Audits

• Penalty analysis: Watching out for any penalties that may come about from updates to search engine algorithms.

• Backlink analysis: Review backlinks from time to time to verify if any of them may be harming rather than helping the site. Backlinks from fishy, disreputable, or spammy sites can actually be negative SEO attempts by competition.

• Indexation: Are all the pages of a website being indexed? Watch out for any pages that are not being indexed. Using Google Search Console can help uncover such pages.

• Script usage: Using scripts can sometimes hamper search engines from effectively indexing a site. Redoing parts of a website or a platform in a more crawler-friendly tech-stack can help with rankings.

• robots.txt: The robots.txt file is a simple text file that is used to instruct search engine robots, or “bots,” about which pages or sections of a website should not be crawled or indexed. It’s a standard used by websites to communicate with web crawlers and other web robots. The robots.txt file can be used to help improve the website’s search engine ranking by excluding low-quality or duplicate pages from being indexed, or by ensuring that important pages are not blocked from being crawled. However, it’s important to note that the robots.txt file is just a request, and not all robots may obey it. Additionally, it’s also possible for malicious actors to ignore the instructions in the robots.txt file, so the file should not be relied on for secure data protection.

• sitemap.xml: The sitemap.xml file is a standard format for providing information about the pages, videos, and other files on our website, and the relationships between them. The sitemap file is submitted to search engines to help them crawl our website more effectively and to understand its structure and hierarchy. By submitting a sitemap.xml file, we are providing information about the pages on our site, their relative importance, and when they were last updated, which can help search engines to index our site’s content more accurately and efficiently. Additionally, it can also help to ensure that all of our pages are included in the search engine’s index, which can improve our site’s visibility and ranking in search results.

• Site speed: A slow-loading website can cause visitors to bounce back to the search results, which can negatively impact our site’s engagement metrics, such as time on site and pages per session. Search engines consider these metrics when evaluating the relevance and quality of our site’s content. Slow-loading websites can rank lower in search engine results, as search engines prefer to present users with fast-loading, high-quality websites.

• Schema markup: Schema markup, also known as structured data, is code that we add to our website to help search engines understand the context of our content. It provides additional information about our page to search engines, beyond just the text on the page. Having accurate and complete schema markup can also make our content eligible to appear in rich snippets, which are enhanced search results that display additional information about our content. Rich snippets can increase the visibility and click-through rate of our content in search results, which can have a positive impact on our search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Some examples of schemas include article schema, product schema, local business schema, event schema, and recipe schema.

On-page SEO audit

This type of audit focuses on the content and structure of individual pages on a website. It evaluates factors such as keyword usage, header tags, meta descriptions, and internal linking and identifies any areas for improvement. Note that internal links are just as important as backlinks for a website. Internal links should be working and be discoverable for crawling by search engines.

Off-page SEO audit

This type of audit focuses on factors outside of a website that can impact its visibility on search engines, such as inbound links, social media presence, and online reputation. The goal of an off-page SEO audit is to identify any issues that may be affecting a website’s ability to rank well on search engines.

Competitor SEO audit

This type of audit involves analyzing the SEO strategies of a website’s competitors to identify areas for improvement. It evaluates factors such as keyword usage, link building, and content optimization and provides recommendations for ways to stay ahead of the competition.

Local SEO audit

This type of audit focuses on optimizing a website for local search results. It evaluates factors such as local keywords, Google My Business listings, and online reviews and provides recommendations for improving a website’s visibility in local search results.

Mobile SEO audit

This type of audit focuses on optimizing a website for mobile devices. It evaluates factors such as mobile-friendly design, page speed, and responsive design and provides recommendations for improving a website’s mobile experience.

Content SEO audit

This type of audit focuses on the quality and relevance of a website’s content. It evaluates factors such as keyword usage, originality, and relevance and provides recommendations for improving a website’s content strategy. Some other factors considered are:

• Identifying expired content

• Identifying content that is spam or could be perceived as spam by search engines

• Duplicate-content issues cause Google to have to make a decision about which URL to index. This may not be the desired URL, so canonicals can help declare the preferred URL. Improper usage of canonicals can be very detrimental to the site. There are those that call this a duplicate-content penalty, but it is actually not a penalty at all, as this is how search indexation is designed to work.

International SEO audit

International SEO audit refers to the process of evaluating and analyzing a website’s visibility and ranking in search engines for target audiences in multiple countries or regions. During an international SEO audit, the following factors are typically evaluated:

• Domain structure: The audit will examine the website’s domain structure to determine if it is set up in a way that is optimal for targeting multiple international markets.

• Content: The audit will examine the website’s content to ensure that it is optimized for the target audience in each market, including the language and cultural nuances of each target audience.

• Localization: The audit will examine the website’s localization efforts to determine if the site is effectively targeting each international market, including the use of local language, local addresses, local phone numbers, and local currency.

• Geolocation: The audit will examine the website’s geolocation efforts to determine if it is accurately targeting the desired geographical location and to identify any technical issues that might be hindering the website’s ability to rank well in these locations.

• Keyword research: The audit will evaluate the website’s target keywords and determine if they are relevant and optimized for the target audience in each international market.

Conclusion

By conducting a regular SEO audit, we can identify any issues that may be impacting our website’s performance and visibility on search engines, and take steps to improve our website’s optimization.

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