27TH JULY 2023
Picture your website as a living being in the vast online world, trying its best to attract visitors and provide a great user experience. Just like we go for regular health check-ups to keep ourselves healthy, websites also need a thorough examination, a website technical audit, to ensure they are in top-notch digital shape.
Much like a health check-up, a website technical audit is not just a one-time affair. It's a proactive and ongoing process, vital to maintaining peak digital performance and adapting to the ever-changing demands of the digital landscape.
The process can be quite complex. That’s why, as a professional SEO company, we are giving you a simple step-by-step guide that will make it easy for you to understand the basics. Let’s start!
First, take a closer look at your website’s inner workings. Using tools like Screaming Frog or Site bulb, you can crawl your website and get a comprehensive view of its structure, internal links, and status codes. This process mimics how search engines access and index your site, highlighting any issues that might affect your website’s SEO performance.
Verify that search engines can crawl and index your site effectively. Use the "site:" operator in Google to check the number of indexed pages. If there's a significant discrepancy between the number of indexed pages and the actual pages on your site, it may indicate crawling or indexing issues that need attention.
Ensure your XML sitemap is up-to-date and accurately represents your website's structure. Submit the sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to aid search engines in discovering and indexing your pages efficiently.
Website speed is a critical factor in SEO and user experience. Use tools like Google Page Speed Insights or GTmetrix to analyze your website's loading times. Optimize images, leverage browser caching, and minify CSS and JavaScript to improve speed and reduce bounce rates.
The majority of internet users accessing websites via mobile devices, mobile friendliness is paramount for the balance. Use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to ensure your website adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes and devices.
Review your website's URL structure for readability and relevance. URLs should be descriptive, containing target keywords when applicable, and avoid excessive parameters. Use hyphens to separate words for better search engine understanding.
Duplicate content can harm your SEO efforts. Utilize tools like Copyscape or Site liner to identify and resolve duplicate content issues across your website. Consider using canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a page to search engines.
Analyze your website's architecture to ensure logical organization and easy navigation. Create a clear and intuitive hierarchy using categories, subcategories, and breadcrumbs. This enhances user experience and helps search engines crawl your site efficiently.
Internal links play a vital role in distributing link equity and guiding search engine crawlers. Ensure that your internal linking strategy is well-structured, using relevant anchor text and connecting related pages.
Keyword research is not limited to content creation; it's also essential for technical optimization. Identify relevant target keywords for each page and optimize Meta titles, meta descriptions, and header tags accordingly.
Also Read: 7 Simple Steps for an Effective SEO Strategy
Examine your website's robots.txt file to ensure that search engine crawlers can access essential pages while excluding non-essential ones. Make any necessary adjustments to improve crawl efficiency.
Broken links can negatively impact user experience and SEO. Use tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs to identify broken links and fix or redirect them as necessary.
Ensure your website uses HTTPS to encrypt data transmission and protect user privacy. Secure sites are preferred by search engines and can positively influence rankings.
Monitor and fix 404 errors, which occur when a page cannot be found. Regularly review your website's crawl errors in Google Search Console and rectify any issues to maintain a smooth user experience.
A catalyst for small businesses to reach the horizons and an accelerating gear for an established business to keep on the path,
“Properly practiced reativity can make one ad do the work of ten,” said Bill Bernbach, a legendary ad man.
Recently Tata Motors changed the name of its car from Zica to Tiago as Zica sounds similar to the deadly virus Zika. It’s a timely business decision that reminds one of candy.