google site index check

Semalt Advice On How To Perform Free SEO Audit Of Your Website



Have you already done an SEO audit of your website, blog, or online shop? Are you wondering if you should do a full analysis of your website? A web audit is, after all, a process in which all aspects of the website and the implemented strategy are analysed, together with a report on the position and reputation of that brand on the internet and a series of recommendations on what should be improved and how to do it.

In the end, analyzing a web page is a lot like changing the oil in your car. You know that it is essential for the engine to run smoothly and that it will help extend the life of your car. 

There are a million cheap excuses not to do an SEO audit! But, like your car, an SEO audit is an essential part of a long-term success strategy. So you need to repeat it from time to time to make sure your website is up to market standards. All this is not possible without the help of a good SEO tool such as the SEO Personal Dashboard.

On the other hand, it's a bit of a complicated process, which is why it's so important to choose a good SEO agency or an independent consultant. However, you might not have enough money to hire a professional. For this reason, my goal in this guide is for you to know the process needed to properly perform an SEO audit.

To begin, let's determine exactly what an SEO audit is.

What is an SEO audit and what is it for?

Before we continue, it's worth defining what an SEO audit is and why it is so important. An SEO audit is an internal and external analysis of a website that shows information at a specific point in time of a specific page or the entire website or blog, in order to evaluate the optimization of different factors that Google takes into account. This way, you can know what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong, to optimize all factors and get more visits organically.

Importance of performing an SEO audit on your website

It seems then that the important thing is not only to appear on Google or the first pages of Google. but to appear in the first positions of the ranking. This way, you get more visibility and impact on your target audience. Thus, thanks to the analysis work done during the SEO audit of your site, you will be able to detect the points that are working and need more protection as well as the parts that are harming your ranking and therefore need to be improved (one of the main goals of the audit should be to increase organic search traffic).

Although most SEO audits are time-consuming to prepare and often too technical, in this guide I will focus on the really important points and the use of simple SEO tools such as the SEO Personal Dashboard. It is essential that you understand each step and perform them in order, otherwise you may stop analyzing the vital points of the website. Some of the most important reasons why you should perform an analysis of your website now are:
Let's move on to the steps to follow to audit your website. 

Step №1: Prepare the tools and reports you'll need

I'm not going to fool you, to do things right from the start, you need to spend some money (especially if your project is already a certain size). In fact, while it's true that this can be done completely free, it's practical to invest a few bucks in some tools, as they will help you do better web analytics faster and draw better conclusions.

However, to avoid all these headaches, I suggest you use the DSD tool, an all-in-one tool, which will provide you with better results.

Step №2: Audit the website's organic visibility

Organic visibility? What is it? Very easy! It is the visibility that your website has in search engines through "natural" positioning. Although we can start with other steps, when I do an SEO review of a website, I usually start here. 

The goal is to see, at a glance and through the SEO Personal Dashboard, the visibility of the site in search engines like Google. To analyze the organic visibility, this tool is what you need.

Step №3: Audit search engine traffic

Now it's time to audit the traffic your website is receiving. One thing is to know how often you are seen (organic visibility) and another, very different, is to know who may click on the Google snippet and access your website. 

In any case, not all web traffic comes from search engines, as it can come from advertising, social networks, referrals, or direct. Therefore, it is important to analyze the incoming web traffic and detect other pages or platforms that recommend your content. 

Step №4: Audit your keywords

Keyword research is the most important part of any SEO project. Before a business or brand, big or small, can create an online marketing strategy to improve its ranking and increase its organic traffic (traffic that comes from search engines like Google), it needs to know which keywords to boost.

Keyword research is, in fact, an essential element of a successful inbound marketing strategy. Your online business won't get very far without understanding how this process works. Keywords are the central theme or motif of the website content. That is, within a single website, you can have hundreds or even thousands of keywords. After all, these keywords must be aligned and consistent with "what users type into the Google search box" to find what they are looking for.

When you search for a term on Google, it returns the most relevant and popular information. In general, each page on your website should target 1 or 2 unique keywords (otherwise, Google will have to choose for you). To do this, your pages should contain well-chosen keywords, so that they can cover key aspects of your business and different user states.

Finding the right keywords comes down to answering several questions. The SEO tool I recommend for doing keyword research is the SEO Personal Dashboard. It's accurate, easy to use, and very cheap or even free. With this tool, almost anyone can do keyword research with minimal understanding of the factors I mentioned above.

Step №5: On-site SEO audit

After analyzing the environment of the website, that is to say, the visibility it has in search engines, the keywords for which it is positioned, and the traffic it receives, it is time to make the internal analysis. This is what we call the SEO On-Site audit (within the website), so it is time to audit the elements that make up the website. This is one of the most important and complicated analyses. Therefore, I ask you to pay close attention to every detail so that you can audit your website yourself:

Step №6: Off-site SEO Audit

On-site SEO is controllable and you can optimize it yourself, but off-site SEO depends on others and in many cases is not easy to control. This is the group of SEO guidelines that focuses on factors external to the website, that is, factors that do not depend entirely on you and your activity as an administrator and content creator of your website.

Now, you ask yourself, which is more effective? SEO On Page or SEO Off-Page? Well, both! On-Page SEO is essential, but by itself, it doesn't guarantee good rankings (especially when you're fighting in competitive niches). That's where off-page SEO comes in, which will help you gain authority and climb in search positions.

Once the target keywords are well-chosen, they must be implemented on the site (On-Site SEO) and promoted from other sites (Off-Site SEO). Ultimately, it is about improving the authority of articles, pages, and products by building quality links to them. This is done by Link Building, which helps you improve some of the most important SEO factors.

Among these factors, some are more important than others, such as the number and quality of inbound links. The inbound links of a web page, blog or online store are very relevant for its search engine ranking. Google understands that when a page is linked by others, it is because of the quality of its content, because of the value it brings with its information, or because it is a reference in the sector.

Step №7: Conclusion and prioritization of problems

If you have reached this point I congratulate you, because even though it is not easy, it is very rewarding to have so much information from your website to be able to make changes (for the better) and make decisions. Sometimes you may have gotten the form wrong, others the size, and others the meaning, but the important thing is to realize this and for that, you perform a full SEO audit. Once you have all the data, I recommend you order it as I explained in this guide and prioritize it.

There will be details of the website that will take you longer (e.g. designing and developing new articles, product pages) and others that will take less time, but it is essential to know a working route so that the result comes faster. The objective is to position your website in Google and be visible to millions of users who search every day for keywords in which you should be in the top 5 positions. To do this, use colours or numbers to prioritize the order of work (especially if you are working with an SEO agency or an SEO consultant). Also, make the best SEO tool available to you, the SEO Personal Dashboard.