Checklist for performing a basic SEO audit

Keeping up to date with the latest SEO practices can be overwhelming for someone who is just starting out as a new website owner. Additionally, ensuring that existing SEO implementations are regularly supported in line with the latest Google algorithm changes can be a daunting task for some.

To make sure you don 't miss out on them, you should perform an SEO audit of your website / blog regularly. By keeping a checklist handy, you maintain a standard SEO audit task list that ensures that none of the crucial points are missed.

In this article, we are going to present you with a comprehensive checklist that will help you perform the SEO audit of your website effectively and efficiently.

Advantages of avoir an SEO audit checklist are:

• Help you identify weak points on the site and work on them
• You helps optimize your site off and on page
• Helps you increase your site loading speed after you implement the findings from the checklist
• Self-check your own website
• Helps you increase organic traffic for your business
• The checklist helps you scan your website for omissions or SEO Wrongdoing
• This SEO audit checklist will help you improve a website's ranking factor by providing checkpoints.

We've done our best to create a comprehensive checklist so that you don't miss out on key SEO aspects. However, there will be some checkpoints that we largely skipped from the checklist.

Now let's dive right into the content of the checklist for your next SEO audit.

Determine the objectives of the SEO audit of your site

This is the most important task of your SEO audit checklist where you determine the objective or why you need an SEO audit. These goals will eventually define the scope of this checklist and maybe make things a little different.

For example, if your website is not delivering the speed results you want, you might want to conduct an SEO audit and figure which is causing the problem. On the flip side, if there is a sudden drop in traffic metrics, you might want to correct things through an SEO audit. Well, there are many similar goals behind this activity and by evaluating them carefully you will be able to perform an SEO audit more effectively.

Keyword analysis

The benchmarkIt starts with keywords , so it is a good idea to start your audit by analyzing the keywords that your site uses and whether you are targeting the right ones.

Make sure to use less competitive long tail keywords that are very specific to the industry in which you are dealing. The right keyword will be relevant, measurable and obviously not the moon, that is, it will help you rank higher.

Some tools that you can use are UberSuggest , SEMrush , Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends .

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You need to execute a keyword strategy that targets time-limited keywords simply because as your website grows you will need to amplify keyword research and look for other detailed keywords that will help you Rank better.

Too many keywords on website will kill your SEO Game. Rearrange the number of keywords needed. Include keywords in URL to help your pages / articles look better rank and make sure these URLs are short.

Keyword cannibalization is another SEO degrading factor for your website. This happens when two pages of your bsite are competing for the same keyword. Make sure you implement decisions to fix it.

Later in the audit, you will need to analyze the competition for these keywords.

Content Analysis

We all know that the content delivered by your site must be unique and free from plagiarism. Well, there are several other content crawl checks that need to be done.

Start by checking your site for duplicate content and ask for help from tools like Siteliner.com . By providing a match percentage, it displays the result for pages that match other pages. You can also opt for the premium services of Copyscape to see if any of your content has been plagiarized on the Internet.

Good content that helps your website rank higher is engaging and SEO optimized. Make sure you are using the target keywords in all the right places on a page on your website.

• Keyword in the title of the post / page
• Keyword in the first paragraph
• Appearances of the keywords in the H1 tag
• Use of the keyword in the meta-deion of the message
• Appearances of the keywords in the URL structure
• Keyword in alt text of first image used
• Appearance of keywords near end of message content.

To make sure your content is engaging, always update user-generated data in the comments section of your blogs. Keep engaging with the audience so that you can get a good chunk of SEO juice out of them as well.

Make sure your content is the right lengthr is just as important as using quality content. Create the right content strategy that is well balanced with short, medium, and long articles. Regularly posting content is a huge SEO booster as well. If you feel that your schedule needs a boost, you can revise it during the next SEO audit.

UX Analysis

The UX provided by a website is a major determinant of site traffic and the average time spent by visitors.

Google Analytics can help you see what the user experience is likely to be on your website. Alternatively, you can find great navigation for your site audience so that they can seamlessly surf the pages of your website without having to struggle for the information they are looking for.

Another crucial site UX ranking factor is the presence of broken links or pages on your ifyou. The Tools link checker can help you remove these links and ensure that your users do not encounter them.

Check image optimization

Make sure that you are optimizing the images present on your website. There are various plugins available that can help you optimize images. And don 't forget to implement the following:

• Use high resolution images
• Resize them to declutter your site database
• Use a relevant image that matches your text
• Enter an appropriate name for your image file using the target keyword
• Use the alt text of the 'picture.

Content Promotion Analysis

If your website uses content promotion services to share its updates through social networks,make sure they are well integrated and work as expected.

Checking Web Hosting

The right web hosting service boosts your site's SEO efforts by supplementing its reputation. server, the availability of its website and, of course, the loading speed it offers. Every SEO audit should be an event where you review the performance of your existing web host and, if there is a need, make the switch and choose a better service provider.

Resources such as HostingBooth can be very useful when looking to benchmark the performance of existing hosting service providers.

Checking website load speed

Use a tool such as Pingdom to determine the current speed of your website. If charging takes more than 2-3 seconds, please make sureou will solve it by following the necessary steps as soon as possible.

Don't skip website load times for mobile devices.

Site availability

During all SEO audits of your site, you must check the availability of the site offered by your website to its users. Site uptime is the length of time your website is available to its users. A website with frequent downtime will lead to a drop in traffic and affect your site's ranking. To ensure the availability and maintenance of your site, you can count on tools such as Uptime Robot , Site 24 * 7 and Pingometer .

Link analysis

Make sure that your backs are relevant and of high quality. Majestic is a great link checker if you want to check for relevance, authorityand the quality of the backs of your website. The Backlink History Checker will help you determine the number of backlinks detected by its bots Web for specific domains, subdomains or URLs.

You should also assess the presence of all outgoing and internal links present on your website and get rid of all low quality links.

URL Checking

The right URL structure is crucial for your website because it says a lot about your site's SEO . All URLs on your website should be SEO optimized, but not over-optimized. Take care of all uppercase and lowercase urls on the website.

Checking Google Penalties

The truth is that Google is free to penalize your website for failing to comply with its regulatory or other updates iinstructions. A Google sanction can seriously damage your site's online reputation and the SEO of our site can go haywire. And in a situation where you are unaware of such a penalty being applied to your website, all efforts to fix a low SEO score can be a phone call away.

By therefore, during every SEO audit, you should run a Google penalty test to see if your website has been penalized. There are several tools available that can help you figure this out, such as the Panguin Google Penalty Check Tool and Fruition's Google Penalty Check Tool .

Sitemaps help Google better understand the structure of your website by giving it access to your site. Once you have properly set up a sitemap , you will need to keep it free of any errors. assuming it is correct.ent configured.

Start by checking for the presence of your site's sitemap file by adding sitemap.

Google Search Console search will help you determine how many URLs were successfully indexed when you previously submitted the sitemap. It will also notify you of any issues or issues. Use tools such as CodeBeautify and XMLValidation to verify your sitemap. for errors before submitting it.

Site Security Check

The security of a site is a compulsive factor that determines the ranking of your website. If yours is an e-commerce website, security is even more important. Since an SSL certificate is now a very important object for printing a website, make sure your websites have it and on your next auditSEO take action to

Conclusions

Once you've done everything right, monthly or quarterly SEO audits lp you revamp your SEO strategy and make sure you don't get left behind. With the checklist provided above, you will be able to perform a more effective SEO audit for your site and make sure it ranks well.