Evaluating a Site’s Health with an SEO Website Audit for B2B
What is an SEO Website Audit?
An SEO website audit is an analysis of a website to determine how well it is optimized for search engine visibility and ranking. The audit looks at factors such as site structure, on-page elements, off-page factors, and more.
An SEO website audit is important because it can help you identify problems that may be preventing your website from ranking well in search engines. It can also help you find opportunities to improve your website’s SEO.
There are many different ways to perform an SEO website audit. You can use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to crawl your website and look for technical issues. You can also manually check your website for things like broken links, duplicate content, and missing titles and meta descriptions.
When you’re performing an SEO website audit, it’s important to keep in mind that there is no “perfect” website. Every website has room for improvement, and your goal should be to identify the areas where your website can most improve its SEO.
You should perform an SEO website audit at least once per year, and more often if you make significant changes to your website. For example, if you change your website’s theme or add a lot of new content, you may want to perform an audit more frequently.
Performing an SEO website audit is an important part of maintaining a healthy website. By regularly auditing your website, you can identify problems and make changes to improve your website’s SEO.
Make Sure the Content is Visible
One of the most important parts of an SEO website audit is making sure that your website’s content is visible to search engines. If your content is not visible to search engines, it will not index or rank in search results.
There are a few ways to check if your content is visible to search engines. The first is to use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to crawl your website. This will show you which pages are being indexed by search engines.
If you’re using WordPress, you can also check your website’s visibility settings in the Yoast SEO plugin. Go to SEO → Search Appearance and make sure that the “Content” and “Media” options are set to “Visible.”
The second way to check if your content is visible to search engines is to look at your website’s robots.txt file. This file contains instructions for search engine crawlers. You can use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to view your website’s robots.txt file.
If you see that your content is set to “noindex” or “nofollow,” that means that it is not visible to search engines. You will need to change these settings for your content to indexe and rank in search results.
Ensure the Analytics/Tracking is Set Up
For your SEO website audit to be complete, you need to make sure that your analytics and tracking are set up properly. Without proper tracking, you won’t be able to measure the results of your SEO efforts.
There are a few things you need to do to make sure that your analytics and tracking are set up properly. First, you need to install the Google Analytics tracking code on your website. Second, you need to create goals and events in Google Analytics. And third, you need to make sure that your analytics account is linked to your Google Search Console account.
If you’re not sure how to set up your analytics and tracking, you can find instructions here:
- Install the Google Analytics Tracking Code on Your Website
- Create Goals and Events in Google Analytics
- Link Your Google Analytics and Search Console Accounts
Your SEO website audit is not complete until you have properly set up your analytics and tracking. Without proper tracking, you won’t be able to measure the results of your SEO efforts.
Perform a Site Crawl
One of the most important parts of an SEO website audit is to perform a site crawl. A site crawl will help you identify problems with your website’s structure and content.
There are a few different ways to perform a site crawl. The first is to use a tool that has been previously mentioned, like Screaming Frog SEO Spider. This tool will crawl your website and generate a report of any issues it finds.
The second way to perform a site crawl is to use Google Search Console. Go to Crawl → Fetch as Google and enter your website’s URL. Google will then crawl your website and show you any errors it finds.
You can also use a tool like DeepCrawl to crawl your website. DeepCrawl will provide you with a report of any issues it finds, as well as some recommendations on how to fix them.
Scan the Website for 404s
A 404 error is an HTTP status code that means that a page cannot be found. When a user tries to access a page that doesn’t exist, they will see a 404 error.
404 errors can be caused by several things. The most common reason for a 404 error is that a page has been deleted or moved. Another common reason is that a user has typed in the wrong URL.
404 errors can hurt your website’s SEO in two ways. First, they can cause users to have a bad experience on your website. Second, they can prevent search engines from indexing your website properly.
Auditing Robots.txt File
The robots.txt file is a text file that contains instructions for search engine crawlers. These instructions tell the crawlers what they can and cannot crawl on your website.
You can use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to view your website’s robots.txt file. If you see that your content is set to “noindex” or “nofollow,” that means that it is not visible to search engines. You will need to change these settings for your content to index and rank in search results.
Check the Website’s Mobile Friendliness
In 2015, Google updated its algorithm to give preference to mobile-friendly websites. This update, known as “Mobilegeddon,” had a significant impact on the SEO of many websites.
If your website is not mobile-friendly, it will hurt your SEO. To check the mobile-friendliness of your website, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
If your website is not mobile-friendly, you will need to make some changes to make it compliant with Google’s algorithm.
Check for Suspicious Backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. They are an important ranking factor in Google’s search algorithm.
However, not all backlinks are good. Some backlinks, known as “suspicious” or “toxic” backlinks, can hurt your website’s SEO.
To check for suspicious backlinks, you can use a tool like Moz’s Link Explorer.
If you find any suspicious backlinks, you will need to disavow them. Disavowing a link means that you are telling Google to ignore it.
To disavow a link, you will need to add the URL of the linking website to a text file and submit it to Google.
Access Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool that allows you to see how your website is performing in Google’s search results.
To access Google Search Console, you will need to create a free account. Once you have created an account, you can add your website and start exploring its data.
Checking Schema Markup
Schema markup is a code that you can add to your website to help search engines understand your content.
To check if your website has schema markup, you can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
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