What is an SEO Audit

An SEO audit is the process of evaluating how well your website is optimized for search engines. It helps you identify errors that may prevent your website from ranking well and opportunities that can help you rank better.

An SEO audit typically covers areas such as:

• Indexing and traceability
• User experience
• Web Architecture
• Competitor analysis
• Keyword research
• On-page SEO
• Backlinks

Basically, it’s a phone number lead general “check” of the health of a website.

SEO Audit Tools

An effective SEO audit is based on concrete data about the technical health, traffic and backlinks of your website (and those of your competitors).

The two most important tools for an SEO audit are:

• Google Search Console : A set of Google dashboards and reports that allow you to monitor and troubleshoot any issues related to your website’s presence on Google.
• Semrush – An all-in-one SEO toolset that provides a complete overview of your website’s performance and helps you improve it in all the crucial areas for SEO.

In the next steps we will take a closer look at how to perform an SEO audit step by step using these tools.

Let’s get to it.

1. Check for Indexing Issues

The first point of our SEO audit checklist how to sell in installments without the risk of default is about pages that are not indexed, since they are not in Google’s database. Google cannot rank them.

To see if your pages have been indexed, check for issues directly in Google Search Console.

Go to the “Pages” report in the “Indexing” section of the left menu. Here you can see a graph of all pages based on their indexing status.

Below you will see a list of reasons why the pages have not been indexed.

Review them all one by one and inspect those that correspond to these reasons.

Remember that not all pages need to be indexed, only the ones you want to appear in search results. Therefore, it is completely normal to have some URLs that are not indexed.

Here are some examples of URLs that do not need to be indexed:

• Pages with redirects
• Administration pages
• Alternative pages with canonical tags
• Feed Pages

If you find a page that should be indexed, but isn’t, fix the problem by following Google’s guidelines . Once you’ve done this, press the ” Validate Fix ” button.You can also request Google to index the URL by clicking the ” Request indexing ” link.

If you have substantially modified the page, you can request indexing again, even if the page is already indexed.

If you want to learn more, read our guide to Google indexing .

2. Check for Duplicate Versions of Your Website

It is essential to ensure that Google only indexes one version of your website.

It could be in multiple versions of a URL (depending on whether there is a WWW on the domain and whether it uses.

For a search engine, all these versions are different:

 

If your website runs on more than one of these versions, it can cause many crawling, indexing and positioning problems. Especially because Google will see them as duplicates.

Additionally, having multiple versions of your site can dilute PageRank , which can also have a negative impact on your rankings.

You can check it very easily:

Simply enter all versions of your website into a web browser.

You should be automatically redirected to the chosen version. For example, if your preferred URL version is you should be redirected if you enter any other version in your browser.

If your website is accessible through multiple versions, use a 301 redirect. Check out our guide on SEO redirects to learn more.

3. Run a Web Crawl

A professional SEO audit is based on crawling.

That is, you should be able to simulate the way Google crawls your site and find problems in the same way that the search engine finds them.

To do this, you will need an SEO audit tool like Semrush Site Audit . First, you will create a project and set up the audit.

There are several settings in this step. You can refer to this guide to help you.

Once you’re all set, click the ” Start Site Audit ” button.

Depending on the number of pages crawled, it may take more or less time to complete. Once it is finished, you will receive an email.

The audit dashboard looks like this:

The main metric you should pay attention to is the Site Health score. It is an overall indicator of your website’s SEO health, based on the number and severity of issues found.

Below you will see the problems divided into three categories:

1. Errors
2. Warnings
3. Notices

This will help you prioritize what you need to fix.

You will also find the “Topical Score”, which will help you delve deeper into various aspects of technical SEO:

We will delve into some of them in the following steps.

However, the main purpose of the Site Audit tool is to help you see all the issues in one place. Click on the Issues tab , next to the Overview tab :

Here you will find a complete list of all the issues. Go through them one by one and start solving them.

Click on each issue to see a list of all affected URLs.

Here are some examples of problems you may encounter:

• Crawlability issues – For example, some pages return a 5xx status code.
• Redirect issues – For example, there are redirect chains and loops.
• Sitemap issues – For example, some incorrect URLs were found in your sitemap.
• Internal linking issues – For example, you have broken (non-functional) internal links.
• On-page SEO issues – For example, some pages don’t have title tags.
• Markup issues – For example, some structured data does not comply with Google guidelines.
• Performance issues – For example, some pages load slowly.

Some of these problems are fairly easy to fix. Others may require more complex work.

If you’re not sure where to start, the tool provides an explanation and a brief “how to” guide for each issue. Just click the ” Why and how to fix it ” link next to the issue name.

Note : You don’t have to wait for your next SEO audit to use Site Audit. Run the tool regularly to track your progress and uncover new issues that may have appeared since the last crawl.

4. Check Manual Actions

If your website violates Google’s spam school email list policies , you may receive manual action from Google.

In practice, a manual action means that your website’s ranking will be worsened until Google revokes the action. This action can affect one page or your entire website.

Here are some reasons why you may have received a manual action:

• Keyword stuffing
• Unnatural links (both to and from your website).
• Various types of spam.
• Thin content with little or no added value

You can check if you have received a manual action in Google Search Console. Down in the left sidebar menu, you will see a section called ” Security and Manual Actions “, and within this, a link to ” Manual Actions “.

Click and you will be taken to a page where you will see the status of the actions.

Hopefully, you’ll see a green check mark indicating that no issues have been detected.