Tips on Performing a Technical SEO Audit: Updated 2022
An audit is the best thing to perform to find the website’s hidden strengths and weaknesses. There are lot many loopholes that remain hidden inside cracks. Also, SEO efforts on specific parts may require less attention. It is the sure-shot path to boost organic traffic and increase revenue.
Do you want to know how to do a technical SEO audit? It has the power to overhaul your website from scratch. With this, you get a clear understanding and defined path. It becomes much easier to walk and achieve desired results. We’ll discuss the Technical SEO audit in detail below.
What is a technical SEO audit?
Technical SEO audit is the process of evaluating and verifying the technical aspects of the website. It enables you to check the health of the website. And see how a website performs on the search engines.
It is much different than checking your content, keywords, and backlinks. Without covering technical SEO, it is a lot difficult even to index the website. Leave the part of improving your rankings!
In today’s time, competition is shooting high. And search engine algorithms updations keep on happening now and then. So, technical SEO audit becomes inevitable. If not complete, mini audits can keep you informed regarding any technical issues.
How to Conduct a Technical SEO audit for 2022?
Technical SEO audit is not that easy; it’s like completing the parts of a jigsaw puzzle. The following tips can help you make your job much easier:
Detect and fix crawlability issues
Search engines index your website when web crawlers visit your website. If there are any crawlability issues, the web page doesn’t appear in search results. These are the areas:
- Robots .txt file
- Sitemaps
- Subdomains
- Indexed versus submitted pages
It is essential to make sure that to use URL parameters and meta robots tags correctly.
Give proper meaning to duplicate content.
Sometimes duplicate content is necessary for the website. There could be two admin pages with almost similar content having slight variation. But, how will search engines come to know which one page to index? It is by assigning canonical tags. In this way, two pages from the same website will not fight for the rankings.
Fix redirects to decrease crawl depth
Redirects are an essential part of taking your visitors to relevant pages. Some web page information could become redundant with time, like changes in the industry. But, if there are redirects, after redirect, and so on. Search engine bots will get stuck in the redirect loop. Generally, external redirects are responsible for the redirect loop. So, remove or fix any such problem.
Check the status of your sitemap
The sitemap is a blueprint of all links and image URLs of your website. Search engines come to know about website navigation with its structure. Sitemaps convey information about any new web pages added. These are the things to review:
Error-free sitemap
The sitemap must be clear and concise. Do you know any errors that could be detrimental to the website SEO? The sitemap must not include unnecessary redirects and error pages.
Updated one
If you’re creating new web pages, include them in your sitemap. Otherwise, it is not worth creating them. Search engines will not be able to detect them.
Add a sitemap to the Google search console. In this way, Google will register its presence.
Review internal links of the website
Internal links matter a lot to improve the relevance of highly converting pages. Thus, it is vital to check their relevance and correctness. What if the internal links are not valid? Figure out these parameters:
Error in URL
Manual or technical errors in URLs can make your internal linking URLs invalid. So, verify link correctness with SEO audit tools.
Broken links
Another case could be that internal links are dead. It will take users to blank pages. Indeed, it will be a worst-case user experience scenario. Look out for any broken links with a deadlink checker.
Website architecture
Website architecture plays an essential role in web page indexing. It tells how many links it takes to reach the homepage. For this, monitor click depth. Optimize click depth number to three or less than three.
Calculate website speed
Website speed means how much time a website loads. Website speed is a crucial factor for:
- Mobile-friendliness
- Improving UX
- Reducing bounce rate
- Satisfying core web vitals
Stats show that site speed is more than 4 seconds, which increases bounce rate by 17%. So, optimize the site speed by less than three seconds.
Conclusion
In final words, technical SEO makes the backbone of SEO for business. Search engines can crawl and index your website seamlessly. It briefs you about click depth and internal link issues. So, technical SEO is a mandatory part of giving an overview of your website’s technological follies and faults.
