An SEO website audit is a crucial component of any effective search engine optimization strategy. It helps identify and diagnose issues on a website that may be negatively impacting search visibility and search engine rankings. By performing routine SEO audits, you can uncover website problems early and implement fixes to improve search performance over time.
In this post, we’ll explain what an SEO site audit is, the benefits of performing one for your own website, and provide actionable steps to conduct your own DIY audit. Read on to learn how web designers in Melbourne thoroughly inspect your website and find issues hurting your search rankings.
What is an SEO Website Audit?
An SEO website audit examines both on-page and off-page elements to provide an in-depth evaluation of overall website health. It gives insight into technical problems, site architecture issues, content gaps, optimisation flaws, and more so you can address them accordingly.
Some key things an SEO site audit looks at include:
- Indexation issues like pages not being crawled or indexed
- Duplicate content and thin content problems
- Technical SEO issues like site speed, structured data errors, indexing directives
- Issues with website navigation and internal linking
- Keyword targeting across important pages and content
- Image alt text optimisation
- Site security concerns including SSL certificate, HTTPS implementation
- Link building analysis and inbound link evaluation
Conducting routine audits can help spot site issues early before they significantly damage SEO Melbourne and search performance. Even sites that seem perfectly healthy on the surface can contain hidden flaws an SEO analysis would uncover.
Benefits of an SEO Website Audit
Here are some top reasons why completing periodic SEO audits should be a priority:
Identify Unknown Website Issues
An audit can detect website problems you may be unaware of that hurt search visibility, like excessive 404 errors, site speed bloat, or broken backlinks. These are issues you likely wouldn’t spot without a full inspection.
Obtain an Unbiased Evaluation
It’s easy to be biased and miss things when self-auditing your website. An unbiased audit offers an outsider’s neutral perspective of flaws that may be hurting optimisation efforts.
Diagnose Technical SEO Problems
Many technical problems like site indexing errors, structured data issues, and page speed delays can get missed without an SEO analysis. An audit diagnoses these precisely.
Improve Site Health Over Time
Routine audits let you benchmark your site, then track improvements in site health by fixing problems and errors uncovered in each new analysis.
Boost Search Rankings
Finding and correcting site flaws through recurring audits directly leads to better on-page optimisation and improved search visibility over the long-term as problems get fixed.
Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting an SEO Website Audit
If you don’t have the budget for a professional site audit, you can conduct your own using a mix of free tools and your own evaluation. Here is a step-by-step checklist:
Crawl Website for Indexation & Duplicate Content Issues
Use a site crawler tool like ScreamingFrog to crawl your site and spot indexation errors, duplicate content issues, thin content pages, and more. Fix problems like missing page titles, meta descriptions, H1s, etc.
Check Page Speed Insights & Site Performance
Use Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom Website Speed Test to evaluate page speed. Diagnose performance problems hurting user experience and site crawlability. Optimise images, enable browser caching, minify CSS/JS, and more.
Review Site Architecture & Internal Linking
Examine site architecture and internal linking scheme. Look for ways to improve navigation and flows to important pages and content. Identify orphaned pages or thin content to consolidate or improve.
Analyse Keyword Targeting
Use Google Search Console to see which terms are driving traffic and prioritise optimising pages for those search terms first. Identify content gaps where competitors rank for keywords you want.
Review Image Alt Text & Tags
One area for web designers in Melbourne to check in an SEO website audit is examining image alt text and tags across different site pages to see if they are properly optimised for keywords and search intent.
Evaluate Inbound Link Profile
Check link-based metrics for your site and drill into your inbound link profile using tools like Ahrefs and Majestic. Identify toxic backlinks for disavowal and surface new link building opportunities.
Check Security Implementation
Review site security and make sure current best practices like SSL certificates and proper HTTPS redirects are properly implemented site-wide.
Inspect Site Markup
Validate markup using W3C’s Validation Service to check for errors that could cause crawler issues. Review structured data markup for errors using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
Creating Action Plans & Implementing Fixes
The site audit gives you a blueprint of flaws hurting SEO Melbourne and areas for improvement. Now focus on the highest impact issues first and create action plans for implementing remedies across the next quarter.
Conclusion
An SEO website audit offers immense value through diagnosing hidden issues damaging search visibility and providing data-driven recommendations to boost rankings. You can conduct DIY audits periodically to improve site health or work with professional web designers in Melbourne to receive more thorough professional assessments.
Either route, ongoing audits that spark incremental fixes and optimisation is crucial for sustaining long term search success. Use the audit analysis to inform high-impact projects that move the needle, not just one-off sporadic fixes. With regular check-ups and remedies, your website will offer fewer flaws for search engines to bump on over time.
