When you hear the word “audit” do you start to sweat and search through shoe boxes for your old receipts? Stop worrying! We’re not talking about a tax audit, just an SEO audit. While it involves a lot of work, an SEO audit can never get you into trouble, and potentially save you from a world of hurt.
In this episode of our Here’s Why digital marketing video series, Mark and Eric explain why starting with just three essential elements of a good SEO audit can do wonders for your site’s ability to rank in search and draw traffic.
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Resources
- 15 Crucial Elements of an Informative SEO Audit
- See all of our Here’s Why Videos | Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Transcript
Mark: Eric, in your guide to the 15 Crucial Elements of an Informative SEO Audit you gave us a complete plan for what should be covered in an audit. Now, for this video, could you share with us the three elements that you think are most critical?
Eric: I’d be glad to. Let’s start with discoverability.
Mark: What do you mean by discoverability in this case?
Eric: Discoverability here refers to making sure that the crawlers of search engines have the easiest possible time navigating through your site. Search engines can’t index what they can’t find or see.
[Tweet “Search engines can’t index what they can’t find or see. More #SEO audit essentials at”]
Mark: How do we make our sites fully discoverable by search engines?
Eric: Start by making sure your content is either in the HTML source or available through JavaScript so it renders in the Document Object Model or DOM of the page. What that means is, you can’t use elements where a user has to click on something and it causes the page to retrieve more content from the Web server. That kind of content is not visible through a search engine.
You also need to pay attention to your site architecture, how your pages are organized, the way your content is connected in the hierarchies you set up for it, because these help search engines to better understand what your site is about.
Think of it like the paper filing system in an office. If I looked at your drawer labels, folder labels, and on down to the individual documents, and then I stepped back and thought about that whole structure, I’d probably have a pretty good idea of what your business is about.
Mark: Great. Now let’s move on to your second most essential element of an SEO audit.
Eric: That would be performing really basic health checks. These are things you should be looking at on a regular basis in order to catch any problems before they get too big or start damaging your business.
One of the things you should do is get your site validated with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools, and check each of these regularly for any error or warning messages they might have about your site. Keep an eye on your site’s index status in Google Search Console, as well. So, you see here, this graph tells you how many of your site’s pages are indexed by Google.
Watch for any large or sudden changes which may indicate a problem. And while you’re in Google Search Console, also check the Fetch as Google section, which will let you compare the version of a page as Google has it cached to your actual live version. This will show you whether Google’s able to read your pages accurately.
And then, one last easy regular check: do searches for your branded terms. You should be ranking easily for these, and if they aren’t showing up, it could mean you have a penalty.
Mark: Make sure search engines can discover and crawl your site, do regular health checks, and what’s your third SEO audit essential, Eric?
Eric: Do a thorough analysis of your keywords. Use the various keyword tools available. Check for things like ‘keyword cannibalization‘.
Mark: Keyword cannibalization? That sounds scary.
Eric: It is scary. It’s a situation where you have more than one page competing for ranking on the same keyword. Now that’s scary. Search Console will tell you what keywords you’re ranking for, and if you have some that you used to rank well for but they’ve dropped off, it may be an indication of trouble.
While you’re digging around in your keywords, you can also look for opportunities with “striking distance keywords,” those that rank currently from positions 5 to 20. With just a little bit of work, you may be able to move these up, and in that range, a rise of several positions can mean a significant increase in traffic and potential ROI.
Mark: Well, there you have it, folks, Eric Enge’s top three essential SEO audit tasks. Now, Eric’s SEO audit checklist gives you 12 more, and you really should be doing all of them to have the clearest possible picture of the SEO health of your site.
Eric: And don’t be afraid to get started. I mean, an SEO audit may seem intimidating, but it’s nowhere near as scary as a tax audit.
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