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3 min read SEO audit-SEO tips

How to Perform an SEO Audit

Key Takeaways

  • Accessibility, loading speed, mobile friendliness, and indexation are fundamental factors to assess first as they directly impact a site’s ability to rank well in the SERPs.
  • The next step in your SEO audit is to assess on-site and on-page SEO, including technical analysis and how content is displayed and organised.
  • Lastly, it’s crucial to assess social media and backlinks, and conduct GA and GSC audits as they provide insights into traffic sources, user behaviour, and overall performance.

SEO audit checklist

On-site SEO — Technical analysis

  • robots.txt is placed in the root folder
  • robots.txt is not block­ing impor­tant resources
  • XML sitemap is placed in the root folder
  • SSL encryp­tion is implemented
  • URLs are SEO-friend­ly; hyphens are used for divid­ing words, URLs are under 115 char­ac­ters long
  • there are no dupli­cate URLs
  • 301 redi­rects are prop­er­ly used
  • num­ber of 404 errors is not excessive
  • error pages return error sta­tus codes
  • there are no serv­er errors 5xx
  • titles are H1
  • there are no miss­ing or dupli­cate titles
  • titles are between 30 and 65 characters
  • there are no miss­ing or dupli­cate meta descriptions
  • meta descrip­tions are between 70 and 155 characters
  • there is no key­word cannibalization
  • images are under 100 kb
  • images have alt tags
  • canon­i­cal URLs are prop­er­ly used
  • num­ber of Nofol­low links is not excessive
  • the foot­er is used for prop­er nav­i­ga­tion and information
  • there is no a block of links in the footer

Homepage

  • the home­page con­tains at least one para­graph of text
  • con­tent is unique, 200+ characters
  • all ele­ments are functional

On-page SEO — important pages

  • title tags are opti­mized: unique and keyword-based
  • cus­tom meta descrip­tions opti­mized for clicks are used
  • focus key­word is used in the title, URL, meta descrip­tion, images’ file names, alt tags,
  • focus key­word is found mul­ti­ple times in the content
  • con­tent is unique
  • URLs are static
  • URLs are descrip­tive and short, under 115 characters
  • there are no exces­sive num­ber of inter­nal links — few­er than 200

Load speed and performance

  • pages load under 5 seconds
  • images are optimized
  • com­pres­sion is enabled
  • caching is enabled
  • CSS and JS files are minified
  • the num­ber of HTTP requests is not excessive

Accessibility and indexation

  • num­ber of indexed URLs in search engines (site:search) is rough­ly equivalent
  • home­page appears on top close to top for the site:search
  • the site ranks well for brand searches
  • goal pages are no-index
  • there are no blocked impor­tant pages or resources
  • XML sitemaps accu­rate­ly reflect exist­ing valid URLs
  • sitemaps con­tain only URLs that return 200 sta­tus codes
  • inter­nal nav­i­ga­tion is functional
  • the same con­tent is served to all user agents

Google Analytics audit

  • the web­site tracks vis­its with analytics.js (ga.js is a dep­re­cat­ed method)
  • the track­ing code is inside <head> tag
  • the track­ing code is on every page
  • dif­fer­ent views, includ­ing test and raw view, are set up
  • time­zone set­tings are correct
  • cur­ren­cy in view set­tings is correct
  • inter­nal search track­ing is set up
  • oth­er Google prod­ucts are linked; Google Search Con­sole, AdWords, AdSense, etc.
  • fil­ters are set up; inter­nal traf­fic (devel­op­ers, agen­cies), refer­ral spam
  • bot fil­ter­ing option is checked
  • demo­graph­ic reports are enabled
  • inter­est reports are enabled
  • UTM-tags are used cor­rect­ly for cus­tom campaigns
  • impor­tant goals are configured
  • use­ful events are configured

Google Search Console audit

  • total num­ber of indexed pages cor­re­sponds to reality
  • crawl stats show nor­mal Google­bot activity
  • XML sitemaps are submitted
  • there are no blocked resources
  • num­ber of crawl errors is not excessive
  • there are no secu­ri­ty issues
  • search ana­lyt­ics shows brand­ed and impor­tant key­word queries
  • hre­flang tags are set
  • there are no mobile usabil­i­ty errors

Off-site SEO

  • is the web­site gain­ing traffic
  • is the web­site receiv­ing back­links from relat­ed sites
  • how many unique root domains are point­ing to the site
  • is the back­link pro­file healthy

Mobile experience

  • mobile design match­es the desk­top design
  • all con­tent is respon­sive and looks good on mobiles and tablets
  • but­tons are not too close
  • site speed checks on mobile
  • there are no pop-ups to slow down the site

Social media mentions and visibility

  • is the web­site receiv­ing traf­fic from social media pages
  • are there any brand men­tions on social media
  • search “brand name + social media” gives accu­rate results
  • are the account infor­ma­tion com­plete and accurate
  • is the rel­e­vant con­tent post­ed regularly
  • do peo­ple inter­act on social media pages
SEO
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