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When it comes to building something, you have to start from the ground up. The same goes for an SEO strategy, as it requires a preliminary step to know where you're starting from: the SEO audit.
An SEO audit is a detailed process that analyzes all the technical and content elements that affect your website's search engine ranking. Through this analysis, you can identify errors or issues that affect indexing, ranking, and user experience .
In this blog post, we explain how to perform an SEO audit of your website to gain a clear understanding of your domain's status and, subsequently, choose the right SEO strategies to improve its ranking.
1. Check for indexing problems
The first step in any SEO audit is to check if all of your site's important pages are being indexed by search engines —Google, in this case. Use Google's own tool, Google Search Console, to see how many and which of your pages have been indexed.
If you find that important pages for your business are not being crawled, there may be technical issues , such as blocks in the robots.txt file or misconfigured tags like "noindex" that prevent them from being indexed.
2. Check for duplicate URLs
Make sure your site doesn't have duplicate versions that could confuse search engine crawlers. These cases negatively affect indexing and ranking because the engines don't know which version of the URL to show in their index . Ideally, you should redirect all variants to a single version using 301 redirects.
Although they may look the same to you as a user, keep in mind that to the crawler, all these pages look different:
www.domain.com
www.domain.com/
domain.com
domain.com/
http://domain.com
https://domain.com
3. Perform an internal crawl of the web
A web crawl helps detect technical issues that may be affecting your site's visibility. It's important to identify broken links, 404 errors, redirect issues, and other technical issues that negatively impact your SEO .
In addition to issues with links and 404 pages, crawling also checks whether SEO titles, meta descriptions, headings, and other elements are optimized for the specific keywords of each URL.
4. Check the usability of the mobile version
A very high percentage of users now only browse on mobile devices, so websites must be optimized for browsing on these devices.
Use Google's Mobile-Friendly Testing tool to ensure there are no issues affecting the mobile user experience. Factors such as responsive design, loading speed, and ease of navigation are crucial factors for mobile SEO, especially after Google's shift to mobile-first indexing.
5. Check that Google has not penalized you manually
Google may impose manual penalties on your site if it detects actions that violate its guidelines, such as the use of "black-hat" SEO techniques . These penalties drastically affect your rankings and are difficult to reverse.
Check Google Search Console to see if your site has been manually penalized and implement a strategy to address any "black-hat" actions: low-quality external links, keyword stuffing, cloaking, etc.
6. Analyze your website's loading speed
Your website's loading speed is one of the most important ranking factors, and it also impacts user experience. Tools like PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix can help you identify which elements are slowing down your site.
Some common factors that affect speed include very large images, excessive HTTP requests, and large JavaScript or CSS files . Optimizing your loading speed will improve your SEO and user experience.
7. Analyze the Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are metrics that measure your site's user experience, focusing on three main aspects: largest element load time (LCP), time to first interaction with the page (FID), and visual stability (CLS) . These metrics influence how search engines perceive the quality of your website.
Improving your Core Web Vitals not only optimizes your SEO, but also provides a smoother experience for your visitors, increasing retention and conversion rates.
8. Analyze the links on your website
We refer to both internal and external links, known as “backlinks.”
A well-optimized internal link structure helps distribute link juice or authority among your site's different pages: the most important URLs for business should have the most internal links . Make sure there are no broken links (404s) and no links to URLs redirected with a 301.
Regarding external links, or " backlinks ," you should conduct an audit of lost quality links and low-value links that are hurting your SEO. Remember that this isn't about the number of external links, but rather their quality. The best strategy is to have websites with more authority and in your same niche link back to your website.
9. Check your organic traffic volume
Monitor fluctuations in your organic traffic to spot potential issues or areas for improvement. Use Google Analytics to review your main page metrics , user behavior, and search patterns.
A drop in traffic may indicate technical issues, penalties, or the need to optimize your content for new keywords. It's also helpful to compare your current performance with previous periods to identify seasonal factors that may affect your search engine performance.
10. Study your competitors
Competitor analysis is an essential component of any SEO audit. It analyzes the keywords they're ranking for , their backlink profile, and the content strategies they're using.
This comparison will give you a clear view of where the opportunities lie and what aspects you need to improve to better compete in search results.
11. Detect keywords you aren't using yet
Specifically, studying your competitors will also help you identify keywords you're not leveraging. You'll need to use SEO tools (which we discuss below) to identify these keywords and see where your competitors rank for those searches. This way, you can create new content focused on those keywords to attract more qualified users.
12. Monitor your SERP ranking
Constantly monitoring your search engine rankings helps you verify whether your SEO strategy is working after the audit . By doing so, you'll be able to adjust your strategy based on trends and changes in search algorithms. Monitoring your organic rankings also helps you identify opportunities you're missing out on that your competitors are taking advantage of.
Most popular tools for SEO audits
To conduct a professional SEO audit, you need specific tools to help you detect problems and optimize your website.
Google Search Console
It's a free Google tool used to monitor your site's visibility in search results, detecting crawl errors and indexing issues, and providing search performance data. It's a fundamental tool for professional SEOs.
Google Analytics
Also owned by Google, it's a platform that collects data on web traffic and user behavior on a site, not just from SEO but from all other channels through which users reach your website. It's useful for seeing which URLs have the most traffic, retention, or conversions.
SEMrush
It's a comprehensive digital marketing platform that offers tools for SEO, competitor analysis, keyword research, website audits, and backlink analysis. It also includes SEM and social media features, making it one of the most comprehensive tools on the market.
Dinorank
Similar to Semrush, although only for SEO purposes, it's a tool that allows you to perform web audits, track keyword rankings, and analyze domain authority, providing metrics to improve search engine rankings.
Ahrefs
It is an SEO tool specialized in backlink analysis, keyword research, website audits, and monitoring organic search engine performance.
Screaming Frog
Finally, Screaming Frog is an SEO web crawling tool that allows you to comprehensively analyze websites. It's designed to identify technical issues that may affect a site's search engine performance, such as broken links, incorrect redirects, duplicate content, metadata errors, and more.
Don't know how to perform an SEO audit of your website?
Does all this seem overwhelming or don't know where to start? Don't worry, it's normal; SEO requires specialized knowledge to be applied correctly. Therefore, the best way to conduct a professional audit is to turn to an SEO agency, like Maktagg , where we have been helping our clients improve their website's SEO for ten years.
On the one hand, we perform the SEO audit and develop the strategy that best suits your business . On the other hand, we also implement it on your website, unlike agencies that only "recommend" or send you a document with actions for you to carry out, whether you know how or not.
Do you have a corporate website and would like to offer your services through Google? Or do you have an online store and need an e-commerce SEO agency?
Fill out the form and ask for a no-obligation SEO quote . We'll provide a free professional audit, whether you choose to stay with us or not ;).
