That means you should look up phrases that include your brand name followed by your product or services. There are several files on your server — like .htaccess, robots.txt and sitemap.xml to name a few — that dictate how search engines access and index your content. Optimizing these files, so they are configured appropriately, can have a huge impact on your rankings (which is why we prioritize them as a part of our technical SEO audit services). It helps you find technical issues, track keyword rankings, and improve your content strategy. Understand your competitors and monitor your SEO progress with custom reports. Overusing exact match keywords or a lack of diversity in anchor text can trigger red flags for search engines and negatively affect your search rankings.
Why do an SEO audit?
You can check the presence of a sitemap on your website with WebSite Auditor in .xml sitemap in the Indexing and crawlability section. Now, you have to make sure that all your important pages are open for indexing. Head over to the Resources restricted from indexing section and review the list of pages currently restricted from indexing. You can also Enable expert options to access advanced crawler settings for List Mode. It is especially important to check the domain for penalties when you buy an already-used one. There is a risk of buying not only the domain but also its previous penalties by Google.
You may also want to prioritize the reviewing of pages that show signs of being low-quality. You can do that in Ahrefs’ Site Audit; just head to the Content Quality report. You should always aim to use subheaders to break up your content and make it more appealing. In HTML, you can use H1-H6 subheaders to provide some structure and hierarchy to your pages. If you have a relatively small site (fewer than twenty pages), you can check all of the above manually with ease. The issue with PageSpeed Insights is that you can only check one page at a time.
This is exactly why every recommendation provided by a tool needs manual verification. You should always evaluate the severity and real-world impact of the issue yourself. SEO tools make our work faster, easier, and more efficient, but they still can’t fully replicate human analysis or insight.
Step #4: Maximize Your Internal Links
In fact, Barry Schwartz, a prominent blogger, dubbed it the “Medic” update. If it says anything other than “No issues detected,” read our Google penalties guide. To check for manual actions, go to the Manual actions report in Google Search Console. The fastest way to check whether you’ve been hit by an update is to plug your URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and see if any traffic drops align with an update. Once you’ve authorized with Google, selected your site, and clicked Import, the audit will start. To do this, start by heading to Site Audit, click on + New project, and allow Ahrefs to authorize your account.
This effectively prevented all of their pages from appearing in search results. I also created a reference checklist you can keep handy to ensure you won’t miss anything important. SEOptimer is a Website SEO Checker which reviews these and more to help identify problems that could be holding your site back from it’s SEO Anomaly potential.
- When selecting the best software for your needs, be sure to compare SEO solutions and pick the one that fits your requirements best.
- Together, these determine how enjoyable users find your site.
- The best SEO audit tool often depends on individual needs and preferences.
- While high-quality, search-engine-optimized content is a great way to boost your traffic numbers, it’s what happens once those visitors are on your website that really counts.
- And if speed is your priority, the Smart Report option gives you a great baseline.
So this kind of audit can get REAL results for your business. Your navigation menu structure should be intuitive, and your site architecture should be logical. And then you can build an effective, data-backed plan to get your website at the top of SERPs. Optimization never ends because the landscape is always changing.
A healthy profile should have mostly branded and generic anchors, which shows that the links have been acquired naturally. If you see an excessive number of keyword-rich anchors, that’s a red flag that could trigger Google penalties. First, check the referring domains graph to see your link growth over time. The easiest way to check if your site is mobile-friendly is to use this Mobile Friendliness Test Tool. Enter your website URL, and the tool will analyze the page to see if it meets mobile usability standards. Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking.