Advanced SEO Audit Checklist For All Stages Of The Analysis [Infographic]
Ilkhom Chakkanbaev
Author of Seopulses Blog
Website SEO Audit is a website check for internal issues and compliance with search engines' requirements. An audit is necessary both in case of search engine sanctions and when everything is fine with the website. It can help accelerate website growth by identifying and fixing technical vulnerabilities.
You should always carry out a detailed audit before starting on-site optimization. It will help you find minor bugs and serious problems.
Let's get to our technical SEO audit checklist.
You should always carry out a detailed audit before starting on-site optimization. It will help you find minor bugs and serious problems.
Let's get to our technical SEO audit checklist.
Contents
1. General information
1.1 What is an SEO audit
1.2 Why is SEO audit important
2. Stages of an SEO audit
2.1 Gathering information about the project
2.2 Analysis of audience, search demand and competitors
2.3 Traffic analysis
2.4 Analysis of the site structure
2.5 General technical audit
2.6 On-page SEO guide
2.7 Display in SERP (issues related to markup)
3. Analysis of the link mass
3.1 Growth dynamics
3.2 Naturalness
3.3 Quality of the link mass
3.4 Anchor list spamming
3.5 Analysis of density and commerciality of the anchor list
3.6 Conclusions on the link mass
4. Checking for sanctions of search engines, risk assessment
5. Additional checks related to the specifics of the project
6. Search for effective ways of project development
7. Making a report and optimization plan
8. Conclusions
FAQ
1.1 What is an SEO audit
1.2 Why is SEO audit important
2. Stages of an SEO audit
2.1 Gathering information about the project
2.2 Analysis of audience, search demand and competitors
2.3 Traffic analysis
2.4 Analysis of the site structure
2.5 General technical audit
2.6 On-page SEO guide
2.7 Display in SERP (issues related to markup)
3. Analysis of the link mass
3.1 Growth dynamics
3.2 Naturalness
3.3 Quality of the link mass
3.4 Anchor list spamming
3.5 Analysis of density and commerciality of the anchor list
3.6 Conclusions on the link mass
4. Checking for sanctions of search engines, risk assessment
5. Additional checks related to the specifics of the project
6. Search for effective ways of project development
7. Making a report and optimization plan
8. Conclusions
FAQ
- General information
- What is an SEO audit
- Why do you need a site audit
- Stages of work
- Gathering information about the project
- Analysis of audience, search demand and competitors
- Traffic analysis
- Analysis of the site structure
- General technical audit
- On-page optimization
- Display in SERP (issues related to markup)
- Analysis of the link mass
- Growth dynamics
- Naturalness
- Quality of the link mass
- Anchor list spamming
- Analysis of the ratio of backlinks types
- Analysis of density and commerciality of the anchor list
- Conclusions on the link mass
- Checking for sanctions of search engines, risk assessment
- Additional checks related to the specifics of the project
- Search for effective ways of project development
- Making a report and optimization plan
- Conclusions
General information
What is an SEO audit
Why is SEO audit important
Target audience portrait.
Collect primary information about the project.
Assess current SEO metrics.
On-page optimization. Helps customize meta tags and other parameters for optimization.
Backlink crawling.
Additional optimization related to the specifics of the work.
Stages of an SEO audit
Gathering information about the project
First of all, you should decide on the launch goal, which can vary, for instance:
Brief
Primary audit
Access
In the case of a brief, it will help obtain the maximum volume of information about the specifics of the client's work, business data, and approximate indicators during the work.
For a primary audit, you can use Serpstat or an alternative service, which allows you to get data on keywords the site already ranks for, analyze links and visibility for the last year, and much more.
Required accesses:
Google Analytics;
Google Search Console;
Also, say the company has already worked with SEO contractors. In this case, it is best to demand an SEO analysis report, which will allow you to understand the work that has already been done and pay attention to the tasks that have not yet been completed.
Personal demonstration
Leave a request, and we will conduct a personal demonstration of the service for you, provide you with a trial period, and offer comfortable conditions for starting exploring the tool
Analysis of audience, search demand and competitors
User portrait
Let's proceed with our SEO audit checklist. The portrait of the target audience should contain the following data:
age;
gender;
residence;
marital status;
area of employment;
income level;
position;
needs, desires, hobbies.
Additionally, we should understand that some topics may have several target audiences, each of which, in certain circumstances, may be interested in the promoted product.
Competitor analysis
There is a lot of work here since you should collect the maximum amount of data about your competitors:
1
Traffic from Google in the promoted regions. You can find it in the Serpstat Overview report.
2
Search engine visibility over time.
3
Used keywords.
4
Link analysis, you can draw a parallel with the promoted site with Links Intersection tool.
5
Indexing.
You could even go as far as doing a complete competitor website audit. Find a complete list of all possible data about competitors here.
Content audit
It's not currently possible to completely delegate this process to robots. A human SEO auditor would still need to do some parts of the work with texts and content.
Although, you can automate a major part of content audit processes with specialized tools. Find out how in the following article:
Although, you can automate a major part of content audit processes with specialized tools. Find out how in the following article:
Traffic analysis
Traffic analysis can be performed using the standard analytics system - Google Analytics.
It's also worth checking out reports from Google Search Console, for example, Devices.
Analysis of the site structure
There are many types of site structures: linear, branched, tree, mixed, etc. First of all, you should see if it looks harmonious after expanding the keyword list or needs to be redone.
For example, in an online store, you can determine the category of goods that, e.g., microphones can be related to. Accordingly, you should think over the entire path of the user and the section. For example, you can start with the category "Microphones and accessories", after which they can be divided into "Microphones" and "Accessories", and so on.
For example, in an online store, you can determine the category of goods that, e.g., microphones can be related to. Accordingly, you should think over the entire path of the user and the section. For example, you can start with the category "Microphones and accessories", after which they can be divided into "Microphones" and "Accessories", and so on.
A large site is not homogeneous; it consists of several sections, each of which (with proper content structuring) corresponds to a sub-niche with its own search demand, competition, and user behavior patterns.
Therefore, an adequate audit must necessarily contain a comparative analysis of the sections. Moreover, without careful study of the site in parts, one cannot be sure that there are no technical problems. Different dynamics across sections can easily distort the indicators that we tested to catch problems.
The analysis itself is simple enough. You need to collect data on the number of pages, indexing, traffic, conversions, link mass, and so on in a pivot table. Then problems and inconsistencies appear at a glance.
Therefore, an adequate audit must necessarily contain a comparative analysis of the sections. Moreover, without careful study of the site in parts, one cannot be sure that there are no technical problems. Different dynamics across sections can easily distort the indicators that we tested to catch problems.
The analysis itself is simple enough. You need to collect data on the number of pages, indexing, traffic, conversions, link mass, and so on in a pivot table. Then problems and inconsistencies appear at a glance.
General technical audit
Robots txt check
In the case of Google, you can use the following tool, where it is enough to select a property and start working. Here we also see the entire file with the rules.
If you need, you can check the ability to scan pages.
Then we see the result and the prohibiting rule.
After checking the indexing and understanding which pages should not be crawled by the robot, just add them to the robots.txt file.
Check if the correct pages are closed in robots.txt. You will find this recommendation in the Serpstat Site Audit.
Check if the correct pages are closed in robots.txt. You will find this recommendation in the Serpstat Site Audit.
“
One move with your magic wand and "Allow: /" turns into "Disallow: /". In this case, do not be surprised why your site is not indexed or, even worse, dropped out of the index and lost all positions. How can these problems be avoided? Similar to Meta Robots - keep track of positions and regularly check the site with a crawler. Be careful when setting up robots.txt on test subdomains (for developers and QA) - these subdomains obviously should not be indexed; therefore, it is advisable to close them in robots.txt, but there are times when such a robots.txt file goes to production, and everything becomes sad.
Formation of XML sitemap
To generate a sitemap on a standard CMS, you can use modules or plugins. For example, in the case of WordPress, it is enough to install the Yoast SEO plugin, where you can enable the generation of an XML sitemap in the general settings.
If you are using a non-standard CMS, you can use the free SiteAnalyzer tool to generate a sitemap in XML format. After that, you need to download the file to the file's root folder and use it to download to the systems you need.
Indexing check
You can check the indexing of site pages in Google through Search Console, where in the Coverage section, you can see the following types of indexed pages:
Error
Valid
Valid with warning
Excluded.
By going to one of the items, you can see the indexed pages with the date of verification.
You can also use filters to speed up your search.
To check the indexing of a specific page, you can enter a URL, the indexing status of which will be shown by the system.
Optimization of pagination pages
Optimization is needed to eliminate the problem of indexing pagination pages, which are sequential URL numbers. For example, page 5 of an online store catalog.
In some cases, search engines can crawl these pages and add them to search results. To solve this problem, it is enough to add the "rel ="canonical" tag to the site page code.
You can find errors related to misuse of the canonical tag in the SEO Site Audit tool reports.
Multilingual websites
For the search engines to consider all versions of the site (language), it is necessary to arrange them on separate URLs. Additionally, you should set the hreflang attribute for alternate pages. Also, do not forget about the Sitemap, in which you need to add several versions of the page through the "loc" element.
The hreflang attribute is recommended for search engines and is relevant primarily for Google.
The most frequently encountered error in using this attribute is the lack of links from one page to another. After all, if there are several versions of a page in different languages, then each of them must contain a link to all variants.
You can easily find errors related to incorrect use of the hreflang meta tag in SEO Site Audit checklist tool, as well as other website analysis and optimization checklists.
The hreflang attribute is recommended for search engines and is relevant primarily for Google.
The most frequently encountered error in using this attribute is the lack of links from one page to another. After all, if there are several versions of a page in different languages, then each of them must contain a link to all variants.
You can easily find errors related to incorrect use of the hreflang meta tag in SEO Site Audit checklist tool, as well as other website analysis and optimization checklists.
Server parameters
Server parameters play a significant role in the site loading speed, which affects the usability and the position in the search results.
To optimize your site at the server level, it is recommended to use:
Caching
Compression
CDN
On-page SEO guide
Title, Description and H1 heading (meta tags)
It's the first step in SEO page analysis and an absolutely essential one. You should check all site pages for accurate and optimized titles and descriptions before anything else.
To do this, right-click on the checked page in Google Chrome and then select "View page source" in the drop-down menu.
To do this, right-click on the checked page in Google Chrome and then select "View page source" in the drop-down menu.
You can find the values you need in the page code.
You can also view meta tags using the free Serpstat Website SEO Checker extension.
For mass checking of website pages, you can use crawlers, for example, Netpeak Spider. You can also use Serpstat Site Audit, which allows you to quickly and easily get all errors in the meta tags and site titles. You can use the tool for both a quick SEO audit or a full site audit.
Title
I consider titles up to 45 characters unoptimized; you can always put one more key in them. Plus, I know many companies and SEOs who deliberately write titles longer than 65 characters, giving robots one or two more keys that humans cannot see, but robots perceive and skip into the ranking.
Recommendations for beginner SEOs on how to make a Title tag:
Title
I consider titles up to 45 characters unoptimized; you can always put one more key in them. Plus, I know many companies and SEOs who deliberately write titles longer than 65 characters, giving robots one or two more keys that humans cannot see, but robots perceive and skip into the ranking.
Recommendations for beginner SEOs on how to make a Title tag:
The site pages' indexing depends on how Title is created, so write about information/goods on the page as accurately and concisely as possible.
In Title, use the main key (product name, service, type of activity); if this is an article, indicate what a person can find out by visiting your page.
Do not use adjectives and quality keys like "best phone", "best hotel". Headlines like these often increase CTR, but they are also often ignored by robots. So be careful!
Do not write page titles like "Main- development company ...". Nobody cares that this is the home page of the site.
Do not copy Title from others. Your page title should be unique and meaningful. Do not borrow other optimizers' possible mistakes, do not forget about constantly checking the site for optimization.
Do not overuse regular and special characters. Search engines themselves will try to remove or replace them. For example, if you compose the title "Promotion!!! Mass sale and credit at 0%," the search engine will remove unnecessary signs or alter the Title at its discretion.
Don't spam with keys. One page - one key. There is no need to list everything possible. The robot and people will not understand what is on the page. Use keys in content.
Description
As with Title, different search engines have different optimal lengths. There are sometimes 425 character snippets on Google. Also, the description attribute is increasingly being replaced by search engines with their own. And its importance in optimization is no longer so significant.
Recommendations for beginner SEOs on making Description attribute:
As with Title, different search engines have different optimal lengths. There are sometimes 425 character snippets on Google. Also, the description attribute is increasingly being replaced by search engines with their own. And its importance in optimization is no longer so significant.
Recommendations for beginner SEOs on making Description attribute:
Your page descriptions should be meaningful and engaging.
I recommend using icons and special symbols to attract attention. Even at the top positions, you will be more quickly noticed through the snippet's bright colors.
In the page description, it is advisable to use the main page keyword in the first sentence. Do not fill your descriptions with promotional offers alone, they rank poorly.
Do not copy fragments of text into the description; the robot can do it for you.
Do not copy descriptions from others.
Although the description attribute is less and less taken into account by robots in ranking, you should not ignore it. It boosts CTR very well.
Stick to the optimal length. If there is not a lot of information on the page, you should not create large descriptions. But if the page contains a lot of information, try to describe the page well and tell the robots and people that they can get it on this page.
Optimizing website loading speed for desktop
To improve the speed of loading the site on computers, you can use the following methods:
Image compressing
Compressing pages in zip or gzip
Using WebP images
Lazy Load
Caching
Reducing CSS and JavaScript.
Slow download speed is still common as speed optimization on medium to large projects can be challenging. Often, the creation of new types of documents (for example, tag pages) requires database queries that were not provided at the design stage.
To speed up, complex work is required, with testing all kinds of pages using various tools. Sometimes SEOs limit themselves to checking the home page in Page Speed Insights. Of course, this is not enough.
Google Analytics reports contain a lot of useful information about different loading stages (server response, redirection, HTML loading) for users.
To speed up, complex work is required, with testing all kinds of pages using various tools. Sometimes SEOs limit themselves to checking the home page in Page Speed Insights. Of course, this is not enough.
Google Analytics reports contain a lot of useful information about different loading stages (server response, redirection, HTML loading) for users.
Optimizing website loading speed for mobile
For mobile devices, in addition to the methods used in the PC, you can use Google Accelerated Pages (AMP).
AMP issues
AMP pages are an accelerated mobile version that can significantly increase loading speed, and are also distinguished by a special badge in Google search results.
404 error page
The presence of broken links on the site must be regularly checked, and this can be done using various tools, for example:
SiteAnalyzer.
The presence of incorrect server response codes is not a problem as long as it does not become a mass thing. If only a few pages give incorrect codes, there is nothing wrong with that, but as soon as they start to expand, it is necessary to fix this technical problem urgently. Otherwise, it will lead to poor indexing or losing credibility and, accordingly, position in search.
The search engine will define 404 and 500 in the same way - the page does not exist. If there is a 503, it will come back later to see the changes, but if it stays for more than 2 days, it will also be evaluated as 404. Try to avoid 4xx and 5xx errors on the site, unless, of course, you create them specifically for others goals.
The search engine will define 404 and 500 in the same way - the page does not exist. If there is a 503, it will come back later to see the changes, but if it stays for more than 2 days, it will also be evaluated as 404. Try to avoid 4xx and 5xx errors on the site, unless, of course, you create them specifically for others goals.
Personal demonstration
Our specialists will contact you and discuss options for further work. These may include a personal demonstration, a trial period, comprehensive training articles, webinar recordings, and custom advice from a Serpstat specialist. It is our goal to make you feel comfortable while using Serpstat.
Optimizing images on the site (multimedia)
The images on the promoted page are the main reason for slow loading, so they should be fixed first to improve loading speed.
You can also use Serpstat Audit to find images that are too large.
You can also use Serpstat Audit to find images that are too large.
Display in SERP (Markup issues)
Micro-markup allows you to highlight a site in the search results, for example, you can get a search line from the main page of the site. Or add a rating.
To make it easier to optimize your site, use the Serpstat Checklist tool. There you will find simple and understandable checklists for different areas of work with the site, which you can adjust to suit your goals.
Link analysis
Growth dynamics
You can check the number of links and the dynamics of site growth via Serpstat Backlink Analysis tool.
Naturalness
Unfortunately, there is no exact way to automate the process of determining naturalness; you can only reduce labor costs. For example, you can upload all link anchors through the Serpstat report "Link Anchors".
Then evaluate the domains by Domain Rank, which will help you understand how authoritative the site can be.
In future, it is best to separately consider each link and its naturalness, for example, how concisely and unobtrusively the link is.
Link quality
To more accurately understand how the links correspond to the quality indicator, you should use a table in which you need to write out all the links from the Serpstat or use the API to get data. In the table itself, we fill in:
number;
date of indexation/appearance;
donor;
acceptor;
anchor;
donor page;
acceptor page;
traffic - can be obtained via Serpstat or Similarweb;
trust;
spam;
backlinks;
external links.
These two indicators can also be checked through Serpstat. The service has a special report for external links.
After that, you can already determine the quality indicators of each link or domain.
Spamming anchor list
Thanks to the above table, you can additionally add an indicator by link type, for example, mixed, non-anchor, anchor. After that, check that the link ratio is respected:
Anchor: 20%
Non-anchor: 65%
Mixed: 15%
If not, then it is best to try to restore these proportions in the future when building the link mass.
Density and commercial analysis of anchor list
It can be carried out using the same Link Anchors report.
It can also be carried out through the analysis of the created file.
Conclusions on the link juice
Based on how many search queries a site can be promoted by and how many links already exist, it is possible to understand the approximate level of link growth, as well as to which URLs (landing pages) they should be directed.
Checking for sanctions by search engines, risk assessment
To check for sanctions from search engines, just use the Google Search Console. You can see the existing issues in the Manual Action section.
Additional checks related to the specifics of the project
Before finishing the report, it is recommended to look again at both the competitors' sites and the possibilities of the project specifics, which may be related to:
Business niche.
Company itself.
For example, in the second case, a company that sells goods or services in several regions should consider the possibility of promotion through subdomains or other means.
For the field of activity, you can see the possibility of rebuilding the site for the specifics of the business, for example, some sites that are engaged in design or construction work have a counting calculator that allows the client to see the approximate price of the service in advance. Additionally, this will improve the behavioral indicators of the site, allowing you to keep the user longer.
For the field of activity, you can see the possibility of rebuilding the site for the specifics of the business, for example, some sites that are engaged in design or construction work have a counting calculator that allows the client to see the approximate price of the service in advance. Additionally, this will improve the behavioral indicators of the site, allowing you to keep the user longer.
Search for effective ways of project development
The first step is to make a plan. For example, it is best to approach these tasks initially:
1
Check technical data, robots.txt, sitemap, micro-markup, 404 errors, etc.
2
Then check the indexing and block unnecessary, technical pages or duplicates in robots.txt.
3
Further filling in and adjusting the title, description and H1.
4
Then create new landing pages and make other changes to the site.
5
Further, it is already possible to introduce complex technical issues, for example, the refinement of the micro-markup, AMP pages, improving the site loading speed, and many others.
Reporting and optimization plan
After all the necessary points of the analysis have been completed, you can start drawing up a report on the audit results. You should understand that the final report should be as simple and understandable as possible so that even non-specialists could realize that there is an N series of problems and issues, and they will need X hours and a certain budget to fix them.
You also need to remember that the report may be different for different sites, not only in size but also in the content of some blocks, for example, the performance of work to eliminate existing errors.
It is necessary to indicate additional blocks in the report:
You also need to remember that the report may be different for different sites, not only in size but also in the content of some blocks, for example, the performance of work to eliminate existing errors.
It is necessary to indicate additional blocks in the report:
SWOT analysis. Here we indicate the strengths and weaknesses of the project.
Analysis of competitors.
So that each person can understand what needs to be done, you should add a summary, where we indicate a shortlist of the most severe mistakes, an assessment of the site's risks and condition, and the time frame for the project and the required budget.
To speed up the SEO reporting process, you can use custom reports in Serpstat.
To speed up the SEO reporting process, you can use custom reports in Serpstat.
This will not only simplify the collection of statistics, but also make them more accurate, as well as automate some of the processes.
Conclusion
In this article, I have tried to describe the fundamental site analysis points that can be applied to most sites. These points should be checked first.
It should also be understood that there is no perfect solution that can be applied to all sites since it cannot take into account the capacity of the project, its budget, and other features.
It is best to use a systematic approach and, after initially checking all the site factors, proceed to their solution to achieve the maximum result with minimum labor costs and then move on to more and more complex tasks.
It should also be understood that there is no perfect solution that can be applied to all sites since it cannot take into account the capacity of the project, its budget, and other features.
It is best to use a systematic approach and, after initially checking all the site factors, proceed to their solution to achieve the maximum result with minimum labor costs and then move on to more and more complex tasks.
FAQ
How long does an SEO audit take?
There’s no standard time frame, it can take from 10 minutes up to a day, a week, or several months depending on the size of your website, the depth of the analysis, the tool being used, or the specialist(s) involved, etc.
How to perform the local SEO audit?
An SEO Audit is absolutely essential for any website, it should be conducted regularly (about once every 6 months) even if there are no apparent issues visually and the website seems to be performing well. Here are the steps you should take:
1. Research Local Competitors
2. Examine your Local Keywords
3. Check traffic in Google Analytics
4. Analyze your Google My Business page
5. Work with your online reviews
6. Check your website’s display on SERP
7. Perform Link Analysis
What is an SEO audit tool?
It’s a helpful instrument that allows you to effectively analyze your website and detect any technical issues that damage its performance in search results.
Personal demonstration
Our specialists will contact you and discuss options for further work. These may include a personal demonstration, a trial period, comprehensive training articles, webinar recordings, and custom advice from a Serpstat specialist. It is our goal to make you feel comfortable while using Serpstat.
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