Do you know what the most important asset of a business is nowadays? Their Website!
Even if you aren’t selling your products online, a website can help you reach out to your potential audience and not only promote yourself, but also educate them about your products or services.
If you are already aware of the importance of being online and have a website for your business and an SEO strategy in place, then you are already ahead of many of your competitors. But, can you clearly pinpoint to the SEO factors that bring the best results? Or, even more importantly, can you tell what pages on your site aren’t performing as they should?
If you don’t have an answer to these questions, then it may be time to do an on-page SEO audit. In this article, we are going to tell you what an on-page SEO audit is, why do you need it, and what you should pay attention to in order to ensure that your site is visible to the search engines.
What Does SEO Audit Mean?
An SEO audit can help you understand if there are any issues with your strategy that could affect the overall success of your digital marketing efforts. It usually involves an analysis of your entire website to make sure that every part of it follows SEO best practices and functions in a way which enables you to achieve your goals.
This check is divided into 2 components: front-end and back-end.
The front-end part deals with the presentation of the website, its content, and user experience, while the back-end part deals with the development and functionality of the website, in a word, the technical part.
Do You Really Need a Website Audit?
If you want to achieve long-term success with your SEO strategy, then regular audits are a must. They help you make sure your strategy is up to date and follows the best practices communicated by the search engines.
The various tools available also make it easier to analyse how effective the techniques you are applying are, and can give you suggestions for improvement to get the best results. An audit can also help you to become familiar with new search engine updates, which can be quite small and hard to see sometimes.
Things To Watch Out For During An SEO Audit
With so many pieces in the SEO puzzle, you may be wondering what you should pay attention to and what you should ignore or not stress about that much during an audit.
Here’s a list of the most essential SEO aspects to investigate during an audit:
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Title Tags
Every page must be unique, and that goes for both the content and the title tags. Title tags are displayed as hyperlink terms in a search and communicate to the search engines what the page is about. They must contain keywords related to the page content to make it easier for the crawlers and users to understand what the page is about.
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Meta Descriptions
Although meta descriptions don’t directly influence the Google click-through, they can generate more clicks to your site. Make sure that your meta descriptions are descriptive and enticing and make users want to find out more about your content.
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Are the Internal Links Relevant?
A good link to your site’s pages means a better reader experience and this can have a positive effect on your ranking in Google searches. If you use internal links check that you are using anchor text with a precise match.
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Do You Have Original Content?
Content is the king of SEO. No matter how cliche it sounds, it’s the truth as both the search engines and users frown upon thin or duplicate content. Make sure that every blog post your write is well researched, informative, and adds value to your users. You should also develop a consistent publishing schedule and follow it.
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Use Short URLs
The perfect URL contains descriptive terms for the page and is short. Make sure you opt for an optimised URL from the start, because changing it abruptly can negatively influence your SEO strategy.
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Organise the Content Logically
Structure your site clearly and logically to provide the reader with an easier-to-follow experience. Use appropriate category and page grouping that make the menu intuitive. For an even better experience make sure your website has a privacy policy and an information page.
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Make Sure You Size the Images Correctly and Put the ALT Tags Correctly too
Large image files can affect your website speed. And, if the load time is too big, people may bounce and look for the information that interests them somewhere else. That’s why you should compress your images as this can reduce their size without affecting their quality. Don’t forget to also use ALT tags as the search engines use them in their search algorithm.
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Check If the Links on the Website Work
Non-functioning links leave a bad impression on the reader and have an unfavourable impact on Google rankings. Make sure your links function well and create redirects for the pages that don’t exist anymore.
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How Fast the Site Loads
As mentioned earlier, loading time can be a decisive element in a user’s decision to stay and scroll more or exit the site in frustration. And because Google and the other search engines care immensely about the user experience, a poor one can significantly affect your ranking.
Secret Techniques to Improve An On-Page SEO Audit
Now that you know what SEO factors to pay attention to when performing your audit, let’s take a look at a few tips that can make this endeavor more efficient and successful.
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Check the Site Map
An XML sitemap will help you index the site faster and better see its structure. Why does that matter? Because that’s how you can notice minor but important details like duplicate categories. Details like these make the difference between a site that performs well and one that doesn’t bring the expected results.
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Use Tools like Screaming Frog
This program reviews your website and finds all the errors you would normally spend minutes looking for. All you have to do is open the program and redirect it to the site, then request the information you want. There are countless other tools out there that can make your life easier.
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Check for 302 Errors
302 errors are quite common and can appear sometimes when you want to temporarily redirect your site to another site. The problem occurs when website owners want to redirect the page permanently. This communicates to Google that this is the new page you want to list. To fix this issue, create a list of all errors and pass it on to the webmaster.
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Duplicate Content
Carefully analyse every page on your site and check for duplicate content. If there is, check that the appropriate canonical tags are used. The search engines are very strict about duplicate content and will penalise your site if they notice it.
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Focus on Social Media Too
Although social actions come from outside your web pages, they can tell you important things about the site and how its content is doing.
Over to You…
If you pay close attention to the smallest details and make the necessary changes where necessary, we guarantee that you will notice a change in your site’s ranking and traffic.
The best thing to do is to perform an audit at least once or twice a year. You will be surprised how many errors can creep in without you realising. If you’ve never performed an SEO audit before and don’t know where to start, you should let the experts at Australian Internet Advertising take care of everything for you.
We have the knowledge, tools, and expertise to analyse every aspect of your site, see how they relate to your SEO strategy and make the necessary adjustments to ensure it will help you reach your goals.
