Do you want to know if your website is SEO friendly? What are the possible problems on it? But above all, how can you find out and how can you correct these problems? You have come to the right place!

We are going to present you different steps to perform an SEO audit of your website. We will guide you step by step so that at the end of this article, your site is optimised and you can achieve the performance you want!

Doing an SEO audit of your website: why and when?

First of all, it is interesting to ask yourself the questions: What are the reasons why I should carry out a diagnosis of my natural referencing? And when should I do SEO audits?

To get to the heart of the matter, an SEO audit will enable you to identify the strengths, weaknesses and therefore areas for improvement of your site. Once you have these elements in hand, you can define action plans to improve your positioning and therefore visibility on search engines.

Now let's look at the question of timing. An SEO audit is done :

• When you start your activity (even if you are not yet positioned, the audit will allow you to analyse the competition and to carry out the good SEO practices quickly).
• When deciding to implement a strategy (for a client or for your business).
• During a new version of your site / an optimisation (to check that there have been no problems and that your site can continue to be indexed).
• If you notice a significant change in position or a significant drop in traffic (again to check continuity of good SEO practice and to understand these changes).
• Otherwise, doing an SEO audit at regular periods will only be beneficial to anticipate and adapt quickly.

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8 simple steps to an SEO audit

1. Prepare for your SEO audit

You will need some tools, most of which are free, to carry out a full SEO audit:

• SEMRush : a very powerful SEO tool for accessing numerous stats and reports
• Google Search Console: Google's tool for tracking your search engine rankings
• PageSpeed Insight: essential to know the loading speed of your website on computer as well as on mobile (Remember: the loading time of your website pages is one of the most important criteria in the eyes of search engines)
• Google Analytics: knowing your positioning and the source of your traffic is important to be able to set up action plans
• Detailed SEO Extension: an extension that gives you an overview of the SEO structure of your pages

You can also find a list of 10 essential tools to improve your SEO.

2. Establish and analyze a keyword strategy

One of the first steps, and not the least important one, in carrying out a diagnosis of your natural referencing is to take stock of where you are. Indeed, before optimising the SEO of your site, it is preferable to know on which queries and which keywords you are positioned. For this, you have several solutions:

• On Google Search Console, you can go to the "Performance" tab to study the number of clicks or impressions on each of the queries where Google indexes you

• On Google Analytics, you can study the pages of your site that are the most performing according to your KPIs (Conversion rate, Bounce rate ...). You can also find out on which keywords visitors to your site came. A very powerful analysis tool since with a sufficient amount of data, you can make comparisons between two periods. A useful option to evaluate the impact of your changes.

• On SEMRush, you can create a project including your domain name. Then, in the "Local SEO" tab and then "Position tracking", you can add keywords manually, via the tool itself or via Analytics to get an overview of your ranking.

• A little bonus: the SEO Hero Ninja site gives you the possibility to know your rank on the keyword you define

3. Analyze your positioning in relation to the competition

Once you are aware of the state of your site and you start to know where you can improve, it is essential to know how your competitors are positioned. Indeed, the main purpose of the SEO audit is to identify areas of improvement to outperform your competitors. There is only one first position on search engines and it is the one you should aim for (well, the first 3 positions are also very good!).

To be able to compare yourself with your competitors, SEMRush offers a very visual solution. So you can go to the "Position Tracking" tab to add your competitors and have a positioning map according to organic traffic and organic keywords.

You now know how your natural referencing is and how you stand in relation to your competitors. Now, we are going to show you the different levers to optimise your site and therefore your referencing in order to appear in first position on different SERPs.

4. Check if Google indexes all the pages of your site

How do you know if Google is indexing all the pages on your site? How do you know if two identical pages on your site are not indexed with different URLs? These are examples of questions to ask yourself quite quickly during an SEO audit.

If some of your pages are not present on search engines, we can tell you that it will be very difficult to rank on your target queries. On the other hand, if the same page has several URLs or if you have the same content on different URLs, this has a negative impact on your SEO.

A very simple method to study the pages of your site that Google indexes is to type on Google the query: site:your-domain-name (For example for Digidop, it would give site:digidop.fr).

Once validated, you get all the pages of your site that are visible on Google. You can then check if any important pages are missing or if there are any duplicates.

If you want to know how to index your pages on Google quickly, here is a quick tutorial:

To find out more about the indexing problems of your site's pages on Google, you can access the "Coverage" tab via Search Console. In this tab you can get an overview of the indexing errors of your pages including a short technical explanation.

5. Make sure your site has a fast loading time

A crucial step not to be forgotten in the realization of your expertise is to check the loading speed of your site. This is very important, as it is as much a factor in ranking on computers as on mobile. And then, you also have to think about your audience, your site must be pleasant to use. The speed of your site is part of theUX (User Experience). Having a fast loading time will be as beneficial for your visibility as it is for capturing your audience.

Fun Fact: According to Google statistics, 53% of Internet users abandon a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

To evaluate the loading time of your pages, there is no need to perform technical manipulations. Once again, it's quite simple! Just go to SEMRush, the "Local SEO" tab, go to "Site Audit" and then access the page load speed results. You can now find out which pages on your site have a too high loading time.

Once you know which pages are too slow to load, you can go to Google PageSpeed Insights. You can then analyse your pages in more detail and get technical recommendations on what can be improved.

6. Make sure your web pages are responsive (optimized for mobile)

Again, this is an important point that needs to be analysed. Many sites look great and are very attractive on the computer, but lose all their charm on mobiles and tablets. Your site represents your identity and nowadays it is impossible to do without a good adaptation on the small screen.

Fun Fact: In 2020, global mobile internet traffic accounted for about 51% of global internet traffic (Source: Statcounter)

As you will have understood, you must not neglect mobile for your SEO strategy. Once again, in order to give the best results to Internet users, Google will prioritise sites with good mobile optimisation.

There's nothing rocket science about finding out if your site has good mobile usability. Go to Google Search Console, then to the "Experience" category and finally to the "Mobile Ergonomics" tab. This will give you a technical report of the errors encountered on your pages.

7. Analyze your content (pages, articles ...)

On the various search engines, the content of your site is the basis for referencing. The web is full of information and you need to do well with your content. Here is a list of the different points that must be analysed to optimise your pages:

7.1 Good SEO practices to follow

Here is a short list of practices to follow to improve your content and ensure that it is well referenced:

• Fill in your Title tags (It must not exceed 60 characters and must be relevant)
• Fill in your Meta description tags (It should not exceed 155 characters and should attract internet users)
• Respect the order of the title elements (Only one H1 and no title break)
• Fill in the "Alt" tags of your images (description of the image for the robots)
• Compress your images (To minimise the size of your pages, as we said, the speed of your site is crucial)
• Enrich your content (Be careful: optimising your natural referencing should not be done at the expense of the UX! Don't forget that you are talking to humans)
• Use your keywords around a semantic field (Your content must include strategic words and use synonymy to rank well)

A free and useful tool to check the structure of your pages is Detailed SEO Extension. This chrome extension will allow you to check the SEO structure of your page, but also indicate if your images are missing any "Alt" attributes for example.

7.2 Beware of duplicate content

So far, we have mainly talked to you about factors that can improve its positioning. However, it is also necessary to take into account the factors that can dereference or at least have a negative impact on its content. By this we mean duplicate content.

In simple terms, duplicate content is when search engines find the same content on different URLs. This should not be taken lightly, as Google may penalise your website.

On the SEMRush Site Audit tool, under problems, you can find the pages concerned. Duplicate content can be observed on the same site or on a site from another. Plagiarism must therefore be banned from content creation methods.

7.3 Fix the errors in your links

When it comes to the content of your site, an important point to check is also to perform a link analysis. There are two points concerning this part that are important to pay attention to.

Firstly, you should be aware of orphan pages. Orphan pages are pages on your website that are not linked to other pages. However, you should know that to optimise your site, there must be an internal link between your pages. Your pages must be easily accessible and this is possible thanks to links. Thus, through this process of internal linking, you reinforce the weight of your different pages. If a page is "orphaned", it will not benefit from the power of the other pages. Moreover, it will be more complicated for the analysis robots and algorithms to understand the theme of the orphaned page.

In a second step, you need to search your website for broken links. Broken links are links that don't work or link to a 404 page. This is a technical problem that is bad for the UX and can have a small impact on your search engine ranking.

Once again on SEMRush, you will find the areas of improvement concerning your links in the "Problems" of your site audit.

8. Examine the quality of your backlinks

When implementing a natural referencing strategy, there comes a time when it is necessary to focus on obtaining backlinks. In a simple way, this consists of obtaining links from other websites pointing to a page on your site to reinforce its weight.

On the web, it is important to be a reliable source to get better traffic and the technique / strategy of backlinks reinforces its authority. Moreover, a site with a high traffic that links to a page of your site will boost it considerably thanks to this link. However, you have to be vigilant once again, because this is a practice that is very closely monitored by Google on the web because it is often used in an abusive manner. Google can then penalise you if it thinks you are trying to lead it astray.

A toxic backlink is a link that will harm your SEO. To discover them, all you have to do is to do a backlink audit on SEMRush. You will then be able to see the potential toxic links that point to your site.

A tool for disavowing links to your site has been set up by Google to avoid being penalised. Be careful, however, not to overuse this tool. In addition, you should try to get as many quality links as possible to have more weight in the eyes of the search engines.

That's it! Your machine is ready to reach the best positions on search engines thanks to this complete SEO audit. As we mentioned earlier, don't wait until you have glaring problems to perform a technical diagnosis of your site. The goal is to identify small problems so that you are not caught off guard.

At Digidopwe can help you build an SEO optimized website. Indeed, our areas of expertise in the creation of webflow sites, in natural referencing and in nocode tools, allow us to offer you a quality online visibility!