SEO Audit

Identify what is Preventing your Website from Ranking Well in Search Engines

Owning a website and wanting people to find it on Google means you have to stay up with your SEO work. When conducting an SEO audit, you will find technical SEO issues as well as on-page things your website is lacking. The primary function of an SEO audit is to identify what is preventing a website from ranking well in search engines and provide a roadmap to fix it.

At a technical level, an SEO audit evaluates how well your site aligns with the ranking systems used by Google. It systematically analyzes three core areas:

1. Technical Performance
2. On-Page Optimization
3. Authority & Trust Signals

SEO Audit: Identify what is Preventing your Website from Ranking Well in Search Engines

SEO audits can be done whether you have an e-commerce website or a blog. Heck, even if you have a business website you should be doing SEO audits. Owning a website and wanting people to find it on Google means you have to stay up with your SEO work. When conducting an SEO audit you will find technical SEO issues as well as on-page things your website is lacking. We check crawl errors, duplicate content, broken links, and so much more. SEO audits give us the ability to crawl through your website and see everything that could be causing you to rank lower on SERPS. Think of an SEO audit like a check up for your website.

Evaluating Technical Performance

There’s no SEO strategy more important than your technical SEO audit. What’s the point of having great content and killer backlinks if search engines can’t see your website because of how it’s built? Understand how search engines crawl and index your site and how to fix errors that may be preventing them from doing so. Once your site crawls and indexes properly, you’ll start seeing high rankings and providing users an excellent experience.

Having technical SEO errors on your site can be hurting your rankings more than you know. 404 errors create a poor user experience and waste crawl budget by signaling to search engines that you aren’t concerned about your website. Page speed affects your rankings because Google added page load speed to its ranking algorithm with the Core Web Vitals update. Nobody wants to wait for a slow website to load. Slow page speed creates poor user experience, which can cause you to lose rankings and traffic. If search engines encounter errors when they try to crawl your page, you will see crawl errors in your Google Search Console. These can be caused by too many redirect chains, server errors (also known as 500 errors), and blocked resources such as robots.txt or your robots meta tag.

When search engines crawl and index your site, they try to determine what your pages are about so they can rank them. Some common indexing errors include having your robots.txt file blocking search engines from crawling valuable pages on your site, incorrect canonical tags telling Google and other search engines the wrong URL to focus on, missing XML sitemaps or having an XML sitemap that isn’t organized so search engines can find your most important pages. Duplicate content spreads your ranking power between pages with similar content. If search engines are unable to crawl pages on your site due to JavaScript problems or a page being hidden behind a login, it will not be indexed. Google Search Console has an index coverage report that will show you all of your indexed pages, excluded pages, and pages with errors.

Site architecture helps users navigate your website and helps search engines crawl your site more efficiently. Having a solid hierarchy will help guide crawl budget to your most important pages using internal links. Creating a flat website structure where every page is a max of three clicks deep from your homepage helps reduce the number of orphan pages on your site and evenly distribute link equity. Breadcrumb navigation, URL structures, and implementing HTTPS correctly on all pages of your site are also important factors. Focus on mobile-first indexing and optimize your Core Web Vitals such as LCP and CLS.

On-Page Optimization

If your pages aren’t well-optimized, you lose out on organic search engine traffic. On-page optimization factors are the things that live on your website pages. This includes your content itself, meta elements, internal linking, and more. Today we’re going to walk you through optimizing your pages correctly so you can start ranking higher and improving your SEO efforts.

Page Content

Google rewards pages that satisfy searcher intent. That means your pages need to be helpful, well-written, and on-topic. Before optimizing a page for SEO, outline what you want to say. Please give your content an introduction, body, and conclusion. Format longer pages with bullet points, numbered lists, and images. Please ensure that your page provides answers to what your audience is searching for. Write quality content that dives deep into your topic instead of giving short, shallow answers. Lastly, make sure you’re using your keyword(s) and terms throughout your content where it makes sense.

Meta Tags & Page Titles

Page titles and meta descriptions are a simple SEO element many website owners forget to optimize. Think of these elements like advertisement copy; they need to catch users’ attention and make them want to click. Include your focus keyword at the beginning of your page title and in your description. Page titles should be under 70 characters and descriptions should be under 155 characters.

Heading Tags & Internal Links

People often overlook heading tags and internal links, even though they are two easy SEO items. Internal links help spread link juice to other pages on your website and keep users engaged. Use descriptive anchor text that matches the page you’re linking to. Your page should only have 1 H1 tag, and it should include your main keyword. Use H2 and H3 tags for section headings and try to include your focus keyword and variations in them too.

Keyword Optimization

Keyword targeting is closely linked to on-page content. Start by doing keyword research to find your main keyword and secondary keywords. Include your focus keyword in your title, first paragraph, at least one heading, and throughout the page. Don’t go crazy and overload every sentence with keywords. Instead, use variation and synonyms of your keyword. Remember to optimize your image alt attributes and image titles. Page speed is also a ranking factor, so make sure your pages load quickly as well.

Analyzing Authority, Trust, and Competitiveness

Trust and authority are things websites must have to rank. Google looks for trust signals to determine if they can trust your site. Users are also looking for trust signals to decide if they can trust your site. Trust signals: Link Reputation, Content Reputation, and Competitor Analysis.

Backlinks are a big ranking factor that search engines use to determine where you sit on Google. When other websites link back to your content, it allows search engines to see those backlinks as a vote of trust, which helps push your site higher on the SERPs. One quality link from a high DA website will outrank 100 spammy links any day. Building high-quality backlinks for your website may include outreach, guest blogging, digital PR, and creating content that others want to link to.

Content isn’t just important for users but for search engines as well. When you publish unique content that fully covers subjects and answers searchers’ questions, it helps show Google that you know what you’re talking about. Develop content that speaks credibly by using expert resources and quotes, qualified authors, customer reviews, and consistent content publishing standards. Having trust seals on your website, a privacy policy page, and displaying clear business information can help establish trust with your visitors and help them convert.

Competitor analysis is one of the best things you can do to help improve your website’s trust signals. By researching how your competitors are ranking, you will be able to identify what areas your website is lacking. Are you falling short in backlinks? Content quality? Domain Authority? Use tools to compare your website against your competitors and identify areas you can surpass them. Study competitors ranking above you on targeted keywords and analyze what they do on their website that you don’t.

You need to build authority and trust for your website over time. Google and your audience see many factors as contributing to your trustworthiness. Earn backlinks from reputable websites, create content others can trust, and analyze your competition to allow your website to obtain the trust signals it needs to rank.

Why an SEO audit is crucial

SEO audits are sometimes something that we as marketers easily forget to do. You built your site, instructed your team to continually update content, and crossed your fingers after you checked that SEO box when you launched your website. Case closed, right? WRONG. SEO is an ever-changing journey. Whether it’s Google rolling out an algorithm update, you publishing fresh content, introducing changes to existing pages on your site, or new competitors entering your space, your website can be impacted. Don’t leave it up to chance. Schedule your site for an SEO checkup.

An SEO audit will thoroughly examine your website and show where your site stands. Website architecture, internal links, and metadata are just some of the things that we will analyze. Once you know which areas of your site could use some sprucing up and which areas you’re nailing, you can dedicate time and resources where it matters most.

Want to gain some quick wins? Start by correcting major indexing errors. Want to dig a little deeper? Put some time into optimizing on-page elements and content. What is the one thing that all websites ranking high in organic search have in common? They conduct SEO audits. Regularly. Search engines change their algorithms frequently, so by staying on top of these changes, you can stay ahead of the competition, and your website traffic will thank you.

Want to gain some quick wins? Start by correcting major indexing errors. Want to dig a little deeper? Put some time into optimizing on-page elements and content. What is the one thing that all websites ranking high in organic search have in common? They conduct SEO audits. Regularly. Search engines change their algorithms frequently, so by staying on top of these changes, you can stay ahead of the competition, and your website traffic will thank you.

Conclusion

The most accurate way to analyze how your website is doing is by running a clean, detailed SEO audit. SEO audits show us where your website has technical and on-page SEO issues. By fixing crawl errors, indexing problems, duplicate content, slow speed, and broken links your website can achieve maximum success. Knowing where your website currently stands will help you focus your valuable time and effort where it needs to go. Don’t wait for Google to poke you when your rankings plummet. Start running SEO audits and bettering your website for the future.