Khaled Khan 2 years ago
Checking at a website and knowing there are flaws that are dragging it down and preventing it from appearing at the top of search results pages. You may see a few things that need to be changed just by browsing the site. Maybe the homepage’s title tag doesn’t follow SEO best practices, or the navigation appears to require both hands to navigate.
If you don’t know what technical SEO is? Then it is equally important as content and user interface when it comes to complete search optimization. You must ensure that your technical SEO plan is flawless in order for your website to perform ideally in search engine rankings. A comprehensive technical SEO audit might be beneficial.
It’s not easy to do a technical SEO audit; it’s a jigsaw with many moving parts. When you initially face an audit, it may appear that there is simply too much to accomplish. Google or Bing algorithms send crawlers to your site to examine HTML code, JavaScript, performance, structure, and other factors.
This means that a well optimized website needs more than just keyword density and good content to achieve exceptional SEO results. Many internet marketers and business owners understand the importance of SEO, but technical SEO auditing is tough for those without experience.
Creating a technical SEO checklist to assess the health of your website is an excellent method to figure out what you need. This comprehensive technical site audit guide was intended to assist you in working through some of the most crucial aspects of current search optimization. A checklist like this may assist websites, online businesses, and eCommerce sites figure out where they could be having problems. To ensure that your technical SEO is complete, go over our audit instructions below.
A SEO technical audit is a procedure that examines various technical aspects of a website to ensure that they are compliant with search engine optimization best practices. This refers to the technical aspects of your site that are directly related to search engines ranking elements such as Google or Bing. HTML components, appropriate meta tags, website code, JavaScript, and suitable website extensions are all technical SEO services.
It is not required to evaluate every aspect of an SEO strategy for a technical audit SEO. Many SEO aspects should be checked individually, including content for on-page SEO best practices, keyword strategy, content, and more. Technical SEO, on the other hand, is critical since it entails looking under the hood of your website for more intricate issues that you may be unaware of. It also comprises checking for technological issues that might jeopardize the user experience by causing your website to crash.
A technical website audit checklist might entail reading through our technical seo guide and step by step recording any faults you uncover in an Excel or Word document. You’ll be able to keep track of the faults you find and address them one at a time, ensuring that your website is well-optimized for search engines.
They’ll set up an intro call once a potential customer sends an email showing interest in working together and answers the service provider’s survey questions (Skype or Google Hangouts is preferred). Before the call, the service provider conducts a fast SEO assessment based on their survey responses to familiarize themselves with their market. Here’s an example of how the survey may appear:
During your initial encounter with the customer, you should ask the following critical questions:
If they both think they’re a good fit after the call, the service provider will issue a formal proposal and contract. To begin, they offer clients a month-long trial period to ensure they are a good fit. This provides an opportunity for both the client and the service provider to become friends. During this month, the service provider devotes time to conduct a comprehensive SEO assessment.
Depending on the size of the website, SEO audits might take anywhere from 40 to 60 hours. The audits are divided into three sections and presented using Google Slides.
If the customer enjoys the work after the first month, they’ll start implementing the SEO audit suggestions. In the future, they’ll do a monthly mini-audit and a quarterly in-depth audit.
To summarize, they do an SEO audit for their clients:
When a customer and service provider start working together, they’ll provide them with a Google Doc containing a list of passwords and vendors.
This includes the following:
The most important aspects that influence your website’s SEO may be divided into three groups.
At regular periods, you should undertake audits of each of these elements. This will guarantee that you’re always up to date on the industry’s shifting situations. The mobile-friendliness of your website is one of the most crucial considerations. Because mobile searches account for over 60% of all searches, Google has begun to prioritize mobile-friendly websites.
Let’s look at how to perform a technical SEO audit now that you know what it is and what parameters it includes.
The crawling of your website should be the first step in any technical SEO evaluation. You can do this using programmes like Semrush, Spyfu, or DeepCrawl. The On-Page SEO Checker from Semrush also gives you practical suggestions for improving your site’s SEO strategy, backlinks, technical SEO, and content quality. Broken links, poor pictures, page title difficulties, and improper keywords are all detected by crawlers.
They can also assist you find duplicate material, redirects, and pages that aren’t connected. You may also look at your crawl budget in the Google Search Console. The amount of pages that Google Analytics crawls on your website and how frequently it does so make up your crawl budget. You can see how the Google Analytics bot crawls your website by looking at your crawl budget.
How can you make the most of your Google Search Console crawl budget?
You must complete the following tasks:
Duplicate pages will quickly deplete your crawl budget. Duplicate pages may be found using tools like Screaming Frog. The title and meta description tags for these pages are frequently the same. As many duplicate pages as feasible should be removed. If you must keep them, though, block them from search engine bots.
Some pages, such as the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Conditions, may not need to be included in the search engine results. You may prevent these pages from being indexed and save money on your crawl budget by doing so.
Google Analytics may crawl the same page twice, with and without URL parameters, as if they were two separate pages. The Google Search Console allows you to set URL parameters. This may tell Google Search that it’s crawling the same page rather than two.
Every reroute followed by the Google Analytics bot is a waste of crawl expenditure.Furthermore, if there are enough 301 or 302 redirects, the bots may lose track of them and fail to reach the destination page. To optimise your crawl budget, you should limit the amount of redirection throughout your technical SEO assessment.
Another option is to use Google Search to manually search for your website. To do so, go to Google Search Console and search for “site:domain name” to get the results. This will display the number of times your pages appear in the search results. Also, just because certain pages are missing doesn’t indicate your website isn’t crawlable. It can, however, offer you a sense of what’s wrong with it and how it’s harming your search engine rating.
Websites such as SEO Site Checkup provide you with your website’s SEO score. This score is simply a 100-point scale that illustrates where you excel and where you fall short. This score might assist you in determining the next steps in your technical SEO assessment. The evaluation can assist you in determining your most often used keywords. It can also assist you in the detection of broken links and code problems. You may also see if your website has a sitemap and a robots.txt file. If your website has malware or phishing activities, this is taken into account when calculating the score.
Your website’s sitemap is incredibly significant. It can give search engines information about your website’s structure and help them find new pages. In order to execute a successful SEO strategy, you’ll need a sitemap.. As a result, you should examine it throughout your technical SEO audit. Make sure your sitemap has the following information:
There must be no mistakes in your sitemap at all. Redirects and URLs that may cause indexing issues should be removed. If they aren’t, search engines may decide to disregard your sitemap.
The sitemap should be short and sweet. The Google Analytics crawler will not crawl it if it contains more than 50,000 URLs. As a result, you should keep it brief and include all relevant pages.
As soon as new material is released, it must be included to your sitemap. This can aid in the discovery of fresh information by search engines.
Your sitemap must be submitted to Google Search. There are two methods to accomplish this: manually or by stating its address in robots.txt.
You must ensure that there is only one “version” of your website that may be seen.
Do you have many versions of your website?
If it happens, you’ll be sending the search engine mixed signals. The crawlers will be perplexed as to whether this version is correct. Users will not be able to see your website if the search engine is uncertain about the different versions. This might have a significant impact on your search engine results.
This issue can arise as a result of duplicate HTTP vs. HTTPS versions or as a result of mobile and desktop versions slugging it out. Only one version of your website should be browseable, according to the technical SEO audit. Ensuring that your website uses HTTPS is a smart idea. Even Google Search ensures that users are aware of which sites are secure and which are not.
Websites that utilize HTTP now have a “Not Secure” flag next to them.
A proper structure on your website can considerably enhance your search rankings. As a result, it’s important to double-check both internal and external connections. A broken link can also be caused by the removal or relocation of web pages.
What are the internal connection variables you should look into? During the technical SEO audit, verify the following facts about your internal linking:
The click depth indicator indicates how far a page is from the homepage. You need to keep this number as low as possible. It should ideally be less than 3. You may figure this out by going to Site Structure and then Pages in WebSite Auditor. The click depth will be indicated in one of the columns.
Broken links have the potential to waste your crawl money. They may even cause visitors to get perplexed, which is bad for your website’s reputation. In WebSite Auditor, navigate to the All Resources tab and then to Internal Resources. To detect broken links, sort the list by HTTP Status Code.
These are the pages on your website that aren’t linked to anything else and might be difficult for search engines to locate. In WebSite Auditor, go to Site Structure and then to Pages to locate orphan pages. Select Rebuild Project from the drop-down menu, then Search for Orphan Pages in the second step.
When it comes to SEO, your site’s speed is a crucial component. People despise waiting for websites to load, and the longer they take, the more likely they are to leave. As a result, a website speed test is required as part of any technical SEO assessment.
What relationship exists between page load speed and bounce rate?
If your website takes more than 5 seconds to load, you’ll see a 90% spike in bounce rate. Google Analytics will begin to include site speed when determining your rankings in the near future.
As a result, it’s critical that you assess and improve your site’s speed. For this, you may utilize Google PageSpeed Insights. It will tell you how fast your website loads and how well it compares to others. The nice aspect about this programme is that it also tells you how to enhance your speed.
On Google Search’s first page, almost 70% of the results are HTTPS. If your website currently uses HTTPS, your technical SEO audit should include a search for typical HTTPS vulnerabilities.
What are the most frequent HTTPS difficulties encountered by most websites? Here are a few things to look for on your HTTPS site:
All of your website’s links, including canonicals and redirects, must point to HTTPS pages. You may have HTTP to HTTPS redirects on your website, however taking consumers via redirects is not recommended. Crawling may also be hampered by the redirects. This is because the crawl budget will be squandered each time the Google bot encounters a reroute.
When safe pages load unsecured material like photos and movies, the mixed content problem occurs. This may compromise the page’s security. Browsers may even be prevented from loading the complete page or unprotected information. Go to Site Audit in WebSite Auditor to look for this problem. To locate the mixed content, look for the HTTPS Pages With Mixed Content Issues option and click it.
WebSite Auditors can also show you a comprehensive list of non-HTTPS resources on your website. Look through the Internal Resources section and sort by URLs. The HTTP pages will be displayed first. Examine the whole list of pages that link to each HTTP page. It also displays the location of the broken link so that you can quickly correct the problem.
Check to see if your Google Analytics service is providing you with reliable real-time data. If it’s working properly, the code has been appropriately installed. This should be checked during the technical SEO audit. Each web page’s Google Analytics tracker code must be placed above the header.
Once the service is up and running, you may compare the data to the search results for “site:domain name.” In both circumstances, the number of pages should be similar. If the numbers aren’t close, it suggests that certain pages aren’t correctly receiving crawl requests. You may also use Google Analytics to check your bounce rate. This is a rate that you want to maintain as low as feasible.
A high bounce rate implies that visitors to your website aren’t getting what they’re searching for. You should optimize your content and page loading speed, among other things, to lower the rate. During the technical SEO audit, you can also utilise the MozBar to check for SEO information on different pages of your website.
It can distinguish between different link kinds, such as follow, no-follow, external, and internal. Each page’s Page Authority is also displayed in the MozBar. This is a score between 1 and 100 that indicates how well a page may rank in the search engine results pages. A tool like this may make your auditing process go more smoothly.
Backlinks are critical to your website’s success, so it’s no surprise that they’re included in the technical SEO assessment. They demonstrate to search engines how useful your website’s content is to users. Crawlers, on the other hand, aren’t only looking for hyperlinks in off-site SEO. Google’s bot also looks for brand references on your website. As a result, it’s critical to be aware of what’s occurring on and off your website. Using tools like Ahrefs, you may do a backlink audit. It might help you figure out what kinds of backlinks are pointing to your site.
It also aids in determining which locations require additional high-value linkages. You may also see how many backlinks your competitors have and strive to outnumber them. It’s also a good idea to look at the keywords that your rivals are ranking for. You may accomplish this by using Semrush to look at the backlinks coming to your rivals for the relevant keywords. This allows you to compare your backlinks to theirs and devise a strategy for ranking higher than them.
You should also look at which social media channels your target audience uses. It’s possible that those who enjoy your material may wish to connect to it. This might assist you in obtaining additional backlinks.
Social media may also assist you in increasing brand recognition, which will aid in search results for your company’s name. In your SEO efforts, you must not forget the value of social media. It aids in the growth of traffic and mentions. What’s more, it’s even easier than launching a link-building effort.
You can ask Google to re-crawl the website after the issues detected in the technical SEO audit have been resolved. This final phase of the technical SEO audit ensures that the modifications you’ve made are implemented right away. To do so, go to Google Search Console, choose Crawl, and then select Fetch As Google. You must first enter in the URL to be re-crawled before pressing Fetch.
After the Google bot has fetched your page, click Submit to Index to request that Google re-crawl it. You can provide either the specific URL or the URL together with all of the connected sites. In the latter situation, Google will index the material using the URL as a starting point. It will then crawl your website by following all internal links.
An SEO audit of your website on a regular basis is essential to the success of your SEO campaign. Testing all of the technical parameters for problems on a regular basis might help you detect and fix them quickly. You must make sure that your website loads swiftly and that the internal linkage is properly implemented. Broken links and redirects must be identified and eliminated.
After you’ve finished your technical SEO audit checklist, you can start working on improving the health and performance of your site’s organic rankings with the help of a reliable WordPress SEO service. In many circumstances, good SEO performance is a hard and time-consuming effort, but adopting best practices means you’ll be much more equipped for long-term organic success.
1. What is a technical SEO audit?
Ans – The method of optimizing a website such that it is easy for search engines to crawl and index is known as technical SEO. A technical SEO audit can assist you identify issues that are obstructing your website’s rankings.
2. What is the best way to do a technical SEO site audit?
Ans – The following are some of the processes to doing a technical SEO audit:
These are the most crucial phases in a technical SEO audit, and you can finish them all in a few hours.
3. Is SEO considered a technical skill?
Ans – While SEO does need some technical knowledge, it is easy enough for anyone to pick up from the ground up. To learn SEO, you don’t need a technical background.
4. How can I learn technical SEO?
Ans – You may study technical SEO by looking through a variety of internet tips and resources. However, in order to truly master the craft, you must put your knowledge into practice.
5. How much does a technical SEO audit cost?
Ans – You may do your own technical SEO audit without spending any money. If you do decide to employ paid SEO tools, the purchase of the product will be the only expense you will incur.
6. What does a technical SEO audit entail?
Ans – A technical SEO audit searches for any issues that might prevent search engines from crawling and indexing your site or pages. While there is no hard and fast rule for what should be included, the processes outlined here are comprehensive.
7. What is the purpose of an SEO audit tool?
Ans – SEO audit tools are intended to speed up and improve the efficiency of your auditing procedure. These eliminate the need for you to manually do each inspection and can automate many of the phases of an SEO audit.
8. What is the significance of technical SEO?
Ans – Technical SEO is vital since it aids search engines in better understanding and categorizing your website’s content. The way search engines index your website is crucial because it helps you rank for relevant search queries and attract relevant visitors.
9. How long does it take to perform a technical SEO audit?
Ans – You can do a technical SEO audit in under an hour if you have experience and know what you’re doing. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours, even for novices.
Khaled Khan is a WordPress developer who has been working in the industry for over six years now. He's currently employed as a Senior Engineer at Sizmic Labs, where he helps build a WordPress community of both developers and site owners. When Khaled isn't busy with work you can find him watching survival shows (the crazier ones are always better) cooking up something new in his kitchen -- or out exploring new places to eat in and around Hyderabad.
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