SEO audit - what is it and what should it contain?

SEO audit is the first step to properly validate the site and start working on the positioning of the site. It should be performed even before choosing the method of traffic acquisition, even if we aim at toll traffic.

Without properly conducted SEO audit and the process of optimising the website or blog, none of the actions will have an effect. This is due to the lack of actions that ensure that the website is optimised for search engines and their standards. Without the acceptance of our site by search engine robots, it becomes impossible to achieve high positions in the search listings. In spite of work and activities on the effects, we will not gain a satisfactory number of new visits from organic traffic.

SEO audit - what is it?

The range of activities undertaken during the execution of SEO audit is designed to find out and check basic information about the website. During the audit, every element of the website is checked, starting with the entries, through the correct display of the website on other devices, to issues requiring basic knowledge of the HTML.

Speed of page display and its correctness for mobile devices

Probably no one would want to wait several minutes to view a page where navigating to a subpage borders on the miraculous or the page does not display correctly. In the context of your own website, the situation is identical. More and more traffic and activity on the internet is coming from mobile devices, and if such a person does not see our website, we are losing visitors through no fault of our own.

Checking the textual content

This is a fundamental activity in audit seo. It is intended to make sure that keywords are selected appropriately, that the density of keywords is not too high, but also to check that internal links are correctly made and, above all, that there are no duplicates on the page. It may seem that if we paste information received from the manufacturer as a product description in an online shop, we will ensure high quality. Nothing could be further from the truth; search engines detect duplicate content without problems. The basis of our website is unique content that takes SEO correctness into account.

The SEO audit takes into account

Positioning by SEO audit guarantees the quality of the activities carried out. In addition to ruling out errors and indicating correct elements to be improved, SEO audit also presents a marketing strategy. By choosing the right keywords, knowing the strengths of the competition and ensuring quality content on the website, positioning can begin.

Benefits of action - SEO audit, positioning

Provided a well-executed audit on the basis of which SEO actions are taken, a website will achieve high positions for the selected keywords. As a result, after a well-executed SEO service, a much higher ranking will be noticeable. organic traffic on the website. By providing the site with a source of organic traffic, by acting SEO auditthen it is time to gain visitors and customers through other channels. Immediately after positioning activities, the most frequently chosen route is an advertising campaign Google AdWords with advertising CPC (Cost per click), in which we only pay for the effect, i.e. a click on our link. Facebook advertising can be an additional alternative. Depending on the target audience, this is often where we achieve better results or comparable results to Google Ads.

SEO audit - can you do it yourself?

SEO audit is the basis and beginning of any cooperation with an SEO specialist. Without a properly performed audit, there can be no satisfactory results. When conducting an SEO audit, a professional will check many parameters (some of which we have already mentioned in the previous paragraphs). In addition, he or she will carry out keyword analysisas well as how your competitors are performing. Performing an audit also enables you to identify errors that negatively affect the position of your website. In addition to errors, the SEO will also find elements that are correct, but can still be improved.

Many of you are probably now wondering if hiring an SEO specialist is your only option. Perhaps you'd like to increase your website's visibility, but can't currently budget for an audit? We have good news for you - SEO audit you can do yourself. Of course, this will not be an easy task, especially if the subject of optimisation is new to you. However, with enough time and determination, you will do step-by-step SEO audit. Want to know how? Read the following paragraphs of our article.

Home-based, free SEO audit - what will you need?

However, good intentions alone are not enough to perform an SEO audit. For an effective analysis of your site, you need the right tools. Don't be afraid to pay for them. Yes, some of the full versions may be a bit on the expensive side, but in most cases, free alternatives or trial versions will suffice.

Here is a list of the basic tools you will need:

• from Google: Search Console, Analytics and Keyword Planner - using the Google Search Console You will find out which keywords your website is displaying for and which ones are generating traffic. In addition, you will examine indexing errors using Search Console. However, in order to make use of Google Search Console, you must not only have a Google account, but also verify domain ownership. In turn Google Analytics is used to analyse website traffic. Using it, you can check how your traffic translates into your business goals. The last tool in the Google "package" is Keyword PlannerThe keyword planner. It will tell you how often a keyword is searched for and give you suggestions for phrases.
• Senuto - Although it is not free, it offers a trial period of 7 days. Senuto is a multifunctional tool with which you can check which phrases your competitors are visible on. Definitely worth using.
• Screaming Fog - is a tool that crawls, collects data on the structure, content on a page. It analyses and reports all the data needed for an SEO audit. You can use it for free, provided your pages have no more than 500 subpages.

How to perform an SEO audit - step by step

You already know what tools will be useful to perform a website audit. So it's time to get started with a free audit so you know how to improve your website's position in Google search results!

Check the visibility of the site

Using Google Search Console or the trial version of Senuto, find out what the current page visibility in Google. Research which keywords and positions it can be found for in organic search results. Export the results to CSV format and enter the data into e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. Remove all unnecessary phrases unrelated to your business. Leave only those phrases that you think are used by potential customers.

Analyse key phrases

You already know what phrases your website appears for in Google searches. Now it's time to find out the other side of the coin - the queries that web users type in. Find out what words your potential customers. Google Keyword Planner can help at this stage. In addition to the phrases for which you are visible and those searched for by your target group, include phrases that you think are missing and that directly relate to the service or product you offer.

However, this is not the end of the keyword work. Be sure to find about 3-4 domains that are Your competition in terms of Google search results. Bear in mind that this will not necessarily be your direct "offline" competition either. The "competition" tab in Senuto will be indispensable for this task. From there, select your strongest "opponents" and then study their visibility. Of course, not all of their phrases will be useful to you, but it is very likely that you will find interesting suggestions among them.

If you have followed the steps above, there is probably a lot of data in your sheet. Do not feel overwhelmed. First of all divide the phrases into groups related to users' intentions. Search intentions can be very different. The main ones we distinguish are: navigation, information and transaction. From the point of view of SEO activities, intentions belonging to the 'navigation' category are of low value. Why? Because the user knows what page he wants to visit. He just doesn't know how to get there, so he uses a search engine. Intentions of the "information" type mean that the Internet user's goal is to find the answer to a certain query. He or she has no intention of buying yet. The 'transaction' intention means that someone is already ready to perform a specific action - such as making a purchase. It is the searches associated with this intention that have the highest conversion rate.

Analyse the site structure

Carefully examine the current site structure. The more elaborate the structure, the better for the visibility of the site. Does the current website have all the planned sub-pages? Maybe you need to expand it with sub-pages optimised for selected keywords? Do you already have content that you will put on the new pages? After all, this will largely determine the traffic and visibility of your website.

Check that the website is correctly indexed

Indexing, which is the scanning of each page by Google's bot, is designed to allow the search engine to decide whether a page is worth adding to the index at all. Not indexed? You are not in the search results. The number of indexed addresses URLYou can check this in Google Search Console. The tool has a special section on indexing. What does the ideal situation look like? Indexed are as many URLs as you have subpages. What about situations where, due to errors, one sub-page has several copies indexed? You need to eliminate this type of situation. This can be done using 301 redirects, the disallow command, the noindex or canonical tag.

Content audit

Content analysis is a very important stage of the audit. Obviously, if a page currently has little content, it will be a long-term task to supplement it. Each subpage should be exhaustively saturated with content that matches the visitor's intentions. However, the audit will also serve to find possible errors. 

One of the most common abnormalities is duplication of content. It occurs when the same content occurs in several places on the web (external duplication) or is duplicated on several pages within the same site (internal duplication). If you want to ensure that this disadvantageous phenomenon does not occur in your case, you need to ask yourself a few questions. Are the product descriptions on the website (especially for online shops) unique? Are large blocks of content repeated on sub-pages? Or does the website have a different language version? Has it been fully translated (no fragments in Polish)? Are the title and meta descriptions unique for each subpage? When adding a certificate SSLHave you done a proper redirect? If not, Google will see two, duplicate pages! For checking duplicate content, tools will come in handy. These can be Siteliner, Copyscape (external duplication) or Screaming Frog.

The second content problem that can arise is cannibalisation of content. This ominous-sounding phenomenon consists of more than one subpage of a domain being optimised for the same key phrase. For this reason, two (or even more) addresses "fight" with each other for position in Google. Cannibalisation is the result of duplicate content. Why does cannibalisation occur? Because robots have a problem determining which page is more relevant to a given keyword. For this reason, we will see page A one time after typing in this query and page B the next. They will exchange space. The result of cannibalisation is less traffic from the search engine.

Content problems continue

The third problem is the so-called "thin content". These are simply pages of very low quality that have virtually no value from the point of view of the Internet user. They may be automatically generated pages, pages without content or duplicate pages when entering an SSL certificate. It is imperative that they are blocked from being indexed, as the effect of their presence may be to lower the position of the entire domain. 

The final defect to be noted during the content audit is content formatting. First and foremost, you need to ensure that each sub-page has one H1 heading (no more, no less). It is a good idea to include the keyword phrase for which the page is to be positioned. You should also use lower-level headings - H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. A clear structure will make your site user-friendly as well as bot-friendly.

Page loading speed

Loading speed affects a website's position in Google, but not directly. Why? Because it affects the behaviour of internet users, and these in turn are not without influence on the search engine algorithms. Imagine a situation like this. You have written a great article, you are convinced that it will win the hearts of visitors. Someone decides to open the page, but seconds pass and it still loads! Most people will simply give up and decide to visit your competitors! How will Google interpret this situation? It will consider that the page does not meet the expectations of search engine users typing in a given query and will lower your position in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Page). 

Technical audit

A technical SEO audit requires specialist knowledge, but if you feel up to it, you can analyse issues such as site crawling, internal linking or optimisation graphic designer.

Crawling is Googlebot's scanning of the internet. Crawler (also known as Spider) is a programme used to find, read content and index pages. Do you want your content to exist on the Internet? First, Google has to find them. This is done in two ways. The first is for the bot to follow links from already known sites (remember that Google's search process is continuous). The second way is for the site owner to submit a map of the site.

Site mapA site map is a file (usually in XML format) that contains all the active URLs of a site. A professionally produced map should include a graphics map in addition to the update dates of the individual pages. What task does a site map? Allows robots to index quickly. In this way, addresses will be added to the search engine index efficiently. The site map has to be submitted to a special Google Search Console tool. Is there an alternative? Yes. You can use the appropriate Google form ("submit URL") to submit new pages to the site. However, if you need to add, for example, several hundred or several thousand addresses, entering them manually is a waste of time.

Technical audit - internal linking and image optimisation

Internal linking is a tool with which you can significantly improve your position in search results. Therefore, during your SEO audit, check in Google Search Console how the links on your site are distributed (Links-Pages with the most internal links). Internal linking works on two fronts - it helps the search engine to understand and rank the site, and it also helps visitors to navigate the site. Check your existing linking for the following. Does the text anchor Is the link text appropriate? Are no phrases too general being linked? Are articles from the same category being linked to one another? Are you not using the same phrase to link to different posts? This can lead to cannibalisation. Are there not too many links on one subpage? Remember that the strength of links depends on the number of links, and that the strongest links are those leading from the home page. 

Optimisation graphic designer is very important for SEO reasons. It is not a discovery that most of us are visual learners and we often buy with our eyes. Websites with high-quality, aesthetically pleasing images that match the content are more likely to be visited by internet users. In the case of online shops, they also contribute to higher conversions. How do you make it easier for robots to analyse information about graphics? Pay attention to the size of the image, its name and alt attribute. The larger the graphic, the longer it will take to load.

According to Google's own guidelines, the maximum size of files that are displayed on a page is 200 kilobytes. Publicly available compression tools should be used, which will reduce the size of images without visibly compromising quality. As for the name, it should be as descriptive as possible. However, do not use diacritical marks (Polish characters) in it. Just as important as the name is the alt text attribute. This is a short text which will be displayed in case the image cannot be loaded. It should describe what is in the image and contain relevant key phrases.

Will a home SEO audit be authoritative?

You may feel overwhelmed by the amount of information we have included in the previous paragraphs. And you must be aware that we have not covered every possible step of an SEO audit. Are you wondering if you are up to the task? If you are going to perform the audit yourself for the first time, you will certainly encounter some difficulties that you will not be able to overcome. First of all, you may have problems interpreting the results due to your lack of experience. This in turn leads to misleading conclusions.

But don't be discouraged - you can still carry out a somewhat 'truncated' SEO audit. You can easily undertake less demanding tasks. Analyse the current positions of your domain in Google search. Also analyse page addresses for duplication, as well as sub-pages for meta titles and descriptions. Check how long the site takes to load and how it presents itself on mobile devices. Don't forget to examine internal linking.

SEO audit - summary

An SEO audit is the cornerstone of all SEO activities. If you are going to conduct it yourself, follow the basic steps we mentioned in the previous paragraph. If you implement the changes correctly, you can count on an improvement in your website's visibility after approximately 2-3 months. Remember, however, that positioning specialists in e.g. SEOSkiThey have experience and knowledge of SEO audits. As a result, they will carry out the audit professionally and efficiently. For a layman in the field of optimisation, this task will be time-consuming and exhausting.