5 Factors Every SEO Specialist Should Consider during Website Audit
Hello friends, I hope you all are doing great. In today's tutorial, I am going to show you 5 Factors Every SEO Specialist Should Consider during Website Audit. A website audit is a complex investigation of a web platform that is significant for its functionality, promotion, and development. An audit includes analyzing search engines, correcting any problems that prevent it from achieving high-ranking positions, and checking the content and website structure. It shows whether a previous strategy was effective and helps to come up with a new one. It is a regular checkup, and your website is a patient.
An audit shows what needs repair in order to attract organic traffic and strengthen ranking position. When performing an audit, there are numerous features to consider such as:
- backlinks check;
- website monitoring;
- navigation and usability check;
- keywords detection for improving organic search results;
- investigating the competitors;
- on page seo check .
- website health check
Every SEO specialist should focus first on analyzing the link base.
Choosing the tools
Search engine algorithms are constantly changing and evolving as research tools keep upgrading together with requirements for web resources. You can choose the most effective by conducting a survey among your colleagues, checking out forums and professional media or using different tools on your own to assist in completing the task more efficiently. Remember to consider that one tool may perform better than another.
Inexperienced SEO specialists sometimes pay more attention to keywords and website structure since they are easier to comprehend. However, link research is the core of a website audit with
SitecheckerPro and
Majestic as a top option for examining links and search engines parameters.
There are three methods for using Majestic
- Define website trust when looking for donors. Pay attention to Citation Flow and Trust Flow parameters to find good platforms for cooperation.
These parameters will help you to analyze whether all the backlinks are suitable your website theme. These two numbers shouldn`t be too different from each other.
- User analysis for all website links. Use the findings to come up with a strategy of promotion.
You can explore what type of links your competitors use or analyze your own ones.
The main advantage of Majestic is its scale: you are able to analyze up to 10 competitors simultaneously and get access to the largest database of links.
- Determine the technical health of the site, in order to correctly optimize your website for search engine rankings you can do with the help of Sitechecker.pro.
It is possible to check some of its features:
- Analyze the page for errors in the URL;
- robots.txt and sitemap;
- internal and external links.
- Also, you can use extra features like website monitoring to track the most important pages. It is really useful when you want to monitor indexing issues or content changes.
With the help of this software you can track the active number of errors, improve your website health and SEO ranking.
Below are the 5 important factors to consider when doing a website audit:
#1. Backlinks analysis
Backlinks are the external links to your website. Each backlink is a piece of a puzzle that plays an important role in indexing. The sources and quantity of web page backlinks define the importance of a page and how a search engine decides on the order of link display. Backlinks help to attract a primary audience but remember that quantity doesn’t always define the quality. Strong website architecture requires fewer backlinks. During analysis, you may stumble upon information that will become helpful for improving general design.
Sitechecker Pro users can check essential backlink parameters. You can start from the Free Backlink Checker: the more reliable the website is that you choose, the better it influences your reputation. The best way is to come up with a short list of trusted websites for efficient backlinks is to use Sitechecker Pro for primary analysis and then do some manual work. A check feature analyses the number of links and domains and then creates a report with trusted themes for all URL addresses. You can look through the top 10 or 20 positions to check everything closely.
Indexing data is also displayed in Backlink Checker Report, helping you to attract attention of search engines to the important information. Make sure all the important information is indexed. In Sitechecker, users can also view all
404 error pages and
redirect chains and reclaim the ones that are not working.
#2. Anchors analysis
The next step will define whether your links include spam or irrelevant anchors. Anchors are a powerful tool that can either take your website to the top or result in sanctions and blockage. It depends on how good you are at using them.
An anchor is a text part of a link – a clickable content that disguises a portal to another page. This text usually consists of keywords inserted directly in the sentence. The more relevant the anchor is, the more significant weight is transmitted by the link. This relevance lies in the relationship between text and link: it should be obvious and logical. Sometimes it is useful to break the main search of synonyms and epithets to make anchors more diverse. There is no perfect strategy for optimal anchor choice. Analyze the choice of competitive web resources and find the most efficient option.
What is your best chance to analyze anchors? The answer is – anchor cloud.
If you can`t afford majestic tool, there is a free one from Sitechecker. It shows anchors to every backlink you would like to track.
With this information you can:
- Analyze anchor text. If it is not suitable for your business or contain spam words, you have to remove or decline such backlinks. Otherwise, you can get a penalty or warnings from search engines.
- Explore the topic. Google likes websites which relevant links. If your blog is about Tech but all the backlinks are left from Fashion blogs, there is a big reason to wonder whether you are a spammer.
- Check external backlinks. It will help you to determine which sites are suitable for you.
#3. Internal links analysis
Now, let’s pay attention to internal structure and navigation. A convenient menu is just the tip of the iceberg. For better performance, you need to create an integral infrastructure and interlink the pages within the website. Besides convenience, this step increases the thematic and statistic weight of the website. The more links lead to a particular page, the more weight it carries. Smart distribution of internal links has a positive influence on indexation results, especially if your website consists of four or more pages. The connections should be logical and help a user to find information faster. Make sure there are no broken links or irrelevant anchors.
You can receive the full list of the links that are used for website ranking through Majestic Site Explorer. It is possible to get the list of links found on your website currently and those that were used before. You can see what is working, what is effective, and what needs to be fixed. For instance, some pages were closed or deleted, but you kept sending traffic there. You can solve the problem with a full report of the issues.
For these purposes you can try website health checker from Sitechecker. Launch website audit and get the information about all technical errors. You can find 404 error pages, check their anchors and remove from your website.
#4. Analysis of the competitors
It is important to know your rivals and what is going on in the industry. The analysis of the competitors is crucial for making strategic decisions and understanding the place of your project within the market.
To choose the competitors for tracking, you can use keyword analysis via Majestic. Even if you know your rivals, there is a chance to stumble upon some strong candidates with promising SEO strategies that can become a threat in the future. If you have many keywords in common an analyzed website is your direct rival. If its visibility is high, it probably uses the right strategy for SEO optimization.
You need to compare the frequency of visits, the number of indexed pages,
keyword density, structure and content, interlinking, etc. You can analyze general features and specific approaches that are important for promotion such as domain age, the number of visitors, meta information, and linking strategy. This data will help you to come up with new ideas and a fresh approach to your own web resource.
#5. Data examining and monitoring
Tracking reports help to keep a check on server uptime, download speed, viruses, and even changes on pages, similar to indexation status and robots.txt file status, and page code. Why is this so important? With time, new people get involved in the working process, the majority with little understanding of SEO. You can explain the basics but monitoring the changes wouldn't go amiss.
You should scan websites to detect such changes and view all notes regarding them in a journal. Great feature getting mails from special when new links are added and get updates on their status.
It is possible to get complete SEO reports on the backlinks to compare their value. Keep monitoring the key competitors to get the reports on the relevant link building campaigns every 10 days. Track the important keywords and compare those with competitors’ performance, too.
Conclusion - How an audit benefits your website
A website audit is a set of complex measures that require time and analysis that help with:
- behavioral factors improvement;
- organic traffic increase;
- higher position in search results;
- conversion enhancement;
- and better perspectives for monetization.
When you need to detect all issues of the websites functioning and analyze the competitive environment, choose a comprehensive audit which includes a technical audit, SEO analysis, usability check, and a marketing audit.
The technical audit is aimed at analyzing hosting, website coding, website management features, software vulnerability, loading time, etc. SEO audit shows website success regarding its rating in search engines. You are to investigate content quality, external links, indexed pages, the correctness of titles and meta tags. The purpose of a usability check is to detect how convenient your website is for users by studying website design and analyzing the ease of technical manipulations, such as entry and exit and filling in electronic applications. The final stage helps to make sure the website is compliant with the requests of the target audience and has advantageous differences compared with competitors’ websites.
A website audit is a significant step in upgrading your web resource, and it should not be neglected. Timely and high-quality analysis ensures the stable and efficient functioning of a website. Conducting an audit on a regular basis guarantees that your web resource will occupy high positions in the search results and ensure new customers.
Introduction to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Hi Guys! We welcome you on board. Today, I am going to elaborate the details on the
Introduction SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and why it is important for your blog, especially for the engineers and students who intend to start their own blog and website to showcase their skills with an online presence.
This is my first article covering SEO series where I aim to continue and complete all the tips and techniques required to make SEO work and stand out.
It is observed, most of the engineers who are fond of making their own blogs start their journey quite well, but with the passage of time, they find it quite difficult to maintain the online presence too long, because they lack SEO skills to make their blog available on the top of search engine results. As a result, most of the students give up in the early stage of their online journey.
That's the reason today I choose this topic, so you get enough knowledge about how you can rank higher on the search engines. Let's get started.
Introduction to SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of tips and tricks used to rank your blog higher on the search engines. This process will help you retain and gain a number of visitors on your blog.
All search engines work efficiently and strive to offer more relevant data to their users. If your data resonates with the needs and requirements of the users, followed by certain rules and regulations recommended by search engines, you'll come with a higher chance of appearing on the top of search results.
There are three search engines that are mostly used for bringing visitors to your site called Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Most of the traffic you get from these search engine called organic (unpaid) traffic which you get by following the general rules of SEO without paying a single penny.
Now internet technology has been evolved over the time and main search engines like Google and Bing have made major changes in their algorithms so websites and blogs with most relevant and useful information come forward on the search engines when someone looks for specific information.
I have come across a number of emails and comments from visitors around the world asking how do we maintain our site and rank higher in search engines? And what are the main SEO techniques and tips we follow for providing the most relevant information to our visitors? Before I elaborate the main SEO tips, you should have a clear idea why do you need good SEO for your site?
Why Do You Need SEO?
In the early stage of the internet, blogs and websites didn't require much SEO techniques because there was a fewer number of websites available at that time. Now, almost millions of websites are available on the internet and only those survive that come with better SEO.
Most of the students and engineers come with very good software skills that help them make good responsive blog design but still unable to get organic traffic on their blog. The reason is quite clear. They waste enough time making good website design that makes them forget giving required attention for SEO that plays a vital part in bringing organic traffic on the blog. Good website design will be of no use if no one comes to see your website.
Making good website design and posting quality content is beneficial as long as you are paying equal attention to the SEO of your website. Search Engines come with intelligent bots which crawl and identify the pages that are most suitable and relevant for the users. No matter how much quality content you have written, if the content doesn't resonate with the requirement of the visitors and the keywords they are using for specific information, your content won't appear on the top of search results.
A golden rule of thumb is, create a content that is beneficial for both search engines and visitors; ignoring any of those can severely affect your blog traffic.
SEO is easy? Can I do it by Myself?
For some people, an idea of doing SEO for the blog looks quite intimidating that scares the hell out of them. They think only professionals, with lots of hard work and experience, can do SEO; however, this is not true. Without prior experience, you can start learning and get the experience right away.
But keep one thing in mind, this is not a process that you can do one time and get away with it; it requires tweaks and modifications with regular intervals as your blog grows with the passage of time.
There are only a few rules and regulations, which if you follow, can put you ahead from others and help you rank higher in the search engines.
Also, it is possible, some SEO tips that deem beneficial for others may not work for you. However, it is a matter of hard work and customization of your blog with different SEO methods, so stick with the ones that turn out to be good for your blog.
Types of SEO
There are three types of SEO techniques frequently used by most of the bloggers. Some are beneficial and highly recommended by the search engines and some give quick results but prove to be ineffective in the long run and come with limitations and drawbacks. Let's discuss one by one.
1. White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO is referred as tips and techniques used to rank your blog higher in the search results, without breaking any rule of the search engines. These tips are beneficial when you focus on achieving a long-lasting position on the search results, without ignoring visitors and search engine requirements.
These techniques include proper keyword research, link building, backlinking, title and meta description that include focus keyword, SMO marketing, branding, producing quality content, keep uploading fresh content, tweaking already produced content that resonates with recent visitors and many more.
White hat SEO is highly recommended by most of the bloggers because it will set you free from getting blocked by the search engines.
2. Grey Hat SEO
As the name suggests, Grey Hat SEO is referred as the SEO strategies that lie somewhere between white hat SEO and black hat SEO and are equally effective in making your blog go higher in the search results.
Applying grey hat SEO can be considered as techniques in which you are not 100% sure if you get the desired result but still you keep applying these techniques until some work for you. Grey hat SEO includes link buying, duplicate content, purchasing old domains and many more.
3. Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO is considered as the tips and techniques used to increase organic traffic on your blog and are illegal and break rules recommended by search engines. These tips will rank you higher for short period of time, provided you don't get noticed by the search engine.
In order words, these are the shortcuts that help you go higher in the search engines from backdoors.
Applying black hat SEO can put your site at huge risk because the moment search engines get to know you are breaking their rules, you'll get banned immediately.
These techniques include keyword stuffing, doorway pages, hidden text, spam blog, unrelated keywords, fake link building.
Types of White Hat SEO
SEO is divided into further two types on the basis of functionality.
A. On Page SEO
B. Off Page SEO
Let's discuss one by one.
A. On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO stands for tips and strategies that are completely in your control while you are producing content and preparing it for a search engine. There are many factors that widely impact your page in order to make it appear higher in the search engines.
1. Domain
Domain name plays a vital role in SEO strategies. If your domain name resonates with the specific keyword and the service you are providing, you come with a higher chance of appearing on the top of search results.
Suppose, your service is related to cricket or football, then domain containing cricket or football in their names will have a higher chance of appearing on the search engines as compared to those lacking these words.
2. Title
The
title you pick for your post must contain your focus keyword. Search engines come with automatic bots. Making your title stuffed with focus keyword will make it easy for bots crawling and picking your page without much effort.
And the title length must not exceed from 60 characters for better SEO. It is shown as a blue link when you search for any information.
3. Meta Description
Meta description is the little summary about your blog post. It should highlight the main points of the post and range from 160 to 320 characters. Writing more than 320 characters will automatically get cut off from the description. Focus keyword must appear in the meta description.
Meta description helps in increasing your CTR (click through rate) and you will get a higher chance of appearing in SERP (search engine results page).
4. Headings
Picking the right headings with the focus keyword can affect your SEO strategies. Page comes with many headings including H1, H2, H3 and so on with H1 is the main heading. H1 heading comes with a bigger font size that decreases gradually as we move from h2 to h3 to h4 and so on.
For example:
<h1>Introduction to SEO</h1>
<h2>Why we need SEO</h2>
<h3>Types of SEO</h3>
You can choose one heading H1 as your main heading and as many h2, h3 and h4 as required. The headings you used for your page must contain a focus keyword that resonates with the overall content of the page.
5. Keywords
Picking the most suitable keywords is very important to bring more visitors to your blog. Google Keyword Planner is a great tool to manage your keywords in your blog post. Keyword density is equally important for your SEO.
It is recommended, you maintain keyword density up to 1%. Suppose, your blog post is 1000 words in length, then focus keyword must appear 10 times in your blog post.
6. Alt Text
Alt text is very necessary when you add an image in your post. This alt tag tells the search engine bots what your image is about. This is the only way bots come to know information about your images otherwise simple image without alt text gives no meaning to the image and bot cannot interpret what image is all about.
And when you upload the image, try to embed as many keywords as possible related to the post in the alt text. Suppose, this article is about "Introduction to SEO", so related alt text would be like this i.e. Introduction to SEO, Intro to SEO, Introduction to Search Engine Optimization, Types of SEO, Types of Search Engine Optimization, Why do we need SEO. Add many alt tags as possible with focus keyword in it.
Also, the name you give while saving the image must be relevant to the topic. Suppose, the image you save for this article should be "Introduction to SEO.jpg" instead "image1.jpg"
7. URL Structure
Blog Post URL is another important factor that can affect your SEO strategies. Big and messy URLs have less chance of being identified and indexed by the search engines. Your URL structure must be relevant to the topic and not too long. Shorter URLs have more chance of going higher in the search engine results.
Avoid characters like $,%*& or underscore in the URL, instead search engine prefer dash - sign in case you are agreed to add sign anyway. Number and characters are preferred by search engines to add in the URL structure.
Whatever URL you prefer to set for your post, it must be relevant to the topic and gives a clear hint of what your topic is all about.
8. Internal Linking
Internal Linking is very important to decrease the bounce rate of the website. Bounce rate is defined as the number of visitors who visit your site and leave immediately after spending some time on your site.
By doing internal linking, visitors who are reading your recent post may find something beneficial in the posts you link to, in your article.
Keep one thing in mind while linking other posts, they must sound fit and resonate with the topic of the article. Avoid linking to those posts that are entirely on the different topic from the one you are writing.
B. Off-Page SEO
Doing better On Page SEO means half work done for making your blog go higher in the search engines. Your blog authority has a lot to do with Off Page SEO. What On Page SEO does for preparing your blog for search engines, Off Page SEO will do it for SERP.
1. Creating a Sitemap
Creating a sitemap for your blog is very important. Search engines bots won't be aware of your online presence unless you create sitemaps. Every search engine comes with their own webmaster tool for creating sitemaps. Like Bing and Google have their own webmaster tools. While Yahoo uses Bing webmaster tool. However, you can also use a third-party tool to create a sitemap for your blog.
These sites maps are like road maps that give directions to the google bots where your web pages are located. Each sitemap contains a total number of links to your blog.
2. Back Links
Backlinks play a vital role in your Off Page SEO strategies. The more high authority and trustworthy sites are linking back to you, the higher the chance of your web page appearing on the search result. It is like a voting system but a little bit different from the democratic system. Getting only one backlink from a trustworthy, high authority site is way better than getting a number of backlinks from low authority sites.
Best way to get a backlink from trustworthy sites is creating a high quality and relevant content so other sites feel no hesitation sharing your content on their platform.
3. Guest Posting
Guest posting is another effective way to increase your online presence and make your content available to as many visitors as possible. There are a number of sites that are open to guest posting. You can approach them and ask them for a guesting posting about the topic that is missing on their blog. In this way, they'll get free written content and you'll get a high-quality backlink in return. Make sure, the blog you choose for guest posting is highly relevant and fall under your blog niche.
4. SMO
SMO (Social media optimization) is very important and widely impact your SEO strategies. Social media engagement will help you create a brand name for your business. If you are highly active on social media, follow up regularly and discuss the problems your visitors are facing, you will come up with a higher chance of being identified by the search engines that give value and keep an eye on the content that is widely discussed on the social media platforms.
5. Forum Submission
Forum submission is another important factor that falls under Off Page SEO and helps getting more backlinks. Take an active participation in the forums that are related to your blog. Build a connection, make a rapport with the visitors, answer their questions and queries. In this way, they will get a hint that you are pretty nifty about your skills and have enough information about the topic they are discussing on the forum.
6. Directory Submission
Directory submission is one of the oldest ways, still effective, to bring traffic on your blog. Pick a relevant directory and submit your blog with useful information and blog link. This process takes time and gives result slowly but surely.
7. Question and Answer
Answering questions related to your blog is the best way to hijack a number of visitors. You can join the question and answer sites related to your blog and help the visitors solve their problems and queries. Don't just go and put your link on those websites. First, give value to the visitors by answering their questions then put your link on the site. This way visitors think you are more concerned about their problems than bringing traffic to your site.
8. Article Submission
Pick high-quality article submission directory related to your niche and submit your article. Make sure, the article you submit contains high-quality content that gives value to the visitors. Low-quality content may get rejected that ultimately effects the overall reputation of your blog.
You can also check complete guide of
SEO Tutorials on a single page where I have combined all the articles combining both On Page and Off SEO.
Conclusion
These are just the important points to put your blog higher in the search engines. Don't just rush to things and expect quick results. Apply these tips I have mentioned above one by one as you start your journey with SEO. You will definitely see a spike in your traffic as your blog grows and becomes older with the passage of time.
Don't compare your progress with your competitors. What works for them may not work for you. Just keep trying a number of different SEO tips & and techniques and stick with the ones that prove suitable for you. Applying SEO tips is not one time process, you need to keep modifying and tweaking your SEO techniques because it may happen the techniques that are suitable recently may turn out to be ineffective in future.
The more you are concerned with the problems visitors are facing and giving ultimate solutions to them, the more your blog will go higher in search engines. Don't just pick any random topic and make a blog post on it. Do proper keyword research before writing a post.
Produce a content that fulfills the requirements of both search engine and visitors. You can't ignore any of them to really get off the ground your blogging journey.
Getting top position in the search results is not one night stand, you need to work hard consistently and efficiently if you really want search engines give value to your blog. And don't lose hope if things don't work out in the start, they will work, if not now, but eventually.
We are targeting On Page SEO first, that is necessary and plays a vital role when you are creating a blog post. Our next article mainly focuses on how to create stunning
Blog Post Titles.
That's all for today. I hope you have enjoyed the article. However, if still you feel skeptical or have any question you can approach me in the comment section below. I'd love to help you based on best of my knowledge and expertise. Feel free to keep us updated with your feedback and suggestions, they help us provide you quality work. Thanks for reading the article. Stay Tuned!
