SEO Audit

SEO factors checklist for website audit

The SEO site audit is a very important part of website promotion, as lays down a foundation of an SEO strategy. Thanks to the audit, you can improve the result and reduce the cost of website promotion, thus increasing the profit.

An SEO audit is an analysis of a website regarding a number of important factors that directly affect its ranking in search results. The study identifies any optimization gaps that need to be worked on and SEO factors that need to be improved to increase search visibility. An audit reveals the uncovered potential of the website for your business.

Let's consider in detail what parameters may negatively impact website optimization. Once you fix these issues, you will achieve higher results at a lower cost.

• Duplicate pages and content. Often, high-quality websites rank poorly precisely because of the large number of duplicates in the Google index. In the audit, we analyze which pages are accessible, which ones are indexed and whether there are any duplicates.
• Robots.txt. This file does not contribute to the promotion of the website, but errors in its rules for search engines can be critical. We check if the robots.txt file is configured correctly.
• Sitemap.xml. For large resources, search engines often cannot index all pages. In such cases, it is necessary to set their priority for scanning and indexing. We analyze the correctness of the sitemap configuration.
• 301, 302, 403, and 404 responses. We check the correctness of the website server response code. All non-existent addresses must return the 404 response code of the server with the optimized 404 page. There should be no broken links in the internal linking. Also, only URLs with a response code 200 should be used, 301 and 302 redirects should be avoided.
• Validity of the code. This parameter can have a negative impact on technical optimization. Therefore, we check the HTML code and recommend eliminating the detected issues. We use the Validator.w3 tool to check the validity of the website's source code.
• Indexation errors. Google Search Console is a powerful tool that helps webmasters and SEO specialists. We investigate all indexation errors and coverage issues flagged in GSC. We find their root cause.
• Website usability. Excellent usability will not only increase conversion rates but also have a positive impact on search rankings by improving user behavior on the website. Search engines take behavioral factors into account, so they influence the website's rankings. We examine user behavior on the website, the number of clicks and page views, depth of scrolling, bounce rates, and other analytical data that reveals the usability of the website.
• Website structure. A well-designed structure is a guarantee of a website's convenience, functionality, and growth potential. The more pages that meet the various needs of your customers, the greater the potential of the website. We check if the most important pages are just one click away from the home page. We also examine the structure of the directories, the optimization of filter pages, the intersection of search queries, and the availability of landing pages for popular niche keywords.
• Internal linking. In addition to menus, pages with second-level nesting should be accessible via links in the content, in calls to action. Internal linking of categories and related products on large portals deserve special attention. For online stores and large portals, internal linking can increase traffic many times.
• Meta tags. These are among the most important factors for high rankings in search. We analyze the title and meta description of all pages. We check if they meet Google's requirements and best SEO practices in terms of length, keyword presence, and relevance to the page's content.
• Semantic core. This is an evaluation of the quality of the keywords collected and the integrity of the semantic core for your business online. Evaluation of the correctness of the website structure in accordance with the semantic core.
• Keyword research. The main principles - selecting search queries that are semantically related to the keywords for which your website ranks; finding valid search queries that match your products or services but are not used in the website content; identifying competitor keywords that generate organic search traffic.
• Landing Pages. Evaluate the right selection of landing pages and their number in relation to the keyword groups collected. Commercial keywords should lead to categories or product pages only.
• Content. Analyzing the completeness and quality of textual content is very important. Quality and useful content must be written in accordance with the semantic core and target the most relevant keywords.
• Content uniqueness. This is crucial because non-unique text can lead to search engine penalties. We check for pages with non-unique or missing content and offer a copywriting plan to fill in all gaps.
• Use of keywords. The most important rule of copywriting: copy should be written for people, but with search engines in mind as well. Google prefers websites for users, but the resource will not rank high without the use of the right keywords. We investigate whether keywords are used and whether it is done naturally.
• Backlinks analysis. We analyze the external links to the website and its donors. We pay special attention to the quality of donor sites: any spammy or suspicious resources should be eliminated.
• Anchor text analysis. Google does not like any anchor and link spamming. And the easiest way to find unnatural links is to analyze the anchor list. If the anchors are not natural, websites will be penalized by the Penguin algorithm.

SEO audit is only the beginning of the process

A professional SEO audit will help you make your website more search engine friendly. The path to building a wide presence on the internet and getting high rankings on Google starts with improving your search engine optimization. Website improvement must start with an SEO audit.

Our audit report includes a list of recommendations for the website owner and technical tasks for developers and copywriters. Implementing the changes will help the website attract more visitors, improve search engine rankings for targeted keywords, and thus increase company profits.

There are a variety of SEO factors that affect a website's ranking in organic search results. An SEO audit will help you better understand which factors you can improve on your website. Identifying pages and areas that need improvement, together with thorough keyword research, is a must-have for a successful SEO strategy. However, this is not a one-time task, because SEO must be maintained regularly.