Over the years, every SEO expert might have conducted thousands of SEO audits. Numerous discovered websites' problems work as a barrier restraining them from getting on the top of the search engine results. Audits are done to figure out why your websites are not getting results. Besides, it helps to identify the potential problems and reasons behind those. Here are some of the best practices that you need to know about us. You can configure various problems when you are doing an on-page or off-page audit. Many points slip out from even expert's minds. Therefore, we've come up with a comprehensive checklist for SEO experts.
Here is the checklist to consider for conducting an SEO Audit:
- Meta Descriptions
The Meta descriptions of any page are limited to 160 characters and must contain the specific page's targeted keywords. They don't influence the ranking of the website directly. However, a well-written description can have a positive impact on your website's SEO. Your website meta descriptions must be unique for each page, contain relevant keywords and content, appropriate in length.
- Title Tags
The title tag should include your page's content as it tells the search engine about the website page. It is one of the most important SEO audit factors. Besides, you should avoid over-optimizing the title and keep it between 50 and 65 characters. Each page should have unique title tags containing well-researched keywords too. You must check all these points while optimizing your website.
- Website Structure
The content structure of your website should be correct. You can check that your web pages content must contain targeted keywords and relevant content that engage website visitors. Your website should contain dedicated pages for main keywords or titles for better ranking on search engines. For instance, when we search for something on Google, it shows the most relevant results related to the former keyword. Therefore, the website's content should be correctly optimized for getting crawled quickly by Google.
- Canonicalization
Canonicalization is defined as the method of making one version of URL format for all the webpages having similar content on your website. Basically, it is the way of informing Google that you should consider this particular URL as the URLs' authority containing similar content. Sometimes, canonicalization is not done correctly, which can lead to ranking losses and penalties. While performing an on-page SEO audit, you can check the following for the canonicalization issue:
- Check whether your website loads with "www' or without "www." And if it loads, does it shift to the later version?
- Check and ensure that your site doesn't load at /index.php or /index.html.
- If your site is an eCommerce site, does it contain canonical tags in place?
- Image Optimization
There are two factors in image optimization that need to be taken care of: Image Alt Tags and Image's Filename. You can reduce the loading time of your website by optimizing its images. Because when you optimize the images, you can decrease the image size without affecting its quality. As an SEO expert, you should check if your website's Image Alt Tags and Filename has relevant and targeted keywords or not. If not, you must add them in both, respectively.
- Header Tags
The heading and subheadings on your website pages are termed as header tags. It is imperative that they should contain relevant keywords. Some SEO experts prefer to use heads that are more visible to visitors, like conversion headers. Without over-optimizing these header tags, you must check whether they have relevant keywords or not.
- Schema Mark-up
It is a semantic vocabulary of tags you put on your website to help search engines easily recognize your website. For example, if you want to target a specific area locally, you should check the LocalBusiness schema. It should be added with your business name, address, and phone number.
- Social Media Integration
On SEO, Social media has a growing impact. That is why SEO experts recommend integrating social media pages on your website. When you set up your website on social media, it is easier for visitors to follow, share, and review. While auditing, you should check if social media is integrated on the website or not. And also, check for engagement buttons like share or like on your web pages, especially on blog pages.