How to Complete a Technical SEO Audit in 8 Steps

That means all of your backlinks—the links to your website from another one—are someone else’s external links. When most people think of “links” for SEO, they think about backlinks. You can find out if any meta descriptions are missing, as well as if they are too long or too short. In general, it is good practice to ensure all of your pages have title tags, none of which are longer than 60 characters. If you and a competitor have sites that stand shoulder to shoulder on the SERP, then even the most basic of issues could be the catalyst that determines who ranks at the top. So in my opinion, even the most basic of housekeeping issues should be addressed.

• Everything from the name of the image to the size of an image file will have an SEO impact.
• That’s why proper internal linking can help boost your topical authority.
• This will take you to a list of all the errors Semrush found on your website.
• These standards directly impact your search rankings and the trust that users have in your content.

You can then take the necessary actions, such as contacting the web admin or reporting the site to gain back your traffic. FAQFox is a free SEO tool that can scrape the Internet for questions your target audience might be asking or searching. Input a keyword, and this tool shows you a score from SEO Anomaly zero to 100 that tells you how competitive the keyword is.

Broken links

Without a good copy, you shouldn’t even try optimizing your website. It also provides you suggestions on how to improve your overall website’s score so you can achieve higher rankings in search results. Google Search Console (GSC) is the powerful FREE tool from Google that every website owner should use. It gives the important data including the website issues or errors that are preventing your site to get higher rankings in search results. Once you enter any website’s URL in their Website Audit tool, it scans your whole website and gives a score out of 100. You’ll find a list of the most important problems you need to fix on your site for better rankings.

Measure Your Page Performance

Smartphone usage worldwide has grown exponentially, and it’s important for websites to be compatible with the rising demand. Their in-depth report can look overwhelming unless you’re coming to the game with some technical chops. You would need to create an account, answer some questions about yourself, and choose to skip a trial in order to create the free audit report. There are a number of choices available, and HubSpot’s Website Grader is one of the most user-friendly.

This issue can refer to both internal and external links and simply means that the URLs linked to are returning a 4XX return code. These links damage the user experience for visitors and can impair the credibility of your site. For those who monetize sites with display ads, it can even prevent ad providers from allowing ads on your site.

Tools like KeywordsFX, LSI graph, or even related searches and Google autosuggest are great for helping you come up with related keywords. You should be looking for keywords in the title tag and meta description during your SEO audit, as well. These show up in the search results and can give users and search engine crawlers context to what your page contains.