SEO Audit is a standard process that any website must have. Its main purpose is to quickly identify the underlying issues affecting organic search performance.
What is SEO Audit? Why
do you need a website audit? An overall website
audit helps you know what your website is having. From there, you can improve
the overallperformance SEO of the entire website. This helps to increase overall keyword
rankings as well as specific SEO pages.
What is SEO Audit?
SEO Audit is the process of checking and evaluating the status of
a website to see how well it has been optimized. Evaluation is based on many
related criteria such as content, onpage, offpage... SEO Audit also means
"audit of optimization with search engines".
What is SEO Audit concept?
SEO Audit is like a
"medical examination" for a website. Check if the "health"
of the website is good and offer a "plan" to cure the disease. When
performing SEO Audit properly, you will get an overview on its website as:
Problem of sites, the traffic of the website, keyword analysis, improve the
technical aspects of the site, ...
You Think SEO Audit is a
rather complicated process, right? Because you need to analyze many aspects of
the business to determine what is working and what needs improvement. However,
the ultimate goal is still “How to improve rankings?”
When should SEO Audit?
You should perform an
SEO Audit at the following 3 times:
1. When starting a new project
In fact, before doing
anything, you need to create a specific strategy. Thanks to that, you will set
clear and precise strategic goals. And the same goes for the website! Do an SEO
Audit before doing anything else.
2. Beginning of each quarter
Performing an SEO Audit
at the beginning of each quarter will help you understand the SEO performance
of the previous quarter. See if the SEO performance of the time of the audit is
different from that of the past 3 months. If there is a big difference, then
adjust accordingly.
3. When the website has an abnormal phenomenon,
SEO Audit helps you
determine how your website is performing. However, if your website is a
small-scale website, you should not abuse SEO Audit. Take the time to do more
important work instead of just focusing on statistics.
If your website is medium or large in size, SEO
Audit is extremely necessary. Especially when you notice a decrease in traffic,
you need to perform a timely audit to detect and fix outstanding problems.
The parts that need to be audited on the website
Here are 4 main parts
that you cannot ignore when conducting an audit:
Technical SEO Audit
First, you need to
determine if your website is working properly or not. To do this, you need to
do a technical analysis.
Technical SEO analysis
includes the following two aspects:
Accessibility
Accessibility means the
ability that both Google and users can reach your website. If potential
visitors can't see your page, no matter how much new content you create, it
won't work.
First, you need to check
the robots.txt file and the robots meta tags. Because they can restrict access
to certain areas of your website. Sometimes, website administrators
accidentally block certain pages, making it impossible for Google to access them.
Both the meta tag and
the robots.txt file should be checked manually to make sure they don't have any
unusual problems.
XML diagrams are also an
important part of a website. They help create a guide map for Google's web
crawlers. You need to make sure that the XML schema is properly formatted and
sent to the site administrator's account.
Next, is the overall
website structure.
When performing an
audit, you need to make sure that users are only a few clicks away from moving
from the home page to the subsites. The fewer clicks, the easier it is for the
crawler to get to the landing page.
Sometimes, redirects
also cause a few minor problems. You can delete or move your content. However,
that makes it no longer possible for the crawler to access the page. To reopen
access, you need to create a redirect so that they can reach the moved page.
Above are ways to help
Google reach your website. What about users?
The first and most
important thing is that when users can't access your website freely, they will
immediately leave. Therefore, try to improve the website loading speed.
Even if you find a
certain interface pleasing to the eye, consider whether your visitors are
really impressed with it. Most users want when surfing the web to get
information quickly and reliably.
Today, the number of
people using mobile devices to access the Internet is increasing day by day.
Therefore, you need to adjust your website to be mobile-friendly. As a result,
users can perform all options right on mobile devices without having to go to
desktop computers.
Indexability
After having analyzed
and met all the technical requirements, you can start to have your website
indexed.
When it comes to Google,
reach and indexability go hand in hand. Both of these factors will determine
whether your pages are shown to users or not.
Reachability refers to
whether or not crawlers can access your pages. Meanwhile, indexability refers
to whether these pages show up in search engines after visiting or not.
In some cases, when the
robot has looked through your content but does not show these pages to the
user. So what is the cause of this problem?
First, it could be due
to a Google penalty.
This is the main reason
why some pages are not displayed. Because crawlers behave differently between
websites. If your website is large-scale with a lot of content, the landing
pages will be indexed immediately.
On the other hand,
bloggers also post some content from time to time. And these content are
indexed more slowly.
Many people will be
afraid that Google has imposed a penalty when it discovers accessibility
problems or some minor problems with the website. However, if your website is
really hacked, Google will send a notification to the webmaster tool account.
In that field, you'll
need to:
- Identify
the reason for the penalty
- Troubleshooting
- Ask Google to reconsider
In the worst case scenario, you'll have to pay
some fees and fix the problem.
Onpage SEO Audit
SEO illustrationOnpage
SEOAfter conducting
Technical Audit your website is complete, looks pretty good. Everything on the
website is arranged in order. Both the user and the robot can access the
website. Everything is always in normal working condition.
Next, you need to look
at each page one by one. There are two ways to analyze onpage:
General Content Issues
All your posts should
contain useful information for users. However, you also need to make sure that
the content on the pages is related to the main idea of the website.
There are many bloggers
who insert promotional content or products on the website. This helps them to
increase their income in a short period of time. But in the long run, it
affects search engine optimization.
In a word, you should publish
articles related to the general topic. However, there are many bloggers who
encounter the situation of "keyword cannibalization" and duplicate
content. So why does this happen?
Because when you want
your website to rank higher in Google search results, many people have written
a lot of content on the same topic. This can be good for traffic because it
encourages visitors to read more content on your website. On the other hand, it
easily leads to duplicate content errors.
When you have 2 articles
with the same or similar content, Google will have difficulty in indexing.
Search engines may index more pages than the actual number of pages on your
website.
The same goes for
keyword cannibalism.
In this case, the
website owner tries to improve rankings for a keyword that appears in many
different pages. Google will not recognize those pages, but only the best one.
As a result, the remaining pages will not bring any benefit to SEO. Even search
engines can't access them.
Page-by-Page
Problems Page-by-Page Problems
refer to how each page is written and structured.
In fact, content is the
most important factor determining rankings. But before you worry about that,
you have to make sure every article is well-structured and aimed at the target
audience.
This is important not
only for search engines but also for bloggers and visitors. If your content is
nothing special, don't waste time and effort to optimize your website.
Let's start with the
URL!
The URL needs to be
short, easy to understand, and properly describe the content. If you need to
separate words, use a hyphen, and especially the URL must contain the keyword.
This means that you should put the title of the article short and contain the keyword.
As for the content, make
sure you publish articles of the right length, at least 500 words. The article
should provide valuable value to the visitor, be unique, contain LSI keywords,
be grammatically correct, and be easy to read.
At the same time, you
also need to optimize the images in the articles. This will give the articles a
better chance of ranking in Google image search results.
Meta tags are also a
very important SEO tool. You need to create attractive meta tag content to
attract readers to visit your website, thereby increasing the conversion rate.
In addition, it is
necessary to add related links.
There are many people
who do not like attaching links of other websites/pages to articles. However,
SEOers think otherwise.
Linking to other articles
is a great way to demonstrate that your website has quality, trustworthy
content. However, you need to make sure that the links attached are relevant
and authoritative.
In addition, check that
the attached links are working properly, are relevant to the website's topic,
and contain the appropriate keywords.
Audit Offpage SEO
Audit SEO Offpage - GTV SEO
Technical analysis and
on-page analysis help your website become more perfect and closer to Google.
Next is off-page analysis.
Offpage ranking factors
are the fruit of your work. They show the popularity of the website. Besides,
you also know if people have access to your website and from which website, the
source of access is reliable or not, etc.
I will start with the
trust factor. For SEO, what does trust mean?
It means a website that
is trusted by the Google search engine. In other words, if you do not apply
negative SEO methods (black hat SEO), your website will receive more trust.
This is an important
step that you need to make first. Because Google is constantly improving to
detect manipulations in the system.
However, there are some
people who still do it on purpose. When your website is rated as highly
trustworthy, it means that it will make an "impression" with search
engines as well as create a great resonance. Therefore, it is necessary to
adhere to the governance guidelines that Google has set.
Next, you need to make
sure that your content is friendly to other readers and bloggers. When this is
achieved, your website will receive many backlinks, many shares on social
networks. At the same time, increasing traffic, the time visitors stay on the
website is also longer and the bounce rate is also significantly reduced.
Off-page analytics helps
you see how other people react when visiting your website.
Bloggers will look at
the stats to decide whether to share your website or not. If your website
receives a lot of backlinks but the interaction on social sharing posts does
not improve or decrease. Then Google will flag red flags to signal that your
website is having some serious problems.
Competitive Analysis (competitors and similar
industries) and keyword analysis
Competitive Analysis GTV SEO
The last part of SEO
Audit is keyword analysis. In the SEO world, keyword analysis and competitor
analysis are similar
because keywords are the
smallest unit of measurement in SEO. When you analyze keywords, you are
analyzing your competitors.
through the example
below.
Let's goYou are
producing a certain food item., your competitor has X products (keywords) and
each product gives different results. You can analyze them, to come up with
your own strategy and decide which products (keywords) you can create better
than your competitors.
Basically, when
analyzing keywords you need to consider 2 factors: Difficulty and traffic.
Keyword difficulty will
tell you how hard or easy it is to rank. Meanwhile, traffic will show how many
people have been searching for a term containing the keyword within a month.
Ideal keywords are those
in the middle, with medium difficulty and medium traffic. However, if you want
to beat your competition and quickly increase your traffic, you need to find
keywords that are performing above average.
For example keywords
with medium difficulty and high traffic or keywords with low difficulty and
medium traffic.
You need to consider
many potential keywords before choosing the ones that you will use. These
keywords will be the "backbone" of the website, you need to publish
content related to them. Thanks to that, your website will quickly achieve the
performance of the website as expected.
You should use the
available SEO tools to perform keyword analysis.
The most commonly used tool
today is the Google Keyword Planner, which is a free tool provided by Google.
In addition, you can also choose Ahrefs tool, but this is a paid tool.
SEO Audit Website with Ahrefs – GTV SEO
Learn how to use this powerful SEO tool in GTV's
article: What is Ahref?
Do's and Don'ts when Website
Audit SEO Audit is
necessary! But when doing it, you also need to follow certain rules to avoid
wasting time with no results.
Things to do when implementing a website Audit
The first and most
important thing is that you need to implement a comprehensive SEO Audit. From
structural elements to content directly affect the SEO visibility of your
website.
It will provide a
complete picture of what is happening on your website. If something goes wrong
that isn't shown in the results, it's easy to go off track and make incorrect
adjustments.
SEO Audit must be easy
to understand! As a business owner, it's a good idea to piece together the
issues to find out how SEO issues are affecting goals or profits. Then come up
with solutions to improve the situation and increase sales again.
Final! After the audit
is complete, you must establish feasible plans, clearly map out a clear route
to quickly handle problems. The most important purpose of SEO Audit is to
detect the errors that your website is encountering and offer a reasonable solution.
Things not to do when performing SEO Audit
You do not need to be in
a hurry, hurry to perform SEO Audit. You simply need to take the time to find
the root cause affecting your website. The audit time depends on the size of
the website, usually from 2-6 weeks.
SEO Audit implementers
need to carefully study and consider many aspects to clearly identify the root
of the problem. Only then can you decide what changes to make on the website.
However, before wanting to make those changes, the SEOer needs to make a
detailed report to send to the website owners.
You should not apply one standard SEO Audit to
all websites. Because not all websites are necessarily full of technical
elements. Therefore, depending on the size, type and purpose of the website,
the appropriate audit method should be applied.
Checklist SEO Audit website
In fact, each website
will apply different SEO Audit methods. However, you also cannot ignore the
basic technical elements of SEO such as sitemaps, server errors, and metadata.
At a higher level, when
implementing SEO Audit, it is necessary to consider accessibility, indexability
and optimization.
To make sure you audit
your website to the right standards, you can refer SEO Audit
checklist to GTV's.
Checklist SEO Audit
Website Audit Tips
within 5 Minutes
And to become a website
Audit expert you will need more knowledge. We have a complete set of SEO Audit
courses that provide the most complete step-by-step to perform a website:
- AuditAudit
Content: https://gtvseo.com/khoa-hoc-audit-content/
- Audit Technical: https://gtvseo.
com/seo-audit-technical/
- Combo 2 Audit courses: https://gtvseo.com/seo-audit-website/
Don't hesitate to contact GTV for advice!
Let's go to the next
part!
Tools to support SEO Audit
SEO Audit tool – GTV SEO
Here are the popular
tools that you can use when performing SEO Audit:
- Google
Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Google's Structured Data
Testing Tool
- Ahrefs (try it out) 7 days)
- Copyscape
- SERP Simulator
- Web Page Word Counter
Not all of the above 8 tools are necessary.
Therefore, you can consult and choose a favorite and most useful tool for your
SEO Audit process.
What to Expect During and After the SEO Audit
As stated above, it will
take you 2-6 weeks to complete the SEO Audit. During that time, you will have
to analyze and detect the above errors that your website is facing. However,
every 1 or 2 weeks, you need to do a progress report to see what you have
accomplished and what more needs to be done.
In any website audit,
you will find a few problems. And every time you detect them, you need to deal
with them immediately, this makes it easy to find other errors when continuing
the SEO Audit process.
After completing the
audit, you need to make the report. Even present the problems you have
discovered and the suggestions to fix it to the website owner. Besides, you
will also get an overview of the current website status.
Conclusion
SEO Audit is an
extremely important process for every website. Performing an audit at the right
time will help you detect problems and fix them in time. As a result, your
website will become more perfect and "friendly" to Google and users.
Follow other GTV articles to get more knowledge about SEO!
#gtvseo #gtv_seo #seo_audit
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