SEO Audit Agency Near You in Cleveland, OH

What Is a Technical SEO Audit?

In the ever-evolving world of SEO, staying ahead of the curve requires more than just great content and effective queries. Technical SEO plays a crucial role in ensuring your website is easily accessible and understandable by search engines. This will walk you through the essential steps of conducting a technical SEO audit, helping illustrate how it will help you boost your website’s performance and rankings.

Introduction to Technical SEO

The technical SEO audit will assess the website’s technical structure and website performance. This includes evaluating the website’s hosting environment, server configuration, security, and coding. It will also review the website’s indexing and crawling capabilities to ensure that search engine robots can access the website’s content. Additionally, the audit will assess the website’s URL structure, website speed, website design, and mobile usability.

Understanding Technical SEO

What are the Definition and Key Elements of a Technical SEO Audit?

Technical SEO refers to the optimization of a website’s infrastructure to improve its visibility and ranking on search engines. Unlike on-page SEO, which focuses on content and keywords, technical SEO deals with site speed, mobile usability, and architecture. A comprehensive site audit evaluates many things, including:

• Backlinks
• Content and structured data
• Metadata
• Mobile Accessibility
• Optimized content
• Page errors
• Page indexes
• Responsiveness
• Site Security
• Site speed
• Social signals
• User experience

What Are The Differences Between Technical and On-Page SEO?

While on-page SEO focuses on optimizing individual pages for specific keywords, technical SEO ensures that search engines can efficiently crawl and index your entire site. Think of it as the foundation of your SEO efforts—without a solid technical base, even the best content may struggle to perform well.

What’s Involved In A Technical SEO Audit?

Site audits can explore a wide array of essential areas that tell you what’s working on your website, what’s falling short in performance, and what needs to be improved to increase your website ranking. Website audits can assess:

On-Page SEO

The on-page SEO audit will review the website’s content to ensure it is optimized for search engines. This includes assessing the website’s use of meta tags, title tags, and header tags. The audit will also review the website’s internal linking structure, as well as the quality and quantity of its content. Additionally, it will assess the website’s use of queries, including their placement and frequency.

Crawling and Indexing

How Can You Ensure Your Website Can Be Properly Crawled?

Use tools like Screaming Frog to crawl your website and identify issues that might prevent search engines from accessing your content. Check for broken links, redirect chains, and missing pages.

How Can You Fix Indexing Issues?

In Google Search Console, review the Coverage report to find pages that are excluded from indexing. Common issues include noindex tags, canonical errors, and crawl anomalies. Resolve these issues to ensure all valuable pages are indexed.

Website Architecture

What Is the Importance of a Clean URL Structure?

A well-organized site architecture helps search engines understand your content and improves user experience. Ensure that your site has a logical hierarchy and that important pages are easily accessible.

How Can You Improve Site Navigation?

Simplify your site’s navigation by reducing the number of clicks needed to reach important pages. Use internal linking to connect related content and guide users through your site.

URL Structure

What Are The Best Practices for SEO-Friendly URLs?

Create URLs that are descriptive, concise, and include relevant keywords. Avoid using complex parameters and ensure your URLs are easy to read and understand.

Common URL Issues and Fixes

Check for duplicate URLs, broken links, and redirects. Standardize URL formats and use 301 redirects to handle any changes or updates to your URL structure.

Site Speed and Performance

Importance of Site Speed for SEO

Site speed is a critical ranking factor. Faster websites provide a better user experience and are favored by search engines. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix to analyze your site’s performance.

Tools to Measure and Improve Speed

Identify and fix issues such as large image files, excessive JavaScript, and unoptimized CSS. Implement caching, compress files, and use a content delivery network (CDN) to enhance speed.

Mobile Friendliness

Significance of Mobile Optimization

With the increasing use of mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly website is essential. Google’s mobile-first indexing prioritizes sites that offer a great mobile experience.

Testing and Improving Mobile Usability

Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to evaluate your site’s performance on mobile devices. Make necessary adjustments to ensure your site is responsive and easy to navigate on smaller screens.

Security

Importance of HTTPS

Security is a key aspect of technical SEO. Sites that use HTTPS are favored by search engines and provide a secure experience for users. We will ensure your site has a valid SSL certificate.

Steps to Secure Your Website

Regularly update your software, use strong passwords, and implement security plugins. Monitor your site for vulnerabilities and take swift action to resolve any security issues.

Structured Data

Understanding Schema Markup

Schema markup helps search engines understand your content better. Implementing structured data can improve your site’s visibility and enhance search result features like rich snippets.

Implementing Structured Data for SEO

Use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to create and test your schema markup. Apply relevant schemas to your pages to improve their chances of appearing in rich results.

Content Optimization

The content optimization audit will assess the website’s content to ensure it is optimized for search engines and users. This includes evaluating the website’s use of keywords and phrases, as well as assessing the quality and quantity of its content. Additionally, the audit will review the website’s use of multimedia and its internal linking structure.

Duplicate Content

How to Identify Duplicate Content Issues?

Duplicate content can confuse search engines and harm your rankings. Use tools like Copyscape and Siteliner to identify and address duplicate content on your site.

Solutions for Duplicate Content

Implement canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a page. Use 301 redirects to consolidate duplicate URLs and ensure that each piece of content is unique and valuable.

XML Sitemaps

What Is the Role of Sitemaps in SEO?

XML sitemaps help search engines discover and index your pages. Ensure your sitemap is up-to-date and includes all important pages.

How Can You Create and Submit an XML Sitemap?

Use tools like Yoast SEO or Google XML Sitemaps to generate a sitemap. Submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure your pages are indexed.

Robots.txt

What’s the Purpose of the Robots.txt File & What Are the Best Practices?

The robots.txt file guides search engine crawlers on which pages to index. Ensure your robots.txt file is correctly configured to prevent blocking important pages.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them With the Robots.txt File?

Avoid disallowing essential pages or resources. Use the robots.txt Tester in Google Search Console to check your configuration and make necessary adjustments.

Error Pages

What’s the Importance of Custom 404 Pages?

Custom 404 pages improve user experience by guiding visitors to other relevant content instead of leaving them at a dead end. Ensure your 404 page is helpful and on-brand.

How to Monitor and Fix Errors?

Regularly check for 404 errors in Google Search Console. Fix broken links and redirect outdated pages to relevant content to maintain a seamless user experience.

Off-Page SEO

The off-page SEO audit will assess the website’s presence on the web. This includes evaluating the website’s backlink profile, social media presence, and directory listings. Additionally, the audit will assess the website’s presence in the local search results, as well as its participation in industry forums and directories.

Why Do I Need A Technical SEO Audit?

Site audits help Cleveland, OH business websites up for success and are essential to improve the efficiency and visibility of your site. Thorough audits help you improve your search engine ranking, and increase site traffic and performance, which provides an exceptional opportunity for online growth. They also provide the most effective way to correct errors, discrepancies, security issues, and more. When your site harbors issues, it could suffer from decreased traffic and customer conversions. It’s critical to perform regular site audits to identify any problems your website might have to ensure good user experiences and help your website reach its full potential.

What Are The Benefits Of A Technical SEO Audit?

Checking your website’s health and searching for SEO errors is essential to the site’s success. Site audits help you fix website errors quickly and boost search engine visibility for potential customers in the Cleveland, OH area. There are many other benefits of site audits, which include:

• Optimizing website performance to evaluate the robustness of your site’s content, technical performance, and infrastructure to ensure your website is easy to find by search engines and users can easily navigate through your content.
• Enhancing search engine optimization, so you can identify missed SEO opportunities and fix poorly executed SEO aspects, such as mediocre query choices or stuffing, redundant content, and inferior anchor text and linking. It also allows you to re-focus your SEO efforts, so you’re not continually searching for changes in search ranking algorithms.
• Optimizing conversion rates, so you can re-evaluate the effectiveness of your website’s lead generation and conversion, and spot previously overlooked opportunities, such as relevant CTAs and landing page deficiencies.

When Should You Conduct A Technical SEO Site Audit?

Performing regular site audits helps you stay on top of your website maintenance before it becomes too much to manage and ensures your digital marketing strategy stays on track. Audits are also the best way to confirm your website is doing exactly what you want it to do. While there isn’t a clear-cut rule on how often you should conduct site audits, certain situations might call for an unscheduled audit, such as when you’ve:

• Shifted your marketing strategy and want to ensure your content still aligns with your primary objectives.
• Suffered from search engine ranking issues and need to re-evaluate your website’s SEO.
• Redesigned your website and need a full SEO audit to ensure the new content is user-friendly and meets current trends and algorithms.
• Launched a new website design that requires an immediate SEO audit to ensure it meets optimal parameters.
• Learned of changes in search engine algorithms that require you to update your website in response and take advantage of the latest practices.

While these and other reasons should prompt an immediate site audit, don’t overlook the importance of routine audits to keep your site up to date. Routine audits can be especially important for content, which can contain inaccurate or outdated data if ignored for too long. Content that’s gone stale can cause your web traffic to tank, which hurts your website ranking. Fresh content keeps visitors returning and is vital for SEO purposes. If quarterly audits aren’t feasible, shoot for a minimum of once or twice per year.

How to Prepare for a Technical SEO Audit

Access Points We Need

Before we dive into the audit, we need to gather the necessary access points. Popular access points include Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and CMS. These tools will help us identify issues and track improvements.

Setting Objectives and Goals

Clearly define what you aim to achieve with your technical SEO audit. Whether it’s improving site speed, fixing indexing issues, or enhancing mobile usability, having specific goals will help us guide your efforts and measure success.

Monitoring and Maintenance

Regular SEO Audits

We can conduct regular technical SEO audits to stay on top of any issues and maintain optimal site performance. Various options are available, such as quarterly or biannually, depending on your site’s size and complexity.

Tools for Ongoing Monitoring

Tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and third-party services to monitor your site’s health and performance continuously are typically what we use to monitor your website’s health. We can also set up alerts for any critical issues.

How Can You Get A Technical SEO Site Audit?

Poorly performing websites that don’t take full advantage of current SEO practices can hurt or even destroy your business. Site audits help you discover how well your site and other sites are performing. You can get a site audit using a variety of tools and software, but website audits aren’t easy, especially if you’re not tech-savvy. Steer clear of free site audit tools that are often unreliable or fully capable of providing all the details you need. Premium audit tools come with varying price tags and capabilities, but require you to have certain technical know-how. Hiring a site audit and SEO expert is the easiest, most reliable way to ensure you receive the comprehensive site audits you need to succeed.

No matter the size of your company or project, FREQUENCY27 can help you maintain your website with a well-thought-out strategic approach that’s adaptable to the ever-changing world of SEO. Our budget-conscious approach and highly developed technical skills allow us to tackle all your website needs. We strive to enhance your online presence and boost your SEO, so your site is always heading in a positive direction.

Contact us to schedule a no-cost consultation to see if your website needs a site audit today.