A successful SEO audit requires a meticulous and comprehensive approach. From understanding your audience’s pain points, questions, and search queries to identifying focused phrases and capitalizing on featured snippet opportunities to optimizing your content structure and embracing webmaster tools, the following steps will help you boost your website’s performance:
Also, ensure you regularly monitor the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console and check for 404 errors and broken pages in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Keyword Research
A successful SEO campaign begins with keyword research. This helps you understand what people are searching for when they visit your client’s website, and it can also help you identify keywords that could be performing better.
Using this information, you can create a list of targeted keywords and analyze how competitive they are. You can then use this data to create an SEO strategy for your client.
In optimizing website performance, businesses frequently refer to an SEO audit checklist, a comprehensive tool that aids in identifying and rectifying critical areas for improved search engine visibility and ranking.
When conducting an SEO audit, focusing on the page-level factors that matter most is essential. This includes factors like E-A-T, duplicate content, and keyword cannibalization (when two pages compete for the same search query). It’s also crucial to review how pages are organized sitewide. This will make it easier to spot issues that could negatively impact rankings in the future.
On-Page Optimization
Once you’ve done the technical part of your audit, it’s time to move on to on-page optimization. This is where you analyze each page on the client’s website to improve its performance and optimize it for search engines.
This includes title tags, meta descriptions, headings, alt text for images, and more. The key is to balance the content to be keyword-focused and provide a great user experience.
Avoid keyword stuffing, which is when you repeat your keywords too often within the text. Instead, focus on a keyword density of 1-2% while sprinkling your keywords naturally throughout the text.
Link Building
A significant part of an SEO audit is identifying and addressing issues affecting the site’s search engine rankings. This includes monitoring mobile-friendliness, schema markup, duplicate content, and broken links.
One of the most effective ways to build links is through competitor research. For example, suppose a competing tech company has an in-depth article about a new industry development but needs to detail how it works. In that case, you can create your comprehensive piece and contact them with an offer to link to it.
Just be careful not to use spammy or manipulative techniques, which can result in Google penalizing your website and removing it from the search results. Instead, focus on natural, high-quality link-building that aligns with your goals and adds value to your audience.
Content Marketing
A website inspection checklist is a professional’s most essential SEO audit tool. This can take the guesswork out of finding and repairing quality problems on a website, which can help boost your credibility as an SEO expert and ensure that your clients get the best service possible.
Analytics
As an SEO professional, you’ll have access to much information that your clients don’t. Our job is to distill this jargon-heavy audit report into something easy for them to understand.
For example, your client might want to know how many web pages are indexed by search engines. This is important because if a page isn’t indexed, it won’t appear for search query results.
Then, your client might also want to know if any of their web pages are experiencing “keyword cannibalization.” This is when two different web pages on a website are competing for the exact search query keywords. This is a problem because it confuses Google and forces it to decide which page SEO should prioritize.
