Step-by-Step Guides to a Technical SEO Audit

Nowadays, technical SEO audit is an integral part of creating a high-traffic website that can outperform your competitors.

A good web design supposes to meet certain SEO technicalities and requirements in order to make your website visible on search engines.

Contents

What is a technical SEO audit?#1]. Crawler and indexing issues #2]. Site structure and navigation #3]. Performance & mobile friendly #4]. Internal linking & anchor text #5]. Other elements of Technical SEO #5]. Conclusion References / Resources PLEASE SHARE ON PINTEREST

Having developed an outstanding website, it becomes crucial to ensure its functionality goes beyond being visually appealing.

Actually, the challenge lies in ensuring your website is visible online and that your online presence is beneficial to your business.

This is where a technical SEO audit becomes essential. As a matter of fact, it’s important to conduct a technical SEO audit nowadays.

It offers the best way to guarantee that your website is properly optimized for search engines to crawl, index, and rank efficiently.

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What is a technical SEO audit?

So, what do we call a technical SEO audit? Having built an impressive website, getting the right kind of web traffic to your website is essential in order to outperform competitors, and this is where technical SEO comes in.

In short, a technical SEO audit is a process of analysing technical aspects of a website related to search engine optimization.

This is the SEO audit that helps you ensure popular search engines like Google can crawl, index, and rank pages on your site.

In other words, technical SEO audit is behind the scenes work to uncovers the hidden issues affecting your website’s performance on search engines.

Below are some of the best step-by-step guides to perform a technical SEO audit to secure a strong position for your site in search results:

#1]. Crawler and indexing issues

Crawlability is one of the most important concepts of technical SEO that you need to take seriously. It’s all about a search engine’s ability to access web content and index it for ranking in search results.

In other words, the crawlability of your website determines how easily Google can crawl and index it. However, it’s possible to block crawlers on your site and tell Google not to crawl and index your site or web page.

Mind you, blocking crawlers from crawling your website means that your site or the respective page won’t turn up in the search results.

Use a website crawler tool.
Check for redirect chains or URLs blocked by robots.txt.
Check and fix any crawl errors such as broken links.
Ensure your content is visible online.

If you want to make your website visible on the search engine results, then fixing any indexing issues is an important step to take.

As a matter of fact, you will have to take the necessary steps to verify that search engines are effectively indexing your website. Doing this will enable you to ensure your site’s optimal performance in search results.

Ensure your URLs are not blocked by robots.txt.
Check and fix any indexing issues affecting your site.
Review your website’s XML sitemap.

The powerful tool can help you fix site issues affecting your website’s crawler accessibility. Additionally, you can also spot other indexing issues with Site Audit and a full list of what you can do to fix them.

Successful SEO is not about tricking Google. It’s about PARTNERING with Google to provide the best search results for Google’s users.
Phil Frost, Main Street ROI

#2]. Site structure and navigation

There is more to a website than just the beautiful images and awesome content you post on it, and it’s called site structure. In fact, a website structure is how a website’s content and pages are organised and interconnected.

Moreover, this is another essential element of technical SEO audit that can have negative impacts on your website availability and accessibility.

Usually, site structure includes how web pages are hierarchically arranged and their relationships to one another. In essence, site structure helps visitors and search engines navigate and understand your website’s content.

Use SEO audit tools to identify and fix errors.
Analyse site structure for logical and easy navigation.
Ensure canonicalization is correctly implemented.
Check for duplicate content and URL issues.
Avoid dynamic URLs whenever possible.
Optimize URL structure for readability and keywords.

Not all websites are made equal. Some websites are simple, logical, and easy to use. Others are a messy hodgepodge of pages and links.

A website navigation menu is an organized list of links to other web pages, usually internal site pages. It’s an essential element of web design and technical SEO audit that enables users to easily access your website content.

Without website navigation, your visitors can’t figure out how to find your blog, your email signup page, your product listings, pricing, contact information, or help docs.

Quick and easy access to the content they’re after is more important for your website users than a… visually-stunning design.

Website navigation allows visitors to flow from one page to another without frustration. If you’ve done your job well, visitors leave your site with the intention to return and might even buy something from you or sign up for your email list.

Bad navigation is an especially common problem. We’ve all struggled to find things on disorganized websites without any logical structure. It feels hopeless.

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#3]. Performance & mobile friendly

Your site performance is all about page speed – how long a site takes to load or render content for users to consume. Any website that takes too long to load will generally hurt and negatively affect user experiences.

You can use Google PageSpeed Insights and other alternative website speed test tools to assess page load times. They can help to effortlessly enhance your website’s performance and take it to the next level.

With these tools, you will gain insights into the speed, SEO, and user experience to ensure your site is at its best.

Measure your web page performance to identify and fix errors.
Optimize images and other media files to reduce file size.
Minimize server response time by using caching mechanisms.
Make use of web optimisation tools to speed up your website.
Minimizing JavaScript, CSS, and HTML can improve your page speed.

Nowadays, mobile-friendly web design is essential for your website optimisation. Mobile friendliness is all about ensuring that your website is accessible on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

In essence, it’s about ensuring that your website is responsive and renders correctly on various devices and screen sizes. This is one of the page experience ranking factors that determines ranking on search engines.

Optimization for various types of devices and resolutions plays a fundamental role in modern website design. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the essential website design ideas that can boost your ranking and web traffic.

Nowadays, it’s important for web page layouts to be genuinely responsive and not rely on any fixed-size elements. Therefore, using fluid grids and flexible images can guarantee that a web page will render well on a variety of devices, windows, and screen sizes.

#4]. Internal linking & anchor text

Internal links are links that connect pages on your website and they are important elements of technical SEO for your website ranking.

Your website users or visitors and search engines use links to find content on your website. Search engines and your website visitors use links to navigate through your site. If there are no links, users won’t be able to access content.

SEE ALSO: 7 Types of Anchor Text For SEO

The idea of proper navigation means that users are able to get from one page to another without any difficulties. You should be aware of the fact that pages that are not linked are harder for search engines to crawl.

Anchor text is the clickable text or phrase that appears in a hyperlink. Anchor text helps users to navigate the page, grasp what the linked page is about, and enhances content accessibility for users with screen readers.

Descriptive and relevant links as well as their anchors help keep users on a site longer. Also, it can help reduce ‌bounce rates if applied correctly.

There are several internal linking benefits of using anchor text when it comes to SEO. The obvious fact is that relevant links with clear and appealing anchor texts on your pages can help drive confidence to click.

In essence, anchor texts encourage users to navigate from one page to another which is good for your website user’s experience, SEO, and ranking.

Check that your pages are properly linked for easy navigation.
Review internal linking structure to ensure it promotes a logical flow.
Check if anchor text is descriptive and relevant to the linked page.

#5]. Other elements of Technical SEO

There are several other essential technical SEO elements that could affect the reach and online visibility of your website.

#1]. Technical on-page elements:
You have to check HTML markup for proper usage of title tags, meta descriptions, headers (H1, H2, etc.), and schema markup.

Furthermore, it’s important to ensure that each page has a unique and descriptive title tag and meta description. Also, you should validate structured data markup using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

#2]. Duplicate content issues:
It’s important to create valuable content people are likely going to share because unique content is the key to search engine ranking.

Additionally, having duplicate content can confuse search engines and it could have negative impact on your website SEO and ranking.

Also, you should identify and rectify instances of duplicate content, whether it’s within your site or on external platforms. Use canonical tags to indicate the primary source of content.

#3]. Site security:
Do you know that safeguarding your site can lead to improved search engine performance? The fact is that if your site security is weak, hackers can exploit it for what is known as SEO Spam.

You have to ensure that your website is served over HTTPS to encrypt data transmission. Also, you should check for any security vulnerabilities such as outdated software versions or insecure plugins.

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#4]. Structured data & rich snippets:
According to experts, structured data is important when it comes to SEO. This is because it’ll make it easier for Google to understand what your pages, products, and your website are about.

As a matter of fact, Google needs to find out what a page is about to show it in the search results. Therefore, using structured data is like telling Google what your site is about.

Additionally, you should implement structured data markup where applicable to enhance search engine visibility and potentially trigger rich snippets in search results. You can use Google’s Rich Results Test tool to test structured data markup.

#5]. International SEO Considerations:
If applicable, you should optimize your website for other countries and languages. You should determine what international content you offer and for which markets or languages.

Also, you should ensure proper implementation of hreflang tags for international and multilingual websites to indicate language and regional variations. You should also verify correct geotargeting settings in Google Search Console for country-specific versions of your website.

#5]. Conclusion

Auditing your website should not be a one-time event, it should be done periodically for better results. As a matter of fact, having regular audits will help keep your site healthy and competitive.

You should set up regular monitoring and reporting to track the impact of your technical SEO efforts over time. Stay updated on industry trends and algorithm changes to adapt your technical SEO strategies accordingly.

Also, you can use this guide to conduct a comprehensive technical SEO audit of your website. This will help you identify and address any issues that may be hindering your website’s performance in search engine results.