SEO audit reviews online assets to ensure that a site performs as best as possible in search results. The process of SEO audit includes determining the strengths and successes to scale, identifying the mistakes to fix, and recognizing what is not working that you should do less of and what is not working that needs to be improved. In this post, we will look at how an SEO firm in Los Angeles conducts an SEO audit.
Identify Link Building Opportunities
No SEO audit is complete without building site-specific internal and external links. Internal links are vital for forming authoritative hierarchies within the site and passing link equities within your own pages. It includes creating a new piece of content, doing a site search for older and related content which has built up some equity, and then finding the anchor text within old content to link to the new content. User experience and information structure should also be considered when creating internal links. External links can be made by searching for resource lists that can feature your content and link it to you. Another way is to search for unlinked mentions with the help of a good SEO tool.
Identifying Site Structure Improvements
To improve your site structure, you can work closely with developers and designers from the best SEO firm in Los Angeles to help you develop user-friendly solutions that enhance page authority without compromising UX. You can also increase the number of blog posts per page to bring the older posts closer to the homepage to improve your site structure. Another way is to check for overlapping links like your blog’s popular or related post sections. You can replace the duplicate links with other pages to which you want to pass equity to maximize the coveted link space fully. Your target audience and business goals will determine which method you choose to define and organize content.
Finding Thin Content
This content fails to meet user needs, such as a 300-word blog post explaining a complex concept. However, you cannot put 1000-2000 words on every site page. Also, the pages closer to your homepage will be dominated by design work like icons, hero images, or call-to-action buttons. Therefore you should look at the content. This may include selecting pages that may have dropped in performance or rank, exporting the top 25,50, or 100 pages, and ensuring they are sufficiently beefed up. You may also use site audit tools within the SEO software that will offer a comprehensive report on content length and quality. Long-form content will give you more opportunities to link internally and to squeeze in target, LSI keywords, and ancillary that can help the page to be found.
Identifying Duplicate Content
Scanning for duplicate content will involve looking at the same subsets of your site that you came across while scanning for thin content. Duplicate content can occur unintentionally due to your CMS dynamically generating new pages similar in appearance. However, duplicate content can invite potential site penalties.
Scanning for Keyword Optimization
Know that there are certain pages on your site where optimizing for target and ancillary keywords may not be feasible. Hence, you should ensure that all your pages are completely optimized for keywords that can help them appear in organic searches. You can use any free keyword tool to search for keywords related to your industry. The keywords should have high intent, high volume, and low difficulty levels. Doing vertical-specific keyword research can be a great way to generate blog topics. Ensure your target keywords are in the title, UR, heading 1 and 2, meta title, meta description, and body copy. You can use ancillary keywords in Heading 2 and the body copy if possible.
Making Sure Your Meta Tags Are Optimized
Meta tags consist of meta titles and meta descriptions and help Google and the users to determine the page’s content and act as a promotion for your content. These are the main factors that Google considers when determining the order to rank pages. Using vertical-specific keyword research for writing or rewriting your meta tags will help ensure that they are optimized for the keywords that will help them appear in the search. However, avoiding keyword stuffing regarding meta tags would be best. Optimizing the metal titles can be done by keeping the titles under 60 characters, the target keywords existing only in your title, and including your brand name in the title.
To Sum Up
Apart from this, other approaches to SEO audit include identifying page update opportunities, switching from HTTP to HTTPS, scanning for site errors, and running page speed analytics. Remember that there is no one prescribed recipe for a successful SEO audit. Google changes its algorithm almost daily and rarely tells us why or how. So the one-size-fits-all approach for SEO audit is unrealistic.