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!
Step 1: Audit Your Website
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.
Step 2: Check Indexing and Crawling
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.
Step 3: Review XML Sitemap
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.
Step 4: Evaluate Website Speed
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.
Step 5: Examine Mobile-Friendliness
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.
Step 6: Assess URL Structure
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.
Step 7: Check for Duplicate Content
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.
Step 8: Review Site Architecture
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.
Step 9: Analyze Internal Linking
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.
Step 10: Conduct Keyword Research
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
Step 11: Review Robots.txt
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.
Step 12: Check for Broken Links
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.
Step 13: Audit Site Security (HTTPS)
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.
Step 14: Monitor 404 Errors
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.
The Way Ahead
Remember, like taking care of your health, SEO is an ongoing process. Regularly monitoring and updating your website’s technical aspects will keep it ahead in the ever-changing digital landscape. The result? A well-optimized website that attracts organic traffic, gains a competitive edge, and provides an exceptional user experience.
Seems a bit complicated right? That’s why for any technical SEO services such as audits or local SEO services, it is advisable to take help of a professional SEO company. If you need SEO services for small business or large, you need to hire SEO agency or SEO services Provider Company. Contact us and we will help you!
