Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing a website by applying many factors from search engine guidelines to increase natural traffic from the search engine result pages (SERPs). Search engines are always working towards to improve their algorithm for returning more accurate results for the user's search quires. Now search engines are more keen to optimize user experiences by filtering unimportant contents/web pages from search engine's organic listing pages. If a website can not be found or indexed by search engines, then the website is going to miss out the majority of prospective visitors for targeted keywords.
Search Engine Optimization will not only help to make the website content indexable for search engine bots but also improve website usability and user experiences issues by applying targeted keywords/query terms to their expected positions. SEO audit is the process of reviewing a website for various On Page (On Site) and Off Page (Off Site) SEO factors to see what types of SEO crawling errors the website is currently facing, the page speed issues, inbound link popularity, mobile usability, user experiences issues etc.
A comprehensive SEO audit can drive more organic traffic from search engine's organic listing pages by discovering SEO errors the website is facing and fix them with the SEO best practices. Check out a complete SEO Audit Checklist below both for On Page and Off Page SEO issues.
On-Page SEO Audit
On-Page SEO auditing is the process of evaluating how search engine friendly a website is, the page speed issues, header response analysis, and other On Site SEO factors to improve the site visibility, reach, and accessibility.
An effective On Page SEO Audit checklist should address the following SEO factors -
- Site Architecture Analysis
- Usability and Search Friendliness Check
- On-Page Keyword Prominence Evaluation (Keyword targeting in the webpage title tag, internal anchor text, header tag, page content, Meta description, image alt tag etc.)
- Relevance of Website's Primary Subject Matter to the User's Queries
- URL Structure Analysis
- Duplicate Content Issues Check
- Mobile Usability Issues Check
- Page Speed Analysis
- Google Rich Results Check
- Robots.txt File Review
- Header Response Analysis (404 Error pages or Not Found pages, 302 temporary redirects, 301 permanent redirects etc.)
- Server, Hosting & IP Issues Check
Off-Page SEO Audit
Off-Page SEO auditing is the process of evaluating how popular a website is in the topical community, global link popularity of the website, historical performance of site as measured by time spent on pages, Click Through (CTR) from SERPs, direct visits, bookmarks etc.
An effective Off Page SEO Audit checklist should address the following SEO factors -
- Total Number of Index Pages to the important Search Engines
- Total Backlinks or Inbound Links of the Website
- Global Link Popularity of the Linking Domains
- Topical Relationship of Linking Page
- High Weighted Listing Domains
- Local SEO Listings
- Global Visitor's Demography Analysis
- Anchor Text of Inbound Links
- Text Surrounding the Link
- IP Address of Linking Domains
- Bad Neighborhood Check