The technical SEO audit takes care of all the technical elements of the platform. You optimize and take into account many aspects, all of which are closely related to the ranking factors. Before going through the technical elements, let's see why an SEO audit is done, the implications, and the agency's technical SEO procedures. You have to understand from the beginning how essential the website's technical elements are if they are done well. You will see the growth brought to sites when technical issues are resolved.

With each new client and site, professionals must do the SEO audit at the beginning and go through the technical elements to see all the major problems. Depending on what they discover, they prioritize all those problems that, if solved, they know will have the most prominent SEO impact in the shortest time. The main goal is to increase organic traffic. The most significant benefits and traffic increases are seen in the case of large sites (10k+ pages) when they are optimized. The good part is that once implemented, they remain optimized for as long as the site and platform exist.

Technical SEO Audit Model

What do experts analyze at the beginning? First, they take care of the technical SEO audit https://gamitseo.com/seo-audit/ and begin by looking at organic traffic from Google Analytics over the last few years to see if there are any declines or Google penalties. Following the traffic trend and comparisons from year to year, they can determine if SEO has been done, if there are movements in the market, and if they need to prioritize penalties. Second, they correlate traffic data from Analytics with data from Google Search Console to see the trend over the last 12-16 months and check for manual penalties or other issues flagged by Google.

Also, in the Search Console, they analyze the Index Coverage report to see how many pages are indexed, how many are not indexed, and why those pages are not indexed. After checking this, they analyze what is on the site. They use a specific crawler, which shows everything needed to know from a technical point of view. This way, they will determine precisely what to optimize and in what order. Before you start working on the audit process, run a crawl of the website using an auditing tool.

How Is an SEO Audit Done?

Any website audit tool you can use in optimal parameters should work. Access the website audit tool, configure it by adding a new project or selecting an existing project, and complete the website audit settings https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-audit/, such as the limit of verified pages and the crawl source. You only need to edit the number of pages to check, which will depend on your website's size. Sometimes, it will be necessary to remove some URL parameters, bypass some restrictions, or allow or disallow particular actions. After that, you can start the website seo audit and let the crawler work.

At the end, a window will open where you can see the results. The first stage of the website audit involves checking if your website is mobile-friendly. Mobile SEO is now more important than ever. Why? Primarily because 60% of searches come from mobile devices. Second, Google started using the Mobile-First algorithm. That means Google also uses your website's mobile version for desktop searches. You can use the Mobile-friendly testing tool provided by Google to do this check. The second stage of the website audit involves verifying that Google is indexing only one version of your website.

There is the possibility of having indexed many versions of your website on Google. If that's the case, you need to know how to redirect them properly https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2018/04/25/how-to-improve-your-conversion-rate-with-the-help-of-seo/ because if you do not do it, Google will think that there are many different websites. If one of your versions doesn't go where it should, don't worry. Just use the 301 redirect to the one you want it to be used. The next stage consists of accelerating the website. Years ago, Google announced that the loading speed of a website is essential for increasing ranking.

Don't Just Analyze the Home Page

Check the most viewed pages on your website, such as blog posts or category pages. Remember to compress images; large images can slow your website's loading speed. Search and delete pages that do not serve for anything. If the number is more significant than expected, that's okay; you're not the only one in this position. Deleting these pages will help you increase your organic traffic. Find and solve indexing problems. You can do this with the help of Google's tool, specifically the Search Console. The report will show you those pages that cannot be indexed for one reason or another.

In an SEO site audit, you must check if you have enough organic traffic and can do it using Google Analytics. This way, you know the number of people who have visited your website. Improve on-page optimization. That is very important, and you can do this by identifying the pages most viewed. They can be those that target a keyword, those that have less traffic than before, or those with a good ranking but can become better with some work. You can include the keyword in the title tag in the first 150 words, use five external and five internal links, and add specific keywords.

Determining the Ranking of the Keyword

Now is the moment when you have to pay attention to your SERP rankings. There are many tools you can use to do this. Remember the analysis of backlinks. These are important because they and rankings are the most essential tools that work together https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/guide-tracking-your-links-how-monitor-backlinks-steve-letissier. First, analyze your homepage with an analysis tool. Then, the next step is to see how many other websites are linked to yours. These steps will help you see if your website has as much authority as it should be based on the backlinks you have. It is unnecessary to mention that they must be high-quality to see the best results.

Finally, search your website for toxic links. Also, verify the backlinks you have. Most of them have to be from genuine websites. If it's not, and your links come from dubious websites, you should ditch them. You can also repair broken links. These could be better for the user experience and can harm SEO. Find those pages on your website that Google cannot index. You must also verify external and internal links to see if any are broken. Remember content improvement. Use shorter introductions, small paragraphs, many subheadings, images, and videos.

Never Forget About Competition

It's time to see how your opponents are doing! For starters, visit your competitors' best keywords. Of course, if they use specific keywords and have a high ranking, why wouldn't you use them, too? Then, start scrolling through their pages and see which are best viewed. Identify what type of content they have or other things that make you think viewers appreciate. The final step is to see who links to the most viewed pages. Once identified, you can engage in building a connection with them.

Another critical step as part of the SEO audit services is optimizing UX signals, and that is because Google's RankBrain measures how users interact with your site. In other words, everything you have on your site will have to improve the user experience and make them happy. If this happens, you will experience an evolution in the Google ranking. As for the flattening of the website architecture, this is very important for SEO. Why? It helps search engines find and index all the pages you have. At the same time, it tells Google which pages are the most important.