For example, it’s suggesting that we rewrite our list of the best keyword tools because it used to rank in the top three for its target keyword but now doesn’t even rank in the top 100. You can also double-check your organic search performance in Google Search Console. This is important to do because Ahrefs organic traffic numbers are estimations. Make sure your site uses HTTPS, which encrypts data and protects user information. If your site is still running on HTTP, install an SSL certificate and update all internal links accordingly.
How to Do a Basic Website Audit to Improve SEO and UX (in 10 Steps)
By analyzing your site with an SEO tool, you gain a clear understanding of what needs to be done to improve your ranking on Google. Many tools are out there, and they help you with different elements of the SEO audit at different levels of expertise. Neglecting SEO audits result in missed opportunities, declining traffic, and loss of potential customers.
For example, Google’s primary goal is to serve the best and most trustworthy content to users from reputable sources. Sites that comply with data privacy requirements will most likely be viewed as more authoritative than those that don’t have these essential legal policies. You can also use tools like Ahref’s backlink checker to take the guesswork out of analyzing the value of the links you gathered. We won’t waste your time with sales folks who don’t know what they’re talking about. You’ll sit down with a REAL digital marketing expert who will work to understand your business, your needs, and your SEO Anomaly goals. This invaluable information enables you to make informed decisions, refine your SEO strategy, and improve your website’s overall performance.
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You can use it to find out whether your page isn’t appearing or isn’t appearing properly in Google search results. As you can see above, it gives you a score based on your site issues. You’ll find a list of issues (along with the scoring) in the following topics. If you want to crawl unlimited URLs, you should go with their premium plan which costs you 150 Euros per year. As you can see above, it lists down all the issues that occurred within your site by sorting them out from high priority to medium to low priority. In case you want to guide on claiming Semrush free trial, check this guide.
The platform will showcase graphs on both mobile and desktop performance with an opportunity to open full reports with details and suggestions. With Core Web Vitals influencing rankings, it’s essential to guarantee seamless loading times and visual stability. The pages with duplicate titles and meta description tags are likely to have nearly identical content as well. Your pages will never show up in search without proper HTML tag optimization. Sometimes, we may accidentally link too many resources on a single page. Even if you add those outgoing links with good intentions, Google may perceive your site as spammy.
SEO Performance Audit: Key Insights and Metrics
First and foremost, if a person is unable to browse freely, he will quickly bounce from your website. In that regard, it is important to improve your website speed. First thing that you have to determine is whether your website is working properly. Before anything else, you need to create a viable strategy that will help you establish your goals.
Head over to the Resources restricted from indexing section and review the list of pages currently restricted from indexing. You can also Enable expert options to access advanced crawler settings for List Mode. It is especially important to check the domain for penalties when you buy an already-used one. There is a risk of buying not only the domain but also its previous penalties by Google. To avoid this trap, consult our guides on how to choose expired domains, and how not to get trapped into the Google sandbox during a website launch. There are two predominant data sets that Lighthouse/PSI use to determine your site’s score; lab data and field data.
This may be good for your traffic as it will encourage visitor’s interested in topic to keep coming, but it can also lead to duplicate content. All in all, SEOptimer is a great site audit tool which gives you plenty of information on your site issues along with the recommendations. This is a premium SEO audit tool so if you want to crawl more pages within your website, you need to pay for their premium plans. Serpstat is an affordable all in one SEO toolkit and its pricing starts just at $69/mo and it offers a Site Audit tool which evaluates how optimized a website is. It also shows you a list of all the technical issues that your website has. Site Audit tool from SEMrush scans your website for 130+ technical and SEO mistakes.
And it’ll help you identify broken links, understand your website’s architecture at a deep level, and much more. Another takeaway is that SEO audits have become more efficient and insightful with AI and automation. What used to take days of manual checking can now be streamlined – from crawling millions of pages quickly to using AI to analyze patterns in your data. Embracing these tools means you can conduct “free SEO audits” on the fly, anytime, with minimal effort – allowing you to focus more on strategy and less on grunt work. It’s no wonder that 37% of marketers use AI to automate time-consuming SEO tasks .
- It was probably the new links that had the most positive effect.
- High organic traffic indicates you’re bringing in and engaging users with targeted interests, which grows your site’s credibility.
- To find all broken links on your website, scroll down to Broken links in the Links section of the Site Audit module.
- If you need a detailed plan for optimizing these elements, see our SEO roadmap article for actionable next steps.
- Your competitor has X products (keywords) each one giving different results.
Issues we may find may include similar tag tags, duplicate content, HTML / code problems, load speeds, and more. Determining which are most important and which items will help you rank better is an essential part of our plan. Throughout the process, you will work with various team members at OuterBox and we’ll truly get to know your business. We hope the SEO audit is the first step in a long-term business relationship.