The results appearing at the top of SERPs tend to get the most of the click-flow. Hence, online businesses continually strive for a high search engine ranking. As an SEO practitioner, you may be putting the best of your efforts but still might not get the ranking boost. If this is what is happening and you are not able to identify the problem, maybe something is wrong with your auditing method. So, to help you out on this one, we are going to talk about some of the best SEO audit techniques to improve search rankings.
Identifying problems is crucial to maintain a sound website. Needless to say, how important the health of a website is for its search ranking.
Naturally, without having a comprehensive report on the problems, you won’t be able to fix them. Therefore, it is crucial to have effective auditing techniques and tools in place.
You invest so much in digital marketing but your website’s performance can totally undermine all that. Because at the end of the way, all these efforts are directed at improving your website’s ranking and performance.
Therefore, website auditing should be treated as an essential part of SEO. If your website is not doing well on search engines with your current SEO audit techniques, check out the points below.
Best 7 ways to improve search engine rankings with SEO audit
#1. Make sure you’re using the right tool
The software solutions you use to audit your website play a big role. And needless to say that using such tools is imperative. Therefore, you need to make sure that you are using the right SEO audit tools.
SEMRush, Woorank, Moz, and so on—there are many amazing SEO audit tools out there to choose from. However, it makes it all the more important to be very thoughtful with your choice.
Different tools have different specialties. To make the right decision, one needs to be through with all that.
Another important thing is to compare the tool’s features with your auditing requirements.
There are certain tools that are better for B2B business while there are others that serve B2C better. Just like that, there can be many specifications.
So, before settling for a particular SEO audit tool(s), make sure to compare its features with your requirements.
#2. Check your inbound and outbound links
It goes without mentioning how important a factor link-building is when it comes to the SEO of a website.
Google observes which sites link with yours and which sites you link with. This helps the search engine get an idea of your site’s EAT. The better links you maintain, the higher visibility you get.
So naturally, if you have links to/from spammy and shady websites, it can have adverse effects. In such a case, Google may associate your website with those poor websites and penalize you.
Many times auditors miss to see this aspect and never find out the reason for the ranking drop. Therefore, when you audit your website, make sure to check your inbound and outbound links.
This way you will be able to weed out bad links and improve your search engine rankings.
#3. Scan for thin content
I don’t even have to tell how important content is for determining your site’s rank. Hence, it is important to maintain quality content.
One of the many content related factors is its volume.
It’s always suggested to write at least 1000-2000 words per blog. Content with smaller length is called thin content. Such content is unreliable because it fails to meet user’s needs. Apparently, if you write a 200-300 words blog for a complex topic, it won’t really help people.
However, maintaining 1000+ words on every page is not possible. Therefore, you should audit pages individually.
Hence, scanning for thin content is crucial to maintain high search rankings.
#4. Don’t forget to check for unethical attacks
As a part of black-hat SEO practices, many businesses hire hackers to hack their competitor’s website. This can severely damage your website and lead to a ranking drop. Therefore, it is important to run security checks accordingly.
I have already talked about bad links. Sometimes, this too can be a result of a black hat SEO attack. And I have just named too. There can be more ways one can harm your website’s search engine ranking.
To prevent this, you can also set up certain Google webmaster tools to get notifications in case Google finds something suspicious. Also, track your website’s speed and scan for malware attacks.
This way, you can make sure that your SEO efforts continue to bring you high rankings and visibility.
#5. Watch out for duplicate content
Scanning for duplicate content is another important function of SEO auditing.
Sometimes, you may have duplicate content within your website. This can happen even if you haven’t done so intentionally. And you must know how much Google hates duplicity. So, make sure that there is no content duplicity and redundancy in your website.
Also in the last point, I have talked about negative SEO attacks and the need to be prevented from them. One of such attacks is duplicate content.
Many a time competitors would develop lookalike websites by duplicating your content and spread it over the internet. And this can definitely harm your website’s ranking. Therefore, you should watch out for such websites and report to relevant search engines on spotting any.
#6. Make sure Google has indexed your site
If Google doesn’t index your website, it won’t rank it.
Google spiders crawl over your webpages to go through its content. Once that is done, it would index you depending upon your content. It is done for each page individually.
After your site is stored in Google index, it’d rank it accordingly on the SERP once a related search is done. Hence, it is important to make sure that all your webpages are crawled and indexed.
To find out whether or not Google has indexed your webpage(s), do the following-
- Open Google Search Console
- Go to Google Index
- Navigate to Index Status
This way, you will find out how many pages on your website are indexed. If this number is lesser than that of the total pages on the website, this means some of the pages are un-indexed. So, there you got your problem.
Next, just find the problem pages and let Google index them. Or else, the search engine won’t rank those particular pages at all.
#7. Ensure a fast loading website
Site speed is one of the many crucial ranking factors on Google. Therefore, it is important to make sure that your website loads fast and your page speed is good.
If your webpages take too long to load, Google may drop your ranking. So, to keep that from happening, open Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool. There, you will be able to find about your pages’ speed.
Found issues? No worry, you can fix it with the tool Site Audit. Here’s how to go about it-
- Run the software Site Audit
- Go to Internal Pages
- Navigate to Performance
There, you will be able to find how your pages are performing in the terms of speed.
If you find slow pages, then it’s time to optimize them.
Conclusion
Auditing your website for Search Engine Optimization is crucial to achieve and maintain high Google rankings. However, how to do the same can become a big question. Stated above are some of the best techniques to audit your website for SEO. Follow these to enjoy higher visibility.
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