A Basic SEO Audit Checklist

A site’s health is a key factor that influences the ranking of your website. In today's post, we look at the basic search engine optimization (SEO) audit checklist, and more.

Keeping up with all the latest trends can be crushing for someone who has just started out SEO. Besides, making sure that the existing SEO operations are in place as per the latest Google algorithm changes can be an overwhelming task for some.

To make sure that you and your site are up-to-date and are not missing out on anything obvious from an SEO point of view, you should perform an SEO audit of your website regularly. With an easy-to-follow ready checklist, you do a standard SEO audit task that ensures none of the critical factors are missed.

In today’s post, I will brief you with a comprehensive checklist that will help you execute the SEO audit of your website effectively and efficiently.

The benefits of having an SEO audit checklist are:

• Helps you identify the site’s configuration issues and work on them
• Helps you with your site’s on and off-site SEO
• Helps you improve your site’s speed and performance optimization
• No need to depend on others for website auditing
• Helps you increase the organic traffic
• The checklist helps you find any SEO exclusions or unlawful activity
• Help you improve the website’s ranking on SERP

I have tried my best to create a comprehensive checklist so that you don’t miss out on the key parts of SEO.

Now, let’s explore the checklist for your next SEO audit.

Define the scope of SEO audit

Before you dive in, determine the purpose of your work to know why you need an SEO audit. These objectives will eventually define the scope of your checklist and help you navigate smartly.

For example, if your website is not achieving the desired load speed results, you might want to conduct an SEO audit accordingly to figure out what’s causing the trouble. Or, if there is a sudden downfall in the traffic metrics, your line of action will be different to fix things through an SEO audit. Well, there may have many separate or inter-connected goals behind performing an SEO audit; so by carefully assessing them, you will be able to perform an SEO audit more effectively.

That’s the reason, there will be certain areas that I have purposefully skipped from this basic checklist.

1. Keyword analysis

Analyzing keywords is a good idea to begin your audit with the analysis of the keywords your site is targeting and if you’re using the right ones.

In general, the right keyword will be relevant, measurable, and obviously will help you do business better. A few tools that you can use are -

• UberSuggest
• SEMrush
• Google keyword planner
• Ahrefs
• Google trends

Beware of keyword cannibalization, is another damaging factor for your website. It occurs when more than one page of your website competes with each other for the same keyword. Make sure that you implement resolutions to take care of it.

2. Content analysis

Content that’s on your site must be unique and free of plagiarism, which is a basic requirement of doing SEO properly. Well, there are several other facets of content analysis checks that must be safeguarded.

Begin by checking the presence of duplicate content on your site with help from tools such as Siteliner.com. You can also take the help of the Copyscape tool to see if any of your content has been plagiarized or not.

Typically content that helps your website rank better is customer-engaging and search engine-friendly. Make sure that you are using the targeted keywords throughout a page on your website. Some recommended places are -

• Keyword in the title of the post/page
• Keyword in the first paragraph
• Keyword appearances in the H1 Tag
• Use of keyword in the meta description of the post
• Keyword appearances in the URL structure
• Keyword in the alt text of the image used
• Keyword appearances towards the end of the post’s content

To make sure that your content is engaging, always answer the user-generated queries through the content of your landing pages. Keep updating old content with regularly publishing new content for the audience so that you can get a fair share of traffic on both.

Making sure that your content is containing the right information is just as important as using the right language. Create the right content strategy which is well balanced with both text and multimedia content including a regular content publishing plan is sure boosts your SEO.

3. UX and UI analysis

The UI furnished by a website is a huge determinant of the site’s UX and the conversions from landing pages.

Google Analytics and Search Console can help you fix the UX issues on your website to a great extent. Alternatively, you can figure out a smooth UI for your site’s audience so that they can seamlessly surf through the pages of your website and take the action you want them to do.

Another critical site UX ranking factor is the presence of any broken links or pages within the site. Link checker Tools can help you remove such links and ensure that your site doesn’t have them.

4. Image optimization check

Make sure that you are optimizing the images present on your website. There are various tools available online which can help you optimize images. And don’t forget to implement the following -

• Use high-resolution images
• Resize them to match with your site’s UI
• Use a relevant image that matches with text surrounded by
• Name your image file appropriately (keyword focused)
• Use image alt attribute (keyword focused)
• Check for CDN settings for delivering image content appropriately

Additionally, check for copyright if you use ready-made images.

5. Social media account analysis

If your website is employing social media platforms to share its updates and news, make sure that they are well integrated and are working as planned.

6. Web hosting check

The right web hosting service boosts your site’s SEO efforts by adding its server reputation, website uptime, and the loading speed it offers. In an SEO audit, you must review the performance of your existing web host and if there is a need, search, and select a better service provider.

Resources like PCMag can be very helpful for comparing the performance of the hosting service providers.

7. Website loading speed check

Use a tool like Pingdom and/or PageSpeed Insights to fix the issues (if any) with the speed of your website. If it is taking more than a set standard to load, make sure that you take the necessary steps at the earliest.

Don’t forget the website loading time to optimize for both desktop and mobile devices.

8. Site uptime

During the site’s SEO audit, you must check the site’s uptime records too. Site uptime means your website is up and running - accessible to its users. On the other hand, a website with frequent downtime will adversely affect your site’s ranking. To take care of your site’s maintenance and maintain uptime, you can leverage tools like Uptime Robot, Site 24*7, and Pingometer.

9. Back-link analysis

Make sure that the links from other sites to your website are relevant and working. Moz, Ahrefs, and Majestic are great link checker tools if you want to find out the quality of the backlinks to your website. These tools will help you classify the backlinks detected by their sophisticated web robots for given domains, subdomains, or URLs.

Besides, you scrutiny all the outbound and internal links present on your website and get rid of all the junk links.

10. URL check

The right URL structure is critical for SEO as it tells quite a lot about the page on your site. All the URLs on your website must be SE optimized (and user-friendly too) rightly.

11. Google penalty check

Any Google Penalty can cause a lot of damage to your site’s online brand value which costs your site’s SEO work. If you are not aware of such a penalty being imposed on your website, all your efforts to improve your SEO score can go in vain.

Hence, during an SEO audit, Google Penalty check to see if your website has been penalized or not is an absolute must. There are several tools available such as Panguin and Fruition’s. You can through Google Analytics and Search Console tools though identify if anything bad happened with your site. A sudden drop in traffic will be an easy indication in many cases.

12. Sitemaps

XML sitemap files help search engines better understand the structure of your website by sharing information about your site. All you have to keep the files free of any errors.

A Google Search Console feature will help you figure out how many URLs were indexed successfully after submitting the sitemap files through the tool. It will also notify you of any errors in files. Bing Webmaster Tools have a similar feature. Use tools like CodeBeautify and XMLValidation to check your sitemaps for errors before submitting them to Google and Bing for crawling.

13. Site security check

A site’s security is another crucial factor that determines the ranking of your website. If you are doing SEO on an e-commerce website, security is even more important. Since having an SSL certificate is now obvious for a website, make sure that your website has it and while performing your next SEO audit, check the certificate hasn’t been expired.

In conclusion

Once you are making progress, periodical SEO audits will help you keep your SEO strategy alive. With the checklist provided above, you will be able to perform a more efficient SEO audit and run more effective SEO campaigns for your site.

6 Digital Marketing Strategies For SMBs During COVID-19

The outbreak of COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, is having a tremendous impact on businesses and the economy worldwide. During this time, it’s key to stay calm and safe to explore all options for your business.

I’m going to discuss the six different digital marketing strategies that you can focus on during this COVID-19 outbreak for your business -

• Google My Business
• Online Reputation Management
• FAQ Schema
• Budget Optimization
• Google Ads Campaigns
• Social Media

But before that -

Stay safe.

Keep yourself, your family, and all who you care about safe.

And -

Stay informed.

There is a lot of misinformation floating around at present, so it’s crucial - more than ever - that we all stay informed by consuming information from trusted sources. Don’t panic.

Now back to business -

6 digital marketing strategies for businesses negatively affected by coronavirus:

These are hazardous times; everyone is anxious, but the worst thing you can do is react to everything out of sheer panic, including your digital marketing strategy. Hold patience on your search engine marketing effort can help you continue generating revenue, which is especially essential during potential economic downtime.

Here are some digital marketing strategies to help your business -

1. Update your Google My Business

Whether your business has closed during this period or remains open, it’s vital that you update your Google My Business profile. Google has announced that Maps will display if a business is temporarily closed.

Currently, the only way to mark your business as temporarily closed is to contact Google My Business Support. However, Google’s CEO, Mr. Sundar Pichai said, “In the coming days, we’ll make it possible for businesses to easily mark themselves as ‘temporarily closed’ using Google My Business.”

Google is proactively advising businesses to update their Google My Business listing, especially if they’ve been affected by COVID-19. Google has released information on how to update business information in a bid to help users with the most accurate information.

It’s important for local businesses to update their Google My Business page, especially now when “nearby” or “near me” searches are on the rise.

2. Focus on online reputation management

Businesses keep continuing to exploit blogs or other mediums to publish content relevant to their industry trends and growth as a means to update their customers. This will transmit reassurance to your customers and let them know what you’re doing to help them. Which in turn helps you maintain the online reputation of your business even in a crisis situation.

3. Use FAQ schema

People are using search engines like Google more than ever for finding answers to their questions. Ensure that your website content answers the questions that searchers are searching for. Think about implementing FAQ schema to your website pages correctly so you have an opportunity to appear higher on the search engine results page (SERP), which in turn, can increase your traffic and click-through rate (CTR).

4. Budget optimization

Buyer behavior has certainly changed a lot over the last few weeks and months, so you must be ready to shuffle your marketing budget to react to these changes smartly. This is especially important for businesses that run PPC ads. Now is the time to scrutinize the amount spend on online marketing to find out the most profitable channel.

Spend your total budget wisely, especially if you have multiple lead generation processes for your business. And, if you can afford it, invest in profitable plans only and utilize selected ways for the marketing effort.

5. Run Google Ads campaigns

This is one of the best ways even now, to reach customers who intend to buy. You can also use the ads to reach your target audience on social media.

As we can expect fluctuation in demand for certain products and services, now is the time to use online advertising more intelligently to turn the tide towards your business. Of course, depending on your product/service and/or industry, you’ll need to be mindful of running campaigns.

6. Use social media

Similar to Google My Business, use your business’s social media accounts to keep your consumers informed about every initiative that you take to make their lives easier during the crisis. You can create content related to your business operations.

In conclusion

Obviously, this is a creepy time, but you need to think about the effects that could have on your business if you stop all of your digital marketing efforts.

I cheer you to stay active online, answer your customer’s queries, and let them know that you’re still there - at their service.

We will get through this together. Stay safe.

COVID-19 & E-commerce Digital Marketing

COVID-19 has definitely made an impact on e-commerce businesses over the past couple of months now that isolation and social distancing measures have been put in place.

Employees in many infected countries have been asked to work from home, have been placed under quarantine and offices have been shut down.

Naturally, many brick and mortar stores have since forced to shut down, pushing traditional consumers to adopt e-commerce as an alternate.

Reconsider your e-commerce digital marketing strategy

Many businesses are reviewing their options in light of COVID-19, the budget of digital marketing and advertising will be a target for businesses looking to make cuts.

There is indeed a need to work smarter under the current situation, but it’s a crucial time for marketers to adopt strategies for long-term profitability.

1. Manage PPC budget smartly

Strategies like switching off PPC campaigns entirely could clearly be hugely damaging.

Instead, look to manage smartly across accounts where possible.

• Recheck where search-n-demand is waning, accordingly adjust the whole campaign
• Allot budgets for keywords with a higher chance of generating conversions

CPCs at the moment will likely be lower as many advertisers trim down theirs too, so think about capitalizing on this where possible.

Also, if other businesses stop advertising, you can make CTR gains which will improve your QS and lower your CPCs.

The reverse is also true as other people are also looking for opportunities and studying the market’s movement. So you should not just switch off campaigns unless absolutely necessary!

2. Maintain organic visibility

When it comes to organic traffic, SEO is clearly a longer-term strategy and must retain its effectiveness.

It is expected, Google will be regulating its algorithms now more than ever to ensure that the community gets the most relevant results, so to ignore the SEO basics would risk decreasing organic visibility.

The organic channel is one of the most sustainable traffic sources in any situation.

People will always be searching, perhaps more now than ever before as many are now at home with an internet connection.

Businesses with online exposure are in a better position than any to continue to do business in what is a tough time for many.

3. Continue with digital PR

Yes, digital PR activity shouldn’t break during coronavirus.

Now is a great opportunity to get connected with the audience with your news stories that are aligned with COVID-19 logically. Because many are searching for news as usual.

People still want to read worthy news stories and want updates about how the pandemic presently affecting the industries.

If the news is good, it can get noticed by many on news sites.

If your business is willing to help other businesses and people during this tough time, entice them strategically through your digital PR campaigns!

4. Stay social on social media

There will be a lot more people spending time on social platforms as almost all start to adapt to the working from home routine.

This is a great time to re-ignite your social media strategy.

Below are some common tips for brands looking to renovate their social media plan based on current trends -

• Be accurate: Give customers trustworthy information about the things they care about. Be unbiased and clear
  
  
• Be organized: Try to connect both locally and globally with prospects
  
  
• Be convenient: Consumer’s habits are evolving and it’s important to let shoppers know that solutions are available anyplace, anytime
  
  
• Be innovative: Find out-of-box ways to provide solutions as the customers are isolated and combating with both boredom and anxiety

So even though we all feel quarantined, this ongoing crisis actually gives our businesses an opportunity to be even more social and more community-led.

It also lets your brand become even more popular during this gloomy period.

Resume the business

The things discussed in this post are a general guide to adapting to COVID-19.

Clearly, there’s no one approach to digital strategy for all kinds of e-commerce businesses.

But one thing is sure, it’s that we as a marketer must ensure our brands must perform optimally online all the time so customers never feel reluctant to do business with us.

This will enable us to avoid a long-term impact on market share and keep us ready to do the business whenever the situation demands.