How to do SEO-audit for a website?

Many website owners have surely pondered how their own site ranks and performs on Google. However, the best way to determine ranking and search engine friendliness is not through simply Googling your own site and reviewing its placement. For this purpose, there exists SEO auditing, which helps you ascertain your site’s current status and potential actions to enhance its search engine friendliness.

What is SEO Audit?

What does SEO auditing mean and why is it so important? Put simply, SEO auditing is a process in which issues on a website are assessed, issues that could negatively impact your site’s ranking on Google and other search engines. If your site cannot be properly indexed, if your content isn’t in good shape, or if you have broken links on your page, you could lose a lot of organic traffic.

Check Your Site’s Listing on Google

You can lightly commence an SEO audit by examining the various versions of your site that Google displays in its search results. Your site might have multiple different versions indexed by search engines. For instance, versions that start with http:// or http://www. are distinct in the eyes of search engines, and there should ideally be only one version, such as the version starting with https://. Your site should be indexed in only one version. If you want to check the number of versions, you simply need to go to Google and perform a site: domain.com search.

The page appears on Google only on pages that have SSL protection (https), as it should.

Utilize Google Search Console

Search Console is a free tool that provides information on how your site appears in search engines and how people interact with your site in search results. You can register your site with Search Console here. To quickly set up Search Console, start by submitting your sitemap to ensure that your site is properly indexed. Adding an up-to-date sitemap to Search Console helps Google better understand the composition of your site’s pages.

Site Speed

Site speed directly impacts search engine ranking. Especially after Google’s updates, site speed has been a crucial factor in site search engine friendliness. Besides directly affecting search engine friendliness, speed can also indirectly influence factors like increased bounce rate (immediate exits). Therefore, it’s important to maintain site speed for both search engine and user experience.

Here is a list of a few tests to determine page speed:

Google Page Speed Insights
GTmetrix

Individual Page SEO

Audit Optimizing individual pages involves the following aspects:

Optimizing headings, meta descriptions, H-tags
Setting image alt-texts
Creating optimized content
Internal and external linking

The overall optimization of a site ultimately stems from the synergy of individual pages. The details of individual pages matter significantly in overall search engine friendliness. These details can include elements like heading levels or page meta information, which often require improvement if they’ve never been addressed. Some plugins conveniently pull meta information from page content, but optimizing headings and content mostly remains in human hands.

Here are a few tools listed to help identify potential fixes for individual pages:

Google Lighthouse, also available as an extension for Chrome browser
Ubersuggest
SEMRush

You can access Google Lighthouse by opening the Chrome browser and pressing the F12 key, which will open a new window on the right side of the page.

What happens after an SEO audit?

Once you’ve completed the SEO audit and identified issues affecting search engine friendliness, it’s time to start addressing them. If you have a WordPress site and you’re looking for quick and comprehensive guidance on search engine optimization, take a look at the guide I’ve created here. During the SEO audit, it’s also good to establish goals that you want to promote through the SEO fixes. With clear starting points and actions in mind, it’s easy to keep track of your progress.

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