A technical SEO audit refers to a systematic method in which you examine the various technical aspects pertaining to the optimization of your site's search engine ranking. It basically determines the state of a website and finds out which repairs may be required to increase its search engine rank. Search engine robots crawl the internet looking for websites and pages. In most cases, they get confused when they find websites that are not optimized properly and will thereby ignore the site. You wouldn’t want this site to be yours, hence the need for a regular technical SEO audit.
Therefore, a technical SEO audit should be a method in which an expert can check on the condition of your site and identify any problems that may have arisen due to the absence of optimization techniques. Most SEO experts have a number of tips in which they recommend when they perform an audit of your site. Some of these include the following:
1. Understanding And Studying The Factors That Affect Your Website’s SEO Performance
A sound foundation of a technical site audit begins with understanding the different factors that affect your website’s overall SEO performance. It's important for you to conduct a regular audit on each of these factors, so that you know for certain that you’re regularly up-to-date with all of the changes that goes on in the industry.
These factors can be classified into the following categories:
• Off-page factors, which includes all of the outside references to your website and backlinks
• Technical factors, which include all of the technical matters related to SEO, such as hosting and page loading speed
• On-page factors, which are all of those on-page references, such as keywords and content
2. Using SSL
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. This refers to that particular security technology, which forms an encrypted link between your browser and web server. This is very easy to find on a website, as it belongs to those that have “https://” at the beginning.
This may seem like a very basic advice, but a part of your technical SEO audit should include checking to see that you’ve got https:// and not merely http.
This can be achieved through installing an SSL certificate on your website.
3. Checking The Page Loading Speed Of Your Site
The fastest way to boost your website's web page loading speed is to have a good page load optimization. This will improve the speed of your website, which means that you get to keep more visitors. It's also a key facet of digital marketing that you have to comply with. However, what exactly is page load optimization?
Page load optimization is an essential part of website development and web design. The best optimization techniques are usually done with the help of professional developers. A professional website developer will analyze your website and look into your website's content. They will also check for compatibility issues and security issues. Once this analysis is done, you will then be given a list of potential optimization techniques, which you can either do yourself or by hiring a professional.
One of these techniques includes making your website's content dynamic by using dynamic images that add visual information to your web page. Another thing that can be dynamic in your website are meta tags.
Search engines have a tendency to ignore static pages. The more static pages there are on your website, the less likely they’re to rank high. Therefore, it’s always advisable to have as many dynamic pages as possible on your website.
4. Reviewing Your Site’s Internal Links
The way to effectively manage your web traffic is to review your website's internal links. Internal links are those that direct visitors to a specific page within your website, while external links point to a different webpage. It's not uncommon for some websites to have both internal and external links pointing to their main page, but this can make it difficult for visitors to find their way back to the homepage.
The way to review internal links is to add a few new pages within your site. Each page should link to a different page within your main page. When you add new pages, be sure they include links pointing to a homepage. This will ensure that your site will appear in search engine results once a visitor clicks on one of your links.
If your website has many new pages, then it may take some time for you to fully index all of its pages. In this case, it's best to take advantage of tools such as Google's free Keyword Tool to help you determine the best page within each category to link to. After adding new pages to your site, be sure to review your website's internal links to see which pages within your site link to which keywords.
5. Understanding What To Expect In An SEO Audit
When it comes to performing a complete analysis, there are two things you need to look for. One is the keyword list and the other is the total number of pages on your website. With these two factors, you can determine what keywords you should focus on for your SEO audit.
Along with the keyword list, go through the content of your website as well. You’ll need to determine the keywords that will help your site rank well. In this case, the main content of your website will be used as your keywords. However, if you have a lot of duplicate content on your site, you may not be able to get a decent ranking. This means you’ll have to change the content of your site, as this will not affect its ranking.
When you understand what to expect and what not to expect in an SEO audit, you’ll know precisely how to determine that the audit is complete.
For starters, you should expect this SEO auditing process to run anywhere from two to six weeks.
Parting Words On SEO Audits
A website is necessarily one that’s made up of many technical matters. Hence, it’s but fitting that you also check through its technicalities from time to time. That way, you know that your site still complies with all of the needed requirements for it to rank well with search engines. If you want to succeed online, it’s very important that you maximize all of your SEO efforts. Don't merely settle for minimum. If you’ve long desired to up your SEO efforts, these tips should help you get started.
