Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for driving organic traffic to your website. However, with constant algorithm updates and evolving best practices, keeping up with the latest SEO strategies can be challenging.
That’s why regularly conducting technical SEO audits is essential. A technical SEO audit examines the underlying code and infrastructure of a website to identify and fix issues that impact visibility and performance in search results.
While a full-scale audit can be complex, you can perform a simplified version yourself in just a few easy steps.
In this post, we will walk you through a straightforward technical SEO audit methodology for do-it-yourselfers. Following this simple 5-step inspection guide will allow you to spot common problems and implement quick fixes to maintain strong SEO foundations.
Importance Of Technical SEO Audit
Here are five key reasons why conducting a technical SEO audit is essential:
Enhances Search Engine Visibility
Technical SEO checklists, such as website structure, page speed, and mobile-friendliness, directly impact how search engines crawl, index, and rank your site.
Conducting a thorough SEO audit will improve visibility and can lead to higher organic traffic, better rankings, and increased visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Improves User Experience
Many technical SEO factors also contribute to a positive user experience.
For example, fast-loading pages, intuitive navigation, and mobile responsiveness all play a significant role in keeping visitors engaged and satisfied with your website.
By auditing and optimizing these technical aspects, you not only make it easier for search engines to understand your site but also create a better experience for your users, leading to higher retention rates, lower bounce rates, and increased conversions.
Identifies and Fixes Issues
A technical SEO audit helps identify a wide range of issues that may be affecting your site’s performance, such as broken links, duplicate content, crawl errors, and server issues.
Regular audits allow you to stay proactive in maintaining your site’s health and resolving any emerging issues before they become more significant problems.
Maximizes Crawling and Indexing Efficiency
Search engine bots continuously crawl and index websites to discover and rank content in search results.
By conducting a technical SEO audit, you can ensure that your site is optimized for efficient crawling and indexing, allowing search engines to discover and rank your content accurately and quickly.
Boosts Site Performance and Conversion Rates
Technical SEO directly impacts various aspects of website performance, including page loading speed, site security, and overall functionality. A well-optimized site not only ranks higher in search results but also delivers a smoother and more reliable user experience.
By conducting regular technical SEO audits and making necessary optimizations, you can enhance your site’s performance, usability, and ultimately, its ability to convert visitors into customers or leads.
5 Simple Step Guide For Technical SEO Audit
1. Crawl Your Website
Crawling your website is the first important step when you are checking your website for SEO issues. It is like sending a special robot to explore every corner of your website and make a list of things that need fixing.
This robot called a web crawler, goes through each page of your website, just like how a search engine like Google would.
Here’s how it works:
- Choose a Crawler Tool: First, you need to pick a tool that can do the crawling for you. There are different tools available online, some free and some you have to pay for.
These tools include Screaming Frog, SEMrush, and Moz’s Site Crawl.
- Start the Crawl: Once you have picked your tool, you tell it to start crawling your website. It then begins visiting each page on your site, following all the links from one page to another, and taking notes on what it finds.
- Collect Information: As the crawler goes through your website, it collects information about everything it sees, like web addresses, titles, headings, links, and pictures.
It also checks for any problems like broken links or pages that do not load properly.
- Review the Report: After the crawler finishes its job, it gives you a report showing what it found. This report helps you see any issues that might be hurting your website’s performance in search engines.
- Fix Problems: Once you know what needs fixing, you can start working on making your website better.
This might involve fixing broken links, updating titles and descriptions, or making other technical changes to improve how your site appears in search results.
- Keep Checking: SEO is an ongoing process, so it is important to keep checking your website regularly for any new issues that pop up.
By staying on top of things, you can help your website perform better in search engines and attract more visitors.
2. Check Site Speed
Checking site speed is an important step in making sure your website is working well for both users and search engines. Site speed refers to how fast your website loads when someone tries to visit it.
If your site takes too long to load, people might get frustrated and leave before even seeing your content. Also, search engines like Google prefer fast-loading websites and may rank them higher in search results.
Here’s a simple breakdown of how to check your site speed:
- Use a Speed Checking Tool: There are tools available online, like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix, that can help you check your site’s speed.
These tools are like speedometers for your website, telling you how fast or slow it is.
- Enter Your Website’s Address: Once you have picked a tool, you type in your website’s address and hit enter. The tool then goes to your website and measures how long it takes to load.
- Review the Results: After the tool finishes checking your site, it gives you a report showing how fast your website is and where there might be room for improvement.
It might suggest things like compressing images, reducing the size of files, or changing how certain parts of your website are coded to make them load faster.
- Make Improvements: Once you know where the problems are, you can start working on fixing them.
This might involve making changes to your website’s code, optimizing images, or using a content delivery network (CDN) to help your site load faster for people in different parts of the world.
- Test Again: After you have made changes to improve your site speed, it is a good idea to test it again to see if things have improved. You want to make sure your website is as fast as possible to keep both visitors and search engines happy.
3. Optimize Site Structure
Optimizing site structure is all about organizing your website in a way that makes it easy for both visitors and search engines to navigate and understand.
Just like how a well-organized book has chapters, headings, and a table of contents, a well-structured website has clear categories, subcategories, and easy-to-follow navigation menus.
Here’s how to optimize your site structure:
- Evaluate Your Current Structure: Take a look at your website and see how it’s organized. Is there a logical hierarchy of pages and categories, or does it feel messy and disorganized? Are there too many clicks required to find important information?
Understanding your current structure is the first step to making improvements.
- Simplify Navigation: Your website’s navigation menu is like a roadmap for visitors, guiding them to different sections of your site. Make sure your navigation menu is clear and easy to understand, with logical categories and subcategories.
Avoid overwhelming visitors with too many options or complicated dropdown menus.
- Create a Logical Hierarchy: Organize your content into a hierarchical structure, with broad categories at the top and more specific subcategories underneath.
This helps visitors and search engines understand the relationship between different pages and topics on your site.
- Use Internal Links: Internal links are hyperlinks that point from one page on your site to another. They not only help visitors navigate your site but also spread authority and relevance throughout your website.
Use internal links strategically to connect related pages and guide visitors to other relevant content.
- Optimize URL Structure: Your website’s URLs should be descriptive and easy to read, with keywords that indicate the content of the page.
Avoid long, confusing URLs filled with numbers and symbols. Instead, use short, concise URLs that accurately reflect the page’s content.
- HTML Sitemap: Consider creating an HTML sitemap, which is a single page that lists all the pages on your website. This can be a useful tool for both visitors and search engines to navigate your site and discover content.
4. Mobile-Friendliness
Mobile-friendliness refers to how well your website performs and looks on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. With more people using their phones to browse the internet, your website must be easy to use and navigate on smaller screens.
This is not just about convenience for users; it’s also a significant factor in how search engines like Google rank your site in search results.
Here’s how to check and improve mobile-friendliness:
- Use a Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool: There are tools available, like Page Speed Insights and MobiReady that can analyze your website and tell you if it’s optimized for mobile devices.
You simply enter your website’s URL, and the tool will show you how it appears on different mobile devices and highlight any issues that need fixing.
- Responsive Design: Ensure that your website is built using responsive design techniques. This means that the layout and content of your site automatically adjust to fit the screen size of the device it’s being viewed on.
This ensures a consistent and user-friendly experience across all devices.
- Readable Text and Tap Targets: Make sure that text on your website is easy to read without zooming in, and that links and buttons are large enough to tap with a finger.
Small text and tiny links can be frustrating for users on mobile devices and may lead to high bounce rates.
- Fast Loading Times: Mobile users are often on the go and have limited patience for slow-loading websites. Optimize your site’s performance by minimizing unnecessary code, compressing images, and using caching techniques to ensure fast loading times on mobile devices.
- Optimize Images and Videos: Large images and videos can slow down your site on mobile devices. Use optimized images and videos that are sized appropriately for mobile screens to reduce loading times without sacrificing quality.
- Test User Experience: Be a mobile user and navigate through your website on a smartphone or tablet. Pay attention to how easy it is to find information, fill out forms, and complete tasks.
Address any usability issues to ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience for mobile visitors.
5. Fix Technical Issues
Fixing technical issues is the final crucial step in a technical SEO audit. Once you have identified any problems with your website’s structure, performance, or compatibility, it’s time to take action to resolve them.
Addressing these issues can improve your site’s visibility, user experience, and overall performance in search engine rankings.
Here’s how to tackle this step:
- Prioritize Fixes: Start by addressing the most critical issues that can have the biggest impact on your website’s SEO and user experience.
These may include fixing broken links, resolving server errors, optimizing page speed, and ensuring mobile-friendliness. Prioritizing fixes helps you focus on the most pressing issues first.
- Fix Broken Links: Broken links can frustrate users and signal to search engines that your site may be outdated or poorly maintained. Use a tool to identify and fix broken links throughout your website.
Update or remove broken links to ensure a smooth browsing experience for visitors.
- Optimize Page Speed: Slow-loading pages can drive users away and negatively impact your search engine rankings.
Improve your site’s speed by optimizing images, reducing server response times, and minimizing CSS and JavaScript files. Implement caching techniques to help pages load faster for returning visitors.
- Optimize Meta Tags: Meta tags, including title tags and meta descriptions, are crucial in how your pages appear in search engine results.
Ensure that each page has unique, descriptive meta tags that accurately reflect the content of the page. Optimize meta tags with relevant keywords to improve your site’s visibility in search results.
- Implement Structured Data: Structured data markup helps search engines understand the content of your pages better and can lead to rich snippets in search results.
Implement structured data markup, such as Schema.org, to provide additional context to search engines and enhance your site’s visibility.
- Monitor and Maintain: Once you have fixed technical issues, monitor your website regularly for any new issues. SEO is an ongoing process, and staying proactive in maintaining your site’s health and performance is essential for long-term success.
The Wrap-Up
Regularly running through these technical SEO audit steps helps spot hidden issues sabotaging performance before they go out of control and reduce rankings. As problems get fixed, keep documenting tests and metrics in a spreadsheet to measure progress.
Maximizing speed, crawlability, and content quality through ongoing technical SEO checkups sets sites up for search visibility success by ensuring the infrastructure supports content, not hinders it.
Follow this simplified methodology for conducting routine health checks. Taking it step-by-step will help surface and resolve optimization roadblocks as part of an enduring SEO foundation.
