You may have built your website well with the help of experienced web developers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, if the SEO is not up to the mark, your website will not be able to compete on the rankings of different search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To make sure that your SEO is at its best, you need to conduct technical SEO audits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They will give you an idea of how your website ranks on various search engines and what you need to do to improve your rankings on those search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While it may sound difficult and time-consuming, it doesn\u2019t have to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can easily conduct a technical SEO audit in a short amount of time. And that short amount of time can have a big impact on your ranking on search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before diving deeper into the topic, let\u2019s first take a look at what exactly a technical SEO audit is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You need to ensure that your content and website rank high in the search engine result pages (SERPs) on Google Search Console.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The days of keyword stuffing and backlinking from micro-sites are gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You need to up your game and get your SEO strategy in line with the latest developments on the Google Search Console.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How can conducting a technical SEO audit help your website rank better?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A technical SEO audit is a process during which you check the technical aspects of your website\u2019s SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It basically checks the health of a website and finds out what fixes might be needed to improve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Search engine bots crawl the web to find pages and websites. The bots then check your pages for the different ranking factors before ranking your website in the search results<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SEO is changing constantly and your competitors are keeping up with the changes too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For this reason, it is important for you to remain up-to-date to remain relevant on search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you don\u2019t assess your website\u2019s health, you may end up losing traffic to your competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the search algorithms and technology change frequently, it is a good practice to perform mini-audits monthly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You must also ensure that you do conduct a full-fledged technical SEO<\/a> audit every 4-5 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main factors that affect your website\u2019s SEO can be broadly classified into three different categories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You need to conduct audits of each of these factors at regular intervals. This will ensure that you\u2019re always up-to-date with the changing conditions in the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most important factors to be kept in mind is the mobile-readiness<\/a> of your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As about 60% of all searches<\/a> happen on mobile, Google Search has started giving more importance to mobile-friendly websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that you know what technical SEO audit is and what parameters are included in it, let\u2019s take a look at how you can conduct one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every technical SEO<\/a> audit must start with the crawling of your website. For this, you can use tools such as Semrush<\/a>, Spyfu<\/a> or DeepCrawl<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Semrush\u2019s On-Page SEO Checker also provides you with actionable recommendations to improve your site\u2019s SEO strategy, backlinks, technical SEO, and content quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The crawlers help you find errors such as broken links, poor images, page title issues, and bad keywords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They can also help you identify duplicate content, excess redirects, and unlinked pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also take a look at the Google Search Console<\/a> to see your crawl budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your crawl budget is essentially the number of pages that Google Analytics is crawling on your website and how frequently it is doing that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking at your crawl budget will give you an idea of how the Google Analytics bot is crawling your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How can you make the most of your crawl budget for the Google Search Console?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You need to do the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Duplicate pages can easily waste your crawl budget. You can use tools such as Semrush<\/a> to find duplicate pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These pages usually have the same title and meta description tags as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remove as many duplicate pages as possible. However, if you need to keep them, block them from the search engine bots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There will be pages such as Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions that may not need to be listed in the results from different search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can disallow these pages from being indexed and save on the crawl budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google Analytics may end up crawling the same page twice, with URL parameters and without them as if they are two pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can add URL parameters to the Google Search Console. This can instruct Google Search that it is crawling the same page and not two of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every single redirect the Google Analytics bot follows is a waste of the crawl budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, if there are loads of 301 or 302 redirects, the bots may stop following them and may not reach the destination page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You need to reduce the number of redirects during technical SEO audits to optimize your crawl budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another thing that you can do is manually search for your website on Google Search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To do this, you can go to Google Search Console and type \u201csite:domain name\u201d and search to see the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This will show you how many of your pages appear in the search results. Also, if there are any missing pages, it doesn\u2019t mean that your website isn\u2019t crawlable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, it can give you an idea of what might be going wrong with it and how it's affecting your ranking on search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Websites like SEO Site Checkup<\/a> give you what is called the SEO score of your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This score is essentially a score out of 100 that shows where you\u2019re doing well and where you\u2019re lagging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This score can help you figure out what you should do next in your technical SEO audit.<\/p>\n\n\n The checkup can help you determine your most commonly used keywords. It can also help you find broken links and coding errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also check whether sitemap and robots.txt are available for your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If there\u2019s malware or phishing activity on your website, that is taken into account while generating the score.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sitemap of your website is extremely important. It can info the search engines about your website\u2019s structure and also helps them discover new pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is essential to have a sitemap for getting your SEO strategy right. For this reason, you must check it during the technical SEO audit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Make sure that your sitemap is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your sitemap must not have any errors in it whatsoever. Redirects and URLs that can block indexing should be removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If they are not, the search engines may end up ignoring your sitemap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sitemap should be fairly concise. If it has more than 50,000 URLs<\/a>, the Google Analytics bot won\u2019t crawl it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For this reason, you should keep it short and include all the important pages in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All your latest content must be added to your sitemap as and when it is published. This can help search engines discover new content faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You must let Google Search know about your sitemap. This can be done in two ways: manually and by specifying its location in robots.txt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You need to make sure that only one \u201cversion\u201d of your website can be browseable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does your website have different versions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it does, you\u2019ll end up sending mixed signals to the search engine. The crawlers will be confused about which version is the right one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the search engine is confused about the versions of your website, it won\u2019t know how to show it to the people. This can drastically affect your search engine rankings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This sort of error can occur due to mobile and desktop versions fighting it out or may be due to duplicate HTTP vs. HTTPS versions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The technical SEO audit should make sure that only one of the versions of your website is browseable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a great idea to make sure that your website uses HTTPS. Even Google Search is making sure that searchers know which sites are secure and which ones aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can now find \u201cNot Secure\u201d label next to the websites that use HTTP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A logical hierarchy in your website can work wonders for your search rankings. For this reason, it is necessary to check its internal links as well as external ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Web pages can also be deleted or moved which can result in a broken link as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What internal linking factors should you check?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are a few things you can check about your internal linking during the technical SEO audit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Click depth shows you how many clicks away is a particular page from the homepage. You must ensure that this number is as low as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ideally, it should be below 3. To find this out, you can use WebSite Auditor<\/a> and head to Site Structure<\/em> and then Pages<\/em>. One of the columns will show you the click depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Broken links can waste your crawl budget. They can even confuse visitors and are thus bad for your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can check out the All Resources<\/em> dashboard in WebSite Auditor and then click on Internal Resources<\/em>. Sort the list by the HTTP Status Code to find the broken links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are the pages that aren\u2019t linked to any page of your website and can be hard for search engines to find.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can find orphan pages by going to Site Structure<\/em> in WebSite Auditor and then to Pages<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Click on the Rebuild Project<\/em> option and at step 2, click on Search for Orphan Pages<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your site speed is an extremely important parameter when it comes to SEO. People don\u2019t like to wait for the websites to load and the longer it takes, there are more chances that the visitors might bounce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So no technical SEO audit is complete without testing your website\u2019s speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is the relation between page load speed and bounce rate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your website takes 5 seconds to load, the probability of bounce increases by 90%.<\/p>\n\n\n Google Analytics will soon take site speed into account<\/a> while deciding your rankings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For this reason, you must check your site speed and reduce it. You can use Google PageSpeed Insights<\/a> for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It will show you how fast your website is loading and how it performs against other websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best part about this tool is that it shows you what you can do to improve the speed as well. About 70% of the results<\/a> on page 1 of Google Search are all HTTPS. If your website is already using HTTPS, then you must look for common HTTPS issues in your technical SEO audit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What are the common HTTPS issues most websites have? Here are a few factors you should check your HTTPS site for:<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of the links on your website along with the canonicals and redirects must point to the HTTPS pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You may have HTTP to HTTPS redirects on your website but it\u2019s not ideal to take users through redirects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The redirects can also cause a problem for crawling. This is because you\u2019ll waste the crawl budget each time the Google bot hits a redirect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The mixed content issue arises when secure pages load unsecured content like images and videos. This can reduce the security of the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It can even prevent the browsers from loading the entire page or the unsecured content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To check for this issue, in WebSite Auditor, go to Site Audit<\/em>. You\u2019ll need to find the HTTPS Pages With Mixed Content Issues<\/em> option and check it to find the mixed content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also check out the complete list of non-HTTPS resources on your website through WebSite Auditor. Check out the Internal Resources<\/em> and sort by the URLs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll be able to see the HTTP pages first. For each HTTP page, check the full list of pages that link to it. It also shows the location of the link so you can easily fix things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You need to check if your Google Analytics service is reporting accurate live data. If it is doing it right, then the code has been installed correctly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This needs to be checked during the technical SEO audit. The tracker code for Google Analytics<\/a> needs to be placed above the header of each web page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the service is up, you can check the data against the results from the \u201csite:domain name\u201d results of the search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The number of pages should be similar in both cases. If the number isn\u2019t similar, it means that some pages aren\u2019t accepting crawl requests properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google Analytics also helps you check your bounce rate. You need this rate to be as low as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A high bounce rate indicates that people aren\u2019t finding whatever they were looking for on your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To reduce the rate, you need to optimize your content<\/a> and page loading speed among other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also use the MozBar<\/a> to check for the SEO details of different pages of your website during the technical SEO audit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It can highlight the different types of links such as follow, no-follow, external, and internal.<\/p>\n\n\n The MozBar also shows the Page Authority of each page. This is a number between 1 and 100 that shows you how well the page can rank on the SERPs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such a tool can make your audit process easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Backlinks are essential for the success of your website thus it is no surprise that they are a part of the technical SEO audit. They show the search engines how valuable the content on your website is for the users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, crawlers don\u2019t just look for hyperlinks in off-site SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google's bot also checks your website for brand mentions. For this reason, it\u2019s important to know what is going on and off your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Shanebarker](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/SEO-Quick-Wins-Inline-SEO.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhat is a Technical SEO Audit?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
What Factors Affect Your Website\u2019s SEO Performance?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
What Steps Should You Follow to Conduct a Technical SEO Audit?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Start by Crawling Your Website<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Remove Duplicate Content<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Restrict Indexation<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Provide URL Parameters<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Fix Redirects<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Search on Google<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Check your SEO score<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"SEO](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/SEO-SiteCheckup-Technical-SEO-Audit.png\" "\\"\\"")
2. Review Sitemap<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Clean<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Concise<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Up-to-Date<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Registered in Google Search Console<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
3. Check the Browseable Versions of Your Website<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. Check Internal Links<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Click depth<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Broken Links<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nOrphan Pages<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
5. Test Site Speed<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"Think](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Think-With-Google-Technical-SEO-Audit.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n6. Check HTTPS Content<\/h3>\n\n\n
![\"Check](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Check-HTTPS-Content-Technical-SEO-Audit.png\" "\\"\\"")
Links, Canonicals, and Redirects<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Mixed Content<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
7. Use Google Analytics to Compare Site Metrics<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Why is it important to have a low bounce rate?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"Use](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Use-Analytics-to-Compare-Site-Metrics-Technical-SEO-Audit.png\" "\\"\\"")
8. Do a Backlink Audit<\/h3>\n\n\n\n