When someone hears search engine optimization (SEO), they often think of the content on a website. However, there is much more to SEO than just writing good content.
Technical SEO focuses on ensuring your website is considered “crawlable” and indexed by search engine bots so your website shows up in relevant search results across the web.
In this article, you’ll learn all the nitty-gritty of technical SEO audits, such as:
• What Is a Technical SEO Audit?
• Why You Need a Technical Seo Audit
• How To Conduct a Technical Audit of Your Website
By the end of this article, you’ll better understand how to make your website more search engine-friendly and quickly found.
What Is a Technical SEO Audit?
A technical SEO audit analyzes your website’s on-page elements and behind-the-scenes code to ensure search engines can appropriately index it. It also checks to ensure that your website follows best practices and guidelines for optimization.
These include things like:
• Website structure and organization
• Page speed optimization
• Canonicalization
• Mobile usability
• Structured data markup
• Crawling and indexing issues
Unlike on-page optimization, a technical SEO performance report looks more into the technical aspects of your website. This includes things like page speed, server response time and loading times.
Why Technical SEO Audits Are Important
While keywords, backlinks and great content are essential for any website, technical SEO’s focus on technical aspects ensures your content actually gets discovered, understood and properly indexed by search engines.
“A company should audit their technical SEO on a regular basis to make sure they’re flagging errors as soon as possible,” said Steve Hoenig, Thrive’s SEO Engineer.
When done right, this can result in better rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) for target keywords.
But this doesn’t mean you have to neglect everything else. Meaningfully measuring SEO performance entails looking at multiple aspects of a website. Here are other solutions to reinforce your technical SEO:
• On page SEO services: Optimizing page titles, meta descriptions and content maximizes visibility for relevant keywords.
• Local SEO: Optimizing for local searches sets you apart from competitors and attracts potential customers in the area.
• Link Building: This includes creating link-worthy content and engaging in outreach to get your page mentioned on other websites.
• Franchise SEO: Using local SEO for franchises ensures brand consistency and helps rank individual franchise locations.
• Content Creation: Creating valuable content people want to read, share and link to build your expertise and drive organic traffic.
Technical SEO audit services always come with complementary solutions like those mentioned above. This is because an SEO audit will only identify opportunities – implementation of those recommendations is what truly drives the desired result.
According to Hoenig, the frequency of technical SEO audits also comes in tiers
• General site maintenance: Weekly
• Site redesigns and migrations: Daily
• Monitoring critical errors happening in real-time: Daily.
Hoenig’s team “usually run crawls of [client] websites on a weekly basis” and overlay this crawl data with “technical information from the Google Search Console.”
By offering complimentary services, such as link building and content creation, technical SEO consultants help you tackle all areas to improve your ranking sustainably.
9 Steps to Performing a Technical SEO Audit
So, how do you run a technical site audit? These audits are typically done by teams, so it’s more challenging to do this yourself. However, this is far from impossible.
Here are nine steps to run a comprehensive technical site audit:
1. Identify Website Structure
First, you must understand how your website is organized and ensure it’s easy for users and search engines to navigate. Think of it as creating a clear roadmap for visitors and search bots to explore your site seamlessly.
Here’s what’s involved:
• URL Structure: How your URLs are structured impacts user experience and SEO. A well-organized URL structure is easy to understand and reflects the hierarchy of your content.
• Navigation and Breadcrumbs: Navigation menus and breadcrumb trails guide visitors on your site. A logical and intuitive navigation structure keeps users engaged and helps search engines understand the content’s organization.
• Internal Linking: Links within your content that point to other relevant pages on your site are called internal links. They establish connections between pages and spread authority throughout your site.
• Categories and Tags: If your site uses them, ensure they’re meaningful and relevant. They help organize content and aid in site exploration.
• Hierarchy and Siloing: Group related content under main categories, creating a content hierarchy. Siloing involves organizing content into thematic groups to establish clear topical relevance.
A well-structured website not only aids SEO but also improves user experience, encouraging visitors to stay longer and explore more. It’s like arranging a store neatly so customers can find what they’re looking for without frustration.
2. Analyze Crawled Content
Imagine having a library with missing or duplicate books – chaotic, right? Similarly, your website’s content needs to be examined.
Crawling your website “encompasses all indexed and non-indexed pages, as well as images and Javascript if needed,” said Hoenig.
You need the right tools to truly understand your website’s content landscape. Among the best SEO audit tools available, some stand out:
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider: This tool crawls websites like search engines do, offering insights into URL structures, broken links, duplicate content and more.
• Ahrefs: Not just a backlink checker, Ahrefs also has a robust site audit feature that helps you identify and fix technical issues affecting your site’s performance.
• Semrush: With its Site Audit tool, Semrush provides comprehensive reports on issues like crawlability, indexability and on-page SEO.
(Read more: Best SEO Tools You Can Use)
These tools are excellent for conducting a technical audit to identify content issues on your website, such as:
• Duplicate content
• Thin content
• 404 errors
• Redirects
Since content is vital in your ranking, how they’re indexed and understood by search bots is critical. With the best SEO audit tools, you can quickly scan your site to identify and fix any issues. You can also use them to crawl other sites for content comparison.
3. Check for Server Performance Issues
When users visit your website, they expect speed and efficiency. They’re not willing to wait around for pages to load. Search engines understand this user behavior and reward websites that provide exceptional user experiences.
“Sometimes [performance] issues can be as serious as a server going down, a website being marked as ‘no-index’ for the search engines or an entire section of a website being unreachable to visitors,” said Hoenig.
To gauge your server’s performance, you need to run comprehensive tests. Think of these tests as your website’s “measuring SEO performance report” phase. Here’s what you need to assess:
• Server Response Time: This is the time it takes for the server to respond to a request. A quick response time is crucial for a snappy user experience.
• Uptime and Downtime: A server that frequently goes down can lead to a poor user experience and missed opportunities.
• Caching and Compression: Implementing browser caching and file compression techniques can significantly improve load times.
A technical SEO expert doesn’t just run performance tests mindlessly. They analyze the data, identify bottlenecks and implement strategies to optimize server performance. This might involve upgrading hosting plans, leveraging a reliable CDN, optimizing images and fine-tuning server settings.
4. Evaluate Robots and Sitemaps
Your robots.txt and sitemaps are like the GPS and road signs that guide bots through your website’s intricate maze.
For a technical SEO expert and even for those seeking guidance from technical SEO consultants, evaluating and optimizing these elements is akin to providing the bots with a well-lit path to uncover your content treasure trove.
It’s your way of telling the bots, “Hey, feel free to roam these areas, but stay out of these.”
Here are two technical audit activities you can do with a robots.txt file:
• Access and Examine: Locate and open your robots.txt file. Understand its directives – lines instructing search engine bots which parts of your site to access and which to avoid.
• Balanced Permissions: Review the file to ensure crucial pages are accessible and private sections, like admin areas, are disallowed. Avoid disallowing important pages unintentionally.
Here’s what a robots.txt file looks like:
(Read more: Your Complete Guide to Robots.txt for SEO)
To optimize your sitemap:
• Generate XML Sitemap: Create an XML sitemap using available tools or plugins tailored to your CMS. Include all essential pages you want search engines to index.
• Submission and Updates: Register the sitemap with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Regularly update the sitemap as your content evolves, reflecting additions and removals.
In the grand scheme of SEO, robots and sitemaps might appear to be small components, but their impact is far-reaching.
5. Test Keywords and Rankings
How would you know if your website is doing well? Aside from working with a technical SEO company, one look at the SERPs and your keywords should give you an idea.
Monitoring SEO performance through keyword rankings weekly, monthly or quarterly is crucial for technical SEO audits.
Some of the best SEO audit tools you can use for this step include:
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• Moz Pro
Take a look at this mobile app development company that uses SEO tools to track its SEO performance in one place:
Case study: Mobile App Development Company
These results come from its mobile puzzle’s SEO campaigns that span months, so the company needed a central location to track its progress.
If you don’t know how to use these tools, a technical SEO audit service can help. They offer audits, on page SEO services and other solutions that leverage tech stacks that identify and quantify your website’s technical performance.
6. Check HTML Markup and Titles
These two elements impact your crawlability as well. For instance, having the right headers and content structure will help search engine crawlers understand and index the content.
Like your content, technical SEO audit services will scour your HTML markup to ensure it meets the best practices.
Here are some things to watch out for when monitoring SEO performance in this step
• Properly nest and structure your page content with headlines, subheadings and body text.
• Add meta tags to each page for description and keywords.
• Your titles should be relevant and concise and incorporate keywords.
Once a technical SEO expert sees any issues with the HTML markup, they’ll provide you with suggestions for optimizing it. You can then make these changes to your website yourself or have your technical SEO consultants do it for you.
7. Monitor Inbound and Outbound Links
Many website SEO audit services today offer link analysis.
Basically, they’ll check to see if you have any dead or broken links and examine the quality of your inbound and outbound links.
Inbound links come from other websites and direct users to your website. Outbound links are the links on your website that direct people to other sites.
(Read more: Everything You Need To Know About Link Building)
Whether you do it yourself or with a technical SEO audit company, checking the quality of your links is vital for both SEO and user experience.
8. Review Content Quality and SEO Features
While there’s an emphasis on technical aspects like speed and structure, you shouldn’t forget measuring SEO performance based on quality content. After all, Google’s guidelines made it clear that your content should be helpful and relevant to the user to rank you better.
That’s why a technical SEO audit service includes vetting your content quality and ensuring they’re value-adding.
Some criteria to use in this step include:
• Quality of the writing
• Readability and copywriting style
• Tone of voice, branding and choice of words
• SEO keyword optimization based on organic search trends
Using a technical SEO audit service to review your content also involves checking for grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. This part is essential as it contributes to brand authority and trust in your readers’ eyes.
Here’s what a concerted SEO effort looks like from the perspective of a multi-location residential foundation company. These are the top five keyword rankings they have accumulated from 2015 to 2021.
Case study: Multi-Location Residential Foundation Repair Company
By June 2021, this company already reached 1,161 top-five keyword rankings. This is more than double its 409 top-five keyword rankings in June 2017. These results wouldn’t have happened if the company hadn’t leveraged the interplay between quality content and technical SEO.
9. Take Action Based on Findings
Once you discover the good and bad of your website’s technical SEO, it’s time to go where the rubber meets the road.
If you’re not sure where to start, ask these questions:
• Will this action align with your website’s goals and audience needs? Think about what your user wants to achieve with your website.
• Is this just a short-term fix, or will it help in the long run? Consider which parts of your website to focus on and prioritize those sections.
• What are the risks involved with taking this action? Consider potential issues arising from change, such as user experience or security concerns.
Of course, hiring website SEO audit services will make this process easier for you. They have standard SEO protocols and solutions tailored to your needs.
This means that “issues are found and resolved quicker than usual,” said Hoenig.
Find and Fix SEO Issues With Thrive
There’s a lot that goes on when conducting a technical site audit. Aside from tending to your website’s technical aspects, you’ll also need to look out for non-technical ones. From monitoring SEO performance to vetting content, there’s much to be done.
But you don’t have to go through the process alone.
Thrive Internet Marketing Agency is a go-to provider for technical SEO audit services. But more than that, we conduct thorough backlink analysis, optimize site speed and images and everything you need to set your website up for success.
Let us show you how. Work with a reliable technical SEO company today!
