SEO is a constantly changing industry. Algorithm updates, new best practices, and shifting user trends mean that your clients’ SEO needs will evolve over time.
A regular SEO audit is essential to ensuring your client’s success. Here are some things you should look out for:
Keywords
Identifying keywords that bring value to your business is an important part of the SEO audit process. It helps you create content that meets your audience’s search intent and improves your website’s ranking. It also helps you eliminate underperforming keywords and identify opportunities to expand your reach through new channels.
An SEO audit should be a comprehensive, ongoing process that analyzes the structural and content components of your site. An effective SEO audit should include the following elements:
There are hundreds of different ranking factors that can impact a site’s visibility in search engine results pages. A good SEO audit will focus on the most essential ones, such as mobile-friendliness, backlink profile, and technical issues. It should also cover the content on a site’s page – including meta descriptions, titles, and image alt text. It is also important to check whether the site is secure and user-friendly.
Content
In addition to identifying duplicate content and other SEO problems, an audit can also reveal opportunities for adding new keywords. For instance, you may find that a long-dead blog post is bringing in only a handful of visitors. In that case, you can delete it or combine it with other pages. This will create more opportunities to target the relevant LSI keywords.
You can use free online tools to audit your website. Many of these tools will let you compare the sets of keywords that your competitors are targeting. You can then select the ones you want to focus on and see whether they have any potential.
Using a tool like Screaming Frog can help you identify SEO issues on your site. It offers a free version with a variety of features, including the ability to scan XML sitemaps and search for broken links and duplicate pages. The free software can also identify duplicate meta tags and hreflang attributes. Its UI is structured like a spreadsheet and makes it easy to sort and export data.
Link building
A comprehensive SEO Audit can reveal a wide range of issues that are impacting your website’s performance and ranking. This includes content, backlinks, and mobile optimization. By identifying these issues, you can take steps to fix them and improve your site’s ranking.
A link audit can also identify any unnatural patterns that could result in a manual penalty. This can be caused by a variety of factors, including excessive links, unnatural anchor text, and the use of keyword stuffing.
When performing an internal link audit, make sure to check for orphan pages (pages that aren’t linked to from any other page). This is an indicator of poor navigation and can negatively impact search engine crawling. Also, ensure that all URLs are short, descriptive, and optimized with keywords. This will help Google index your website more effectively. Also, check to see if there are any redirects that aren’t serving their purpose. This can cause a loss of ranking and user experience.
Site speed
Site speed is an important SEO metric, as Google prioritizes fast-loading websites in search results. A fast website also offers a better user experience, which increases visitor retention and conversion rates.
One way to improve your site speed is to reduce unused javascript code, optimize images, and use a content delivery network. Another way is to reduce the number of HTTP requests on each page. You can do this by reducing image size, using modern image formats, and implementing browser caching.
Finally, you can use an SEO audit tool to compare your site’s performance with that of competitors. This tool will analyze a set of keywords and show you how your competitors are ranking for those words. This will help you identify keyword opportunities you might have overlooked. You can then take action to increase your rankings by fixing the issues identified by the tool. Often, these problems are listed in a priority order: errors, warnings, and notices.