SEO Audits are the perfect time to get the house in order and identify any quick wins through optimising pages, fixing errors and checking for any potentially harmful activity on page and off page.
Here are some examples of onsite factors that could massively help your website:
Deepcrawl Analysis
Using tools like screaming frog and webmaster console, I will start looking at crawl data and manually checking pages in Google’s index. Depending on the size of the site this process can be different. I can create a formula for sitewide changes or target primary pages with recommendations on things like:
Duplicate Meta Titles- Missing headers, H1, H2
- 404 errors
- Missing Image Alt Tags
- Meta Keywords
Site Architecture
In order to create the perfect site architecture I need to make sure that all of your pages are working in conjunction with each other. I need to check that we dont have pages in Google’s index that are low quality, have thin content or are possible duplicates of other pages.
This can involve:
- 301 Redirecting Pages
- Removing and “no index” pages
- Click Depth from primary pages
- Sidebars, Navigation structures
Optimisation
Using technical SEO tactics, I will look at things like reducing site speed, annoying popups and missed opportunities with your shema.org. But, first we want to make sure the basic optimisations are in place first:
- Onpage Factors
Optimising headers and meta tags, such as your page titles, descriptions and H1 and H2’s. Identifying pages that can internally link well together and de-optimising or changing competing pages. - URL Structure
Missed opportunities to optimise URL’s, remove query strings, and scroll through your HTML improvements in webmaster console. - Images
Creating Keyword friendly alt tags, and optimising images with search intent.
Duplicate Content
This is a common mistake, but causes a big issue with site performance. Using tools like siteliner we can pull out a report on duplicate content and do an analysis of each page.
In some cases, you might have published a draft version of an article, or you may have some pages left over from where you moved your site to Https. Either way there are some actions to take when dealing with this:
- HTTP vs HTTPS
- Duplicate URL’s
- Canniocal Attributes
- External duplicate
Backlink Profile
Looking in Ahrefs we can get a good idea or your backlink profile. This might be non existant or filled with spammy links, but a full audit will give relevance to who is mentioning your business.
I would look at harmful toxic links that might need to be disavowed, or opportunities to build new links.
- Anchor Cloud
- Domain vs Link Ratio
- Broken Links
- Top linked pages