Did you know over 4.4 billion people across the globe today are active internet users?
Whenever a user visits a search engine and types something in, only a few websites get to rank on the first page. The first three sites have the highest probability of driving new visitors to their pages and increasing their conversion rate.
Where does your website rank on search engine result pages? Are you on the first page or is your content buried deep among the last SERPs?
If your site doesn’t rank top on SERPs, it’s time you conduct an SEO audit. Read on for a detailed SEO audit checklist that will improve your ranking, increase site visitors, and boost conversions.
Analyze the Keywords
The long tail keywords (contain three or more words) help you rank high and drive traffic to your site. It’s not just about the keyword length; your long tail keyword must be of high value and capable of driving valuable results to your site.
You must also use the keywords in the right context within your body text, URL, alt images, and header. To rank higher in SERPs, also embrace keywords in your meta descriptions and title.
Improve Your Page Speed
Even if you have great content, visitors will have to load your site before they can access your content. If your site takes too long to load, the visitors will move on to the next website with high speeds. You will be losing leads to your competitors.
Your site should only take a few seconds to load. Anything longer than this is detrimental to your SEO strategy. Speed optimization is essential for the following reasons:
- Your site’s speed is a ranking factor, and top search engines like Google penalize slow sites.
- A fast site means Google crawlers will visit your website more often and get more done.
- A site that loads fast has high conversion rates and low bounce rates.
- A fast loading site improves user experience, and this translates into more return visitors.
Keep Your Pages Indexed
Search engines won’t find and read your site if it’s not indexed. No matter how much you optimize your website, it won’t improve the ranking of your webpages on search engines.
You can use the Google Search Console to identify the number of pages in your domain that Google has crawled. If the number of pages isn’t increasing, it is likely some of the pages aren’t being indexed.
Once you know the number of pages not indexed, you should index them to improve on your SEO.
Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
Since most people access the internet through their mobile phones, you’ll miss out if your site is not optimized for mobile use. Your website should be optimized for smartphone and tablet users as well as for the search engine spiders.
Unless your site doesn’t target mobile users, you also risk getting penalized by Google if your website is not mobile friendly.
Hence, make sure your website meets the following requirements:
- It loads fast to favor mobile users
- It can load resources across all devices
- The internal links and redirects are working
- Your site doesn’t hide content on the mobile version
Use responsive design to make your website adapt to whatever device (desktops, tablets, and mobile phone) your site’s visitors use.
Enhance Site Security
Keep your website secure because web security enhances SEO. A site that gets hacked can slip on SEO or even get blacklisted. Also, if the attempted hackings fail, the constant attacks from hackers slow down your server and derail the crawler’s effort to access your site.
The result of poor site security is low traffic. Again, Google uses HTTPS as a ranking signal. Thus, getting the SSL certificate presents your site as secure and improves your page rankings.
Optimize on Voice Search
Optimizing voice search is crucial while doing an SEO audit in 2019. Internet users are increasingly deviating towards voice search. Expert predictions state that by 2020, voice search will contribute to 50% of all searches.
Based on the data, there is a need to optimize your site to suit voice search. When people do a search using their voice, they use different terms, meaning your usual keywords won’t be of any help.
According to Google Voice Search Rater Guidelines, the voice search result should be very brief and straight to the point.
Study Your Competitors
It is always good to know what your competitor is doing to outrank you. You can find the keywords they use, both short-form and long-form ones. This is also an opportunity for you to modify the competitor’s keywords, use the updated ones in your content, and outperform them in the ranking.
Also, analyze your competitor’s content and develop beautiful ideas that will help your site rank better in search engines.
Sort Duplicate Content
Duplicated content hurts your SEO by diluting the authority of your page. You can sort content duplication issues by using the canonical link tag to tell the search engine the version of URL you want it to show in the search results.
Also, as you eliminate duplicate material, take note of plagiarism as well. If the content on your page is similar to that of another website, you’ll be penalized for plagiarising work, and this will hurt your SEO as well.
Eliminate Errors
Visitors who click on a link to your site only to get a 404 error may not come back. Just a small mistake, especially in an automated business, gives an impression that your website is not secure and your visitors may never buy anything.
An error-free website ensures your visitors get the best user experience, and you also get higher rankings. Therefore, identify and fix both the errors in your unindexed pages and the “Error 404” message from your broken pages.
Rebuild Pages with Low Value
Pages with low-quality content can hurt your visitor experience and SEO ranking. Eliminate all the irrelevant, uninformative, and unoriginal material on your site. Replace it with high-quality and informative content.
If you find eliminating low-value content to be a lot of work, you can alternatively opt to de-index the webpages. This way, the content will still be on your site, but it won’t rank on search engines or hurt your SEO.
Need Help with Your SEO Audit?
Are you having trouble with SEO audit? Are you unfamiliar with the technicalities of SEO or are too busy to handle it by yourself?
Our team of professional SEO experts is here to help. Contact us today for content marketing services.
