If you want to do a quick technical SEO audit for any website, then the following On Page SEO factors should be the first focus in any effective technical SEO audit checklist. Auditing any website should be a routine check to see the website's health issues, broken links, 404 errors or page not found errors, page speed issues, duplicate content, mobile usability, and other types of SEO crawling errors the website is currently facing and fix them to avoid search engine's penalties. Fixing SEO errors can help a website to rank high in the organic search engine result pages (SERPs) and drive more organic traffic.
An effective Technical SEO Audit checklist should address the following SEO factors -
Duplicate Title Tags
Title tag is one of most important SEO signals for Google and other search engines. This is one of the significant On Page SEO factors which we can control easily and optimize for the best SEO outcomes. Targeting business and page copy specific keywords in the title tag can drive more organic traffic to the website as well as promote the web page to the higher rank position of organic search listing pages (SERPs). A compelling title tag may increase the click through rate of organic traffic.
But for the website default URL structuring problem or any other reasons, a website may have many duplicate title tags. Search engines don't like duplicate content and may penalize a website which has duplicate content. So write unique title tag for each webpage and include page specific keywords to drive more traffic from the organic search listing pages.
Broken Links or Dead Links
Broken link or dead link is one of the killing technical SEO errors because search engines treat them as a poor user experience issue of a website. If a webpage has several broken links, the organic ranking of the webpage may be dropped from the organic search listing pages, because search engines doesn't like broken links as they are confusing to the website visitors. When a web visitor clicks to a broken link, he or she will be directed to a broken page and they didn't find the expected content what they are seeking. This is one of the poor usability issues of a website.
From time to time audit your website and discover the broken links or not found pages which are killing your website. Then update the broken links with the current live pages or implement 301 permanent redirects to the similar pages.
Multiple H1 Tags
For website coding error or any other reasons, a webpage may have more than one h1 tags. As per search engine's guidelines, we have to use only one h1 tag in a webpage. So if a webpage has more than one h1 header tags, use only one h1 tag and replace the rest headers with others such as h2, h3 etc.
Missing Image Alt Tags
We can include important keywords in the image alt tag. It's one of the significant On Page SEO factors and help image to rank high in the image search results. Audit your website to discover the missing image alt tags and write image specific or page copy specific keywords rich image alt tags. Also implementing proper image alt tags will increase the usability of the website.
Slow Response Time or Page Speed Issue
This is also a big technical SEO issues. You may know Google and other search engines are now valuing page load time as a ranking signal. Google considers this seriously as a website usability and user experience issue of a website. Google gives negative weight to the webpages which take more time to load. Also from many research studies, it's strongly claimed that if a webpage needs more than 3 seconds to load, then the page loses traffic. Website visitors don't want to wait more than 3 seconds and they simply exist the page. This is one of the most vital reasons of high bounce rate of a website.
Speed up the website by following guidelines from Google PageSpeed Insights. PageSpeed Insights analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster.
Mobile Usability and User Experience Issues
A website may face several mobile usability and user experience issues. When you conduct a technical SEO audit for any website, it's important analyzing the website to see how friendly it is to the website visitors. Google Mobile Friendly Test tool is a good tool to test how easily a visitor can use your webpage on a mobile device. There are other mobile usability testing tools also.
Bottom Line
Conduct a Technical SEO Audit for your website from time to time to discover any SEO crawling errors the website is facing and fix them with the SEO best practices. There are some other moderate and mirrors SEO crawling issues a website may have such as long title tag, short title tag, missing Meta description tag, duplicate Meta description tag etc. If you don't know how to discover the above technical SEO issues, hire a freelance SEO consultant or digital marketing agency to take care of your website and business.
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