Free SEO Audit Tool Online
It is recommended that you perform an SEO audit of your site every six months. This means auditing your rankings, backlink profile, existing content… anything that could be hindering your search performance. We understand SEO can be extremely daunting. This post will break down a basic, but powerful DIY SEO audit to find top issues with your site, and don't forget to use our free SEO audit tool online.
9 Step DIY SEO Audit
1. Only one version of your site should be browsable.
Think of all the ways someone can type your website in. You should choose only one to be accessible and the others should do a 301 redirect to the canonical version. (http vs https and www. vs none).
This is a priority fix if you find issues with it. We would recommend you use https:// (either www or non-www) because a ranking boost is given for SSL enabled sites. Before continuing on to further audit your site, you will want to fix any of these issues. If you need help fixing these issues before continuing with your audit Contact Us.
2. SEO crawling
Next you will want to perform a website crawl with an SEO analyzer tool. This will spider the site in the same way as Google. It will give you access to useful information on your site structure and current SEO setup. You can google SEO crawling tool tons of options will pop up, some free, and some charge a small fee. A solid free option is Beam Us Up.
3. Check for indexation issues within Google
If you are not indexed in Google, you basically don’t exist. To check that you are indexed is simple.
Google Search Console > Google Index > Index Status or search in Google using the site: yourdomain.com
Without indexed pages you will not get any organic traffic. Ever. So if you are not seeing any pages indexed you need to stop here and fix the issue before continuing.
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4. Review on-page SEO
Start with your homepage and then proceed to other top visited pages on your website (if you performed your SEO crawling, you will know which pages those are).
Check for these things:
- Clickable and easy to read title tags
- Custom and optimized meta description (this won’t directly influence your ranking, but will help you get more clicks if written properly)
- Only one H1 tag per page
- Correct subheader usage
- Keyword optimized throughout
- Check for duplicate and thin content (Google hates both of these things. You can find potential duplicate content issues across the web with Copyscape and check word counts with WordCounter - we suggest 200+ words per page)
5. Check page load times
Page loading speeds are incredibly important for organic rankings in Google. Using Google PageSpeed Insights you can get a good idea of where you are at. If your load speeds are high you will want to work to fix these issues ASAP. It will most definitely help improve your organic rankings.
Continue reading the last three DIY SEO Audit Tips or
Contact us to optimize your page speed.
6. Check that your rankings are increasing
Next, pull up your Google Analytics account and take a peek. We are looking for any drastic dips or continual decreases. If you are noticing these it could mean Google is penalizing your site for something and you will want to look into this further.
7. Review backlinks
Having high-quality backlinks can greatly improve your organic search rankings. You can check your backlink activity with Google Analytics. Head to “All Traffic” and select “Referrals.” The “Referral Traffic” section will show all the linking domains under the “Source” column. Check individual backlinks by clicking on one of the domains and looking at the “Referral Path.”
8. Fix broken links
First, we should start by saying find the broken links. Broken links will wreak havoc on your organic ranking and it can be an easy fix. You will want to either update the page with appropriate content, redirect to a relevant live page, or if the page has no backlinks associated with it you can leave it as a 404.
9. Find keyword opportunities
This is extremely important when it comes to auditing. Keeping a continual pulse on what keywords your competition is ranking for that you are not can help set up your future strategy and growth goals. There are plenty of free keyword research tools you can use for this, including our free SEO Audit tool online.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Once you have completed this DIY SEO audit, your site should be in a much better position to rank organically within Google. If you are looking for a more comprehensive audit that reviews over 100 parameters of your site, we recommend considering our Premium SEO Audit. This includes a consultation with our SEO experts and allows you to build a strong foundation for your SEO strategy.
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