Conducting an SEO site audit is crucial for maintaining a high-performing website. Search engines constantly update their algorithms, and staying on top of technical SEO helps ensure your site remains visible and competitive. A technical SEO audit dives deep into your website’s backend, uncovering issues that may hinder performance—whether it’s slow loading times, broken links, or mobile usability problems. Below, we’ll break down how to conduct a detailed SEO audit using the latest 2024 tools, providing clear steps and examples for each stage of the process.
What Is a Technical SEO Audit?
A technical SEO audit is a comprehensive evaluation of your website’s backend, focusing on elements like site speed, crawlability, and mobile-friendliness. It highlights errors that could harm your ranking on search engines. The goal is to optimise these technical elements, ensuring your website can be crawled efficiently, load quickly, and provide a seamless user experience.
Regular technical audits offer numerous benefits:
- Improved crawlability – ensuring search engines can navigate your site without obstacles.
- Better indexation – ensuring all your important pages are indexed properly.
- Enhanced user experience – faster sites provide a smoother experience for visitors.
- Increased rankings – by resolving technical issues, your website is more likely to rank higher in search results.
Why Perform an SEO Audit Regularly?
A solid technical foundation is critical for success. Even with high-quality content and an effective keyword strategy, a website with technical issues may struggle to perform well. Common elements involved in an SEO audit include:
- Site Speed: Fast websites not only rank better but also deliver a more satisfying user experience.
- Mobile Friendliness: Mobile-first indexing means your mobile performance is now a priority.
- Security (HTTPS): Secure websites are favoured by search engines and provide peace of mind to users.
- Structured Data: Helps search engines understand your content better, leading to rich snippets and other enhanced search result features.
Preparing for the SEO Audit
Before diving into the audit, it’s essential to gather the right tools. The following are must-haves in 2024:
- Google Search Console: A free, insightful tool from Google that helps you monitor your site’s presence in Google search results.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider: This tool allows you to crawl your website, mimicking how search engines interact with your site.
- Ahrefs’ Site Audit: Offers deep analysis into crawlability, performance, and internal linking issues.
- GTmetrix and WebPageTest: Both are useful for diagnosing speed-related issues.
- Mobile-Friendly Test: From Google, this tool checks how well your website performs on mobile devices.
Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting an SEO Audit
Follow these steps to ensure a thorough technical SEO audit:
1. Crawl Your Website
Start by crawling your site to identify issues such as broken links, duplicate content, and improper redirects. Tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs’ Site Audit will generate reports that detail:
- 404 Errors: Identify broken links and correct them by redirecting to the appropriate pages.
- Redirect Chains: These occur when a page is redirected multiple times before arriving at its destination. Simplify these chains to improve performance.
- Meta Tag Issues: Ensure each page has proper meta titles and descriptions that accurately reflect its content.
Example Action: Run Screaming Frog and look for any 404 errors (broken pages). Let’s say you find a broken link to an old blog post. Instead of leaving it as is, redirect it to the most relevant, updated page. Use a 301 redirect to ensure search engines know this is a permanent change.
2. Review Site Architecture
The structure of your website significantly impacts how search engines crawl it. Ideally, you want a flat structure, where important pages are only a few clicks away from the homepage.
Action Steps:
- Ensure your most critical pages aren’t buried deep within your site.
- Eliminate orphan pages (pages that aren’t linked to from anywhere else on your site).
- Use internal linking to connect related content.
Example Action: Visualise your site’s structure using Screaming Frog’s visualisation tool. If a key page is located four or five clicks away from the homepage, consider bringing it closer, perhaps linking to it from your main navigation or relevant high-traffic pages.
3. Assess Site Speed
Google uses site speed as a ranking factor, so improving load times is crucial for both user experience and SEO.
Tools: GTmetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights.
Action Steps:
- Compress Images: Large images can slow your site down significantly. Use tools like TinyPNG to reduce image sizes without losing quality.
- Minimise CSS, JavaScript, and HTML: These scripts can slow your site’s performance. Minify them to reduce their size.
- Leverage Browser Caching: Ensure that elements on your site are cached, so users don’t have to download the same data every time they visit.
Example Action: Run your site through GTmetrix and note the biggest performance issues. If large images are a concern, compress them using TinyPNG or a similar tool. This can reduce loading times, especially on mobile devices.
4. Check Mobile Usability
Mobile-first indexing means the mobile version of your website is considered the primary version by Google. Your site must perform well on mobile devices.
Tools: Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Action Steps:
- Ensure Responsiveness: Your site should adjust to fit different screen sizes seamlessly.
- Adjust Button Sizes: Make sure buttons are easy to click on mobile devices.
- Optimise Font Sizes: Text should be large enough to read without zooming in.
Example Action: Run Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. If it highlights that some buttons are too small for touch screens, adjust the design to make buttons larger and easier to tap on mobile.
5. Analyse Security (HTTPS)
Google favours sites that use HTTPS for secure data transmission. Check that your site uses HTTPS across all pages.
Tools: Jitbit SSL Checker.
Action Steps:
- Verify SSL Certificate: Ensure your SSL certificate is active and properly installed.
- Fix Mixed Content Issues: Check that all links, including images and scripts, use HTTPS. If not, update them.
Example Action: Run your website through Jitbit SSL Checker. If your SSL certificate is active, but some images still load over HTTP, update those image links to use HTTPS to avoid mixed content errors.
6. Review Your XML Sitemap and Robots.txt
An XML sitemap helps search engines discover and crawl your pages efficiently, while a robots.txt file tells search engines which pages not to crawl.
Action Steps:
- Ensure Your Sitemap is Up to Date: It should include all your important pages and exclude any unnecessary pages.
- Check for Disallowed Pages in robots.txt: Make sure only non-essential pages (like admin sections) are blocked from crawling.
Example Action: Submit your updated XML sitemap to Google Search Console. Ensure it only includes valuable pages and that nothing essential is blocked by your robots.txt file.
7. Audit Structured Data
Structured data (or schema markup) helps search engines understand your content better. Proper implementation can enhance your search presence with rich results.
Tools: Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
Action Steps:
- Implement Schema Markup: Add structured data to key pages such as product pages, blog posts, and articles.
- Fix Errors: If the Structured Data Testing Tool shows any errors, correct them to ensure your data is readable by search engines.
Example Action: Use schema markup on your blog posts to help search engines display rich results, like article ratings or publication dates, directly in search results.
Advanced Techniques for SEO Auditing
After covering the basics, consider more advanced techniques like log file analysis and Core Web Vitals optimisation.
Log File Analysis
Log files can show how search engines interact with your site, revealing which pages are crawled most often and whether there are crawl budget issues.
Tools: Screaming Frog Log File Analyser.
Example Action: If certain low-value pages are being crawled excessively, update your robots.txt file to block these pages, freeing up your crawl budget for more important content.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals focus on user experience metrics like loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
Tools: Google Search Console, Lighthouse.
Example Action: Focus on improving your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) by optimising your main content (e.g., compressing images) to load within 2.5 seconds.
Common SEO Audit Pitfalls to Avoid
Avoid these common mistakes during your audit:
- Neglecting Mobile Usability: Always ensure your site works flawlessly on mobile.
- Ignoring Site Speed: Fast load times are crucial for both SEO and user satisfaction.
- Overlooking Structured Data: Missing out on rich snippets can lower your click-through rate from search results.
Conclusion
An SEO audit helps ensure your website stays in line with modern search engine expectations. By following this step-by-step approach, you can identify and correct issues that could be hindering your site’s performance. Regular audits help keep your website running smoothly, enhance user experience, and improve rankings over time.
