A Definitive 27 Steps Guide to Performing an In-Depth SEO Audit in Your Website
Google doesn’t state the exact numbers, but experts agree that the search engine considers more than 200 factors while ranking a page.
The first step to running a successful SEO campaign is knowing your website’s current performance with regards to the most important factors that help it rank.
SEO Audit site used to be a daunting task in the past. This was mostly because the concept of Search Engine Optimization was still new. There were lesser SEO experts, and not a lot of businesses had realized how beneficial it would be to rank their websites on the top of the Google search.
However, these days, anyone can conduct an effective SEO analysis given that they have a good idea about the things they need to check.
In this article, we talk about everything you need to know about conducting a detailed SEO Audit on your website.
What is an SEO Audit?
SEO Audit, in simple words, means analyzing what Google thinks about your website.
It means knowing how well your website has been optimized for the ranking factors currently.
An SEO audit gives you an idea about the issues that you need to tackle to get a better ranking on the SERPs.
You try to study these things with SEO audit:
- Technical SEO issues
- On-Page and Off-Page SEO Problems
- Website Design Issues
- Problems with the User Experience
- Issues with the Content
The more specific we can be in learning these problems, the better our SEO campaign will become. A good SEO audit should give us a clear implementation plan on the things that we need to do to achieve our ranking goals.
SEO Audit Checklist: How Do You Do an SEO Audit?
Follow these step by step process to perform a productive SEO audit:
Step 1: Ensure Your Website is Responsive to Mobile Devices
In May 2018, Google announced mobile-first indexing. Since then, the search engine has been crawling the mobile version of a website before its desktop counterpart while assigning it a rank.
Furthermore, more than 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices. So, if your site works well on mobile phones, you will make the experience better for many of your users who are accessing your content on smaller screens.
Here are some tips on making your website responsive to mobile devices:
- Use larger fonts that are easier to read.
- Clickable elements should be at a comfortable distance from each other.
- Try to use buttons more than links, because they are more apparent on smaller screens. However, don’t overdo this because you wouldn’t want your website to look like an app.
- Set a mobile viewport.
- Use Frameworks like Foundation 3, Skeleton, and Bootstrap that help you scale your website quickly on every screen size.
- Optimize your images for mobile devices. The idea here is to make the file size as small as possible without losing the quality of the photo.
- Disable Flash (we will talk more about it later).
Tip: Google has a tool called Mobile-Friendly test where you can copy and paste the link of your website and know how well it can do on mobile devices.
Step 2: Make Sure Google is Indexing Only One Version of Your Domain Name
Normally, there are four versions of a domain name:
http://examplewebsite.com
http://www.examplewebsite.com
https://examplewebsite.com
https://www.examplewebsite.com
Even if we read all of them as one and they lead us to the same website, search engines like Googles consider them to be different sites. Meaning that you can work hard to build the content and backlinks for one version of your website, but another will not rank.
The easiest way to fix this issue is to add a 301 redirect. This way, no matter which version of the website people open, they will automatically be redirected to the version of your choice.
How to Add a 301 Redirect?
- Redirecting to the www. version of your website
Step 1: Open a text editor like Notepad.
Step 2: Add the following code, replacing ‘sitename’ with the name of your website: Redirect 301 / https://www.sitename.com/
Step 3: Save the file as .htaccess, and upload it into your webspace. If you already have a .htaccess file, you can add this code there. - Redirecting to the non-www version of our website:
Step 1: Open Notepad.
Step 2: Add the following code. Replace ‘sitename’ with the name of your website.
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^sitename.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://sitename.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Step 3: Save the file as .htaccess.
Step 4: Upload the file to your Web Space.
Note: If you already have a .htaccess file, place the code there.
Don’t modify any other content of the .htaccess file.
Step 3: Make Sure Google Has Indexed Your Website
The next step in conducting a successful SEO Audit is going to google.com and searching for your website like:
Site:yourwebsitename.com
If your website is indexed by Google, the home page should appear on the top of the search results. Furthermore, the pages shown in the SERPs are the ones that have been indexed.
If nothing shows up, it means Google hasn’t crawled your website yet. In other words, it means Google doesn’t know about your website, so you will not get a rank.
There may be various reasons for Google not being able to index your website or pages:
- Your website is new. In some cases, it could take up to four weeks for a website to begin showing on search engine results.
- The meta robots tag, or the x-robots-tag in HTTP header have set your website to noindex.
- There are problems with the .htaccess file.
- Your website has been penalized or banned from Google. This usually happens when your website shares inappropriate content, or your use Blackhat SEO techniques.
Step 4: Ensure You Have Good Content
Always keep Google’s Rankbrain in mind while creating content for your website. It is an algorithm that ensures that a website has relevant and sufficient content that users can actually learn from.
These are the bases for Google Rankbrain while ranking a website:
Dwell time: It is the time that a user spends on the web page. A higher dwell time indicates the content to be helpful and interesting.
Bounce Rate: It is the percentage of people who open a webpage and leave without taking action like clicking on links or making a purchase. Higher bounce rate indicates that the website is not relevant to the search term.
Click-Through Rate: Often known by its acronym CTR, Click Through Rate is the percentage of people who clicked on your website listing with respect to the number of users who were actually shown your website link. A lower CTR means your Metadata is uninteresting or irrelevant.
Pogo Sticking: Pogo Sticking means users opening a website, and going back to the SERP and opening another site because the first website didn’t answer their query.
Rankbrain makes sure that websites rank on the top only if they have relevant and engaging content.
Step 5: Delete Unnecessary Pages
There may be many Zombie pages on your website that have no purpose. For example, a webpage with an outdated piece of content that is no longer relevant to the people.
The problem with Zombie pages is that they don’t rank, nor provide any value to the user. Furthermore, even if they get a search ranking, they won’t answer any questions, so Google Rankbrain will take them down. They also take up extra space in your hosting and also may play a role to make your website slower.
You should delete all the pages that don’t have relevant content.
Step 6: Check the Page Speed of Your Website
Google has time and again said that page loading speed is one of the most important search ranking factors.
This is true for both desktop and mobile versions of a website.
You can paste the link of your website in Google PageSpeed Insights to know how well it is doing in terms of speed.
Well, even if the page speed was not a ranking factor, it would still be difficult for you to get traffic. 57% of users leave a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Step 7: Check Your SSL Certificate (https authentication)
If your website only has an ‘HTTP’ and not ‘HTTPS’, you definitely have noticed search engines like Google Chrome showing a ‘Not Safe’ label before the domain name.
Https authentication is a Google Ranking Factor. To get that on your website, you need to install a Secure Sockets Layer (Certificate).
What an SSL Certificate does is that it encrypts the data that users enter in their browsers before it comes to your server. By the way, encryption means the conversion of data to code.
Thus, even if hackers intercept the data on its way to your server, they will only get the code. The code is decrypted once it gets to your website.
SSL certificates also do other things, like verify the website’s owner, or prove that the company owning the domain name exists.
You can buy an SSL certificate from various providers.
Step 8: Check for Proper HTTP Response Codes 
The next step of performing an SEO audit is to check the HTTP response codes of your website to ensure that it opens on web browsers without issues.
As you may have noticed, sometimes web pages don’t open and show errors like 403, 404, etc.
The numbers are known as HTTP Status Code, and they say if the HTTP of a web page is valid. Furthermore, if your webpage is not loading and there is an error code, then you can use that code to find out the reason for the problem.
You can use the Http Status Checker tool to find out the HTTP response information of various pages of your website. You should be looking for an HTTP response of 200.
Here is what different common HTTP responses mean:
1XX: Anything around the hundred range means that the server is processing the request of the client.
2XX: 200 means the web page is okay. Other numbers in the two hundred range mean that the page can load, but there may be issues like Partial Content (206), Non-Authoritative Information(203), No content(204), Reported Content, Reset content, etc.
3XX: 3XX means the page used to exist before, but you will be redirected to another webpage if you try to open it.
4XX: 4XX means client’s side errors. Some common are 400 meaning bad request, 401 standing for Unauthorized, 403 meaning Forbidden web page, 404 that means page not found, and final 409 standing for Conflict.
5XX: 5XX is for Server Error. The most common one is 500, which stands for Internal Server Error.
In other words, it means your website architecture should be simple and straightforward to understand. At no point, the user should feel that they are lost somewhere.
The main pages in your website, including Home, Categories, About Us, Contact Page, etc. should always be only one click away. This is the reason websites place a navigation menu on header more than footers. On top of that, ensure that categories and subcategories are relevant and divided clearly.
Don’t forget to check if there are links to relevant pages in your content.
Like we said before, dwell time is important, and visitors should be able to find everything they want if they are to spend time on your site. Thus, adding a Search Box is a good idea.
To take searchability to another level, you can also incorporate a table of contents in your blogs and articles.
Step 10: Ensure You Have Shorter URLs
This is an often-overlooked step of SEO Audit, but a critical one.
You should have short and clear URLs for each page of your website. Both the search engine and users should be able to look at the link and know if the content is relevant or not.
For example, say that you run an affiliate marketing blog. You wrote an article on the best practices for affiliate marketing.
Your URL could either look like this:
www.yourwebsite.com/blogs/affiliate-amwaetwtewq0a32-marketing-aewtwte
Or This:
www.yourwebsite.com/affilate-mareketing-tips
People are obviously going to click on the second link because the first one is kind of ‘ugly.’ Also, shorter URLs look good on social media posts and other places where people share them.
Another tip is to let users know where the link is taking them. For example, if you sell books, your URL should be something like yourwebsite.com/books-for-sale.
Spend some time creating the best links- studies show that using custom URLs can increase CTR by 32%.
Step 11: Check for Missing Meta Title and Description
Many are confused about the concepts of the Page Title and Page Header. You see, the page title (meta title) is shown in the Search Engine Results page, while Page Headers are displayed once you open the website.
The meta description is the short description of the web page that appears below the page title.
You have to ensure all your web pages have a title tag and meta description. Your title tags should be between 50 and 60 characters, as Google SERPS start cutting title off at this range. Your meta description should be below 160 characters.
Your Metadata should have keywords, but again, remember you are crafting them for the users before search engines. So, make both title and meta description readable, instead of stacking keywords.
SEO Site Checkup has two useful tools, Meta Title Checker, and Meta Description Checker. You can enter your domain name in the platforms, and they will return you the information regarding if all your pages have Meta Titles and Description.
Step 12: Remove Duplicate Meta Data
Google doesn’t like duplicate content appearing on the same website again and again.
You may deliver different content in different pages of your website, but Google will think they are the same if they have the same Metadata.
So, after ensuring all your pages have a meta title and meta descriptions, the next step in the SEO Audit site is to modify the repeating ones.
Follow these steps to check for Duplicate MetaData:
Step1: Install and Run the Screaming Frog Tool.
Step 2: Enter your website’s URL.
Step 3: On the Title tab, select the filter Duplicate. The tool will show the pages that have duplicate meta titles. Note them down and change them.
Step 4: Apply the Duplicate filter again on the Meta Description tab. Note down the pages with duplicate meta descriptions.
Step 13: Ensure the HTML Header Tags are Properly Organized 
HTML header tags organize the content for search engines and users.
Search Engines first scan a page to see if there are any <H1> tags. After that, they will scan inside the <H1> to find any existing lower-level headers like <H2>, <H3>, and so on.
Also, Google thinks that on a page with more than one level of header tags, the highest one is the most important. So, the keywords inside that header are more likely to be focused when ranking some keywords.
If you have a higher-level header, say <H1> inside a lower level header, for example, <H2>, Google will find it difficult to index the content inside it.
To find if your website has sufficient <H1> and <H2> tags, go to Headings Test of SEO Site Checkup. Enter your domain name, and the tool will give you info about the pages that have H1 and H2s.
Make sure that one page only has one H1. Search Engines like pages that focus on one core subject, rather than generic ones that randomly talk about everything. Doing so will also improve your content quality.
Step 14: Check for Canonical Links
Like we said before, Google hates duplicate content. We also said that Google uses URLs to recognize pages.
For humans, www.example.com, and example.com can be the same, but for Google, they are different web pages. Now, if Google crawls both of them, separately, it may think that your website has duplicate content.
A canonical tag tells search engines that a URL represents the master copy of a page. It tells that even if the page has several URLs, all of them serve similar content, and you only want the search engine to index and rank one link.
For example, say you run an ecommerce website. You sell shoes.
The URL of one of your pages may be:
ecommercestore.com/sneakers/nike
Now, say someone applies a filter of ‘size 9’ for the shoe. Then, the URL of the same page may turn to:
ecommercestore.com/sneakers/nike?size=9.
These two URLs serve the same page, but if you don’t add a canonical tag, Google will think they are different and will crawl both of them to find a lot of duplicate content.
Well, these days, Google recognizes such issues, but in those cases, the search engine automatically sets a canonical link. That isn’t practical because you can’t be sure Google will choose the version of the link with the most optimal content. For instance, in the above ecommerce shoe example, Google may show the page with the ‘size 9’ filter applied on its SERPs.
Step 15: Make Sure All Your Images have an ALT Attribute
The Image ALT attribute is the description of the image. In other words, it is the alternative text that is shown to a web browser if the image can’t load.
Image ALT Attributes can be helpful in these cases:
- When the page is being accessed by blind users using screen readers.
- When the user has disabled images in their browsers.
- User Accessing the website with a text-only mode in their browser.
- When images can’t be loaded because of a slow internet connection.
You see, website usability and understandability are very important search ranking factors. When you have Image ALT Attributes, Google will think that your website has content that people can understand even when they can’t load images.
Also, sometimes, search engine crawlers may not be able to crawl over images. They will use the Image alt attribute in such cases.
Incorporating keywords in the Image ALT can also give you a boost in the search ranking. However, make sure that the alternative text stays relevant to the main content, and human-understandable even with the keyword.
To check for the Image ALT attribute, you can again use the Screaming Frog Tool. Enter the URL of your website and in the image tab, choose the filter Missing ALT Text.
Step 16: Check for Brand Name Ranking
Your website must rank for your brand name. To check this, go to Google and search for the name of your company (the website name, and not the domain).
If your website appears on the top, then it is okay. If not, this infers you will have to do extra SEO. If Google thinks that other websites provide better content for your own brand name, it is an indication that you need to work hard to improve your authority on web pages.
For this, you should create backlinks and citations on high profile websites. Press Releases and more helpful content on your website will also help. Don’t forget to be more active on social media.
In some cases, using generic names with a lot of competition can also avoid your brand name from getting the first position on Google search. For example, you may be a phone vendor, and your website name can be bestmobilephoneinsingapore.com. Still, it won’t be easy for you to rank for a general keyword like ‘Best Mobile Phone in Singapore’ without putting a lot of effort on SEO.
Step 17: Check Your Backlink Profile
The next step in running an SEO audit is assessing your backlink profile. This means looking into the links on different sites that are pointing to your website.
You should check to see if there are sufficient backlinks and if the backlinks you created earlier are still working. However, this doesn’t infer that you create backlinks on each site you come across. If a lot of spam websites are pointing to your content, Google will think that you are spamming as well.
You can use Ahrefs Free Backlink checker to get a basic backlink statistics for your website.
Step 18: Local Citations
Local citations are the NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information on your website published on various sites. They are the ‘backlinks of local SEO.’
Well, local SEO is done for the ranking of local businesses in Google rather than websites. For example, if we look for ‘coffee in Singapore’, Google returns the search query with a list of famous coffee houses in the city-state.
You see, Local Citations are needed to rank in Google’s business listings. Google considers you a good vendor if websites with high Domain Authorities have the NAP of your company.
Remember, the NAP information should be exactly the same on every website. For example, say your company name is ‘My New Company Private Limited.’
Then, you should use ‘My New Company Private Limited’ instead of other names like ‘My New Company Limited’ or ‘My New Company Pvt. Limited’ on each of your citations. Otherwise, Google will consider them as different businesses.
You see, Local Citations are needed to rank in Google’s business listings. Google considers you a good vendor if websites with high Domain Authorities have the NAP of your company.
Remember, the NAP information should be exactly the same on every website. For example, say your company name is ‘My New Company Private Limited.’
Then, you should use ‘My New Company Private Limited’ instead of other names like ‘My New Company Limited’ or ‘My New Company Pvt. Limited’ on each of your citations. Otherwise, Google will consider them as different businesses.
Step 19: Create an XML SiteMap
Sometimes, Google may find it difficult to find specific pages on your website because no internal links are pointing at them. XML SiteMap helps in such cases.
XML SiteMap is the index of your website which consists of the links to various pages. It provides a roadmap for a search engine crawler to find important pages on your website.
This is the basic structure (link) of a sitemap:
https://mywebsite.com/sitemap_index.xml
You can directly submit your sitemap to Google to ensure that the search engine crawls every page on your site before showing results for a query.
Many tools on the internet can help you create an XML Sitemap, some being XML Sitemap Creator, My Sitemap Generator, and XML Sitemap Generator.
Here is how you can submit your sitemap to Google:
Step 1: Login to Google Search Console.
Step 2: On the left dashboard, find Sitemaps under Index.
Step 3: Enter the link of your sitemap.
Step 20: Check for Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a text file on the root folder of your website that tells search engines which pages to crawl, and at the same time, the ones to omit.
Remember, robots.txt isn’t to be used to block pages from search engines. For example, someone can’t use the Robots file to block Google from finding pages with illegal content on their website.
Rather, Robots.txt is used to help optimize search engine’s crawl budget and resources. For instance, you can say Google to not crawl the ‘Thank You’ page on your site to save the search crawler’s time.
To find if you have a robots.txt, enter your website name on the browser, followed by /robots.txt.
For example, if your domain name is mywebsite.com, your enter this address:
https://mywebsite.com/robots.txt.
If you get a 404 error, it means you don’t have the Robots file. In such a case, you will need to create a file and name it robots.txt, and upload it into your website’s root directory. You can do so with a simple text editor like Notepad.
You can find your website’s root directory on your web hosting dashboard or with an FTP tool. Filezilla is one of the best free FTP software out there.
Here is the basic structure of a Robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /directory or page/
Allow: /directory or page/
Sitemap: https://mywebsite.com/sitemap_index.xml
After creating the Robots.txt file, you can use Google Robots Testing tool to ensure that the structure of your Robots file is correct.
Note: WordPress creates a virtual robots.txt file for every website. In such cases, the robots.txt query on the browser won’t return a 404 error, but you will still not find robots.txt file in your root folder. If it is true for you, create a new Robots file and upload it on your site.
Step 21: Look for Structured Data Markup Errors 
This one could be a little advanced but is as important as other SEO audit steps in this article.
Structured data is the data that tells Google in more depth about your website content. A good structured data doesn’t only improve your search position but also unlocks other Google search results features.
For example, if you look for a recipe for some food, you will see listings with pictures and names of the brands. The websites in the listings most probably created structured data markups in their codes.
You can use Google’s Structured Data Testing tool to know if the structured data markup information in your website has any errors.
Well, creating a structured data markup is a vast concept. It will be difficult to explain it in a single blog of an SEO audit site. Anyway, here is a link to a Google article on how you can optimize structured data markup.
Step 22: Check for Inbound Broken Links
Inbound links (or internal links) are the links in a web page that points to another page on the same website.
Having broken internal links on your website deteriorates the user experience, and makes it difficult for search engines to find web pages.
You can check for inbound links manually, but if your website is big, you can use Ahrefs Broken Link Explorer.
Step 23: Ensure there aren’t any Broken Outbound Links
Outbound links are the links that point to another website.
Well, after ensuring your inbound links are okay, the next step in SEO Audit is to check for broken Outbound Links.
You should also make sure your outward links take users to only credible websites. If Google finds you referencing to sites with less Domain Authority or scam content, it will hurt your trustability as well.
Ahrefs broken links checker returns statistics for your website’s outbound links as well. The tool from Search Engine Genie also does a good job to let you know about your outward links errors.
Step 24: Don’t Use Flash on Your Website
Adobe declared in 2017 that they would end the support for Flash by the end of 2020. Furthermore, browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox have also decided to stop loading Flash content from the date Adobe will stop its support.
Flash is heavyweight. Apps running on Flash take a lot of resources like memory, slowing websites down.
Well, removing Flash content from your website isn’t a big deal, especially when HTML 5 (html, css, and javascript) itself is lightweight and more powerful than Flash.
Step 25: Check for Correct Keyword Implementation
You can use Google Keyword Planner to see what keywords people are searching for the most and incorporate them on your website.
Furthermore, tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush step the process up a notch by telling you the competition for each keyword, ranking difficulty, competitor’s profile, LSI, frequently asked questions and other valuable insights. They can also analyze the keywords that you have on your website.
You start by using keywords with less difficulty and high search volumes and build up from there.
Step 26: Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword Cannibalization is when two or more of your Content rank for the same keyword. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in some cases, may have adverse effects.
For example, say that a company offers SEO services in Singapore. When people type ‘SEO in Singapore’, two of their content pop out on the search results.
The first one is regarding how to choose SEO services, and the other is a detailed article about SEO tips written with good CTA.
However, for some reason, the first article, which is of lesser quality than the second ranks better on Google. If people click on it, there is a higher chance of bounce rate and low dwell time. This will hurt the website’s authority as a whole.
Also, with keyword cannibalization, something called link dilution happens. Say that you have two topics with the same keyword. They rank in the 6th and 7th position on Google. Instead of creating backlinks for two of them, you may have worked to build links for only one which could take it to a higher position.
Step 27: Assess the YMYL and EAT Profile of your Website
It is somehow uncanny that SEO service companies don’t talk about YMYL as much as they have to.
YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life. In Google’s terms, it is a type of content that directly involves a person’s health, happiness, security, and financial stability.
For example, “How to Be Safe During Pneumonia” is a YMYL content because it deals with someone’s well-being.
Google has hired about 10,000 evaluators that go through YMYL content manually on the web and provide them with a ranking.
Websites should have these three factors to rank YMYL content: Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.
The latter two is about creating a brand for the website and improving its web profile. However, for the SEO audit part, we are going to focus on the Expertise.
If you have YMYL content on your website, make sure that a person with verified expertise in the subject has created it. For example, if you search for health tips on Google, the ones on the top are always written by medical professionals.
You should either have the name of the author in the articles or a very-detailed ‘About Us’ page with information about your team members and their degrees or experience that will make the search evaluators conceive that your content is good.
Bottomline
SEO Audit is one of the most important phases of the whole SEO campaign. It provides you a sense of direction; an SEO audit site tells you exactly what you should do to gain the searching ranking that you wish for.
Well, the above audit can be done by anyone without having to be a technical SEO expert. However, hiring professional SEO services still is the right thing to do because they can gather more data and provide you better insights on how you can implement the information in hand to not only be on the top, but also to increase conversions.
