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How to Perform a Quick SEO Audit on Your Website

Conducting an SEO audit may sound intimidating, especially for non-experts. You have so much jargon to sift through and strategies to implement.

But that’s just it. It can be difficult to get started when you have no clue where to start…where to start sifting through all the jargon, and how to implement your strategies correctly. But SEO audits are important. They improve your site’s visibility in search engines and can help you grow traffic, increase organic sales, and make your website more user-friendly.

In this blog post, we’re going to discuss what an SEO audit is. You’ll learn easy steps you can take to ensure your SEO game is going strong. These are things you can accomplish on your own without the assistance of an expert.

Let’s get started.

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit examines how well your website can be found by search engines, and it is a valuable way to discover how to improve your website. This process involves a variety of factors like your website content and traffic. You’re analysing the website as a whole as well as all your individual pages.

At this point, you might be wondering why conducting an SEO audit is vital.

You have an SEO strategy in place because you want to get found by more people online. An audit analyses how effective those strategies are. It serves as a guiding light for how you should move forward and be more successful.

Let’s say Google releases a new update. An SEO audit could help ensure all your web pages follow the update’s requirements. You could avoid falling to the bottom of the search engine rankings.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO makes sure each web page is optimised for search engines. It includes the elements within your page’s content, such as page titles and meta descriptions, as opposed to link building, which refers to the activity around the content. A web page could target a specific keyword, serving as a gateway to the rest of your website.

Write page titles and meta descriptions.

Before we proceed, let’s define a few words first.

The page title is what appears when users find your content in search engine results. It’s also the title that appears at the top of your browser every time you open a new web page.

It’s recommended that you write the page title for both people and search engines. Include the keyword so search engines can easily find and index your content. Make it quick and attention-grabbing so users won’t think twice about clicking.

The meta description is the short description that appears underneath the page title. It summarises what your page is about and convinces readers to continue reading.

The page title and meta description work hand-in-hand. They tell search engines what your page is about and entice users to visit.

If you’re unsure how to do this on your own, you can install the WordPress plugin Yoast. After you install it, you’ll see a box below the blog post editor where you can enter the:

• Target keyword
• Page title
• Meta description

XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap tells search engines how your website is organised. It ensures search engines find every page on your website and which categories they belong to.

Having an XML sitemap is vital. You don’t want to put a lot of effort into optimising a page only to find out that it hasn’t been indexed by search engines.

This step may sound difficult, but it’s actually quite simple. All you have to do is go to XML-Sitemaps. It’s a website that will generate a sitemap for your website.

Enter your URL and hit Start. You can then download your sitemap in a zip file. Once that’s done, log into Google Search Console and upload it.

The plugin Yoast also offers another option. If you install it, the plugin will automatically generate and upload a sitemap for you.

Pagespeed

Back in mid-2018, Google officially announced its new Speed Update. This update makes page load time a major ranking factor in mobile search engine results.

For example, you and your competitor wrote a blog post about the same topic. Both blog posts contain the same amount of value. This means they’re roughly the same word count and offer similar information.

The only difference is that your website loads faster.

With the recent update, your blog post will most likely rank higher in mobile search engine results. Your content still has to be as good as or even better than your competitors. Having a fast website will give you a much-needed boost in rankings.

If you’re unsure how fast your website is, you can use PageSpeed Insights. It’s a free tool from Google that calculates your page speed based on data from Google Chrome users.

All you have to do is enter a web page URL and hit Analyze. It will then give you a speed score along with improvement suggestions.

Once you have your speed score, you can give the following tips a try:

• Make sure images are properly sized. If your image is too big, it’ll slow down your page’s loading time.
• Examine if your website has unnecessary elements. These include animated graphics that clutter up your web pages.
• Check your plugins. The more WordPress plugins you have installed, the more resources they’ll require. Reexamine your resources and see if there are any you can uninstall or combine.

Conclusion

Conducting an SEO audit may require expert knowledge, but there are a few steps you can accomplish on your own.

Use on-page SEO techniques for all your web pages. Write page titles and meta descriptions that convince users to click on your content.

An XML sitemap tells search engines which web pages to show and which ones to hide. Create one with free tools available online.

Combine great content with a fast page loading time, and you’ll see better results.

Need SEO help from experts? Cornerstone Digital is an SEO agency in Sydney that can help you find your ideal customer via SEO. Call us on (02) 8211 0668 or email us at info@cornerstone-digital.com.au.

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Michael Lam

Co-founder of Cornerstone and web junkie, Michael knows just how to diagnose your online problems and remedy the issue. An online enthusiast who believes in technology as an enabler of growth, Michael worries about all the details so you don't have to.