How to Carry Out Keyword Clustering via Serpstat
The Ultimate Guide to Performing an Actionable SEO Audit

Being featured at the top of Google for your search terms may seem like a tall order now, but an SEO audit can turn the tables and help you get more visitors to your site from search engines. This could translate to millions in additional sales and revenue.
What is an SEO Audit?
What is an SEO Audit?
While there are many free SEO Audit tools out there, they cannot deliver the kind of results you will achieve by implementing the audit techniques you are going to learn in this article. Our recommended audit will give you exceptional results and maximize your time and effort.
What is the impact of performing a bespoke SEO Audit?
What is the impact of performing a bespoke SEO Audit?
What Skills Do You Need To Perform an SEO Audit?
What Skills Do You Need To Perform an SEO Audit?
- Understand the major SEO terms – URL, ALT tag, meta description, robots.txt, image compression.
- Be familiar with some basic SEO tools – some of the most effective tools are Serpstat, Majestic, Netpeak Spider, Screaming Frog.
- Have some website technical know-how – otherwise, this audit will be quite challenging for you.
We will introduce and link you to each of the tools that you'll need in each section so won't list them now.
What does an SEO Audit Consist of?
What does an SEO Audit Consist of?

Technical Part of SEO Audit
Technical Part of SEO Audit
A website's technical components are akin to a vehicle's engine. The engine has to be well taken care of for the vehicle to function efficiently.
Here's how to improve the function of your website's engine:
DNS Settings


Server Connectivity


Robots.txt Fetch
A more in-depth tool can be accessed in Google Search Console.
Go to Crawl module and choose Robots.txt tester.

What you should look for

Page Status Code Errors
How to check it

HTTPS

HTML Validation


Indexation


Structured Data
Results with rich markup will be more appealing to people that are searching and will attract a higher click-through rate. Have a look at the rich snippets produced when searching for "Guardians of the Galaxy."


XML Sitemap

If you have an XML Sitemap, it should be simple and neat. Adding optional tags and instructions can compromise the XML sitemap's integrity, and bring about search bot confusion.
Use W3's syntax checker to evaluate your XML.

Malware scan and canonical header check
Use File Viewer to scan your website.
Site Speed
You can use Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom for this part of the audit.


Google PageSpeed Insights


- Code to text ratio – too much code can increase load speeds dramatically;
- Page Size – pagers over 1.5 MB big are at risk of reduced load times;
- Image file size – if images take up over 75% of the whole page's file size, you should be worried. Consider compressing all images on the page to save space;
- Caching – caching should be installed, activated, and optimized to encompass as many cacheable elements as possible;
- Script minification, externalization, and combination – your developer should identify code that can be eliminated, minified, or externalized to enhance your website speed.
Test of Mobile Friendliness

On-Site SEO Audit
On-Site SEO Audit
- The size of the website;
- The client's needs;
- The goal of the audit;
- The cost of the audit.
Netpeak Spider is the most effective tool for content audit, especially for page-by-page analysis. You can perform this audit on any website.

Menu Navigation
- Comprehensive – It should get to the site's main sections with at most two clicks;
- Simple – A navigation menu with more than seven main features begin to overwhelm the brain;
- Logically arranged – function over style here,please! Artistic navigation menus normally don't make sense;
- Keyword-focused – It is advisable to include an obvious keyword focus in the menu navigation. However, don't stuff every navigation element with a huge long-tail keyword.
Footer Navigation
URL Analysis
The URL should also capture what the web page is about. Check URLs to ensure they:
NAP Presence
Likewise, it is imperative that the NAP is consistent in all its online occurrences and mentions. Consider using Moz Local to ensure the consistency of your NAP.
HTML Sitemap
Breadcrumbs
Main Page Content
Consistent and Frequent Content Production
To check how Google is indexing your content, just perform this Google query: site:www.yoursite.com, and then click "search tools," → "anytime" → "past week" (or any other timeframe).

Page-by-page Analysis
- Page Title – the page should not only have a title, but the title should be within the standard length of 30-35 characters, relevant, and include keywords. Also, ensure there is consistency in how the title is set, including the symbols used;
- Meta description – check if the page has a meta description and whether it is of the right length and engaging for users;
- H1 – check if the page has an H1 and ensure it is relevant and optimized;
- Keyword focus and representation – normally, it is important for every page to have a unique keyword focus, with the keyword occurring on the page with sufficient frequency and semantic variety;
- Copy – the page should have enough copy, and the copy reflecting the page's keyword focus;
- Visual and interactive content – make sure the page has relevant and engaging imagery, and the videos are playing. Also, there should be functional interactive elements;
- Alt tags – images should be optimized with correct filenames and tagged with relevant keywords;
- Internal linking – the page should have at least one internal contextual link. In fact, a website with strong internal linking plays an integral role in creating a website with sturdy internal architectur;
- Last updated – frequently changed pages normally rank higher. Hence, consider revising pages that haven't been updated for at least one year;
- Broken links – no page should have broken links;
- Authority – it is good for the pages to be written by copywriters who have refined knowledge of the content;
- Unique content – content on each page should not be duplicated elsewhere on the site, including H1s and title tags. Likewise, the content should not be copied from external sites. Otherwise, you may suffer duplicate content penalization;
- Ads – ads may overshadow the purpose of the site and undermine user experience unless the site's main goal is Ad revenue;
- Bounce rates – the main pages' bounce rates should not be too high or too low;
- Layout and Readability – be sure that content width, kerning, as well as font type, size, and colour all translate to improved site layout and readability;
- Outbound links – linking out to authoritative websites can enhance your website's co-citation and co-occurrence;
- Overall value – the page should deliver value to the user. If it serves a purpose or provides solutions to a problem, then it's definitely valuable. Otherwise, it should be revised;
- Call to action – if further action is expected, the page should include appropriate CTAs, which encourage the user to take the next desirable step.
There you'll find a detailed guide on the Site Audit tool.

Off-Site Audit
Off-Site Audit
In light of the fact that Backlink analysis is all about comparison, you need to know at least five of your competitor's sites before starting the audit. Otherwise, it will be difficult to measure the effectiveness of the off-page SEO elements. If you don't know who your competitors are, find them via Serpstat.


Organic Traffic

Identifying Penalties
Note that there are two main types of penalties:

Quantity of links
Deep Link Proportion
In that light, a website needs to have more deep links compared to homepage links. A deep link ratio of 75% is perfect, but any ratio above 50% is okay.
Top-level-domain type
Link Trust and Authority
You can check the link trust at Serpstat. Enter your domain to the search box and go to Backlink Analysis module. Then click on Referring domains feature. There you'll see the list of domains that have outbound links leading to your website. Look at the last column, there is Serpstat Trust Rank that shows how trustworthy the domain/page is.

Types of Incoming Links
- Redirect – links that automatically redirect from another site or internal page;
- Follow – the standard link from one website to another;
- No-follow – an incoming link with a no-follow tag.
Spammy Backlinks
Consider downloading the site's backlinks and cherry-pick through them to ascertain the nature and authority of the respective linking websites.
Lost Backlinks
You can check the lost backlinks at Serpstat. Type your domain to the search box and go to Backlinks module. Click on Backlinks and go to Lost Backlinks report. There you'll all required data:
- Donor URL;
- Serpstat Page and Trust Rank of both donor and acceptor;
- The dates when the link was first indexed/ created/ deleted.

Mentions of Your Brand Name
Brand mentions are a great source of authority for websites as they play an integral role in promoting the site's reputation.
Use Google query technique. The method involves excluding your site's URL and social media profiles from the search, and manually analyzing the SERPs.

Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Note that if your website is small, it is not advisable to overdo the audit. You don't need to waste time dwelling on stats while there are other important things that you can work on. If you have a medium to a large website, however, you need to perform comprehensive audits on a regular to identify any issues and fix them in time before things get out of hand.
This detailed guide is all that you need to be able to conduct a comprehensive SEO Audit on your site. If you want to present the audit to a client, it is imperative that you package the report in a attractive way.
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