Audit SEO Google for Better Search Engine Rankings

Auditing your Google SEO is crucial for better search engine rankings. Google's algorithm favors websites with high-quality, relevant content.

To start, identify your target audience and create content that resonates with them. This will help you understand what keywords to focus on.

Google recommends using a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords to improve your content's relevance. For instance, using both "travel" and "travel tips for beginners" can help you target different search queries.

A well-structured website with clear navigation is essential for user experience and search engine crawling.

Connecting your website to Google Search Console (GSC) is a must for SEO success. It helps Google understand and crawl your website more easily, which is beneficial for getting pages ranked or re-ranking updated pages.

You can submit new pages to Search Console to help them get indexed quicker. This can save you time and effort in the long run.

GSC allows you to investigate technical issues that could lead to SEO deranking, a decline in rankings, or poor user behavior. These issues can be costly if left unaddressed.

Here are some common issues you can identify with GSC:

By monitoring and analyzing site content over time, you can make impactful and data-backed SEO decisions. This is essential for staying ahead in the ever-changing world of SEO.

An SEO audit is a thorough examination of a website's technical, on-page, and off-page elements to identify areas for improvement and increase its visibility in search engine results.

It typically involves checking website crawlability, indexing, and mobile usability, as well as analyzing internal linking, meta tags, and content quality.

A website's crawlability is crucial, as it determines whether search engine crawlers can access and index its pages, and an SEO audit can help identify crawl errors and blocked resources.

An SEO audit can also assess website loading speed, which is a key ranking factor, and provide recommendations for improvement, such as compressing images and minifying code.

Internal linking is another important aspect of an SEO audit, as it helps search engines understand a website's structure and content hierarchy.

By identifying and fixing technical issues, improving content quality, and optimizing internal linking, an SEO audit can help increase a website's search engine rankings and drive more traffic.

Using an SEO audit can help you identify and fix technical issues that are preventing search engines from crawling and indexing your website properly. This can lead to improved search engine rankings and increased organic traffic.

A technical SEO audit can uncover issues such as 4xx or 5xx errors, which can be caused by broken links, server errors, or other technical problems. These errors can make it difficult for search engines to crawl and index your website.

A well-structured website with clear navigation and internal linking can also improve user experience and search engine crawlability. This is especially important for e-commerce websites with a large number of products.

Keyword research is a crucial part of an SEO audit, as it helps identify the most relevant and high-traffic keywords for your business. By optimizing your website for these keywords, you can improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site.

Regular SEO audits can also help you stay on top of algorithm updates and changes in search engine rankings. This can help you adjust your SEO strategy and avoid penalties or lost rankings.

Mobile and desktop keyword rankings are not equal, and your metadata may be displayed differently on each. It's essential to audit and compare how your metadata looks on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for both mobile and desktop.

Keyword rankings can suffer if not optimized correctly, so it's crucial to examine your title tags and meta descriptions.

Title tags and meta descriptions work together to generate organic traffic from Google search results.

Inspect your title tags and meta descriptions:

You can easily edit your title tags and meta descriptions using Yoast SEO snippet preview below each page.

Google Search Console is a 100% free SEO performance tracking and analysis tool made by Google.

You can check for index coverage, URL issues, mobile usability, link overview, page experience, core web vitals, and potential enhancements in Google Search Console.

Google Search Console also has a dedicated performance tab where you'll get clicks, impressions, CTR, and other relevant statistics for search queries, pages, etc.

Ubersuggest is another great SEO analysis tool that offers all the features like rank tracking, site audit, keyword research, competitive analysis, and backlinks, bundled up in one tool.

Ubersuggest checks against numerous SEO issues and gives recommendations on how to make it better, and it's free for websites with under 150 pages.

For bigger websites, Ubersuggest offers three models: Individual, priced at $12 per month, Business, costing $20 per month, and Enterprise/Agency, which sets you back $40/month.

An SEO audit is like a health check for your website, and it's essential to do it regularly to ensure your website is running smoothly and efficiently. Google recommends auditing your website at least once a year.

The first step in an SEO audit is to crawl your website to identify any technical issues that might be hindering your website's performance. According to Google, a crawl error rate of 10% or higher can significantly impact your website's ranking.

Your website's loading speed is also crucial for SEO, as a slow website can lead to a higher bounce rate and lower search engine rankings. Google recommends aiming for a loading speed of under 3 seconds.

A mobile-friendly website is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have, as Google now uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. Make sure your website is responsive and easy to navigate on smaller screens.

Your website's meta tags, such as title tags and meta descriptions, play a significant role in search engine rankings. Ensure that your title tags are descriptive and accurate, and that your meta descriptions are compelling and relevant.

Your website's internal linking structure is also crucial for SEO, as it helps search engines understand your website's hierarchy and content. Make sure you have a clear and logical linking structure in place.

Your website's content is the backbone of your SEO strategy, and it's essential to ensure that it's high-quality, engaging, and relevant to your target audience. According to Google, content that is 1,000 words or longer is more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Your website's backlinks are also a crucial factor in SEO, as they help search engines understand your website's authority and credibility. Make sure you have a mix of high-quality backlinks from authoritative sources.

A Technical SEO audit is a crucial step in ensuring your site can be properly indexed and provides an excellent user experience. This audit can be done even if you're not a developer, thanks to the many tools available.

You'll want to check for 4XX and 5XX status code issues, which indicate that content is not accessible or doesn't exist. These issues send negative signals to both users and Google, so it's essential to fix them quickly.

To run a website crawl, you can use SEO audit tools like Screaming Frog or Beam Us Up. These tools crawl your site in the same way as Google spider would, providing in-depth info on crawlability and indexability.

Some common crawl errors to look out for include pages that crawlers can't access, which may be due to blocked pages in your robots.txt file. Make sure to double-check that all blocked pages are indeed necessary and not essential for ranking.

Here are some common technical issues to watch out for during your audit:

Page Rendering is a crucial stage in Google's analysis process, occurring after crawling. It involves rendering the page as a user would see it by executing your JavaScript, a programming language used to enhance webpages and add functionality beyond HTML.

Google uses the "URL Inspection Tool" in Google Search Console to check how pages render. You can test a page and click the "View Tested Page" button to see a screenshot of how Google "sees" your rendered page.

Look for differences between the screenshot and how your page should appear. If there are issues with your JavaScript, it could be a problem, like a broken reviews section or interactive buttons that don't work.

The Semrush Site Audit tool can quickly highlight any issues with your site's JavaScript, making it easier to identify and fix problems.

You can increase your crawl budget by removing unnecessary pages from crawling using the URL parameters tool. For example, if you have hundreds or thousands of /tag pages that Google doesn’t need to crawl, you can remove ‘tag’ as the parameter.

Improving your site speed is also crucial. The Google bot needs to load your page, just like a visitor does when it comes to your site. This will help improve crawl rate and thereby improve your crawl budget.

Acquiring backlinks is another way to increase your crawl budget. Backlinks are one way of telling Google your site is authoritative or a page is important/trustworthy. By displaying this via backlinks, it’s sending messages to Google that this page should be crawled.

To optimize your crawl budget, follow these steps:

Structured data, also known as schema markup, helps search engines understand your content.

It can boost your visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) with rich snippets.

Structured data can tell Google about the author of your post, information about your business, and more.

You can use a tool like the Schema Validator to check that you've implemented your structured data correctly.

You can also use the Detailed SEO extension or check your Site Audit report in Semrush.

Structured data can provide additional information to search engines, helping you get search features like reviews, prices, local packs, social profiles, and rich snippets.

Having featured snippets in SERP results can increase your CTR by 4x and revenue by 677%.

To ensure structured data is set up properly, test it using Google's Structured Data Testing Tool or the GSC Structured Data report.

If you encounter errors, address them ASAP to avoid any issues.

Here are some tools to help you verify and improve your structured data:

By implementing and verifying structured data, you can improve your website's visibility, accuracy, and click-through rate in search engine results.

Backlinks are still a crucial aspect of SEO, and it's essential to analyze your backlink profile to understand your site's authority. In fact, a study of 11.8 million search results found that the top result in Google has 3.8x more backlinks than pages in positions 2-10.

Referring domains, which are the number of different websites that link to you, are a key metric to pay attention to. You want to have a diverse portfolio of referring domains, as this is considered more natural by search engines.

To analyze your backlink profile, you can use tools like Semrush or Google Search Console. Semrush's Backlink Analytics tool provides a report on your links, including referring domains and your domain's Authority Score. This score is based on factors like the quantity and quality of your backlinks.

A good Authority Score is essential for establishing your site's authority. But don't sweat the exact numbers too much - you're just benchmarking where you're at.

Here's a breakdown of what to look for in your backlink profile:

Be on the lookout for suspicious referring domains, such as links from payday loans or porn sites. These can be harmful to your SEO efforts and should be disavowed.

Internal linking is a crucial aspect of SEO, and it's often overlooked. Internal linking helps search engines understand how your content is interconnected, making it more relevant and increasing your chances of higher rankings.

Internal links give your site structure, and they help search engines understand how your content is interconnected. More connected > more relevant > higher rankings. Check your internal linking in Google Search Console Links report, and have a look at all the pages containing internal links.

Ideally, every page should have at least one relevant internal link pointing to it. This helps avoid “orphaned pages.” Making it easier for search engines (and users) to find your content. You can find orphaned content with the help of Screaming Frog.

Broken links are bad for user experience, which can hurt your SEO. Focus on fixing them first.

You probably don't have time to optimize every page on your site. Identify your 5 most important pages that target an important keyword, get less traffic than they did back in the day, or already rank well.

To optimize these pages, include your keyword in your title tag. This is a basic but crucial step. Include your keyword in the first 100 words of the page as well.

Adding external links can also help. Aim for 5+ external links per page. You should also add 5+ internal links to relevant pages.

Use helpful, SEO-optimized images to enhance the user experience and support your content. This will make your page more engaging and increase the chances of ranking higher.

Here are the 5 strategies to focus on when optimizing your pages:

Internal linking is one of the most underrated SEO strategies on the planet. It's simple: make sure you link to high-priority pages as much as possible.

Every page should have at least one relevant internal link pointing to it to avoid "orphaned pages." These pages are practically invisible to Google, making it harder for search engines to find your content.

Aiming for 5+ internal links per page is a good start, as long as they're all relevant. Adding internal links also minimizes your website's crawl or click depth, ideally keeping it to 3 clicks at most.

You can quickly find out if you have pages that are deeper than 3 clicks using the Semrush Site Audit tool. If a version of your site isn't redirecting properly, no worries.

Here are some key benefits of maximizing internal links:

Google has confirmed that site speed is one of the major SEO factors. Recently, Google put even more emphasis on speed with the Page Speed Update from 2018.

Your site speed is crucial for driving conversions since modern consumers expect loading times to be under 2 seconds. To check your current speed, use Google's own Page Speed Insights. Be sure to check both your page speed on desktop and mobile devices, as Google follows a mobile-first approach.

If you get speeds that are under 50, take immediate action to fix your loading times. You can also use GTmetrix or Pingdom for a more in-depth analysis of your page.

To optimize your site speed, consider the following steps:

By following these steps, you'll be climbing up the ranks in no time.

To get a clear picture of how your website is doing, you need to track your progress. This is where analytics and tracking come in. There are several tools available to help you with this, including Semrush's Position Tracking tool and Google Analytics.

To track your keyword rankings, you can use Semrush's Position Tracking tool, which automatically finds keywords you rank for. You can also use Google Analytics to track your bounce rate, which is the percentage of single-page visits to your site.

Here are some key metrics to track in Google Analytics:

In addition to tracking your keyword rankings and bounce rate, it's also important to monitor your goals and conversions. This will help you see if your SEO efforts are translating into business success. To do this, you'll want to set up Conversion Tracking in Google Analytics and track your entire online sales funnel.

To set up keyword rank tracking, you'll need a tool that can monitor your progress. We'll use Semrush's Position Tracking tool, which doesn't just track the keywords you give it, but also automatically finds keywords you rank for.

Using a rank tracking tool is essential to see if your SEO efforts are effective. You can monitor your keyword rankings and check if the changes you make based on your SEO audit are working.

Pro tip: Use a free keyword rank checker to see where you rank for top keywords. This can give you an idea of your current ranking performance.

Your SEO audit should also focus on your target keywords and ranking performance. This will help you identify areas for improvement and track your progress over time.

Monitoring your goals and conversions is crucial to understanding the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. You can track conversions and sales through Google Analytics, specifically by setting up Conversion Tracking. This will help you see if your SEO efforts are driving business results.

Conversions are key to business success, and you want to attract visitors who can be converted into paying customers. By tracking how your search traffic translates into conversions and sales, you can identify areas for improvement.

To optimize your online sales funnel, consider the following: capture visitors' contact information, make it easy for leads to contact you, provide useful information about your business, show social proof, and optimize your checkout for faster conversions.

Here are some specific things to look for when inspecting your online sales funnel:

By paying attention to these factors, you can improve your conversion rates and drive more business results from your SEO efforts.

Mobile usability is a crucial aspect of any website, and Google has strict standards for mobile usability. You can analyze your mobile compliance against these standards in the mobile usability tab.

Google uses a mobile-first indexing process, which means they use the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking in mobile and desktop search results. In fact, just under 55% of all global traffic is on mobile devices, making mobile SEO a vital component of any SEO audit.

To check if your site is mobile-friendly, you can use a tool like PageSpeed Insights. Google used to offer a quick mobile-friendliness test, but it was discontinued in 2023. A responsive design is essential, and you can achieve this by using a CMS like WordPress, which often has responsive themes out of the box.

Here are some tips to improve your site's mobile friendliness:

Make sure your site is 100% mobile-friendly by checking with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. If you run into any loading issues, resolve them following Google's recommendations.

Canonicalization and redirects are crucial for a smooth user experience and SEO performance. A canonical URL tells search engines which version of a page to index and show in search results, solving the problem of duplicate content.

You can use the Google Search Console URL inspection tool to check which page Google considers canonical. With SEMrush Site Audit tool, you can run a thorough inspection of your canonical tags to identify problems like broken links and multiple canonical URLs.

Canonicalization helps link juice flow towards one page, instead of dissipating all over multiple pages. It's similar to a "soft redirect" that improves performance by not actually redirecting users.

Here are the types of redirect issues to look out for:

Use Screaming Frog to identify redirect issues by going into the Response Codes tab and choosing Redirections (3xx) filter.

Redirect issues can be a major headache, but they're relatively easy to fix once you know what to look for.

There are three types of redirect issues you should be on the lookout for: unnecessary 301 redirects, 302 redirects, and redirect chains.

Unnecessary 301 redirects can dilute your link authority and slow down your page speed. To identify them, use Screaming Frog and go into the Response Codes tab, choosing Redirections (3xx) filter.

302 redirects are temporary redirects used to divert traffic while you work on a page, but they don't pass link juice to the other page. They need to be changed to 301s to pass link authority.

Redirect chains are strings of redirects connected together, which dilute your link authority and hurt your page speed. They can be identified using Screaming Frog, selecting Report and then clicking on Redirect & Canonical Chains.

Here are the three types of redirect issues in a nutshell:

By identifying and fixing these redirect issues, you can improve your website's crawlability, user experience, and search engine rankings.

Setting a canonical URL is a crucial step in ensuring search engines know which version of your page is the main one. This helps prevent duplicate content issues that can plague websites.

A canonical URL tells search engines that similar URLs are actually the same, which is especially useful for the www/non-www and HTTP/HTTPS variants of your site.

Search engines will then index and show the canonical version in search results. This is similar to a 301 redirect, but without the actual redirect, which can improve performance.

Setting a canonical URL is sometimes referred to as a "soft redirect." The SEO benefit is that search engines can count all the links pointing at different versions as links to the canonical version.

This helps link juice flow towards one page, instead of dissipating all over multiple pages. Use the GSC URL inspection tool to check which page Google considers canonical.

With SEMrush Site Audit tool, you can run a thorough inspection of your canonical tags to identify problems like broken canonical links and multiple canonical URLs.

Using HTTPS is a must-have for any website. Having a secured website is one of Google's top priorities, and they've officially confirmed HTTPS as a ranking factor.

Make sure your website's URL has the HTTPS tag. This indicates that your connection is secure with an SSL certificate, which encrypts the link between the server and the browser.

A secure connection enables secure browsing and even payments. This is a big deal, especially for e-commerce websites.

Check your website's URL to ensure it starts with HTTPS. This simple step will help keep your visitors' information private and secure.

Technical issues can be a huge hindrance in getting your pages indexed on Google.

Google hates duplicate content, and if it finds some on your site, you may suffer some big traffic losses.

4XX and 5XX status code issues mean that the content is not accessible or doesn’t exist, and it’s very important to fix these items quickly as they send negative signals to both users and Google.

Duplicate content across multiple pages on your site or plagiarized content that’s the same as on other websites can lead to Google de-indexing pages with duplicate/plagiarized content.

Use Copyscape to find potential duplicate content across the web and inspect your content for plagiarism.

If you find someone syndicating your content, ask them to link back to you with a .rel=”canonical” link, and if you find someone scraping your content, don’t hesitate and file a DMCA complaint.

To fix duplicate content on your own website, add canonical links to all duplicate pages, add HTML links from all duplicate pages to the canonical page, and redirect similar pages to the canonical URL.

Here are some steps to address duplicate content issues:

Large sites can become easily overgrown and need trimming, which is where SEO pruning comes in.

SEO pruning is the process of auditing, identifying, and taking action on pages of your website based on data.

You can identify pages that need action taken on them by exporting your data from your pages report and putting them into a spreadsheet.

If a page can be reworked, added to, or modified to improve targeting, positioning, and traffic, it may be worth considering instead of deleting it.

However, if a page is receiving little to no traffic and little to no impressions, it may be time for this page to either be deleted and redirected or noindexed.

This process will help strengthen your site as a whole by decreasing your overall site size and increasing your crawl budget.

SEO pruning can even increase your average page authority, which is a crucial factor in determining your overall authority with Google.

Duplicate content is a problem Google hates, and it can lead to big traffic losses if your site is affected. Google de-indexes pages with duplicate or plagiarized content.

There are two types of duplicate content: content that's the same across multiple pages on your site, and plagiarized content that's identical to other websites. You can use Copyscape to find potential duplicate content across the web.

Inspect your content for plagiarism and investigate any duplicate content that comes up in the results. If you find someone syndicating your content, ask them to link back to you, ideally with a rel=”canonical” link.

If you find someone scraping entire blog posts from your site, don't hesitate to file a DMCA complaint. To deal with duplicate content on your own website, use SEM Rush Site Audit.

Add canonical links to all duplicate pages to help Google understand which version is the original. Add HTML links from all duplicate pages to the canonical page to make it easy for users to find the original content. Redirect similar pages to the canonical URL to avoid confusion.

Here are some steps to tackle duplicate content on your website:

Backlink analysis is a crucial step in auditing your SEO. You want to analyze your backlink profile to see how many referring domains are pointing to your site. Referring domains are the number of different websites that link to you.

A good backlink analysis tool will give you a report on your links, including your domain's Authority Score. This score tells you how much authority your site has based on factors like the quantity and quality of your backlinks.

Don't sweat the exact numbers too much; you're just benchmarking where you're at. However, pay attention to toxic links. You want backlinks from real and relevant websites.

Here's what to look for in a backlink analysis tool:

Be sure to check if your backlink count moves in the right direction. If you notice big declines in the number of links, you have to dig deeper into why you're losing backlinks.

Pro tip: Spammy links are a normal part of any link profile, so don't stress if you see a few suspicious links. Google is quite good at filtering for these anyway.

To conduct a competitive analysis and ranking, you'll want to start by finding keywords your competitors are ranking for. You can use tools like SEM Rush or SEO Quake Chrome extension to gather intelligence on your competitors.

You can also use Google Search Console to see what search queries your site was shown and found for, and the average positioning for a specific query or page.

For a more in-depth analysis, check out competitors' pages that are ranking for these terms, and investigate who is linking back to your rivals. You can use SEM Rush to analyze rivals while browsing the internet, or other tools such as SpyFu, Ahrefs, SimilarWeb, etc.

Here's a list of tools you can use to conduct a competitive analysis:

These tools can help you identify areas where you can improve your SEO and gain a competitive edge.

Competitive analysis is a crucial step in understanding how to rank higher in search engines. It's like taking a peek at what your competitors are doing right.

First, you'll want to find keywords your competitors are ranking for. You can use tools like Semrush to gather intelligence on your competitors and identify those keywords.

Analyzing your competitors' pages that are ranking for those terms is also essential. Check out what makes their content successful, such as the length, visuals, and research citations.

To do this, you can use Semrush's Backlink Analytics tool to analyze your competitors' backlink profiles. This will give you an idea of what types of websites are already linking to similar content.

Here are the three main steps in your competitive analysis:

You can also use other tools like SEO Quake Chrome extension, SpyFu, Ahrefs, and SimilarWeb to gather more information.

To get a clear picture of your current rankings, you can use Google Search Console's Performance report. This report includes details for each query such as the number of clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and your position in the SERP.

You can also use Semrush's Position Tracking tool to track your keywords rankings and monitor whether the changes you make based on your SEO audit are working.

It's essential to check if you're ranking for your target keywords and your position for each one. If your site doesn't appear for your target keywords or is positioned very low, you need to improve your content and/or your SEO efforts.

You can filter your data in Google Search Console by Search Type, Date, Page, Query, Country, and Device to get a better understanding of your rankings.

To filter by Query, you can use the query filter to see how your website ranks on average for a specific keyword or group of similar keywords. For example, if your website is about inbound marketing, online marketing, internet marketing, and digital marketing, you can filter by queries containing "marketing".

Here are some common types of filters you can apply to your data:

By using these filters, you can get a more detailed understanding of your current rankings and identify areas for improvement.

Data Analysis and Filtering is a crucial step in your Google SEO audit. You can apply multiple filters at once to get a deeper understanding of your website's performance.

The new Search Console allows you to access 16 months of data, making it easier to track your website's performance over time. You can select a specific time frame to examine.

To analyze a specific page or group of pages, use the Page filter. You can filter by URLs containing a specific word, not containing a specific word, or exactly matching a URL. For example, if you want to look at your services page, you can filter by URLs containing "services".

The Queries filter is useful for understanding how your website ranks for specific keywords or groups of similar keywords. You can filter by queries containing a specific word, not containing a specific word, or exactly matching a query. This can help you identify areas for improvement.

Filtering by Country can be helpful if you're a local business or operate in a specific region. You can also filter by individual countries if you want to see how your website is performing in each country.

Here are some examples of how you can use the Page and Queries filters: