7 Tips for Delivering High-Impact Technical SEO Audits
Conducting a technical SEO audit is one of the most crucial steps in optimizing a website for search engines. It’s all about finding those hidden issues that might be holding your website back from ranking higher on Google. A well-done audit ensures your website is technically sound, user-friendly, and optimized for search engines, but it can feel like a big task. If you want your SEO audits to be effective and impactful, there are key strategies you need to follow.
In this article, we’ll walk through 7 tips for delivering high-impact technical SEO audits that help boost your website’s performance and make a noticeable difference in search engine rankings.
1. Start with a Crawl of the Website
The first step in any technical SEO audit is crawling the website. This process gives you an overview of how search engines view the site and helps you identify major technical issues. Tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb are fantastic for this purpose.
Why is crawling so important? It shows you what pages are being indexed, which pages have errors, and how your website’s architecture is structured. For example, you can spot broken links, missing meta tags, or slow-loading pages. A website crawl gives you a solid starting point to dive deeper into the technical elements of your site.
2. Check for Indexing Issues
If your website isn’t being indexed by Google, your SEO efforts will be for nothing. One of the primary tasks of a technical SEO audit is to ensure that all important pages are being indexed correctly.
To do this, check Google Search Console for any indexing issues. Look for pages that are marked as “Excluded” or “Crawled – currently not indexed.” You’ll also want to review your robots.txt file to make sure you’re not accidentally blocking search engines from crawling critical pages. A common mistake is unintentionally blocking entire sections of a site.
3. Evaluate Site Speed and Performance
Website speed is a major factor in SEO rankings. Google prioritizes websites that load quickly and provide a good user experience. If your site is slow, not only will users leave, but Google will rank it lower.
Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to evaluate your website’s speed. Look for elements that are slowing down your site, such as large images, unoptimized JavaScript, or too many plugins. Focus on reducing your load time to under 3 seconds for the best results.
Tip: Pay attention to Core Web Vitals, which are a set of metrics Google uses to measure the user experience on your site. They focus on loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.
4. Ensure Mobile-Friendliness
With mobile traffic surpassing desktop traffic, ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly is non-negotiable. Google uses a mobile-first indexing approach, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of the content for ranking and indexing.
Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to check how your site performs on mobile devices. Look for issues like unresponsive design, buttons that are too small to tap, or text that’s too tiny to read. Improving your mobile site will not only boost your rankings but also enhance user experience, keeping visitors on your site longer.
5. Fix Duplicate Content Issues
Duplicate content is a common issue that can harm your website’s SEO performance. When search engines see duplicate content, they get confused about which version of a page to index and rank, which can lead to lower rankings or even exclusion from the search results.
During your audit, use tools like Siteliner or Copyscape to identify any duplicate content on your website. If you find multiple versions of the same content, consider using canonical tags to tell Google which version of the page is the original. This will help consolidate link equity and avoid splitting your ranking power between duplicate pages.
6. Check for Broken Links and 404 Errors
Broken links and 404 errors not only hurt user experience but can also impact your SEO rankings. These are dead-end pages that Google can’t crawl, and users who land on them are likely to leave your site.
Use your crawl data or tools like Ahrefs or Screaming Frog to identify broken links. Once you’ve found them, you can either remove or replace them with working links. If a page no longer exists, it’s best to set up 301 redirects to direct users and search engines to a relevant, active page.
7. Review Structured Data and Schema Markup
Structured data (also known as schema markup) is essential for helping search engines understand the content on your website. By adding structured data, you can improve the way your website appears in search results, often leading to rich snippets like star ratings, product prices, or event dates.
Use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to ensure that your schema markup is implemented correctly. Common types of structured data include product schema, article schema, and local business schema. Optimizing this area can give your website a big advantage in the search results by making it more visually appealing and informative.
Conclusion
Delivering a high-impact technical SEO audit requires a combination of thorough analysis and attention to detail. By crawling the website, checking for indexing issues, evaluating site speed, ensuring mobile-friendliness, fixing duplicate content, addressing broken links, and optimizing structured data, you’ll create a solid foundation for better SEO performance.
If you’re looking for expert help to conduct a technical SEO audit or need guidance on improving your website’s search engine performance, DigitLeap is here to assist you. We specialize in delivering detailed, high-impact SEO audits that drive real results. Let us help you leap ahead in the digital landscape!
