Conducting an in-depth technical SEO audit needs more in-depth knowledge about search engine optimization. Many digital marketing agencies, SEO Resellers, online marketers, and SEO analysts offer technical SEO to the brands online. But still, there are options to conduct an audit for technical SEO on your own. If you have decided to do it yourself, then you have landed on the right page. Because here we will explain the complete process of technical SEO audit simply.
What Is Technical SEO Audit & Why You Need It?
Keeping it short and simple, a technical SEO audit is conducted to check whether your website is up to the mark according to the various technical SEO standards. It will help you find and remove any technical flaws your website has. These technical SEO errors impact your search engine ranking that is why it is important to remove them.
Tools You Need
There are plenty of tools available both paid and free & you can use any of these paid and free tools to conduct technical SEO audits.
Free Tools
● Google Search Console
● Google Analytics
● Google Pagespeed Insights
● Screaming Frog Spider
● HTML Sitemap Generator
● No Follow Browser Plugin
Paid Tools (Optional)
● SEMrush
● Uber Suggests
● Deep Crawl
● Ahrefs
4 Major Parts of Technical SEO Audit
A lot of things are there to check-in a technical SEO audit. But we have classified them into four major parts. All the other factors go under these four sections.
● PART 1: Backend Elements
● PART 2: Front End Elements
● PART 3: Links & URLs.
● PART 4: Generating & Analyzing Audit Report.
Let’s Get Started With Technical SEO Audit
Finally, after picking up the right SEO packages & tools and having a clear vision about technical SEO audit, we are ready to go & let’s start the process step by step.
PART 1: Checking For Backend Elements
The first part consists of checking for backend elements. In this step, you will be checking all the elements that are working at the backend of your website. We will check whether these elements are complying with SEO algorithms or not.
Start A Crawl
To audit your website’s backend health, you will need a crawling tool. You can use any of the above mentioned free or paid tools. All the tools are good and you can use any of them. They will audit your website’s backend system like server, hosting, architecture, domain, etc.
Things To Evaluate
During a crawl through a tool, you will get a lot of information about your website. Now you have to look for the required metrics and parameters. Choose the parameters that are important for your technical SEO audit. Following are some of these parameters.
● Indexing
● Server Uptime
● Sitemap
● Pagination
● Breadcrumbs
● Navigation
PART 2: Checking For Front End Elements
Now after evaluating the above-mentioned backend factors, you need to check your website for the front end elements. There are many flaws in the front end of websites that can kill your ranking on search engines. So it is important to check them during technical SEO audits.
Start An On-Page SEO Audit
The most important part of a front end site audit is to check for the factors related to on-page SEO. Various tools are there to check your website for on-page SEO errors, flaws and much more things.
Things To Evaluate:
As usual, there will be many factors to consider in on-page SEO. Following are some of the most important factors that you need to evaluate during on-page SEO checking.
● Page Titles
● Meta Descriptions
● Tags
● Site Hierarchy
● Keyword Stuffing
PART 3: Checking Links On Your Site
The second last step in a technical SEO audit is to check the health of all the links on your website. No matter if a link is inbound or outbound, you have to check its health and usability.
Start Evaluating Links And Their Health
Pick a tool and start analyzing your website for unhealthy, broken and disturbing links. Links are an important factor for search engine rankings, and you must have to pay attention to them.
Things To Evaluate:
Following are the factors that you need to check about links on your website.
● Broken Links
● Follow/No Follow Link Usability
● User-Friendly URLs
● Malicious Or Spam Links
PART 4: Generating and Analysing Reports
All the above mentioned three steps or parts will give you a lot of information about the various aspects of technical SEO of your website. Now is the right time to generate reports to analyse them and make a technical SEO strategy to fix all the issues you have found. Most marketers use it to fix all the issues at the time they find it. But you can do it later after analysing everything if you have to outsource your technical SEO process to someone else.
Summary
Performing an in-depth technical SEO audit is a time consuming and long going process. However, if we start doing it with proper planning, then we can easily do it. The whole process can be different for different reasons for SEO analysts. But we have provided you with the complete process in detail. Going step by step through the process makes it easy and you will never miss any part of it.