We’ve talked a lot about SEO in previous posts, but how do you audit your current website for how well optimised it is for Search Engines? You may have seen expensive programs or subscriptions, or even recieved spammy emails telling you about wonderful SEO audits of your website. But you can audit your own website and figure out what you need to improve all by yourself.
First I’m going to take you through the steps for an audit, but if you’re wanting to jump straight into it then the spreadsheet and instructions included are at the bottom of the page.
Tools
First up, check you have tools in place to help measure and improve your SEO.
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console (and add your site map)
- A SEO plugin (Yoast or Rankmath)
- Smush Plugin
What is your Canonical URL?
Out of the below, which is your chosen URL?
Okay now go check that when you type in any of these it is or has a 301 redirect to the canonical version.
I recommend you use https over http where possible as having a SSL certificate is preferred as it shows your site is secure which increases trust. It also has a slight increase in ranking by Google for SEO purposes too.
Whilst your on this step, check that this URL comes up in search results when you type in your blog name too. If it’s not, one of your SEO goals should be to make sure that this is the case.
Check If Mobile-Friendly
With the increasing use of mobile devices for everyday search, it’s important that your site is mobile-friendly. Google has also for the past few years been using a mobile-first algorithm. Check this in Google’s own mobile-friendly tool.
Check Site Speed
Google has confirmed that site speed is a ranking factor, and even has a PageSpeed Insights tool for you to check yours. This should give you tips on how to improve your site. For more in-depth hints and tips you can also use GTMetrix.
Another way to improve your Site Speed is to make sure the images you upload are the right size for your website, and compressing images using a tool like Smush.
Check Indexing Issues
Using Google Search Console you can see the index coverage which will flag any issues with your site. You can also use a tool like Screaming Frog which will crawl your site for these issues, but may also pick up details on pages Google hasn’t managed to index too.
Reduce Index Bloat
Type in site:yourdomain.com and see how many pages google has indexed for your website. This may be a lot higher than you expect, and this is because you may be indexing pages that aren’t needed. This could include:
- Archive pages
- Category and tag pages (WordPress)
- Search result pages
- Thin content (<50 words)
This is Index bloat and reducing it can help improve your SEO efforts. Delete any pages you don’t need or no-index the ones you may need for navigation but not for search engines.
What’s Your Organic Traffic?
Jump onto Google Analytics to find out what your current traffic is, and how much is from Organic Search.
Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels > Click on Organic Search
Set your dates for a longer time period of abotu 6-12 months at least to see if you’re currently growing your traffic via search (or maybe you’re not. This allows you to set a benchmark you want to exceed after improving your SEO efforts.
To see more details of your current organic traffic, you can use Google Search console to check impressions, clicks, CTR and average ranking on SERPs, which you can also track like impressions from Google Analytics. Choose which statistic you’d prefer to track and improve over time.
What Keywords do You Rank For?
Knowing you have organic traffic is one thing, but knowing what keywords you’re ranking for is another. Understanding which keywords people find you with allows you to build on those keywords for keyword research and planning.
It also lets you know if those keywords are performing well or not, which can lead you to better optimise if necessary. If you’re seeing a keyword or phrase come up time and time again, but you don’t have a lot of content on it then you can plan to create more posts to help rank higher or more often.
Improve your On-Page SEO
You may have learned about SEO after you started blogging, or you may have just not optimised correctly for a while. Either way, you can go back and optimise old posts by improving your on-page SEO.
Changing all your old posts will probably take a lot of time, so instead I recommend you focus on the more important pages first. This will include posts that already have high impressions on search console, but not as many clicks. It may also include posts which can include keywords you’ve already found through research.
Use the SEO checklist to see what you can improve for each page.
Improve Meta Data
If you don’t want to improve absolutley everything, you can focus on the meta data of your posts. Change how the title of your blog posts, and description will appear in search results.
Image Optimisation
Ensure your images have alt text, a title and file name which are keyword optimised. Rememeber alt text is used mainly for user experience for those with screen readers, so only use keyword if it fits.
Analyse Backlinks
You’ve probably heard of the importance of backlinks. These are what signals to Google that your site has high authority as other people/websites are linking to it.
You can use Ahrefs free to give you the basics of your domain rating, backlink number (as well as dofollow %), and referrring domains. You can also see your top 100 backlinks with detail on the free plan.
You can use Moz too for similar data, but again it’s limited with the free version. Moz’s DA rating is the one used more when companies ask for your DA, but DR works similarly to track your overall ranking compared to other websites.
Backlink numbers aren’t a huge factor apart from benchmarking for future audits. Number of backlinks and whether this is postive is subjective for every single website, but you should hope to increase your backlinks over time.
Referring domains are how many domains are linking to you, for example multiple links on Twitter would count as one referring domain. You’d hope that you’re slowly increasing in referring domains over time, but if after a few audits you’re losing domains then you’ll need to figure out why.
On the details you can see, check the anchor text to understand whether your backlinks are valuable. Finding a lot of weird anchor text can be a warning site that your backlinks are other sites spamming yours, and you can disavow links if needed.
Check Your Broken Links
Sticking to the links, check over links on your site and what you can fully control. Find broken links which are links to your site which Google may be trying (and failing) to index.
On Google Search Console go to Coverage and check for any Errors. If it’s for pages you’ve deleted, or know you don’t want indexed then don’t worry too much. If it’s for pages you want to appear in search results, then the report should also tell you how to fix it.
Then search your blog posts and pages for internal and external broken links. You can use a free tool like Broken Link Check to find all the broken links as well as which page they’re found on.
Keyword Research and Planning
Once you’ve done your audit, aim to do some keyword research and plan ahead to help improve your SEO efforts in the future.
Content Improvement Plan
If you’ve got the time, and want to you can also build out a content improvement plan to help boost your SEO efforts as well as overall content quality. No one starts off as the best writer, so your old content can probably be updated and improved to match the quality of your current content.
Use your sitemap to grab a link to all your posts, and then use checklists to go through what you need to improve. This could include:
- Title tag
- Meta description and excerpt
- Subheadings
- Images and alt text
- Bulk up thin posts
- Update any info which is outdated/now wrong
- Format of post (if different from how you currently format)
- SEO checklist ideas
Spreadsheet SEO Audit Template
I’ve already created a spreadsheet to input the majority of the info you need in the above steps. Check it out and make sure to make a copy or download to make it your own.
Please note, this template is available for you to use for your own blogs, but not for you to edit, re-post or re-use for monetary gain.
If you enjoy content on Uptown Oracle consider supporting us:
Ko-fi | PayPal
Comments
2 responses to “Blogging 101: SEO Audit Template”
lots of wonderful information that gets my head to swimming. i tried download the template but it simply flies back up to the header. obviously, i have no technical skills.
And now I am very embarassed to say I didn’t link the button correctly! It’s now been updated so you can check the spreadsheet out 😅