It’s true: there are many methodologies out there when it comes to an SEO audit. However, with so many available, it can be tricky to know where to start. Fortunately, your search is over. Below we have packed in all the juicy information you seek, cut out the fluff, and put together the ultimate SEO audit checklist.
SEO Audit Types
Before we dive into the most important checklist SEO audit steps, let’s take a step back. Now, you might already know that an SEO audit is, in essence, a way to review your SEO efforts and ensure they’re hitting their maximum potential; it’s the optimisation of your search engine optimisation. However, did you know there are different types of SEO audits?
When you’re handling a large website, one with a wide assortment of content, it’s recommended to perform several focused SEO audits rather than a general audit. This approach can ensure you don’t leave any stone unturned.
Here’s a quick look at the different types of SEO audits:
- SEO content audit: When it comes to an SEO content audit checklist, the purpose is to enhance the quality, recency and accuracy of your content. In doing so, you can boost your search rank, improve traffic and even become a featured snippet.
- Technical SEO audit: This audit aims to improve performance metrics such as website security and speed. An SEO technical audit checklist will cover spam prevention, the switch to HTTPS from HTTP, reorganising and fixing code, and more.
- On-page SEO audit: Meta titles and descriptions, image compression, and keyword placement – these are the backend elements an on page SEO audit checklist includes.
- Off-page SEO audit: This involves exploring the external elements you use for your SEO, such as link building. An off-page SEO audit checklist involves link relevancy, recency, quality, quantity, distribution and more.
- Local SEO audit: This audit covers practices that enhance your local search rank. While generally smaller in scale, it will involve aspects from all of the above audits.
With that covered, let’s move on to the meat of the content. Below is a well-rounded, free SEO audit checklist you can use to enhance the overall performance of your SEO efforts.
SEO Site Audit Checklist
If you’re searching for an effective SEO site audit checklist, look no further. We have compiled a selection of the essential elements required for an SEO audit.
Find (and Fix) Technical Errors
With any technical SEO audit checklist, the first task is to identify and correct any technical errors present on your website.
Common issues include:
- Broken links
- Redirects
- Duplicate content
- Noindex tags
- Meta tags that are too long or too short
Thankfully, you don’t have to go through your site manually, looking at each issue one by one to spot any errors. There are various tools – both paid and free – that allow you to crawl your site for potential problems.
Optimise Page Speed
Another point that cannot be left off a technical SEO audit checklist is your website’s page speed. A sluggish, unresponsive site will be punished by Google – and your organic rankings will plummet as a result.
To tick this element off your SEO tech audit checklist, your first step should be to use Google’s PageSpeed Insights. As the name suggests, this tool details what aspects of your site are performing well and which ones require work to be brought up to speed (pardon the pun). It also delivers insights for both mobile and desktop.
Once you have gathered suggestions for improvement, it’s about putting these into practice. These solutions could be everything from image compression to incorporating lazy loading.
Switching to HTTPS
As we’ve already mentioned two of the big hitters for a technical SEO audit checklist, we might as well make it a trio. Another crucual point for your SEO tech audit checklist is to make the move from HTTP to HTTPS.
Now you may have already done this for your website. If so, feel free to move on to the next section below. If you haven’t, here are three reasons to switch to HTTPS:
- It’s more secure
- It’s faster
- It’s a Google ranking signal
Simply put, you cannot afford to continue running your website on HTTP. It’s a thing of the past from an SEO standpoint.
Deal with Thin, Low-Quality Content
Site content is an integral component of any SEO audit. You want to have high-quality, original, and in-depth content that will please both your audience and Google. The opposite of that – aka thin, duplicate, and low-quality content – will only harm your site’s status.
For your SEO audit checklist, ensure you review your site and deal with any content that’s not hitting the right notes. You don’t have to remove this content necessarily; it could simply be a case of tweaking and adding up-to-date information to optimise its performance.
Find Link-Building Opportunities
Link building is imperative for improving website authority. As a result, no audit SEO checklist is complete without an attempt to spot – and utilise – link-building opportunities for your site.
Internal links are the first place to start. These are easy to incorporate, as you can simply search your site for older content and add it to your new content when relevant – like we’ve just done here.
External links are trickier, though. One way of acquiring external links to your website (also known as “backlinks”) is to find authoritative sites within your industry, reach out to webmasters, and see if they’d be willing to share your link on their platform – perhaps through guest posting, as an example. Alternatively, you can always entrust your link-building to experts who fulfill this challenging task on behalf of clients – as we do here at Click Intelligence.
Keyword Analysis
As part of your SEO site audit checklist, it pays off to complete a full keyword analysis. By delving into the data, you could make keyword discoveries you didn’t expect – such as certain keywords performing better than others. For instance, long-tail keywords often bring in more traffic than higher-volume keywords.
You shouldn’t only look at your site’s keywords, either. Your SEO audit checklist should also cover looking at current trends. Certain keywords can see a significant boost in relevancy, and it’s important to stay on top of these developments. The quicker you add these keywords to your content, the better your chance of getting more organic traffic to your site.
If you need any help with this or any part of SEO auditing and strategy, don’t hesitate to contact our friendly teams for assistance – they’re only an email or phone call away!
