Conduct keyword research. Once you know which pages you’ll be keeping and optimizing for search, conduct your keyword research. This will inform your greater keyword strategy and help you determine which keywords you want your website to rank for organically. The Google Keyword Planner is a great way to kick off your research. You can search for keyword ideas based on terms that are relevant to your product or service.
Review backlinks. A backlink is an incoming link from one webpage back to your site. Review these to see who is linking back to your site. Are they reputable? Are some of them spam-like? Cleaning these up will improve your site’s overall SEO. A great tool to do this is Majestic, an Internet surveyor that provides helpful link data.
Review all page content and optimize appropriately. This is the biggest and most critical part of the SEO site audit It requires a level of organization and accountability that helps you ensure that you’re optimizing your site while also keeping in mind the purpose and mission of your website and who it is you’re targeting with your content.
If you’re ready to jump in, great! But, like I said earlier, the more organized you are, the easier the optimization process will be. Download our SEO site audit template to keep your team on track.
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