Your availability in local directories can make or break the attention you get from customers who are geographically close to your business. Be sure to create a free Google My Business page for your company so that you appear in searches for local keywords. It should be short, concise, and mention your brand name if possible. Try not to include numbers, underscores, or random letters SEO Anomaly as it can make your domain hard for Google (and users) to understand and remember. Implement relevant schema markup to enhance the appearance of your content in search engine results with rich snippets.
The Future of Google: Web Strategists Predict How AI Overviews & Other Search Changes Will Impact Traffic New Data
With this level of importance, it makes sense to know what links you have pointing to your site, from where and to which pages. Typically competitor data is also used to put your backlink profile into context. Whether you call it keyword research, search demand analysis, or keyword auditing, most SEOs would include it as part of their initial work with a client if it hadn’t already been carried out. Deliverables also vary – some audits may look to deliver granular recommendations for the optimization of content, whereas higher level audits may focus on feeding into a content strategy. Of course some may include all of these elements, depending on the agreed scope of the work. Once a solid technical foundation is in place, the next pillar of SEO to address is content.
To audit Flash, Search Console’s Mobile Usability Report will report if your site uses “incompatible plugins” including Flash. Like intrusive interstitials, it’s best to take a look at your page in a mobile browser to inspect how easy it is to get to your main content. If this task is made more difficult by a heavy ad presence, you likely want to mark it in your audit and experiment with reducing the top-of-page ad flow. Of course, you also want to check at this stage for keyword stuffing, and avoid it.
- Google Search Console has several tools available to help you appear in the SERPs for the search terms and phrases your target audience is looking for.
- Keep in mind that AI-powered tools can produce low-quality or even duplicate content that targets the wrong audience.
- Google Search Console helps you monitor your website’s presence in search results, uncover crawl errors, submit sitemaps, and see which keywords drive traffic to your pages.
- It includes elements from the previous levels and adds competitive analysis, backlink assessment, and an in-depth examination of your entire digital footprint.
So I can attest that each one is a quality option that should more than meet your SEO auditing needs. There’s a healthy bit of hair-splitting that goes on with naming SEO tool categories. SEO audit software, SEO rank trackers, keyword research tools, and more general SEO tools have a lot of crossover because the companies that do one thing well tend to do other things well, too. I’ve used plenty of SEO audit tools in my career, and to help you pick the right one for your needs, I spent even more time testing the top options. Whether or not Google uses user experience (UX) signals (like clicks) in its rankings algorithms has long been a topic of discussion in the world of SEO.
Next steps
A mobile-friendly website includes responsive design, appropriate text sizing, touch-friendly navigation, and fast loading times on mobile networks. The correct way to implement infinite scroll is with paginated loading, which means the URL changes as the visitor scrolls down the page. This allows users to share and bookmark specific pages of your content, as well as allows search engines to index individual sections of your content. Google recommends signaling your paginated loading using the History API, which tells the browser when to update the displayed URL as the user scrolls.
If you are unable to do so, you’ll have to go straight to the google search console. The first step to any link quality audit is to find any questionable links pointing to your domain. It’s not enough to simply review what links you personally posted and where; you’ll want to take a look at every link on the web pointing back to your site. You can do this using a free tool like Moz’s Open Site Explorer, or some other external link-based search system. Many search marketers know this information, but still, fail to perform a site audit regularly.
Epiic performs comprehensive SEO audits for businesses operating in all industries. As search engine algorithms and Google Search Essentials continually change, we’ll ensure your website meets the latest requirements and standards. Download The Complete Technical SEO Audit Workbook now and get the tools you need to supercharge your SEO audit process. With any SEO audit, the right SEO tools provide an immensely powerful resource. In addition, it includes another dimension of SEO issues using its own interpretation of SEO best practices. But because of this, it’s always the job of the SEO analyst to help identify these issues and prioritize them in a way that makes sense to the client.
Evaluate Local SEO
Still—whenever possible, you should make sure all your pages are as optimized as possible for keywords that will help them show up in organic search. As with beefing up thin content, there are certain pages on your site where it’s not going to be feasible to fully optimize for target and ancillary keywords. You’ve squeezed “employee scheduling software” onto your homepage in multiple places. That’s a keyword best reserved for a blog post (check out our SEO blog post templates here). Building links is a vital part of accruing website authority, and no SEO audit is complete without recommendations for building site-specific internal and external links.
If you have traffic drops coinciding with major updates, this can tell you what areas likely need your focus. Websites without an SSL certificate appear as “Not Secure” in browsers, which deter visitors. It is important to make sure your site is safe for both users and search engines. Writing meta descriptions and optimized title tags will help with SEO by encouraging users to click on your page and telling Google what your page is about. Your sitemap is what it sounds like — a map of all the main pages on your website. You need a sitemap to make it easier for users and search engines to navigate and crawl your website.
It’s ideal for businesses with medium-sized websites seeking to enhance user experience and technical performance. Run a comprehensive technical SEO audit with ease and find common issues such as duplicate content, broken links, meta title issues, or slow pages. The good news is that there are several free and paid search engine optimization (SEO) tools for monitoring and auditing your site, like HubSpot’s SEO Marketing Software. Not only can these tools help you improve your ranking, they can help you reduce or eliminate the impacts of Google updates that may sweep through your industry. Not only do internal links help your external link building efforts, but they also make for a better website experience for both search engines and users.