8 Simple Steps to Complete a Technical SEO Audit

Technical SEO audits help teams identify behind-the-scenes issues that affect search engine rankings, such as website speed, indexing, and backlinks. It is crucial for SEO experts to fully understand all the factors that affect page rankings so that the team can take the best steps to improve their rankings.

Regular technical SEO reviews are crucial to building excellent SEO strategies. But if you're just starting out, working with a new company, or want to learn how to complete a technical SEO review, it can be overwhelming.

This article will introduce eight steps to help you complete technical SEO audits, increase web traffic, and enhance your confidence as an SEO expert.

Key Points

1. Understanding Technical SEO Audit: This article introduces the concept of technical SEO audit, distinguishing it from page SEO, focusing on how users and search engines browse the website rather than what they display. It explains that technical SEO audits involve checking behind-the-scenes elements such as website speed, indexing and usability to improve search engine rankings.
2. Step-by-step review process: It outlines the eight steps of conducting a technical SEO audit, covering everything from a comprehensive review of website crawling to ensuring mobile-friendliness. This approach is designed to identify and address various issues that affect website performance, user experience, and ultimately search engine rankings.
3. Key Components and Tools: This article focuses on important areas that need to be noted during the audit, including indexing issues, in-page elements, image optimization, internal and external links, website speed and performance. It also mentions the necessary tools such as Google Search Console, Google PageSpeed ​​Insights and various web crawlers that can help SEO experts conduct thorough reviews.

What is technical SEO audit?

What most people think of SEO, experts call it page SEO. Professionals optimize content displayed on the website so that it naturally appears in front of the right audience.

Technical SEO is not about what is displayed on the website, but about how users and search engine bots browse each page. Technical SEO audit refers to the use of a list of behind-the-scenes technical elements to review and improve to improve page rankings in search engines. What are the contents involved in technical SEO review?

When SEO experts perform technical SEO audits, they examine a range of factors that affect website speed, performance, and usability and take steps to optimize the web page. Regular, sometimes daily technical SEO reviews can help experts understand technical issues they may not know.

Picture from: WordStream

SEO experts and marketing teams use tools such as Google Search Console, Google PageSpeed ​​Insights, web crawlers, mobile crawlers, and indexing tools to optimize web pages and improve search engine rankings through technical SEO audits.

When should the technical SEO review be completed?

It is very important to complete technical SEO reviews regularly. Some businesses use technology SEO to help improve cash flow through network traffic and conversions, so daily audits are a must. But for blogs and personal websites, weekly or monthly SEO reviews are enough.

In addition to regular maintenance, technical SEO reviews should always be completed when moving to a new website, starting to provide freelancing services to new clients, or first employed at the company. Of course, technical SEO reviews are also useful during periods of stagnation or decline in rankings.

What do you need to do before performing a technical SEO review?

A few things you need to do before performing a technical SEO review:

1. Understand the customer's goals. Do they want to improve SEO, make it easier for users to browse the web, or optimize the performance of the website?
2. Get their tools and analyze data. To perform a technical SEO audit, you need to be able to access the website's Google console, performance monitoring analytics, and anything else you need to meet customer expectations.
3. Sign a written agreement. Whether you are signing a job contract or working on the go, it is very important to have a written agreement to explain what you will do and how you will do it. You also need a disclaimer and a list of liabilities so that you are not responsible for things beyond your control.

It is important to have all this information in advance so that you can prepare for your work. For example, if you work for a SaaS company, you might be hired to perform technical SEO audits on certain specialized login pages based on their industry and business type to get them to the right people based on their previous searches and user behavior before.

Picture from: Search Engine Land

But if you work for a retail company, your job may be to make sure the page loads quickly, there are no image issues and that all 4xx links are redirected to the correct location.

Step by step guide to completing technical SEO review

Let's introduce eight steps step by step to help you successfully complete the technical SEO review.

1. Crawl your website

Use the tool that scans your website to check how many URLs there are, how many indexable, and how many problems there are, including any problems that hinder your website's performance.

Picture from: Deepcrawl

For Wix users, Deepcrawl is the top tool that professionals trust, but most people start with Google Search Console:

1. Determine the sitemap format to use: XML, RSS, mRSS, Atom 1.0 or text.
2. Create a site map manually or automatically using the site map generator.
3. Add your sitemap to your robots.txt file, or submit it to Google via Search Console.

2. Discover index problems

If the website has some pages that Google cannot crawl, it may not be indexed correctly. Here are some common indexing problems that need to be found:

• Index error
• robots.txt error
• Sitemap Questions

The easiest way to check your website index is to use the coverage report in Google Search Console. It will tell you which pages are indexed and why other pages are excluded so you can fix them. You may need to optimize your crawl budget to ensure that your pages are indexed regularly.

3. Check the elements in the technical page

Although elements within the page are often excluded from technical SEO audits, handling them is considered a basic household chore that needs to be addressed. The following is a list of in-page elements that need to be reviewed during technical SEO review:

• Page title and title tag
• Meta Description
• Specification tag
• hreflang tag
• Schema tag

4. Identify image problems

Image optimization is another often overlooked aspect that is crucial for technical SEO audits. Ensuring images are error-free can help your website rank, including increasing loading speeds, increasing traffic from Google Images, and increasing accessibility.

Be sure to identify the following technical image problems:

• Broken Image
• Image file size is too large
• HTTPS page links to HTTP image
• Missing alt text

5. Analyze internal links

Next, it is important to analyze internal links. Identify the 4xx status code that needs to be redirected. If there are any orphan pages that do not have internal links to them, identify and resolve them.

6. Check external links

Next, go to the external link. External links are important because they make the website more trustworthy to users and search engines. Make sure all backlinks are active and do not cause page breaks and check if all pages have external links.

7. Measuring website speed and performance

Google Search provides better ranking positions for websites with good performance and fast loading speeds.

Picture from: PageSpeed

Here is how to check website performance using Google PageSpeed ​​Insights:

• Go to Google PageSpeed ​​Insights page.
• Enter your webpage URL into the box.
• Click to analyze and view your results.

This tool will provide you with overall scores, field data, suggestions and other diagnostic information that can help increase page speed.

8. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

Finally, make sure the website you are reviewing is mobile-friendly, responsive and compatible with different browsers. Google prefers responsive web pages that are easy to load and easy to view, regardless of the user's device.

The following is an example of how CryptoWallet.com uses mobile and web-friendly design:

Web page view

Move scroll view

You can easily check your website's responsiveness using a tool like Responsive Web Design Checker or using the following steps in Google Chrome:

• Open a web page in Google Chrome.
• Right-click to open the menu and select Check.
• Click on the "Switch Device Toolbar" to see how the website looks on screen and on mobile devices.

Summary

Technical SEO audit helps optimize the website so that users and indexing bots can be more understandable. There are many elements involved in conducting a technical SEO audit, but these eight-step process can help simplify your workflow so that you don’t miss anything.

Frequently Asked Questions about Technical SEO Review

What is technical SEO audit? Technical SEO audit is a comprehensive assessment of website technology, aiming to identify and address issues that may affect search engine visibility. The goal is to improve website performance, crawlability, and indexability.

Why is technical SEO review important? Technical SEO audits help identify and address issues that may hinder the performance of a website in search engines. It ensures that the website is structured in a way that search engines can crawl, index and understand its content.

What are the key components of technical SEO audits? Components include crawling analysis, indexing problems, website structure, URL structure, mobile optimization, page speed, duplicate content, standardization, site map, robots.txt, etc.

How to perform technical SEO audits? You can manually perform technical SEO audits by manually checking aspects of your website, or automate this process using Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and other SEO audit tools.

What common problems are usually identified in technical SEO audits? Frequently asked questions include broken links, duplicate content, missing meta tags, slow page speeds, inappropriate redirection, mobile-friendly issues, and website architecture issues.

Can technical SEO review improve search rankings? Yes, resolving technical issues found in the audit can have a positive impact on search engine rankings. Improve website performance, fix crawl errors and optimization techniques can help improve user experience and search engine visibility.

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