How to Conduct a Basic SEO Audit Yourself
Identify Your Keywords
An SEO audit can be largely divided into a technical audit and content audit. To conduct a content audit, you need to know which keywords it should be optimized for. You can do this using tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Serpstat, or Majestic by analyzing what phrases competitor sites are visible for.
Check Indexation
The technical part of the audit should start with identifying indexation issues. It’s impossible to improve a site’s ranking if it is not fully or partially indexed by a search engine. Check the indexation of your site in Google and Yandex webmaster tools. If there are no indexed pages or significantly fewer than there should be, first analyze robots.txt.
Check Speed
Page load speed is one of the crucial elements of user experience, to which Google now pays special attention. The search engine provides a great free tool for checking page load speeds on both mobile and desktop devices. In PageSpeed Insights, you will receive a score along with detailed recommendations on how to speed up your website.
Check Backlink Profile
Use Google Search Console, Majestic, or Ahrefs to check incoming links to your site. What percent of them contain keyword phrases with exact matches? What is the quality of the sites that link to you?… Analyzing data from these tools will allow you to find answers to these and other questions about your site’s backlink profile.
The actions described in this article will help you identify the main issues that may arise with your site in terms of SEO. Although their resolution often significantly improves website visibility in search results, ultimately, you’ll want to consider hiring a professional to perform a thorough audit to diagnose more serious deficiencies.
Most Important Ranking Factors
The two main factors that have the greatest influence on website rankings are:
- the backlink profile;
- the website content.
A page’s position in search results depends on the number of trusted links directing to the page being ranked. The quality of the page from which a link is coming is also considered by the search engines. The text must be thematically related to the promoted page.
The content of your website should be relevant to the promoted area. Interesting, current, and unique content attracts not only Internet users but also search engine robots crawling through web pages.
3 Common Mistakes in Site Promotion
When auditing paid and free sites, you may notice that owners often make similar mistakes when promoting resources. By fixing these errors, you can easily increase SEO efficiency.
- Over-optimization of keywords on the page. When implementing keywords in text, it’s essential to control the density of keyword and phrase occurrences. This can be adjusted using services like Advego, Istio, etc. The ideal proportion is 2.5-5%.
- Mass purchase of links (of poor quality). Search engines prefer quality over quantity: one link from a decent, thematic portal will bring more value than dozens of cheap links from unknown resources.
Advice! Use both anchored (30-40%) and unanchored links in articles. Also, pay attention to the quality of the donors. The most high-quality are backlinks, which are placed in relevant articles and harmoniously integrated into the content. PrFlare offers a wide range of such sites with SEO parameters assigned to each for your convenience, helping you quickly and easily select the right sites for placement.
- Presence of duplicate pages. Non-unique content negatively impacts promotion. The search engine, of course, must distinguish between technical and popular texts. However, it’s important to strive to increase the individuality of your media product.
Avoiding these simple mistakes can increase traffic and improve the dynamics of visit statistics.
Google Increases Control Over Internet Photos
Don’t want your child’s photos to be spread around the Internet and easily accessible through search engines? Soon, any person under 18 (or their parent or guardian) will be able to request the removal of their photos from Google. Additionally, thanks to a special feature, adult-oriented content will be filtered out for underage users logged into the system.
Google announced changes that will enhance the safety of minors on the Internet and allow adults to better control how their child uses the web. The new rules will apply globally. Some will be introduced soon. The rule updates not only relate to the search engine but other products as well, including YouTube, Google Play, and advertising.
Why Is Website Positioning Important?
Website positioning is a set of procedures aimed at increasing their visibility in search result pages of search engines. When an Internet user enters specific keywords and phrases in the search engine window of Yandex, Google, Yahoo, Mail, Bing, their robots scan the page based on a range of factors using corresponding algorithms and determine its position. Website positioning is about battling for the top 10 spots on the first page of search results. This is because Internet users rarely look further, so companies that earn top spots have a real chance to increase their site’s traffic and, consequently, boost their profit.
Website positioning involves work on and off the site. It concerns the optimization of content and page code, and consequently, all actions related to the website itself:
- keywords and phrases in valuable content;
- correct structure of meta-descriptions and proper formatting of headings;
- functional URL addresses;
- site code optimization;
- optimization of photos and graphics to minimize size and display correctly;
- site load speed;
- site responsiveness, meaning its correct display on devices with varying resolutions.
On the other hand, off-site positioning includes all actions that promote the site online:
- link building, i.e., obtaining external links leading to the site from other sites;
- activity in social networks;
- constant competition analysis.
