Perform an SEO audit 16 steps checklist to better rankings

Sitemaps helps search engines understand your website’s structure. However, it should not contain broken links, redirected pages, or SEO Anomaly non-canonical URLs. Inspect your sitemap in Google Search Console to make sure it’s correctly configured and free of errors.

Who performs SEO audits?

A well-structured sitemap acts as a guide for search engines, making crawling and indexing much more efficient. Understanding how search engine crawlers operate is key to making your website easily accessible. Identifying untapped keyword opportunities involves finding relevant search terms that your competitors are ranking for, but your site is not. Identifying untapped keyword opportunities is critical because it reveals blind spots in your SEO approach, which are areas where you’re losing visibility, relevance, or traffic to competitors.

For example, if you want to capture People Also Ask placements, identify common questions Google is showing in the PAA box. You can do this by simply searching for your target keywords and noting what questions appear in the PAA section. Select the ones that are relevant to your website and click the “Start outreach” button in the top-right corner.

The website ranking above you, for your target search terms, might not even sell the same products as you. But if they’re competing for the search engine shelf space you need, then they’re potentially more significant than who you traditionally think of as business competitors. At the core of most local audits is a business’s Google My Business page, followed by links, citations and reviews. Landing pages and on-site SEO analysis also play a crucial part in local rankings. But as these also fall under the remit of a website SEO audit, whether or not they’re included here often depends on what other audits have already been carried out.

Conduct a comprehensive On-Page SEO audit for any URL of the website.

Additionally SEOptimer provides a range of free SEO Tools such as Backlink Checker, Meta Tags and Robots.txt Generator which will help take you through the actual steps of improving your site. The setup is so intuitive and quick, beautiful reports, great support and my clients are loving the results. Research competitors and find opportunities with search volume, competition and CPC data.

• In terms of SEO improvement and competitor analysis, BrightEdge delivers insightful data, helping agencies refine their strategies and stay ahead of the competition.
• The Search Atlas Scholar Tool is an excellent tool that helps you decipher how Google evaluates and ranks content.
• Uncover content enrichment opportunities with AI-powered analysis.
• Plus, some secrecy behind how Google determines websites and their order of appearance on the search engine results page (SERPs) for different queries doesn’t help.
• From keyword research to site audits and rank tracking, it stands as a reliable resource for agencies seeking to enhance their clients‘ online presence.

This file enables you to call the shots on how users and search engines are directed to specific pages on your site, facilitate custom error pages and apply 301 redirects. You can expect helpful recommendations that go beyond, “Get more links,” too. Instead, we’ll provide a strategy for how your business can attract relevant links from trustworthy sites in your industry. You can put this strategy into action with our in-house team of off-page SEO specialists. You may find that some pages that are not getting crawled simply have no links to them.

If your rankings are falling, focus on an on-page SEO audit to find out how you can boost their performance. Use Google Search Console to see which pages get the most clicks from search. Then, analyze their meta elements to understand what’s working well. High-quality content is generally well-researched, up to date, and provides unique insights.

But you can usually resurrect rankings by refreshing and republishing the content. Google often shows meta descriptions in the search results, so you should try to write an enticing one for every important page. Missing H1 tags, on the other hand, usually point to bigger issues like an improperly coded theme. It shouldn’t list things like redirects, non-canonicals, or dead pages because those send mixed signals to Google. If it’s not a manual action, you may need to check further for Google algorithm updates, as they can significantly affect your site’s organic traffic. Join over 3 million smart website owners who use AIOSEO to improve their website search rankings.