SEO Audit – DIY Guide for Beginners and Startups

SEO audit is the first step to creating an SEO strategy. For beginners, this article will give you a clear idea of where you stand and what is required to improve your rankings on search engines. SEO audits are exhaustive and should be able to report all factors that affect your ranking. While this article is for beginners, there are points that may seem advanced. Don’t worry; we will try to explain things in a simple format.

What is an SEO Audit?

An SEO Audit is the process of analyzing where your website is ranking for which keywords and what is affecting your website’s ranking on search engines. Simply put, we analyze your website for factors that are affecting it. This could be anywhere between the technical aspect of the website or platform, poorly set up website hosting, or content that is not optimized, to backlink profiles and poor backlinks from spammy or banned websites. SEO audit is a thorough check-up of your website for its health.

Prerequisites for SEO Audit

SEO Audits do require tools, and most of the tools we discuss here are free. If you already have a website, you are required to have some data about your website’s traffic before we start an audit. If not, install Google Analytics and verify your website on Google Search Console. These two tools are the bare minimum to get you started. There are plenty of paid tools to get your website analyzed and audited for a fee. Some of the tools you could use include Ahrefs, SEMRush, Screaming Frog, and SE Ranking. Each of these tools provides SEO-related services. Some are keyword tools that provide you with high-value keywords, while others focus on optimizing web pages. All these tools have a site audit tool which is almost the same, providing features advanced SEO professionals use every day. For the moment, we may need to create a free account on at least one of these tools to audit your website for free. Fortunately, most of these tools have a free account and provide limited auditing services for at least one website of your choice.

For websites that have already registered on Google Console, you should be able to see at least one week’s worth of data before you proceed further. With more data, it’s easier to find problems on your website.

Why is an SEO Audit Important?

SEO is still relevant and very important. The fact that Google accounts for more than 70% of website traffic makes SEO a key reason to invest in your website’s search engine optimization. Without an SEO audit, you will not know where you stand. An SEO audit helps you understand key factors:

1. Where you stand in terms of search engine ranking: Search engine ranking for a website is based on the authority of a website. A new website will often rank for no keywords except the brand name. People searching for your traffic will not see your website at all. Some sites with poor content will perform like a new site even after years of existence. Understanding where you stand in terms of traffic helps determine the future path. Sites with thousands of pages and still not ranking could be because of thin content, poorly optimized web pages, no on-page SEO, and other factors related to technical SEO or internal linking.
2. Your authority on the web: The internet is an authority game. Ranking on Google depends on how authoritative you are. If your website has enough high-quality content to compete with others in the industry, you may be promoted to a better ranking. This, of course, also requires good SEO practices, especially on-page and technical SEO practices. Creating authority should not end with content on your website. Reference to your brand name from other websites and possibly a link to your website adds authority. The more mentions you have from other “RELEVANT” websites in the same industry, the more brownie points you get.
3. Poor backlinks: SEO audit also looks into links coming from third-party websites. Spammy links to your site from unrelated websites, forums, blogs, and comments are a red flag. Though Google does not punish websites directly and immediately, there are reasons to believe that these links do affect your website’s traffic.
4. Competition analysis: SEO audit also includes competition analysis and auditing competition websites to see where your website stands in comparison to your competition. Understanding your competitors’ techniques and improving on them helps rank your website better.

An SEO audit helps you with the maximum information on how you should proceed with your SEO tasks over time. Audits help understand where you stand and create a timeline for creating a successful SEO strategy that can be implemented over three months, six months, a year, and in the future.

An SEO Audit helps you with the maximum information on how you should proceed with your SEO tasks over time. Audits help understand where you stand and create a timeline for creating a successful SEO strategy that can be implemented over the course of 3 months, 6 months, a year, and the future.

When to Perform an SEO Audit?

An SEO Audit is best performed 3-6 months after the launch of your website. Your website should have enough content before you start a website audit. Auditing a 5-page website may result in nothing to show. The traffic is often negligible, and if any, there is no space for improvement. Ensure that your website has at least 100 articles OR you have at least 1000 impressions on Google Search Console. The impressions could be over 1 month or 6 months – it does not matter as long as you have 1000 impressions in total for your website.

Before you begin with an SEO audit, we recommend that you have at least 100 pages on your website. Content is the only element required for successful SEO. Well-researched content related to your industry is not only important to grow traffic but also for the reputation of your website. Think about it – how long do you stay on a site with 5 or 10 pages? Websites with 5 pages are like pamphlets you get when you walk through the street. You look once and throw it in the bin. A website with 100 pages is like a small book. You most likely will go through the first few pages before you decide to dump it, donate it, or leave it by the bedside to read some other time!

How to Perform an SEO Audit?

Before you go further, understand that SEO audits require some tools. Below are the tools and links to the sites:

1. Ahrefs Site Audit
2. SE Ranking SEO Audit Tool
3. Google Analytics
4. Google Search Console

Run a Crawl of Your Website

Running a crawl on your website is the first step to take. This can be achieved with tools like SEO Spider by Screaming Frog. The crawl tool will help you understand the depth of each page from the home page and also help you analyze which pages are missing from the crawl. The pages that are missing from the crawl are called orphaned pages. You will require linking these pages from pages that are crawled. Ensure that you link from relevant pages and not some random page. Also, ensure that you link with the right anchor text. Crawling your website with a 3rd party tool like SEO Spider will provide some information required to correct your website’s health. The key information you need to look for includes:

1. Broken Links: 404 errors are not a good sign for user experience and Google’s search engine optimization. Correct these pages. Either redirect these pages to relevant pages or create a page to replace the 404 error.
2. Redirect Chains and Loops: Ever faced a situation when URL 1 redirects to URL 2 and URL 2 redirects back to URL 1? This is a loop that will cause server load and slow down crawling, confusing search engines. Search engines will stop crawling after such a situation or abandon the link altogether after a set time. Ensure there are no loops in redirects.
3. Server Errors: Some pages with poor programming may result in 5XX errors. These issues block search engines from accessing further pages. Avoid 5XX errors on your website. Check plugins and programming errors. You will be able to detect such errors with a crawler.
4. Resolve Crawlability Issues: Ensure crawlability by configuring Robots.txt files. Find problems with Robots.txt files and pages with meta robots tags. Pages with nofollow may be preventing your pages from being crawled. Also, identify resources like CSS, JavaScript, or images that are unintentionally blocking crawlers.
5. Optimize Indexing: Find pages with duplicate content and orphan pages. Create canonical tags for duplicate pages to pass ranking signals to the right page. Create links to orphan pages from existing pages that are crawled.
6. Identify Duplicate Content: Use canonical tags to boost the authority of the main page while diluting the rankings of duplicate pages.
7. URL Structure: Ensure that your URL is in the right structure. URLs should contain the keywords with no stop words.
8. Keep the URL Hierarchical: When possible, use categories to categorize content and create a hierarchy. This creates a logical structure for the site, ensuring Google understands your website better. This also improves navigation and helps users understand the content better.
9. Internal Links: Add internal links to your site from relevant pages. Internal linking is known to improve SEO by increasing crawlability and indexing. Internal links also provide a method to identify and evaluate page ranking.
10. Monitor Content Quality: Ensure that the content is not outdated or thin. Thin content is when the total number of words is not justifiable for the topic. Writing content on website design or web development will require a lot more words than for something like “Baby John’s Potato Wafers.” Content should be detailed. Ensure that the content also uses the right keywords in the right places. Header tags and titles should have relevant keywords related to the section.
11. Include Metadata: Meta descriptions, title tags, and header tags are key elements search engines look for. Ensure that they are strategically placed and include keywords. Include meta descriptions on all pages.
12. Evaluate Mobile Friendliness: Websites are required to be responsive. Creating a mobile-first website is a priority, and ensuring that they load fast is very important. Many areas with poor internet connections require that your websites load extremely fast. If you are serving 2 different pages for mobile and desktop, ensure that you use canonical tags to prevent duplicate content.
13. Check External Links and Backlinks: Backlinks are the powerhouse of SEO. The more, the better – but only if they come from relevant and related content. Links from forums and blog comments are all good, but it’s a lot better when they come from websites in the same industry. Beware of links coming from spammy websites. When possible, try to remove the links from spammy websites. Just as backlinks are important, so are external links from your website. Link to only reputed websites and ensure that the links are relevant to your content and support it in some way. Do not link to websites which may be ill-reputed.

The SEO audit practices are exhaustive, and these are only some of the few tips you should get started with.