What’s a Simple Breakdown of a Technical SEO Audit?
Have you ever wondered what SEO (search engine optimization) services include? Well, they cover a few different areas, one of which is technical SEO.
Imagine technical SEO, like tuning up a car so it runs smoothly. It’s all about making changes to your website and its background settings (the technical bits like the server) so that Google’s little helpers — nicknamed search engine spiders — can scurry all over your site with ease, checking out all your pages and understanding what your site is about.
A technical SEO audit is a health check-up for your website, ensuring it’s set up best for search engine spiders and ready for top-notch SEO services. You can do this check-up or use special software to help you.
It’s all about finding problems that might be causing your website to play hide and seek with people on the internet when you’d rather it was super easy to find. These issues might stop your site from appearing high up in the search results when people look for stuff you talk about or sell.
When the audit is done, you’ll get a report highlighting what’s good and what’s not. Plus, you’ll receive some friendly advice on how to improve your site, which is aimed at getting your site more noticed by search engines and people, which should help it rank higher.
Even though getting into the nitty-gritty of a technical SEO audit can get a bit techy and complicated, it’s totally worth it. If you ensure your site gets this type of TLC, you’re helping it stand out on endless internet pages. This means that people looking for the awesome things you offer are more likely to actually find your site.
What’s Included in a Simple Technical SEO Check-Up?
Think about a technical SEO check-up, like a health check for your website. It can cover many things or focus on specific issues based on your site needs.
If diving into the technical side of your website feels daunting, it’s worth getting an expert’s help to figure out what to look at. But usually, when you do a technical SEO check-up, you’ll want to make sure it covers the following stuff:
Can Search Engines Read Your Site?
You need to check whether search engines can find and understand your website. This is like ensuring someone can see and read the sign to your store.
How Your Site Uses JavaScript and CSS
This is about the unique code and styles that make your site look good and work well. You want to be sure that this doesn’t confuse the search engines.
Which Pages Are in Google’s Index?
This part checks what pages from your site Google knows about and whether you have any duplicate pages.
Pulling in Stuff From Other Websites
Sometimes, your site uses photos, videos, or tools from other places on the internet. You want these to load smoothly.
How Big and Fast Your Images Are
Big, slow images can drag a site. You want your pictures to be just the right size so your site runs fast.
Does Your Site Work Nicely on Phones?
This one is key because so many people use their phones to go online. You want your site to be easy to use on a tiny screen.
Check if Special Data is Set Up Right
Structured data helps search engines understand the details of your site, like if it’s a recipe or a product review.
“Core Web Vitals” – Your Site’s Vital Signs
Google checks specific signals that show how well a site performs. This includes how fast pages load and how stable they are when they load.
How Quickly Do Your Pages Load?
No one likes to wait, so if your site is slow, visitors might leave before they even see what you offer.
Are Your Redirects and Security Set Up Correctly?
It’s important to guide visitors correctly if you move pages around and you want to ensure your site is secure, using SSL (like a safety lock for websites).
These are the basics you want to touch on when ensuring your website is ready for search engines to read and rank well.
Easy Steps to Conducting a Technical SEO Audit
Ensuring your website is ready to rock the SEO world is essential. Here’s a straightforward guide to give your website a check-up and get it running smoothly:
Step #1: Start with a Health Check for Your Site
Think of this as taking your website to the doctor. You’ll look under the hood and see how it’s doing. You can use tools found online – it’s up to you which one you choose.
They’ll help you spot any techy hiccups, like links that lead nowhere or pages that search engines can’t find. Fixing these gets your website in better shape.
Step #2: Take a Good Look at Your Website Layout
Now, let’s get organized. It would be best if you saw how your website is put together.
Scrutinize how your pages are laid out, whether your website addresses (URLs) make sense, and whether people can browse around without getting lost. You want everything tidy and logical.
Search engines might get confused if your site’s a maze, and people visiting it might not find what they need. Both scenarios? Not suitable for success.
Step #3: Dive into Your Content
Think about what’s actually on your site. Words, pictures, videos – all of it needs a close look.
Good content is easy to read and doesn’t have typos or grammar mistakes. It should be about stuff people using your site want to know and be super helpful.
You also want plenty of content so visitors stick around. Not too much, not too little. Try different lengths to see what works best. There’s no one-size-fits-all.
And keep things fresh! Update your content now and then. If you don’t, visitors might yawn and go somewhere more exciting.
Put on your detective hat and consider what people enjoy on your site and why. Look at your popular (or not-so-popular) pages, broken links, and whether your site is easy to use on phones.
Many online tools can help you figure this stuff out, but also trust your gut about what your visitors like.
Step #4: Make Sure Your Site is Speedy
A slow site is a big no-no. It’s been a part of search rankings for ages, and since 2018, it’s also crucial for people searching on their phones.
To be on top of your game, check how quick your site is.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights can grade how fast your site is on phones and computers and give tips to make it faster.
Another one called WebPagetest gives you the lowdown on what’s slowing your site down.
Then, you can make images more diminutive in size, clean up code, and reduce redirects to get your site zippy.
Step #5: Make It Awesome for Mobile Users
So many people use their phones to go online, so your site has to be great on mobile, too. Google loves mobile-friendly sites. If yours isn’t, you might wave goodbye to many potential visitors.
You want your site to load on phones super-fast because most people won’t wait around.
Make your site look good and be simple on a small screen. Because if it’s frustrating to use, people won’t bother.
Google’s got a tool to see if your site is mobile-friendly. Check it out and improve where you can.
Make sure the things on your site, like forms and buttons, are easy to use on phones to turn visitors into customers.
Just follow these steps, and you’ll be on your way to a well-oiled SEO machine that both search engines and real people love!
When Is It Time to Check Up on Your Website’s SEO Health?
Imagine if you never checked your car for issues. It might run okay for a while, but eventually, problems could pop up and cause it to break down when you least expect it.
That’s what happens if you don’t keep an eye on your website’s technical SEO. You might not notice something’s wrong until your visitors start dropping off.
When should you check under the hood of your website with a technical SEO audit?
Well, it depends on what your website looks like. If you’ve got a small site, maybe just a few pages, you can check it once a year and be fine.
But if your site is extensive, with hundreds or even thousands of pages, you should look things over each month. Big websites have more places where things can go wrong, so it’s better to check often.
What Else Should Trigger an SEO Check-Up?
There are certain times when you’ll want to do an audit right away:
- You’ve Made Big Changes: If you’ve given your website a makeover, don’t wait around — do an audit to ensure everything still looks suitable for search engines.
- Your Visitors Are Vanishing: Seeing fewer people stopping by your website? That’s a big red flag! An audit can help you figure out what’s going wrong.
- Before Opening Day: Just like getting a new store ready before customers arrive, if you’ve got a brand new website, do an audit before launch to ensure you’re set up for success.
Remember, though, there’s no set-in-stone schedule for these audits. You’ve got to keep your eyes open for any changes or signs of trouble. Staying on top of things will help you keep your website friendly to search engines, which means more people might visit!
Simple Guide to Technical SEO Audit Tools
If you’re looking to check the health of a website’s technical SEO, many tools can help. The perfect ones are super easy to use – think of them like friendly robots that do the hard work for you. Ahrefs and SEMrush, for example, are powerful tools for a digital marketing company, providing insights into who’s linking to you, checking out other websites, and figuring out what to write about. They’re packed with neat features such as finding new keywords, checking out the links you have, and plenty more.
Take Ahrefs, for instance. It’s like a Swiss army knife for looking at who’s linking to you, checking out other websites, and figuring out what to write about. It’s packed with neat features such as finding new keywords, checking out the links you have, and plenty more.
Then there’s SEMrush, which is like having a spyglass to see what your rivals are up to. With this tool, you can look up many keywords, know who you’re competing with, and dig through a treasure trove of other valuable things.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you can dive into the past and sift through data using their special access or even Google’s treasure map, the keyword planner.
Majestic SEO is like the community library of the internet – it’s free and has a massive collection of over 2 billion web pages, particularly focusing on links that contribute to your website’s overall domain authority. It’s not quite as fancy as Ahrefs or SEMrush since it mainly looks at links, but it’s still a solid choice for peeking at who’s linking to whom, which can boost your website’s technical check-up. It’s incredible when you’re on a budget since it doesn’t cost a thing!
You can check out these handy tools too:
Google Search Console is popular for determining how well your website is doing on Google. It gives you information on the number of people who find and visit your site from search results and your website’s position in Google’s rankings.
You can also use it to send in sitemaps (which help Google find all the pages on your site) and to make sure your robots.txt file (that tells search engines what not to look at on your site) is working right.
Google Search Console helps answer questions like:
- How many different people visit my site each month?
- Are all my web pages being noticed by Google?
- How often does Google check my site for updates?
- What do I need to do to appear in Google’s search results?
With this tool, you can see which pages from your website appear in search listings for specific search terms or subjects related to your area of expertise.
It gives you info about how many people click on these pages without paying for ads if Google has found and kept a record of these pages, and if these pages work well on phones.
It also tells how often people find what they’re looking for on your site and if they stick around or leave immediately.
Plus, you can check your site’s technical parts to ensure nothing is broken, like links that go nowhere or pages that send people back and forth, which means your site isn’t as good as it could be.
The best part? Google Search Console is completely free.
Screaming Frog is a software you use to help check your website for technical problems. It works on Macs, PCs, and Linux computers.
The software looks at everything on your website, like links, images, CSS (which makes your site look nice), scripts, and apps to spot mistakes in your programming and tell you about the overall health of your website. This helps with technical SEO, which is about ensuring search engines can understand your site well.
Screaming Frog can find broken things and places where your site sends people in circles (which could mean you have the same thing on your site more than once). It can also check for other code issues.
It makes sure to look at every part of your website, including subdomains (these are separate sections of your site), so it doesn’t miss a thing. And it’s okay to use across different websites, too.
After Screaming Frog checks out your site, it gives you a web report that lists any problems it noticed. You can also save this info in Excel or Google Sheets.
You can check up to 500 web addresses (URLs) on your site for free. But if you need more or want extra features, you can buy the complete version for $209 a year, which lets you look at as many URLs as you wish.
Technical SEO Audit Key Points
Getting your website to show in search results is super important, and that’s where technical SEO comes in.
Imagine your website is like a library. If the search engines are librarians, they need to easily find and understand your books (aka your website).
If they can’t, your books won’t get recommended to people—that’s what happens when your site isn’t set up right for search engines to ‘read’ it. This is why you must regularly check your website’s technical health.
Think of a technical SEO audit as a health check-up for your site. It makes sure your site can be found and understood by search engines. This type of check-up should be one of the first things you do.
By working with a professional SEO company like The Ad Firm, which provides technical SEO audits, you can ensure your website’s technical bits are in good shape.
This way, you can put your energy into making great content, knowing your website is ready to attract visitors naturally. With The Ad Firm’s help, your site can be in tip-top condition to welcome many new visitors!
About the author:
The Ad Firm began with one mission in mind: HELP CLIENTS STAND OUT. We became the leading digital marketing firm through extensive research, proven techniques, data analysis, and more. With SEO best practices constantly evolving, we keep up to date with SEO’s latest advancements in tools, ideas, algorithm, and strategies. At The Ad Firm, we use a scientific approach to ensure our clients receive superior, quality service.
