How to Do an SEO Audit (for Beginners!) | What You Need to Know Before Diving Into Your Site's SEO

You shouldn’t wait for your car to breakdown before visiting a mechanic.

Regular inspections help you identify andfix problems before they get out of hand, and they ensure your vehicle operates at peakperformance.

Just like your car requires regular inspections, your search engine optimization strategy needs ongoing maintenance to continue driving thebest results.

This maintenance is called an SEO audit.

Want to learn more about what an SEO auditis and how it keeps your site ranking at the top of search results? Just keep watching! What is an SEO audit? SEO audits take a deep dive into your siteto evaluate numerous factors that impact your ability to rank in search engine results pagesor SERPs.

These elements include your website’s on-and off-page SEO, as well as technical SEO performance.

In this video, I’m going to explain thedifferent parts of an SEO audit, tell you how to do an SEO audit, and identify somehelpful tools to help you get started.

Before I dive in, don’t forget to like thisvideo and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get result-driving digital marketing contentfrom our experts.

So, you want an answer to the question: Whatis an SEO audit? SEO audits contain several layers you’llwant to pay attention to when auditing your site’s SEO.

A really useful tool you can use before youdive into your website is our SEO checker.

Once you type in your information, our SEOchecker can do a quick audit of your site, give you an SEO score, and tell you what’sworking and not working.

I’d suggest pausing this video and runningthat report so you can come back, follow along with your report, and really understand howan SEO audit can help you.

It only takes a few minutes! Ok! Let’s get down to business.

There are three parts of an SEO audit I mentionedearlier that I’m going to cover: On-page SEOOff-page SEO Technical SEOFirst, let’s discuss the on-page SEO portion of your SEO audit.

SEO audit part one: On-page SEOYour on-page SEO audit consists of site elements you can control and optimize, and a largeportion of that is the content.

In other words, an on-page SEO audit focuseson optimizing elements within your website that impact your site’s SERP rankings.

What better to get your content ranking thankeywords? Before you create content with keywords, youneed to understand what content is currently ranking and what people really mean when they’researching for a keyword.

Go through your competitors’ websites thatare ranking well on Google and see what they’re focusing on with their content.

Is there anything that they rank for thatyou don’t? Make sure your content is meeting the users’search intent, as well.

Search for your keyword in Google and seewhat comes up.

What are other top ranking sites doing thatis making people click? Sometimes, a keyword can start with “whatis, ” but the searcher is actually looking for a “how to.

” You’ll discover these subtle but importantnuances with some research that will help you rank! So, you understand why users are typing acertain keyword.

Now you have to use it in your content ifyou aren’t already.

You should be using keywords in your: headers, body content, title tag, and meta description.

I’ll break it down.

You should start by using keywords in yourheaders where they fit naturally.

So say you want to tell people why they shoulduse your affordable home improvement services.

You might want to start that section of yourwebsite with a bold header that tells them “why you should use our affordable homeimprovement services.

” Then, you’ll want to use “affordable homeimprovement services” and other similar variations of this keyword where it makessense throughout the body of your content.

Don’t stuff your keyword everywhere.

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That can actually hurt your SEO.

Be sure it makes sense if you read it outloud.

You can use related keywords in your contentto help give search engines the context of your page.

Tools like Ubersuggest, LSI graph, or evenrelated searches and Google autosuggest are great for helping you come up with relatedkeywords.

You should be looking for keywords in thetitle tag and meta description during your SEO audit, as well.

These show up in the search results and cangive users and search engine crawlers context to what your page contains.

Optimizing these with keywords can help boostyour pages in the SERPs.

Making it easier for search engines to findthe pages on your site is very important to your SEO.

A large part of that is internal linking, meaning when you’re creating new content, you should be linking to other pages on yoursite within that new piece of content.

Internal links make it so much easier fora search engine crawler (and people!) to find pages on your site, giving you an SEO boost.

If you’re writing a blog post about financialservices, and you have a page on your website listing your services, you should definitelybe linking to that page.

You’re helping your SEO and driving trafficto another page on your site.

Another important element of on-page SEO ishaving sitemaps that give search engine crawlers ways to find the pages on your site.

Two sitemaps you should have are HTML andXML sitemaps.

HTML sitemaps have links to every page onyour site, and can help both people and crawlers find pages that might not have internal linkspointing to them.

XML sitemaps are purely for search engines.

These are really great for helping searchengines find new pages to crawl.

If your site uses WordPress, you can use aplugin to generate your sitemap.

If you can’t use a plugin, you can createan XML sitemap online.

Once you have an XML sitemap, you can submitit to Google Search Console so it can be crawled.

It can get a little technical, so it mightbe best to partner with an SEO expert if you don’t have a lot of experience with XMLsitemaps.

Now that we’ve covered the on-page SEO portionof the SEO audit, let’s take a look at what you need for an off-page SEO audit.

SEO audit part two: Off-page SEOOff-page SEO consists of SEO elements that you don’t directly control, but you caninfluence.

For example, backlinks — or links to yoursite from other sites — are a key component of off-page SEO.

When a site with a good reputation onlineincludes a link to your site on one of their pages, they pass on some of the value of theirsite to yours.

Your pages gain more value, and you have thepotential for people to click the link on the other page and land on your website.

Backlinks can help you rank better for keywordsthat matter the most to your business.

The higher you are in the SERPs for relevantkeywords, the more valuable traffic you can get to your site.

Bringing traffic to your site for targetedkeywords can result in qualified leads, and then actual sales, for your business.

You should also be familiar with your backlinkprofile, and your competitors’ backlink profiles as part of the SEO audit.

Anyone linking to your competitors can potentiallybe linking to you.

Ahrefs offers a free backlink checker andMoz also offers their Link Explorer tool to help you see where you and your competitorsare getting links from—if at all.

We’re almost at the end! Time to discuss the third part of your SEOaudit: technical SEO.

SEO audit part three: Technical SEOThere is a lot to consider when auditing your technical SEO, and it can get pretty complicated.

It’s best to start simply.

A technical SEO audit takes a deeper diveinto the mechanics behind your site.

You can audit many, MANY other technical SEOelements other than the ones I’ll talk about, but focusing on these things can help youget started.

Does your website load quickly? Are the pages of your website loading quicklyto create a good user experience? Most websites today load within a few seconds, and searchers are used to that.

Around half of searchers won’t even waitfor your site to load if it takes longer than three seconds.

If your site is slow, people are going togo to one of those faster sites, increasing your bounce rate and hurting your rankingsin search results.

You can check your page speed during yourSEO audit with Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool, which will tell you how well your pageloads on mobile and desktop devices, and give you suggestions for fixing any issues.

Is your website, and all of its pages, mobile-friendly? How well does your website go from a desktopto a mobile device? In the last five years, mobile device usagehas exploded, and it currently makes up for over half of all web traffic.

People are spending a lot more time on theirmobile devices, too.

As of 2018, mobile users spend on averageover three hours a day on their phones, compared to just over two hours on a desktop.

Google now focuses on mobile-first when it’scrawling and indexing new sites because this is where a majority of users are viewing sitesand their content.

If someone on a phone sees the desktop versionof your website, parts are going to be cut off, the text might be unreadable.

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it’sreally not a good situation.

You’re going to lose that valuable web trafficto other sites that either have a mobile version, or change with a user’s screen size.

Is your page secure? Believe it or not, site security is an SEOranking factor.

And it’s been confirmed by Google too.

You might notice that at the top of a browser, next to the URL, there’s a message that says either secure or not secure.

If your website isn’t secure, anyone whoinputs their information into the site is at risk of having it stolen.

A secure website encrypts and protects thissite data.

It contributes to your site’s ranking andsends a signal to the user that they can trust your site.

Just think, if two companies sold similaritems online, and one site was secure while the other wasn’t, wouldn’t you feel betterentering your credit card information into the secure site? If you don’t have a lot of experience divinginto the backend of your website, you might consider consulting a web expert to secureyour site.

Well, that’s it for my answer to your question:What is an SEO audit? Don’t forget to run your site through ourSEO checker so you can get started improving your SEO.

It only takes a couple of minutes, and you’llget so many valuable insights to help you with your SEO.

There are a lot of steps to take when divinginto an SEO audit, and it can seem overwhelming, but that’s what we’re here for.

If you want expert help with your business’sSEO audit, contact our experts at WebFX online or by phone at 888-601-5359.

We want to make sure your SEO is up to speed.

For more videos about SEO and the wide worldof internet marketing, subscribe to our YouTube channel! See you soon!.