A technical SEO audit is a helpful technique to understand what is going on in the back-end that leaves an effect on search engine ranking. For instance, backlinks, indexing, and site speed. During the process, an SEO specialist should take care of all the elements that affect the page ranking to take all necessary actions for site improvement. Conducting technical SEO audits on daily basis is a difficult task to build an SEO strategy. But if you are beginning a job with a new company or need to know the complete process of SEO audit then it is remarkable. This article covers the entire procedure of SEO audit in simple steps to make you more confident as an SEO specialist and to enhance web traffic to the web pages.
- What is a technical SEO audit?
- What should be involved in a technical SEO audit
- When to complete technical SEO audit
- Prerequisites for a technical SEO audit
- Steps to follow
- Final words
In most cases, people think that SEO is what specialists refer to as On-Page SEO. Where a professional optimize the content that is shown on the page so that the right audience can approach the information organically. Technical SEO is not the content only that appears on the web page but an approach that how search bots navigate each page.
What Should Be Involved In Technical SEO Audit?
When an SEO audit is performed by specialists they observe several factors that cause the site speed, usability, and performance to take action to optimize the web pages. A technical SEO audit on daily basis can help to understand the technical problems that a specialist might not know. The specialists use some tools for the audit like Google Search Console, indexing, web & mobile crawlers, and Google Page Speed Insights to optimize pages and improve ranking through a technical SEO audit.
When To Complete Technical SEO Audit?
Normally, it should be done on regular basis. It depends on the business requirements if you need to do a technical SEO audit for your business cash flows through web traffic then you must do daily audits but for personal sites and blogs, it’s enough once a week or month.
Another important point to be kept in mind is that besides regular audits you have to perform the activity when starting freelancing for new clients, switching to a new website, and getting hired by other employers. The technical SEO audit starts when your ranking got static or going to decline.
Prerequisites For Technical SEO Audit
There are some prerequisites before you conduct a technical SEO audit: Focus on clients’ goals, whether they want to improve their web pages, site performance, and an easy-to-use site. Access their site’s tools and analytics, to start the audit you need a client’s online business site access like performance monitoring analytics, and Google console.
Sign an agreement, it is important to sign a contract for a new or continued job explaining what you have to do and how you will do that task. A liability disclaimer and a job description confine you to work under some liabilities where you are only accountable for your job.
If you keep all information before starting, the whole process will become easy for you. For instance, if you are working with a SaaS organization, they may expect you to do an audit for specific landing pages as per the requirement to appear for the concerned clients according to previous user experiences and search behaviors.
But if you are doing the job with a retail business then you might suppose to manage the page loading speed, downloading issues, image problems, and redirecting links to the correct location.
Let’s start the step-by-step process to complete the technical SEO audit.
Below are the details of the steps that the User has to follow for the Technical SEO audit.
Use a scanning tool to check the number of URLs are there on the website to find out the issues, judge the indexable URLs, and site performance hindrances.
Deep Crawl is a professionally recommended tool for Wix users, others may use Google Search Console.
The pages can’t be easily indexed if the web pages are not crawled by Google. Following are the indexing issues to look for:
- Index Errors
- Robots.txt Errors
- Sitemap Issues
To check the site indexation, Coverage Report in Google Console is the best approach. It explains what pages are indexed and what others are left. So, regularly index your web pages to optimize the budget.
Mostly, On-page elements are set aside during technical SEO audits, they are considered for housekeeping. The underlying On-page components should be considered while performing a technical SEO audit.
- Title tags and page titles
- Meta descriptions
- Canonical tags
- Hreflang tags
- Schema markup
It’s another aspect to optimize the pages. You have to ensure that the images have no downloading error, missing elements, loading speed, and increasing traffic from Google images.
Identify the image issues such as:
- Broken images
- Heavy image file size
- HTTPS page links to HTTP image
- Missing ALT text
Analyze internal links throughout the procedure, and redirect the 4xx status code. Identify and address the orphan pages containing no internal links.
The next step is to check the external links, these are vital to make a website credible for search engines and users. Make sure all Backlinks are actively working and have no pages broken, and outgoing links are related to all pages.
Performance & Site Speed Measuring
Google search is best for ranking websites with the fast loading speed and performance accuracy. Here are some points that show the use of Google Page Speed Insight on site performance.
- Open Google Page Speed Insights page
- Put the web page URL in the box
- Click analyze and view the results
- Google Page Speed Insights tool provides suggestions, field data, and diagnostic information.
At last, you must ensure that the site you want to audit should be mobile-friendly, different browser compatible, and responsive. Google gives importance to responsive web pages that are easy to load regardless of the devices. For example, Crytowallet.com has a mobile and web-friendly design, check their Web view and Mobile scrolling view.
To check the responsiveness of a site, Web Design Checker is a simple way or follow these easy steps in Google Chrome;
- Open the web page in the Chrome browser
- Right-click to open the menu and select Inspect
- Click on the Toggle Device toolbar, it will show you the mobile and screen display
Technical SEO audits helps the specialist to optimize the web pages, it makes the pages easier for the indexing bot to understand and for users as well. Technical SEO audit involves a lot of stages but these simple steps make the effort easy and streamline the workflow where you don’t miss any important steps to follow.
