The SEO audit of a website is an effective way to detect any underlying problems or identify its weak aspects for performance improvement purposes. In this regard, a technical SEO audit is one such form of SEO that serves the vital role of analyzing the website’s technical aspects and is perceived as an essential aspect of site maintenance.
It lays the groundwork for your optimization efforts and if your website is not optimized from a technical perspective, it will not rank on search engines like Google, regardless of how many links you create. It helps identify issues related to indexation and crawlability that can affect your site’s organic search performance and prevent its visibility on SERPs (search engine result pages).
While it is a complicated process, technical SEO is an essential aspect that cannot be overlooked. If you want to learn how to do an SEO audit, here is your chance to find out. In this post, we will discuss the five steps of an SEO technical audit. However, first, let’s consider what a checklist for an SEO audit should look like.
Checklist for SEO Audit (Technical)
While it is always a good idea to hire SEO audit services for conducting a thorough technical audit, it may also be beneficial to know what a webpage audit should ideally entail.
-
- The website’s accessibility and discoverability by search engines
- Assessing JavaScript and CSS elements
- Examining the indexing process and official URLs
- Management of external resource loading
- Evaluating page load speed
- Ensuring mobile compatibility
- Monitoring Core Web Vitals
- Analyzing redirects and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) usage
- Image file optimization
- Implementation of structured data
5 Basic Steps of Technical SEO for a Website
Crawlability assessment
As a first step, it is ensured that your website is accessible and indexable by the search engines. The process is initiated by reviewing your robots.txt file for any potential errors that might hinder search engine access. Another critical task is to identify and fix broken links that may disrupt the crawling process. This step also includes maintaining an updated and error-free XML sitemap that comprises a record of all of your web pages.
Analyzing site architecture
The next step involves analyzing your website’s architecture, including your URL structure, internal linking, and navigation. There is a focus on maintaining clean and user-friendly URL structures, while the logic and consistency of internal linking are also evaluated to ensure users have a satisfactory and convenient navigation experience.
Title tags and Meta descriptions optimization
In the third step, the title tags and meta descriptions are evaluated for optimization to boost your website’s performance in search engine result pages (SERPs). Each page should have unique title tags and meta descriptions to avoid duplicate content issues. These elements must be compelling and engaging so as to captivate searchers and stand out among the competition.
Content evaluation
The fourth step involves assessing your website’s content. It is important that your content is well-written, provides value to readers, and incorporates keywords for SEO that resonate with your target audience. Exclusivity of your content is the key to differentiating your pages and avoiding issues related to duplicate content.
Checking technical SEO health
In the final step, the technical health of your website is assessed, which includes aspects like site speed, security, and uptime. Since mobile users constitute a large percentage of potential site visitors, the site may also be assessed for mobile experience.
SSL certificates are essential for improving security to safeguard user data and establish trust. Similarly, if site speed indicates an issue, it can be resolved by optimizing the images, reducing the redirects, and minifying JavaScript and CSS files.
Technical SEO Audit with AdHamster
Technical SEO is a fairly complicated process! It is mainly because of the complexity inherent to a website owing to its growth and changes with time. In some cases, sites tend to undergo so many changes that even the webmasters or developers find it difficult to recognize them over time. In such a case, the logical step is to engage professional SEO audit services providers who cannot only help identify areas of improvement but also offer guidance on fixing those issues.
At AdHamster, we provide SEO services to ensure your website is optimized for search engines and is set to rank high in the SERPs. Want to learn more about our SEO services? Contact us today!