For every company to make their presence felt in the online world, it is necessary to invest in SEO projects. If you have invested money in SEO, you would surely like to know what results you are receiving out of this. The data that is derived from the SEO projects needs to be analyzed to understand whether the campaign is a success.
Through data analytics, you will collect your data to get organic traffic on the website. The organic traffic on your website will increase only if you can analyze the data correctly and adapt proper strategies for the same.
Data Analysis Process
The process for data analysis involves three main steps that we will cover here. The first step is the preparation of the kickoff report. The report contains the extracted data for your understanding and analysis using certain tools.
The second step is the analysis of the report. Here you will analyze the report that you have derived. The last step consists of the action that you will take once the report has been analyzed. You need to prioritize the tasks and segregate them according to the level of their importance.
Setting Up the Data Analysis Report
Before you initiate the SEO campaign, the first thing that you need to do is prepare the report analyzing certain necessary data. Three main areas need to be analyzed, and here we will learn how to prepare a report for the same.
Analyzing Overall Website Performance with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most common tools used to track website traffic. The report received through Google Analytics would be vast and would take a lot of time to manually sort it out. That is why a dashboard can be created to segment the data easily.
(Source : Google Images)
The data that you would generate can be for a year. Any data before that would not be important for the current analysis. A section is known as ‘Traffic Source’ would include different non-organic channels through which people can search your website.
The non-organic channels include Paid Search, Social Media Channels, and Referrals. These sources provide critical insights into the formulation of the link building strategy. However, there will not be an in-depth analysis of this data since it is derived to get an overall view of the traffic trends.
How to setup Google tag manager?
Without having any coding knowledge, you can add, manage, and distribute marketing and analytics tags on your website using Google Tag Manager (GTM), which is a free tag management tool provided by Google.
Tags are short pieces or snippets of code that gather information from your website and send it to various third-party applications, like Facebook Analytics and Google Analytics. To set up your GTM account, follow the steps mentioned:
Step 1: Signup for a Google Tag Manager account.
Step 2: Type in the account name and the region you belong to.
Step 3: Set the container by naming it appropriately and selecting the platform it will run on, such as AMP, iOS, Android, or the web.
Step 4: After selecting, click “Create,” and a screen containing the terms and conditions will appear. After reading it, click the Agree button to continue.
Step 5: You will then be provided with a snippet of the installation code for the container, which you can use to manage your tags.
Step 6: Copy the two snippets shown and paste them on each website page. The first should go in the website’s header, and the second should go in the body.
Step 7: Click OK to create your Google Tag Manager account.
Note: You can insert the snippets directly into your WordPress theme if you are using WordPress.
Analyzing Organic Landing Pages with Google Analytics
The search dates for this analysis would again be set for the last one year. Select Organic Search only for the Default Channel Grouping. This search will determine the top landing pages by traffic changes, conversion rates, and session counts.
(Source : Google Images)
You will be able to find out the pages that have the best performance and the type of the page as well. Certain pages have the dominant share of traffic, and picking out these pages would help you to understand the main areas that you need to focus on.
You also need to determine whether the key pages on your website have lost or gained traffic in the last year. The report will help you understand the time that audience spends on your web page.
Since most people access websites from their mobile devices, you can set the device category as mobile-only. This will access the data where you can determine whether the mobile traffic has increased or decreased in this one year.
Organic Search Trends with Google Analytics
Google Analytics helps you to compare the organic session every month. You can do this for the current year or the previous one based on your need. You can also garner a report where you will determine the seasonal changes in traffic generation on your website.
This is why it’s useful to keep track of major changes to your site, like if you started a PBN rental campaign for instance.
The report for this will be available since the time of inception of your website. The day to day changes in organic traffic will also be derived through this analysis.
Your website is made of certain keywords which are searched by the audience to reach your website. The performance and ranking of these keywords can be determined through a tool called Ahrefs.
Google Search Console Dashboard
GSC takes into account two kinds of searches, which are branded search and non-branded search. Branded search is when the audience searches for the business name, URL of the website, or the brand.
(Source : Google Images)
On the other hand, a non-branded search is when the audience has searched for keywords that are coincidentally related to your website. The clicks, impressions, and Click-through Rate (CTR) number for the last 90 days would be calculated in this data.
How to setup Google search console?
Google search console is an excellent tool for businesses to understand how their business and website is performing on Google’s search results by giving the business owners the required data.
It gives you information on how Google crawls and indexes your website and helps find problems that affect how well it performs in searches, such as crawl errors, security problems, and manual penalties.
So how do you set it up to analyze data for SEO projects?
Step 1: Visit Google Search Console and sign in using your regular Google account.
Step 2: You can add a property after logging into your Google Search Account. You can enter your website’s Domain or URL Prefix to move to the next step.
Step 3: Depending on your selected option, you’ll next need to verify your website.
>If you choose Domain Property, the sole method for verifying your website is through your DNS provider.
• You can find a list of DNS providers in the dropdown list from which you can choose.
• When you find your DNS provider, you will see comprehensive instructions unique to that service. If your DNS provider isn’t listed, you may simply select “Any DNS service provider” instead.
• Once completed, copy the TXT record for your DNS that Google has provided.
• Open your domain’s website in a new tab after copying the TXT record, then log in to your domain’s account (for instance, Hostgator, GoDaddy, etc.).
• Then, find the domain you want to set in your list of ones.
• You will have the choice of managing your DNS records. Look for anything that mentions DNS and click on it if you can’t locate one.
• A page displaying the Domain Management page will then be opened, displaying a list of your DNS Records. Once you do, select “Add” to make a new one.
• You will then see a list of options with dropdown lists. First, choose TXT under “Type,” then type @ under “Host” and select 1 hour under “TTL.” Paste the TXT record you previously copied in the provided “TXT Value” space, then save the work.
• Following these procedures will add a new TXT record for Google Search Console.
• Click on Verify and create your Google Console account after adding your TXT record to Google Search Console.
Keep in mind, though, that it could take up to 72 hours to update the DNS entries. Therefore, you can always try again if your verification is not displayed.
>On the other hand, if you choose URL Prefix Property, you can use an HTML file, an HTML tag, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager to verify your website.
– Using HTML File
• To use this method, you must upload an HTML file to your website’s main folder. You must have permission to access your server through the cPanel File Manager or FTP, so don’t use this method if you are unfamiliar with these tools.
• However, if you feel insured using this, download the file from Google and access the site’s root folder.
After that, upload your HTML file.
• Once the file has been uploaded, return to Google Search Console and select Verify.
-Using HTML Tag
You must first add a meta tag to your website’s header to use this method. Using WordPress, you can either individually add the meta tag to your header.php file or use a plugin to add it there.
• If you choose to use a header.php file, you can proceed similarly to how you would go with an HTML file.
• If you are using a plugin, here are the steps to take:
• First, copy the tag.
• Log in to the WordPress admin of your website in a new tab.
• By navigating to settings and inserting the header and footer, you may add the header and footer plugin to your website.
• Go ahead and paste the Search Console meta tag under the “Scripts in Header” space.
• Reopen Google Search Console, then select Verify.
-Using Google Analytics
To verify your site using this, you need to have a Google Analytics account and a tracking code set up on your site. Click Verify after opening the Google Analytics verification box in the Search Console.
-Using Google Tag Manager
Using this method is similar to the previous method. If you already have a Google Tag Manager account, click Verify in the Google Tag verification window in Search Console.
Step 4: Your Google Search Console will be created when you complete the appropriate procedures, choose the methods you’ll use to verify, and click on Verify.
Other ways to set up Google Search Console
While this may be the most common way to set up Google Search Console, there are other ways as well that you can use:
WordPress
We have already mentioned how you can verify your Google Search Console account on WordPress, but you can also verify using the WordPress SEO plugin. You can make use of All-in-One SEO and Yoast SEO.
We showed above how to verify Search Console on WordPress using an HTML tag and header plugin. But you can also verify using your WordPress SEO plugin. Yoast SEO and All-in-One SEO are the two most used SEO plugins.
Start by copying the provided HTML tag and then performing the same first two steps as described earlier.
• If you are using All-in-One SEO, go to your WordPress Dashboard> All-in-One SEO> General setting.
Once you see the page opened, paste the HTML tag in the space provided and click on Update.
• If you are using Yoast SEO, go to SEO on your WordPress Dashboard and select General. Select “Webmaster Tools” and paste your HTML tag into the space to obtain a Google verification code. After making your selections, return to Google Search Console and click “Verify.”
Google Sites
If you are working with a new Google site developed after 2016, you can use the Google Analytics account to verify your Search Console account, as mentioned above. On the other hand, you can use the HTML Tag method if you are using an older version.
Blogger
If you have a Blogger account and have been using it already, any new blogs you generate in Blogger will immediately be verified in your Search Console account. Using an older version of Blogger, you can set your Search Console account using the HTML tag method.
Specific Clicks, Positions, and Queries using GSC (Desktop, Mobile, and Image)
This data is derived only for specific searches conducted from desktop, mobile, or image files. The report would contain the average ranking of the whole website and the traffic generation. It will also consist of the exact searches for these sources that have led to the traffic generation on your website.
Analysis of the Report
Once the report has been established, it will help you not only to form an understanding of your website’s performance but also to form an initial strategy. Takes rough notes while going through the report, which can also be sent to the client or higher management.
The client or management has no use for the complete data. You need to derive the main points presented in the report and send a compact email to the designated person. You can add the link of the report as a supporting document for each of the findings. In the email, you can mention that the data sent is just for informational purposes so that the designated person understands the reason behind your email.
The areas that are the pain points need to be focused on more, and you need to formulate a proper strategy for these. Make sure that you create a priority list so that the assigned people can take care of the task. Also, keep an organized record sheet with you so that you can keep track of the progress that is being made on each of the tasks that have been deemed as important.
Local business SEO is important for generating the necessary traffic for all existing local businesses. And to make sure that your local business is performing how it should, you need to analyze the performance. There are various tools available, but each one requires a hefty fee to use. But why use the pricey tools when Google has already created a free one that achieves the same outcome? Thus, local businesses may look into local business SEO using Google My Business Data.
Using Google My Business Data, you can compare information about GMB contacts and directions queries to analytics about site and contact inquiries. Additionally, you can see which area of your company attracts greater interest from visitors who aren’t visiting your website.
Conclusion
Data analysis is an essential component of any SEO project. You can learn a lot about how your website is doing and spot areas for improvement by analyzing different data sets and user behavior. Data analysis is a continuous process that must be regularly tracked and improved. You can ensure that your SEO strategy is always current and effective in bringing traffic and conversions to your website by frequently analyzing the performance statistics for your website and making adjustments as necessary.
FAQ
How does analytics help improve SEO?
Analytics, which gathers and evaluates raw data for search engines, helps SEO by enabling you to identify the activities you should value, get permission for SEO plans, and make better choices to boost SEO.
What is the use of Google tag manager is SEO data analysis?
Google Tag Manager is useful for SEO data analysis because it makes it simple to update measurement codes immediately. When this is used by SEOs, SEOs have a great deal of room to include scripts and carry out tasks that professionals would often handle.
What are the tools for SEO analysis?
The most effective SEO data analysis tools you can use are Google Search Console, Google Anlaytics and Ahrefs.
Having a comprehensive content marketing strategy is easier said than done. When people think of achieving their marketing goals, it’s always about putting fresh content out there. However, this type of approach might not be the most calculated decision on your part.
Jumping into content creation without proper thinking will only do more harm than good. Sometimes repurposing or updated old content can do wonders for your content marketing strategy. Consider conducting regular content audits so that your business can identify relevant and trendy topics that you should be talking about.
A link prospecting strategy will bring you a lot of new links, but you need a content audit to make sure your site is primed to benefit fully from those linkbuilding efforts.
What is a Content Audit?
A content audit is a systematic process of analyzing and grouping the content on a website. The main objective of doing a content audit is to figure out the strengths and flaws of your existing content strategy and how you can make changes. The changes will be in line with your new content marketing goals and will outline the content plan that you should go ahead with.
Why Do You Need A Content Audit?
Content audit helps you in figuring out the content gaps that may be there in your content. This will help you to create better content for your audience and the search engine, eventually leading your website to rank better.
There are many reasons to perform a content audit:
• To begin with, a content audit can boost the traffic of your site resulting in a better experience for your audience.
• It helps to filter out the parts of your site that are not correctly optimized and need more work to make it better. For example, you may be adding images to your blog posts as your current content strategy. So what about those that were published before? Through a content audit, you can know which blog posts need images to be added.
• There are additional SEO opportunities you can find out when you run this audit. If you’re having trouble getting your blog posts to rank, this audit may recommend adding keywords to the titles of your posts to help search engines understand the content and purpose of your website. And, the more details search engines know about your website, the more accurately they recommend it to the target audience.
• A content audit SEO can let you update all the outdated content on your web page to improve your readers’ understanding of your website. Let’s say you did not add metadata to some of your web pages, or there may be some broken links on your website. This will all be highlighted when you do a content audit.
(Source: Google Images)
All in all, the main aim of this audit is to help you keep your content always up to date. It also lets you improve your content to boost your SERP ranking by addressing points such as:
• The quality of your present content
• If the content holds any value for your audience
• How is your audience able to find it
• The performance of your content, whether it is getting enough organic traffic or not
And finally, if it is relevant and accurate
Once you have the answers to these concerns, you will be able to put together content that is of excellent quality and help you stick to your content marketing strategy.
What Are Its Benefits?
Now you have an idea about why you would need a content audit. So let’s look at some potential benefits it might offer you.
• When you run a content audit, you will be given data-driven information based on facts rather than mere speculations. This will help you make careful and correct decisions to improve your content.
• It lets you highlight pages that are not SEO optimized. For example, the page may need a better heading structure or metadata.
• You can identify the content gaps and learn about more SEO opportunities to use in your content to improve it.
• Through a content audit, you can create a content inventory that will make it easier to manage your content strategy in years to come.
• You can improve the quality of your overall content to give your readers a better experience and provide them with the information they are looking for.
• It gives your content marketing team a clear direction on which content to work on and how to work on it.
• When planning to redesign your sites, running a content audit will allow you to know which part of your website needs the most work.
The process of content audit can be a difficult one, especially if you are new to it. So make sure you take enough time to figure out the problems in your content and ways how to rectify them. You can either sit with your content management team to work on it or make use of templates (discussed in the coming sections) available online to help you start with the process.
How to Perform a Content Audit?
There are certain easy steps that can help you give a kickstart to your content audit. Here is a content audit checklist that you should consider to perform the audit accurately:
Step 1: Decide What Your Goals and Metric Are
To begin with a content audit, you must first decide what you want from the audit. When you know what you want, you will better understand how to divide your audit.
Deciding your goals beforehand is also important, as auditing content requires a lot of dedication, and setting goals helps you clearly see the results you want to achieve.
• You can think and choose from multiple goals, such as:
• Increasing your brand awareness.
• Optimize SEO for certain parts of your website or your complete web page or website for better SERP ranking.
• Improving content that is outdated and repeated or completely removing them.
• Boosting user engagement and conversions.
• Working towards better organizational website structure.
Once you have listed the goals, you will better know what are the strengths and weaknesses of your content.
Make sure you have at least one objective that will serve as the audit’s driving force before choosing the metrics that will be used to evaluate progress. Doing this will lead to a successful tracking and audit of your content.
After deciding on your goals, match them with the relevant content metrics that are usually divided into four categories.
SEO metrics: This includes keyword rankings, organic traffic, backlinks, and dwell time. So if you want to focus on improving your SEO, you need to consider SEO metrics and work on getting more organic traffic and quality backlinks that will enhance the authority of your website.
User behavior metrics: This is evaluated through bounce rate, page views, and average session duration of your web page.
Engagement metrics: This usually shows the number of shares, likes, comments, mentions, etc., your content gets.
Sales metrics: This includes the ROI, number of leads, and conversion rates on your website.
For example, you should examine user behavior and engagement statistics if you want to figure out what areas are the most popular to develop more content on it.
Once you have decided on everything related to your goals, the next step is to determine the content inventory.
Step 2: Figure out Your Content Inventory
Before you move on to checking your content inventory, you must decide on the content you are going to work on. This can be landing pages, blog posts, educational content, news, etc., tests, games, quizzes, videos, and PDFs can also be taken into consideration.
It is much simpler to evaluate content performance, point out areas for improvement, and carefully update each item when you have all your content all in one place.
To create your content inventory, start by collecting all the URLs of the web pages you want to evaluate.
Use SEMrush’s Content Audit Tool to audit your content based on your sitemap data quickly. You will also receive a list of URLs and their related metrics from the tool. With this, you can also look into a particular blog post or subfolder on your website that needs improvement.
To use SEMrush:
• Go to SEMrush and select “Content Marketing” option on the left column of the page.
• Select “Content Audit”
You will be prompted to enter your domain name. The tool will show you subfolders that you can choose to make changes.
However, if your website doesn’t already have one, you can create one using a sitemap generator. Use tools like XML-Sitemaps Generators that will create a site map for you in minutes.
• Enter your website URL and hit “Start”
• You’ll soon have a list of sitemaps which you can download or open in an XML file.
When you have a sitemap, it not only helps you audit your content but also makes it simpler for search engines to quickly understand your site structure and identify the key pages on your website.
Make sure to your sitemap to Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Doing this will allow the tool to take into consideration the current data of your website.
Step 4: Catalogue Your Content
The next step after collecting the URL is to catalog your content.
After you have created your inventory using the URLs, it is now time to categorize it on a spreadsheet.
For this step, you need to keep your goals in mind so it is easier for you to track each metric of the content for the audit.
So, if you are doing a SEO content audit, you can focus on metrics such as ROI, the traffic you receive, click-through rate, and so on.
You can use a spreadsheet to divide the content into various categories as listed below:
• The date when the content was published or last modified
• Number of words
• Type of content, whether a blog, landing page, guide, product description, online publication, video media, etc.
• Format of the content, whether it only has the text content, has images and videos or not, and has a call to action or not.
• Name of the author
• Stages of a buyer’s journey, i.e., awareness, consideration, and decision
• Create a content hub where you can include a group of content belonging to a particular subject.
You can also collect metadata for every content to check and update all the metadata of the content in one place.
Finally, create columns with your metrics to collect data for each web page.
Once you bring all the content in one place with the help of a spreadsheet, a successful content inventory will be created. Through this, you can easily monitor the changes that should be made to your content.
If you find it too bothersome to do it all manually, there are tools available that will help you quickly pull together a content inventory, such as Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider Tool.
The tool is free to use if your website contains 500 pages or less.
You will need to enter the URL and start the crawl to get all the details regarding your web page.
(Source: Google Images)
If you don’t want to use these tools, you can look for a content audit template which you can find in HubSpot, and start with your work.
(HubSpot Content Audit Template)
You may also want to add traffic data from Google Analytics to each page so you can analyze content performance alongside technical SEO metrics.
When considering a content audit template we all know that it can make it easier for you to address the problems according to the issues already mentioned in the template.
However, you should also remember that each piece of content is different. And the issues mentioned in the template may sometimes be relevant to your content, and sometimes it may not.
There may be many other data points and statistics that may not be included in the template.
For example, if you are focusing on improving your blog posts, you need to focus on whether each blog post has metadata, whether images are included, if infographics are used, the right keywords are included, and so on.
While some tools may provide you with information on this issue, some might not. Therefore, you can use these templates to get an idea of how to begin with the spreadsheet and do it yourself.
You’ll be able to stay organized and comply with the requirements of your content audit when you add the correct categories to the spreadsheet.
You should also remember that while it may be tempting to remove specific categories to save time, some categories may give you important insights to analyze the content.
Also, removing certain categories can lead to incorrect analysis. So try to work on as many categories as possible to get more accurate information.
Step 5: Make A List Of Content Problems
After creating your inventory, you should list all the content problems you see and want to focus on. Have a look at all of your content to see how it is performing. You can look for specific things such as:
Content that has duplicate or repeated data
When reading a blog, if you come across the same sentences, you will not really like it and will look for an alternative blog that doesn’t have duplicated or repeated content. The same goes for search engines.
(Source: Google Images)
Search engines like when websites can provide their users with fresh content. If it finds too much duplicate content on different web pages of your site, it can reduce your ranking. So, it’s better to either rework those pages or completely remove them.
Content that is outdated
Users don’t like to come across outdated content. They want to get information about what is relevant in the present times. While users can ignore your outdated content, search engines can do the same, making it important for you to keep updating your blogs regularly.
Content Gaps
The topic around which you may have created your content may be the latest a few years back. But since there are many things constantly being added and changed, it is possible that you may have missed out on a few topics that will be important presently.
You can use Ahrefs “Content Gap” under “Site Explorer”. Enter your competitor’s domain and compare your content to theirs. The tool will give you suggestions on how you can improve your content.
Check the content gaps by analyzing what is missing in your content and the target market you may not have addressed or the topics you didn’t cover. Look at all your content and fill the gap to make your content more relevant.
Target keyword
Check if the content contains targeted keywords according to your product and industry so you are listed higher on SERP.
Metadata
See if you have metadata for all pages on your website. When you create the spreadsheet, you can easily find out which pages you have missed to add metadata or metadata that is repeated so you can change and update.
Data on the image
Analyze your image data to see if they are relevant to the content and have an alt tag and descriptive title. This will make it easier for you to know if the images are SEO optimized and easily accessible.
Word Count
You cannot simply write 100 words and expect your content to rank higher than your competitors. So, make sure that all your posts and pages have enough work count so you can optimize them for SEO.
You can use tools such as Article Insights to compare your word count with your competitors and edit your content accordingly.
Keep track of everything by creating a note next to each asset about why it needs improving. You can also color-code your spreadsheet based on the type of optimization required.
However, this is only helpful if one asset has a single problem. If one asset has multiple problems, color coding won’t be feasible.
(Source: Google Images)
Step 6: Prioritize the Issues
Now is the moment to prioritize the content-related problems you have found. There are two ways in which you can work.
• Either work on the problem starting from the first number to the last.
• Group similar optimization problems and work on them at a time. What does it mean? Let’s say you need to add images to your blog post. Group all the web pages together and work on adding the images. Similarly, if there are keywords to be added. Group the web pages that require adding keywords and work on them.
• Categorize the problems with a high SEO impact and focus on them.
• You can also begin with the easiest issues first and then work your way up to the most difficult ones.
If you are having difficulty in manually doing it, you can use Ubersuggest to do the work for you. You just need to run an SEO audit, and the tool will provide you with details about the problems and how SEO is being affected.
Simply enter the URL of your website and the tool will come up with the issues on your website which you can view and work on.
Step 7: Create an Action Plan
You’ve created your content inventory, know what issues have come up, and have prioritized it accordingly. So, now it’s time to get on with the actual work by creating an action plan.
Start by creating another column on your spreadsheet named “Action to be taken.” This will help you mention what you plan to do with your content, whether you want to keep it as it is, delete it, change it completely, restructure it, or include additional information.
(Source: Google Images)
After you’ve mentioned the action in front of each issue, work on it on a priority basis. Again, here, think about your goals and what may be most important for you. This will help you know the issue you want to take action on first.
You can take these considerations into account:
• Deleting usually takes less time and is easy to do.
• Updating content may take some time as you will have to figure out the content gaps before working on them.
• And finally, changing the entire content may take a reasonable amount of time and concentration to produce better and high-quality content.
To make the work easier, you can add one more column on your spreadsheet where you can highlight the most priority and most urgent issues that need to be addressed.
You may find it helpful to add a priority column to your spreadsheet to keep track of what’s most urgent.
At this step, you can also develop a new content strategy based on the latest topics you are working on and the posts that can improve the visibility and ranking of your website.
URL Actions You Can Take
URL actions is a directive that will include all the things that must be included in that page. This is along the lines of Website Quality Audit but with different classifications.
Let’s delve a little deeper into the classifications of URL actions.
Leave As-Is
This classification is for pages that have been posted less than six months ago. You leave such pages as it is. This is because it still hasn’t quite taken off but might be still relevant for attracting traffic. You don’t want to get rid of a page that was recently published.
If you have posts and URLs that are older than six months and generate good traffic then leave these pages as is. The visits per year should be greater than 100, which means that the post is relevant and up to date.
The relevancy of the process is to get rid of pages that are underperforming and not up to the mark. You have to get rid of pages that are not working to attract any sort of engagement or web traffic. Only get rid of pages that are dragging the website down.
301 Redirect
Now let’s look at a category of irrelevant posts, which generate no traffic, and have no trace back to the pillars. Such pages must be redirected because they don’t add any value to the website. These pages are just bogging down and negatively affecting the performance of your website.
Many content audits will suggest you take down your URL by a 404 page. However, we suggest that you do a 301 redirect if the page has keywords and existing links. Even Google support mentions that 301 redirects are the right way to rename or delete URLs.
(Source: Google Images)
By choosing to redirect, you can provide an additional field where the updated information is available. So, you’re essentially not losing the traffic like in a 404 page but just redirecting it.
Archive
If you have a group of pages that serve no value to search engines but have value to website visitors, then the best option is to block that section from being crawled. You need to manually move such pages into the archive section of the website so that they are not crawled by the search engines.
Let’s take an example of a news publishing company like BBC.com. BBC.com will have content on their website which will date back to the early days of the internet. This old content is relevant but is not generating enough traffic or engagement, therefore affecting the performance of the website. Deleting such content is not a smart choice. So what do you do?
(Source: bbc.co.uk/archive/)
Then you group such pages by an URL structure (i.e. /archives/). Shift the content to new physical folders and voila, your content is practically invisible to search engines. This works well on large, publishing sites that have a lot of old content. This classification of URL action is not for a new e-commerce site or local businesses.
It’s best to zip it all into an archive section and block it from search engines. If a person wants to access these old files, then it’s possible from the archive folder in the navigation or footer section of the website, but not through a search engine.
Refresh
When the post is losing traffic and also the keyword rankings are sliding (5 – 30) but it has a high potential to rank we want to refresh the content. This means making small updates like page title, meta description, meta title, headings, internal links, and media.
If the page is mapping to pillar pages, the content is deep enough, targeted properly then refreshing the URL is the best option. You are not losing the essence of the website, just making significant changes that will make sure to get the traffic and engagement levels back!
Some changes you can look into are making the title more clickbaity, rectifying the title tags, making the keywords more prominent, and updating the right media for the content. These changes will make all the difference instead of rewriting the whole thing.
Rewrite
If the post is losing traffic and keyword rankings are sliding (5 – 30), has high potential to rank with the current topic but is not deep enough, outdated, and needs improvement. Then in such a scenario, we want to rewrite the content.
For example, if you have a page on your website that has the top 10 mobile phones in 2019. The audience in 2020 is not going to be searching for top mobile phones from 2019. You want to give information that is updated with the current changes in the industry and also the search patterns of the target audience.
(Source: Google Images)
As a business owner, you will want your website to have the updates and relevant content. So, if your website has outdated content that is not relevant anymore, you will lose out on a potential audience. Rewriting content gives you a better chance of grabbing more traffic and also delivering quality content.
Merge
When multiple posts are covering the same topic, we will want to “merge” them into 1 page that’s the authority on that topic. This will reduce the content redundancy and also avoid any repetitions across the website.
Merging content will make it easier for visitors to glance at the content in one place rather than opening several web pages on the same topic. Now, the question that comes to mind is how to merge content?
An easy to way handle the merging of pages is to 301 redirect it, we can classify them differently for understanding. So, you’re pushing all the content into a single pillar page and cleaning up the remaining pages. This will keep your website clean and also widen the scope for making the content deeper than it is right now.
Target with Links
Many times the content is updated, relevant, and new but just doesn’t attract rank in search engines. This can happen if the page has broken links or no inbound links. If the content of the website is great, but the page is failing to rank, then you can target the page with links. You start targeted links to this page through a successful link building campaign.
Step 8: Take Steps to Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy
A content audit should not be focused just for a week or months but should be used as a long-term marketing strategy.
You should make a note to review your content marketing strategy every year to make sure all the strategies being used are according to your business goals. This is also important because what worked yesterday may not work today. So, you need to keep up with the changes.
On the other hand, if you belong to a dynamic industry that keeps changing regularly, it is best to set up review periods every month or quarter.
This can be done to discuss new and effective ways to connect with your audience and encourage them to engage with your content.
Regular adjustments should be made to stay on track with the trends. For this, content audits should be run multiple times a year to see if the changes are favorable for your business or if you need to change your strategies.
Building a Content Report
After you’ve gone through each of these steps to painfully analyze and come up with solutions, you need to show your working to the client. You should be able to display the content report in such a way that it is easy to read for a common man.
When it comes to the building stage of an SEO campaign, it’s crucial to show the client what you are working on. These are drastic changes that you will be making for the betterment of the site, so there needs to be complete transparency to the client you are catering to.
The complex spreadsheets and the huge lists will not make sense to a normal person. You cannot send these spreadsheets through and expect them to understand it. If you don’t want to babysit the client, guiding them through each detail, then creating a content report is the best option.
Here are some suggestions that will go into making our content report or content deck.
• A brief overview or index so that the client knows what is in the deck.
• What did you do? This section should explain the things you did in layman’s terms.
• What did we learn? In this section, you should explain the hub and spoke model that you’re using. And then give them an overlook into which are the pillar topics that you have identified for the client’s website. These points let the client know that you have a strategy in place.
• Analyzing the results. In this section, you can include in brief about the URL actions and what decisions you are suggesting. This will serve as a guideline for the client to understand your decision pattern.
• What did we find? In this, you can give like a summary of the pages that you feel need a rewrite, merge, or archive. You can just include the number of pages that you found were fitting the category of the URL actions. You can even include the link for the full content audit.
• What is next for content? In this, we will enlist the next steps that the client has to undertake to make the suggested changes. And also you should be willing to provide some detailed information over call or conference. The follow-up call is important because the client can get overwhelmed with the amount of information that you gave it. Additionally, you should also mention what is the next task at hand for you and the date of completion for the same.
Next steps after a Content audit
A content audit is not a one-time done deal. The results of the Content audit are actionable. You should be willing to make all the changes that we suggested in the URL actions part. Whether it is advancing your content marketing strategy. The suggestions that are mentioned need to be pushed out into production so that they can take effect.
The suggestions need to be taken into action and implemented as soon as possible. The rewrites and merging of content are quick SEO tricks that will save you time.
After you’re finished with the content audit and the proper reporting for it, you should send it across to your client. Write a concise email that has links to the deck and content audit file. Enlist the next steps that you will be targeting to complete. Also, include any important deadlines that you are working for.
Now’s the perfect time to use our guest post service to get some amazing links pointing to your newly optimized content.
To Sum Up
Content auditing doesn’t have to be so difficult. It might be a time-consuming process, but if done right can do wonders for your content marketing strategy. Make sure you take care of the above steps so that you can have a hassle-free time doing a content audit!
FAQ
How many months is a page considered to be suitable for a content audit?
While it is recommended to conduct a content audit once a year, certain may require more frequent audits.
• If it is awareness content such as blog posts, you need to run the audit every six months.
• Consideration content is something that you use to guide the audience to the product and services you are offering. This must always be up-to-date as it has a major role in conversions. Therefore, the right time to run a content audit for this type of content is every 3 to 6 months.
• When it comes to conversion content that is mainly for e-commerce websites, the audit should be done every quarter.
• Finally, retention content that includes content guides, tips, and information related to future products being released on your website should be audited annually.
What should a basic content audit template include?
A basic content audit template should have the following categories:
• Name of the web page• Title of the content
• Type of Content
• Format of the Content
• Content Lengths
• Word Count
• Number of pages
• Last date of modification
• Funnel stage
• Page traffic
What content audit tools can you use?
Some of the common audit tools to use are:
Google Search Console: This tool lets you easily track and evaluate your site and search data. Additionally, using GSC, you can also track specific URLs for informative data.
Google Analytics: With the help of this tool, you can plan your audit and know more about your visitors and their behaviors on your site.
Google Sheets: Google Sheets is an alternative to a spreadsheet where you can easily organize your content audit information.
Ahrefs: With Ahrefs, you can easily check the SEO performance of your site. By adding the details manually or importing from Google Search Console, you can make use of the data to run a site audit.
SEMrush: SEMrush gives a customized audit report that shows where improvements can be made on your site.
Screaming Frog: It is a website crawler that gathers URLs from a sitemap and creates a list for SEO audit.
Competitive Analysis is a strategy used to identify and research your competitors and the techniques they are employing in their products, marketing, and sales.
Conducting a Competitive Analysis is important in order to keep an eye on your competitors and compare strategies being used and how you might evaluate and change your brand techniques to get an edge up on the competition.
This can also be a good first step before you start link prospecting. You can try to capture the best links that all of your competitors also have.
Why Conduct Competitive Analysis?
Competitive analysis is an important step to start employing as it has many benefits such as-
1. Finding your place in the market
2. Identifying your best strategy in moving forward
3. Identifying gaps in your campaign and finding areas you can improve on
4. Uncover market trends
It is important to note that a competitive analysis is not done to copy every move of your competitors or to obsess over each strategy they use. All companies are not the same, and so every comparison is not done on an even playing field. This is just useful information to have a general overview of where you stand and how to improve your position in the rankings.
If you are working on a campaign that is smaller and does not have a lot of competition, you can skip a competitive analysis.
Sending an analysis report to your client works as a “perceived value” deliverable and shows clients that you are putting in the work.
The Competitive Analysis Process
The Competitive Analysis Process involves three key steps
1. Running the Competitive Analysis
2. Analyzing the data
3. Reporting the next steps
1.Running The Competitive Analysis
Before analyzing and finding solutions for the data, we first need to identify competitors and collect information on them. This is why we first run a competitive analysis. This stage has three sub-steps in it. They are:
Finding The Right Competitors
In order to make a competitive analysis that is useful to your business, you will first need to select the appropriate companies. You will need to be realistic, compare your business primarily to ones on a similar level to yours.
For example,- If you are running a startup and are spending time comparing your business with a large corporation, the information you discover will not be insightful and will not help you grow.
The stats of the larger corporation may serve well as future goals, but for your current standing, it will be more helpful looking at businesses that are your direct competitors at the moment.
You do not need to analyze every business in your category as that will only be a waste of time and money. Identify your main threats and conduct a deep analysis on them instead.
To identify your threats, you will first need to know your brand well. If you are working with clients, ask them about their brand in detail. Identify who your target audience is, what your core product or service is, and what services you are offering as a solution to your client’s problem.
Ask customers and prospective buyers who they see as your competition. Pretend like you are a prospective customer looking for the same product or service and note which companies come up.
You can use websites like SEMRush and Ahrefs that display the keyword overlap your business has with others online. They also plot these results against how much traffic the website is getting.
(Source : https://www.semrush.com/)
It is important to know beforehand what part of the business you are looking to analyze and only focus on those results.
For example, if you are a company providing agency services, you need to make sure you are only looking at other sites in the same sector and ignore others like software websites. If your business or your client’s business has many services, you may want to run an analysis separately for each.
(Source : https://ahrefs.com/)
You can also use a keyword search to identify competitors. Search keywords for your own business or ask clients what they think their main keywords are. You then run the keywords through sites like SEMRush and Ahrefs, which will show you companies and their rankings in the search.
By running all your important keywords, you will be able to identify your competitors. Make sure you go through each website that comes up to make sure that they offer the same services as you.
Populate the audit template
After finding your competitors to analyze, you will want to open your audit template and start filling in the information you find into the appropriate tables. The tables are based on the type of company, the item, and the tool used to locate the item.
Examples of the information you will need to fill in include the website URL, age of the company, business name, number of employees, etc. You will also need to find information on the work environment of the company, its ethics, and its mission.
You can find most of the information manually as it is normally listed on the website and their about page. There are also some plugin applications that you can use to find out more. For example, SEOQuake will allow you to find the age of the company in years.
(Source : Google Images)
After adding in the general information on the website, you then need to look at the posts on the website to determine their consistency and quality. The amount a site is updated and the quality and engagement on their posts will give insight into these subjects.
To get a feel of their marketing strategy, you can also follow their social media, sign up for their newsletters, and read their blog posts.
Customer service provisions and reviews can give insight into how their products and services are doing.
You can also gauge the strengths and weaknesses of an organization by looking at reviews left by its employees on websites like Glassdoor.
Make sure to only fill in the columns that are relevant to the type of business you are analyzing. For example, if they are a lead generation company, you will want to only fill in the columns related to lead generation and not related to e-commerce or local business.
The template is pretty self-explanatory and also provides the methods, links, and screenshots needed to find all the information.
Using a virtual assistant or outsourcing your audit
We usually get the audit done offshore and then analyze the data in the house as the task can be tedious and time-consuming. You can also make use of a virtual assistant to get the audit done for you. If you plan on doing it yourself, the template given above will work perfectly.
2.Analyzing The Data
Once you have conducted your search and found out the information on your competitors, then you can begin analyzing the data. This involves three sub-steps-
Reviewing your audit template
You will now need to find insights into your competition by looking at your template.
If you have gotten your report done by a virtual assistant or by someone else, first identify if there are any gaps in the information and attempt to fill them out.
Highlight areas of interest
You can then go through the information line by line and compare your business to your competitors. In this stage, you can highlight and point out any information you may think is important or worth discussing with your client.
Do you have the same target customers? Do you both have the same business objective? Are their prices in the same range as yours? Overall, does the company seem to be doing well in reaching their goals? These are some questions you can keep in mind when analyzing your competitor.
You can also go in-depth and read reviews from customers to gauge the success of the company and its products.
For example, if you notice that your competitors have a significantly larger number of employees compared to you or your client, it usually indicates that you have a lower number of resources available. As a whole, the amount of resources available to a company does affect its organic traffic and the amount of money it can put into campaigns. Highlighting this point and discussing it will help give you or your client a better understanding of what you are up against when planning a strategy.
Look out for areas where you see a significant difference between your business and your competitors.
For example, your e-commerce site may generate more leads, but if your competitors have significantly lower pricing, it may explain why they are doing better than you. You will have to contemplate adjusting your prices to better suit the competition or offer better perks than your competitor like better quality, shipping, customer service, etc.
Other important areas to compare are search engine traffic, ad traffic cost, domain authority, and domain referrals. Also, make notes and highlight the areas that you want to improve on or areas your client has specified so that all of the disparities noted can be discussed before moving forward with a campaign.
Flush out some thoughts
Start noting down your thoughts and key points to focus on in an insight section. Here you can categorize your thoughts on the analysis and summarize all the important information in one place that is easy to find.
Conduct a deeper analysis or “crawl” search
Crawling is a discovery method where search engines deploy a team of robots that are also called spiders or crawlers. They are to seek out new content.
You do not have to conduct a full crawl on every competitor. It can take up time and resources. Only conduct a deeper analysis of competitors that you feel need it. You can use websites like DeepCrawl or SiteBulb.
(Source : https://www.deepcrawl.com/)
Remember that you are not conducting a deep search to view every technical component of these sites. You are attempting to understand how they have an advantage over yours.
You can note the number of pages they have, their page speed, the structure of their website, and anything else that might be of interest to you or your client.
After understanding the structure of the competitor website and how it is set up, you will understand how your site is different. You can then make an effort to incorporate some of the strategies that may be working for them.
If you are looking at a competitor that offers many services that might not be relevant to you or your client, you can look at the individual folders for information on that specific domain. After finding the folder you want, you can then look at each page linked to that project and review the analytics on each and compare them to yours.
Competitor keyword analysis
A competitor keyword analysis is the process of evaluating how the top rankings competitors fare when it comes to their use of keywords.
Doing this analysis you will understand which keywords work and do not work for your industry. You can find gaps and weaknesses in your competitors’ work and try to get an advantage on them, or look at what they’re doing right and use the same strategies. It will also allow you to prioritize SEO tasks to get started on.
You can then use a site like SEMRush or Ahrefs to conduct a Content gap analysis. This analysis shows you the keywords they are using that you or your client are not. These keywords are giving them a higher ranking.
You will have to input your competitors’ domains as well as yours or your clients. Then look at which of them come in the first ten rankings to identify gaps as well as opportunities to improve your place.
After identifying the keywords that will be needed by your business or client, you can send them over to your content and social media teams to let them start, including these in the new content.
Deeper backlinks analysis
Since search engines look at the number of links as a higher authority, you will want to do a backlinks analysis on your competitor sites. A backlink analysis shows you all of the websites that link to your competition, the way it is linked, and to what pages.
You can use SEMRush and Ahrefs to do backlink analysis.
(Source : Google Images)
First, look at the total amount of backlinks. A very high number of backlinks shows us that the website is quite competitive. The total number can be deceptive, though, as some websites can spam links by tactics such as sitewide links, article directories, blog comments, etc.
You then want to look at the number of unique links, which is a better indicator of link quality and of the hierarchy of your competition.
You should seek to keep around an even ratio between your external and unique backlinks, although your external backlinks will usually be higher.
You can then go through the top links of a company and check out the first few links to find out their content and how you might also employ the same techniques for your website. For example, if you find your competitors linked on a personal blog post, you can reach out to the owner of the blog and ask to be featured on it as well.
By reading up on these links, you will be able to notice whether they are links that have been paid for or if they are natural and use this information or provide it to your client.
3.Reporting The Next Steps
After analyzing your data and making your notes, you will want to compile all of your data in a report and have a plan outlining the next steps for you to follow or to send to your client.
Glean insights for your project plan
Start with providing your client with a summary of the most important information you have found while conducting the analysis.
Then, offer a conclusion or statement saying clearly why you think the competitor is ranking higher, has more visibility and reach, or whatever specific factor you were looking to analyze.
You can then start explaining your main points in detail. Use graphs and other visual representations if you can to make your insights easier to understand.
Explain your most important insights first. Explain the steps you took to arrive at your findings and what you found.
Make sure that you show the difference and disparity between your client and the competitor to let them know how much work they should expect, and the time it will take.
For example, if you are explaining your link analysis, you can show the best links the competitor has and why they are the best. You can provide explanations about how they might have gotten them. You will also need to include a summary of the data you found on the links like the total number of links, unique links, most linked pages, etc. You can also use charts or create a fusion table to allow yourself and your clients to visualize the information and see where they stand.
After you are done providing all of your information, add a conclusion at the end and the steps to take next.
Send report to appropriate parties
Send out this report to your client, higher-ups, or other concerned parties so they can see that you are putting in the time and work. This will help you and your client to understand their competitors and where they are lacking. It will also clearly show the next steps you or your client need to take.A competitive analysis report is not something you should spend all your time on but is a beneficial step to take so that you can chart a clear course forward.
A ServiceNow wizard by trade, Gaby quit her 9-5 to pursue the world of search marketing. As a Customer Success Manager at SERPninja, she makes sure your projects get the attention they deserve. She is a certified Google Campaign Manager, HubSpot Inbound Marketing Expert and a SEMrush Expert – it is safe to say she knows exactly what she is talking about. She swears by “The 5 Hour Work Week” but ends up working 80 hours a week to make sure your SEO is handled right.
Competition Analysis for Dummies
Competition analysis forms an integral and important part of SEO. You need to look for your competitors’ weaknesses and strengths as much as your own, to be able to outrank them in the SERPs.
However, before we delve deeper into how to go about performing competitor analysis, you need to understand why the process is of paramount importance.
It helps us understand the potential of our keywords and topics based on the authority of other top ranking pages.
It also provides us with an insight into the gaps, if any, in these top ranking pages so that we can make use of that.
It helps us understand how we could optimise and enhance our website for it to make it to the top rank with our target keyword.
You can make use of this information to create content for your website that has better chances of ranking. With such superior quality of content and backlinks, Google will start ranking you in its search results for many other long-tail keywords even if you do not target them directly.
So now that we know why competitor analysis is essential, we shall now see how Ahrefs could be used to go about the process.
Check for Unbeatable Rankings:
You need to start the analysis by checking if the top ranking pages are government pages or those of big shot organisations. These pages are extremely difficult to outrank because they are most relevant pages for that specific search keyword. For instance, keywords like airforce and military have tremendous competition not just from the government pages, but also from several others. Therefore, maybe it is advisable to avoid these niches and move on to something that has a better chance of ranking.
Check for the Page Authority and Backlinks:
Since we have used Ahrefs as the working SEO tool to perform all the research, it is important that you understand what URL Rating (UR) and Domain Rating (DR) means. This helps illustrate the importance of domain names, too.
URL Rating (UR) gives us an understanding of how strong a specific URL is based on the number and quality of links pointing to it.
Domain Rating (DR) gives us an understanding of how strong a website is based on the number and quality of links pointing to it.
However, the only thing that you need to be bothered about as of this moment is the UR of the page for your target keyword. Therefore, what you have to do is place the URL of the top ranking pages one by one in Ahrefs and check for its UR. The other metric that you have to look for is “Referring Domains”. Take for instance the keyword vegan diet. Once you type the keyword on Google, you will get a number of results. Start the analysis by placing the URL of the top ranking sites in Ahrefs. You could also look for the details of backlinks on the right hand side of the screen on Ahrefs.
As can be seen, the first site has a UR of 43 and a solid figure of 307 for “Referring Domains”. Also if you check, out of 307 Referring Domains, 78% is DoFollow. Therefore, this site looks a tad difficult to outrank.
This is the thus, the first step to pick up the hint of competition by subjecting every top ranking site to the same process of analysis.
Check for On-Page
Optimisation Factors:
Analysing the On-Page Optimisation factors is essential if you need to outrank other pages in your niche in the SERPs. If you find that a certain page has made it to the top ranks of the SERPs without having a proper On-Page Optimisation, you need to seize the opportunity and optimise your page without further ado.
Here are the things that you need to look for while optimising your page-
Page Title, Target URL, Meta Description-
Your page title, as well as its URL must have your target keywords for the niche. It is also important to remember that the meta description strongly influences the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) and thus, needs to be paid attention to.
H1 and H2 Headlines-
Your H1 headline, that is, the main headline must contain your target keywords. Besides the H1 headline, at least one of the many H2 headlines must also contain the target keywords as they make for strong on-page ranking factors.
LSI Keywords-
Your H2 headlines should have LSI keywords, which are nothing but keywords related to your target keywords. You can look up for LSI keywords generating tools on Google. Most of them are free which makes the process of scouring for these keywords easier.
Introductory Paragraph-
The introductory paragraph sets the tune of the rest of the content which is why it is always an effective ranking strategy to have your target keywords placed somewhere within the first paragraph.
Body Content-
It is important to check for the number of times your competitor has used the target keywords in their content. It is definitely a metric that can be taken advantage of and used in improving the content of your page.
Alt-Tags in Images-
While using images to support your content, make sure that you use Alt-Tags with them. Most of the pages do not use them while publishing content with images. You can use this to turn the tables to your favour and outrank your competitors.
Internal Links and High Authority External Links-
Using internal links that sits well with your content can dramatically improve your website’s ranking. Also, using high authority external links make for an important criteria that Google checks while ranking your page.
If your competitors have a bunch of guest posts, for example, it’s worth reaching out to those same sites and seeing if you can collect some of the better ones for yourself. Our guest post service can help you get even better guest posts than your competitors.
Tweak Your Content:
Well-written and crisp content is crucial for your page to obtain backlinks from high authority pages. Therefore, while framing the content for your page, look into the following aspects-
Length and Format of the Content-
Google always prefers a thoroughly researched and extensive content when it comes to ranking. A well-framed content, with segregated headlines and paragraphs, has value for its reader and thus, is an essential factor for ranking.
Grammar of the Content-
Your target audience will leave the page if your content has poor sentence structure and grammatical errors. However, that does not mean that you need to use esoteric words and phrases. Make sure that your content conforms to the rubrics of grammar and has a good structure, lest the bounce rate shall shoot up.
Multimedia-
It is great if you could support your content with relevant pictures or videos. Analyse your competitors’ pages and find out how many images or videos they are using, so that your content can outnumber and thus, outrank them. Be mindful of the filesizes if you’re adding a lot of images, because speed can have an impact, especially on mobile pages.
Conclusion
Analyse every aspect of your competitor’ page to find out where it lacks. Once you find out these gaps, it will be easier for you to fill in and thus, move up the SERPs.
Just like on-page SEO and off-page SEO, there is another area of SEO, i.e., Technical SEO, that may affect the site’s rankings. It doesn’t include activities such as content optimization and link building. Instead, it covers all the technical aspects of a website.
For beginners, working on the technical aspects may look a little tricky. However, there are a few basics that one has to keep in mind in order to excel at it. Continue reading to learn more about SEO technical audit and how to optimize the site without any SEO agency.
What Is a Technical SEO Audit Service?
The technical SEO focuses on website audit and server optimizations. It may include technical aspects, such as site structure, navigation, XML sitemaps, indexing, crawling, redirects, and duplicate content. We can say that it deals with the non-content elements of the website.
These types of SEO audits plays a very crucial role and can have a direct impact on the search rankings. An individual can have well-written and researched articles on the site. However, if there are technical issues with site backends’, your site will never rank on the organic search. Therefore, it is very important to pay special attention to these technical elements of the website.
There are many digital marketing agencies that offer search engine optimization services and website SEO audit services to improve the performance of a site. These agencies have experienced SEO professionals that identify technical issues, perform regular SEO audits and optimize the pages on your site. SEO audit service helps in making the site more efficient for indexing and crawling. This way, search engines will deliver the right content to the users.
You need to buy these services, and the cost of an SEO audit can be quite expensive at times. This will not be viable for people working alone. So what do you do? If you don’t want to spend much money on these services, but still want to audit your website, you can DIY the steps. Read on to learn more!
How to Conduct a Technical SEO Audit?
Now, that you know, the importance of technical SEO, you must know how to perform an SEO audit.
There are three parts of SEO audit reports based on the different aspects of SEO:
Let’s understand how to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit. Here are the steps that one should follow.
1. Begin By Crawling the Site
Crawling is the basis of SEO success, and every SEO audit process must begin with crawling the website. You can use various SEO audit tools like DeepCrawl, SEMrush, Spyfu, and Ubersuggest.
We have been using Ahrefs as our audit tool for years, as it is user-friendly and gives accurate information regarding the website.
First, to run an audit with Site Audit, you must ensure your website is connected to your Ahrefs account as a project. The easiest way to do this is via Google Search Console, although you can verify your ownership by adding a DNS record or HTML file.
To use Ahrefs for crawling your website:
Step 1: Open Ahrefs’ Site Audit. This feature will be available for free in Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tool.
Step 2: Add “New Project”
Step 3: When you add a new project, you’ll have to verify your ownership of the website.
Step 4: Once verified, it’s good to check the crawl settings and set parameters according to your needs.
When you crawl the site, you will get information about broken links, duplicate content, excess redirects, image issues, the site’s performance, and unlinked pages. Therefore, you will understand the various errors affecting the site’s performance.
This will give you a brief idea of the factors you must work on. The SEO tools will scan your website to check how many URLs there are, how many are indexable, how many are not, and how many have issues.
From this, the audit tool creates an in-depth report on everything it finds to help you identify and fix any issues hindering your site’s performance.
Of course, more advanced issues may need further investigation that involves other tools, such as Google Search Console. However, our audit tool does a great job of highlighting key issues, especially for beginner SEOs.
2. Check If there are Different Browsable Versions of the Website
If the website has multiple versions, it will negatively impact the SERP rankings.
If you were using the HTTP version before and have switched to HTTPS, this type of error may come. Therefore, checking the number of browsable versions of the visible website is crucial.
This type of error can also occur when there are different mobile and desktop versions. The search engines will get confused about which version must be shown or which version is correct.
It can negatively impact your rankings. Ensure that there is only one version of the website, and make sure that your websites use the HTTPS version.
3. Check the Crawlability and Indexation Issues of your Website
If search engines are unable to search some pages on your site, it might mess up how your website gets listed – or maybe not listed at all. And if your site isn’t on the list, people won’t find it.
Thus, you should ensure that search engines can smoothly check out your site and gather info. This way, they can put your site in the right spot on the SERP, and you can score a good ranking for those super-important keywords.
Crawlability issues may contain,
Sitemap problems: Sitemaps play a crucial role in crawling the website. You must check that your website doesn’t have any errors in it. Otherwise, it would affect the crawling and drastically affect the search rankings. You must remove blocked URLs and redirect them from the sitemap. If they are not removed, the search engine will not crawl it. You can see these issues by going to Site Audit > All Issues > Other
Robot txt. File: Robots.txt is like a note on your website that tells Google which pages they’re allowed to check out and which ones to steer clear of. You can usually find it hanging out in the main folder of your site: https://domain.com/robots.txt. They guide crawling bots away from private folders, prevent bots from putting too much load on your server, and tell them where your sitemap is located. Just one wrong robot.txt can make search engines skip over your entire site.
“User-agent: *
Disallow: / ”
So, you want to double-check that your robots.txt file isn’t blocking any folders or pages you want to appear in search results.
Indexation problem: Getting your pages indexed is crucial if you want to show up on Google. Only the pages indexed smoothly will appear in SERP. If your pages aren’t making it to the index, there could be many issues causing this hiccup.
4. Evaluate the Different Technical On-page SEO Elements
Although some on-page SEO issues are ignored, if you and a competitor are side by side on the search engine results page, even the most minor problems could decide who snags that top spot.
Here are some of the things you might want to look at:
Canonical Tags
Google is not a fan of duplicate content. This is when canonical tags come into play. This is one of the most high-priority issues you should work on. These tags decide which version of your content takes the lead when you have multiple pages with similar content. If you miss checking canonical tags, it can mess with your crawl budget. To check if there are any duplicate pages,
Step 1: Go to Site Audit
Step 2: Under Reports, click on Duplicate
Step 3: Finally, see the Issues
Title Tags or Page titles
Title tags are very important in a web page. Their main goal is to tell the users and, most importantly, Google what the page is about. And did you know? If a title tag does not please Google, it is free to modify it—the reason for this is that the title tags are too long.
If you find this issue during the audit process, try to reduce the title tags to 60 characters. You can even see this in the Site Audit Issues tab under Content.
Hreflang Tags
The hreflang tags are like a reference for Google, showing them the target region and language of a page. It’s like a guide to help display the correct version of a page, considering where the user is and what language they prefer.
It’s part of international SEO, especially useful when you have different versions of the same page in various languages or targeting different parts of the world.
To find issues related to this:
Step 1: Go to Site Audit
Step 2: Check Issues under Localization
5. Test the Speed of Your Site
After Google said that speed affects a site’s ranking, SEO professionals have taken this point very seriously, and so should you. The site speed could affect the overall performance and the ranking of the site. You must conduct a site speed test.
You must address this issue if your site has a slow load time.
Various factors could affect the speed performance of the site. Here are some of the issues that you must analyze:
• High-definition and large-size images
• Embedded videos
• Plugins and widgets that the site is using
• Repetitive script
• The theme of the site
• Host
To check the speed of your site using Ahrefs,
Step 1: Select Site Audit
Step 2: Click on Reports
Step 3: Check Performance
Step 4: Finally, go to the Overview
Here, you’ll see how your site is performing speed-wise.
(Source : Google Images)
You can use Google Page Speed Insights to test the site’s speed performance. The probability of bounce rate increases with an increase in the load time. Suppose the load time is more than 5%; the bounce rate probability increases and may go up to 90%.
It is crucial to resolve site errors, especially when dealing with your site’s technical elements. These sites have their own credibility and brand names attached to them.
If there are certain issues and faults with the speed or anything else, it could affect your overall image.
When preparing your report, you must check these factors and look out to resolve them.
6. Check Internal Links
After you have tested the speed, you must analyze your site’s internal links. You must check orphan pages, broken links, and click depth.
(Source: Google Images)
Orphan pages are those web pages that are not linked with any other page of your website. To check the orphan pages, you can use the Website Auditor tool. It will help you find all the orphan pages, and you can address the issue with ease.
If any of your indexed pages are orphaned, they won’t make it to PageRank or be found by search engine crawlers.
You can use Ahrefs to check them by going to:
Site Audit > Links > Issues Tab > Orphan Page
Internal links are of exceptionally high importance. They give an excellent experience to the users as well as the search engines but also help external link-building strategies.
When the topics are appropriately siloed, having proper internal links makes it easier for your users to understand what is on your website. Apart from this, it makes keywords relevant, ensures that the page’s content is properly crawled, and allows the users to look for relevant results.
7. Check External Link
External links are links on your page that take the users to another domain. If your site gets linked by someone else’s website, it means it is someone’s external link.
External links are usually used as sources in your content to show where you got the information from.
Additionally, linking externally to authoritative websites makes you look reliable and shows Google that you’ve added trustworthy information.
While doing a website audit to find external link issues:
Step 1: Go to Ahref’s Site Audit
Step 2: Click on All Issues
Step 3: Select Links
You can see issues like your page has been linked to broken pages and no outgoing links found on your page, both of which can harm your site’s credibility and give a bad user experience.
8. Check for the Common HTTPS issues
You must ensure that all the page redirects refer to HTTPS pages. The mixed content error could occur when the other resources on the site load with an insecure or HTTP connection over a secured HTTPS version site.
If such errors exist, then those pages will not load properly. The browser will prevent these from loading. It would affect the security and crawl ability of the site.
9. Check if Your Website is Mobile-friendly
Google stated that more than 50% of the online traffic comes from mobile devices. Also, Google usually indexes those sites that have mobile versions rather than those that only have a desktop version. This is known as mobile-first indexing. Therefore, it is important that you check your website for mobile friendliness.
You can use Ahrefs’ mobile crawler by changing the “Project Settings” and modifying “Crawler Settings.”
After changing the settings, you’ll have to crawl your site again and look for issues that have been added, showing only for the mobile version.
10. Check the Analytics
You must check whether the analytics code is installed correctly or not. If there are some errors in it, you will have to fix them as soon as possible.
(Source: Google Images)
Google Analytics will report correct data only when the code is placed correctly, that is, above the header of each page.
After this, go to Google and type “site: domain name of your website.” It would reflect the number of pages that are visible or are getting crawled.
Compare the data from these search results. The number of pages shown here must be similar to your metric data.
If the number differs, it is likely that some of your pages are not properly crawled. You will have to check the errors that are arising on those pages.
11. Perform Backlink Audit
Backlinks play a crucial part and affect the search engine rankings. Search engines consider backlinks as an important factor for determining your rankings. If a site has more backlinks, search engines will consider your site useful and relevant.
(Source: https://neilpatel.com/backlinks/)
You can check the backlinks using tools such as Ahrefs and Ubersuggest. These tools will provide you with information about the backlinks.
You can conduct a competitor analysis using these tools and see the keywords competitors are ranking for. You can compare your site with your competitors and create your own strategy.
Summing Up
Many website owners fail to execute a thorough SEO audit properly. When you fail to execute it effectively, it can risk your reputation in the industry. Since you might’ve your own brand dominance and power attached, if you fail to maintain it digitally, you will lose out on your customers.
By applying technical SEO strategies effectively, you can maintain their image and credibility. Many brands perform well in terms of content and building backlinks. However, a minor technical failure could adversely affect the performance and search rankings.
Therefore, you must pay special attention to your site’s technical aspects. Conduct thorough research and audit before building your strategy for your site’s better visibility and performance.
FAQ
What do SEO audit services include?
Professional SEO services are mainly provided by SEO agencies where SEO specialists check your site to find issues that are not letting your site shine in the SERP. These services usually include noting the possible issues found, suggestions on how to fix them, and finally, implementing the solutions after a thorough consultation.
Why is it important to audit the technical elements of your website?
SEO is an ongoing process. So, when you properly audit your website’s technical elements, you can identify and fix the issues that are preventing your site from performing well. Doing this improves your SEO performance, site’s content, and user experience.
What will the final audit report include?
The final SEO audit report will contain a detailed evaluation of the site’s metrics and a complete list of actions to fix all technical, content, off-page, and on-page issues.
Do you know how your website is performing and which sections of your website are driving traffic? Are you aware of the contribution that your website is making to the fulfilment of your business goals? To know the answer to these questions, you will have to understand the performance of your website.
The content that you put up on your website should be able to do justice to your business objectives. To know how your website is performing and is being perceived by the internet, you will have to conduct a website quality audit. For people who are unaware of what a website quality audit is, it is checking the health of the website.
You make continuous changes to your website through content change and updates to adhere to the requirement of the audience. Maintaining the quality of your website with each of these changes is extremely important. You also need to see that the technical SEO strategies you are using are working and driving traffic.
For a better understanding of website quality audit and why you need it, you will first have to understand what website quality is. In this module, you will learn about the importance of website quality audit and what it does for your website. You will also get a clear understanding of the process that you need to follow for a successful website quality audit.
What is Website Quality?
Website quality is the health of your website and where it is placed in the search engine rankings. When people try to find your website or search for keywords related to your website, it is displayed in the search results. If your website delivers high-quality content, only then will the rankings of your results be high.
If your website is ranked well, then it will be displayed in the top search results. This, in turn, brings traffic into your website. Your website will only be considered to be of high quality if it follows the guidelines of the webmaster.
The content that is uploaded has to be relevant according to the requirement of the audience. Once you upload your content on to your website, it is checked based on certain parameters, whether it meets the quality that is required. If not, then you may not find your website on the top results.
How do you find out whether the quality of your website is high or not? You will have to ensure that you do a proper quality check and upload only those contents which are good. Without that, your website will not receive the traction that you wish for.
To maintain the quality of your website, you will have to follow a proper structure and also conduct a thorough analysis. This analysis will let you know the changes that your website requires to fulfill the quality maintenance criteria.
How Can Your Organic Performance Be Affected By Website Quality?
Despite having a strong marketing strategy, your brand may be unknown to many people if it is not present among the top search engine rankings. The audience will not know about the existence of your brand, and this will not generate traffic to your website.
In the current digital marketing era, people must be able to find your website online. For this, you have to ensure that the search engine ranking is quite high. The possibility of this arises only if you have a high-quality website. Based on the service or product that you are delivering, you will have to upload content that aligns with the audience’s needs.
The content should be keyword based so that people can find your website when they search for that particular keyword. Along with the content, the structure of the page should also be up to the mark. If you are unable to follow the proper guidelines of a good quality website, then Google will lower your search engine ranking.
The success of your website and subsequently, the business depends mostly on organic traffic. If you have low performing content, then people will not stay on your website even if they find it. But the major chances are your website will not be discovered by your target audience in case of non-performing data inputs.
Factors That Affect Website Quality
A high-quality website is necessary to ensure traffic, increase ranking, and create brand value. There are certain factors that you have to keep in mind when you are developing your brand website. These factors affect the quality of your website.
Accessibility
When people visit your website, they should not have to spend a long duration to reach their desired information. The website should be easily accessible to the audience. This ensures return visits and also increases the value of your website.
Accuracy
The content that you upload on your website should be factually accurate. Any error in the information will break the trust of the audience and also diminish your quality. Moreover, factually incorrect data will lower your search engine rankings as well.
Timely Upload
When you develop a website, you need to give it the utmost importance. The content of the website should be uploaded on time. Your website needs to be active so that quality and performance increases.
Relevancy
Putting up relevant content is a must for you to create high-quality web pages. The content that you include in your website should be aligned with the kind of service or product that you wish to deliver to your audience. Moreover, it should also meet the needs of the target audience.
What Is Website Quality Audit?
To establish a strong online presence, you need to develop a high-quality website. We have covered what website quality is and the factors that affect the quality of your website. Now we will learn about website quality audits. The word audit means an inspection. Hence, website quality audit means analysis or inspection of the quality of your website.
If you are worried about your site not generating enough organic traffic, then you may have to conduct a website audit and a competitive analysis. This audit will determine the drawbacks and problems of your website. Whether it is your structure, content, or even functionality, you will be able to find out the pain points through an audit.
Not only that, but you will also be able to determine the areas that have the potential to provide you with better opportunities. The kind of results that you will derive from the website quality audit will depend on the size of your organization.
If you have just established a new website, then your website audit will determine the problem areas. Through this, you can make the necessary changes that will help you to gain more leads through organic marketing.
On the other hand, if you are a well-developed enterprise, then you will be able to derive both the positive and negative aspects of your websites. This will help you to find out the threats and opportunities that you can face through certain changes.
Why Do You Need Website Quality Audit?
Through a website audit, you can find out the shortcomings of your website. When you develop the content for your website, there may be certain errors which are becoming a barrier for you to increase your rankings. These errors will be found out when the audit is conducted.
The audit will also find out if there are any broken links or duplication of content. These issues need to be addressed so that the website quality is enhanced. The loading time and speed of the website is also checked in this audit.
The blogs or articles that you add to your website will play a big role in the traffic generation for your site. You will have to ensure that the content is correct and relevant to the audience. The audit will check for any factual misinterpretation or irrelevancy based on the keywords that are mostly used by the audience.
Through the website quality audit, you can change the face of your site and generate more traction. If you have a healthy website, then the search engine ranking will also increase. This means that when people search for products, services, or keywords related to you, they will be able to view your website in the top results.
Hence, website quality audit contributes to the growth and betterment of your website and your brand.
What Does Website Quality Audit Do?
When you initiate the website quality audit, you will have to first crawl the pages of your website. You can use different applications such as DeepCrawl, Screaming Frog, or SiteBulb for this step. After this, the SEO data will be crosswalked for each of the web pages.
The content of your webpage will be analyzed for any duplicity, and the ranking of the keywords will be checked. The performance level of each of your web pages will be determined through the audit process. Once this is done, you will be able to understand how valuable each of your web pages is.
When you are finished with the website audit, you can decide what steps to take for each of the problems detected. You can get rid of the pages that are of no value to your website. These pages are the ones that are responsible for the low search engine rank of your website.
You can add different SEO directives to your website and also carry out many other SEO actions. The website audit will present you with a report of the areas that you need to rectify to change your online presence.
Once you are done with your website quality audit, you will have a fast performing website that will consist of content that can meet the needs of the audience.
What Inputs Do You Need To Conduct Website Quality Audit?
All the URLs that are present on your website will have to be reviewed as well as analyzed with the use of any of the above-mentioned applications. Through an XML Sitemap, you will be able to determine the URLs that are present for crawling. There may be multiple sitemaps, and this would depend on the structure of your website.
(Source : Google Images)
The backlinks data needs to be checked with the help of Ahrefs. Ahrefs is a tool that will help you determine the number of people who are visiting or linking your website. This is necessary to understand since links play a major role in the ranking of your website.
(Source : https://ahrefs.com/rank-tracker)
Next, you will have to use SEMRush to determine the rankings of the keywords that are present on your website. This will tell you which keyword is most popular in your content. You will also be able to determine the ranking of that particular keyword and how many times it has been searched by the audience.
(Source : semrush.com)
One of the essential inputs of the website quality audit is the Google Analytics data. This helps determine the organic traffic that you have generated over a particular period. This traffic will be calculated in terms of visits, sales, conversions, and traffic lost.
Lastly, through a Google search audit, you will receive data about the SERP that has occurred in a given time frame along with Google clicks you have received.
What Will You Derive From Website Quality Audit?
Website quality audit provides a consolidated report of all the blank spaces present on your website. This means that you will not have to go through different reports to find out the necessary information. Through the use of different tools, you will be produced with certain valuable insights that will help you in making important changes to your website.
The report will have different classifications, which will help you understand the kind of issue that each web page or content is facing. Once you classify the web pages into different types, it will be easier for you to take the necessary actions.
This report can be used for many different purposes. Making changes on the website is not the only reason that you need to conduct the audit. It is beneficial to go through the website quality audit every few years to determine the current position of your website.
You can use the report to build a successful SEO strategy for your website. The results delivered will be classified according to the market and SEO requirements. This means that any changes you make to the website will bring you one step closer to a better search engine ranking.
The output that you receive from this audit needs to be analyzed correctly to get the desired changes according to the digital market demands.
How Do You Build A Website Quality Audit Report?
Six main SEO sources are used through which you can build the audit report. Creating a proper audit report is the first step to a successful website quality audit. To start, you need to find the sitemap of your website. If there are no sitemaps, then you need to create it. In case there are multiple sitemaps, all of them need to be included in the report.
Next, you will have to import the data of your site using any SEO tool such as Screaming Frog. Here you will be able to get information about the URLs that are present on your website. Along with this, you will import the metas, files uploaded, the word count of each web page, and canonical tags.
After the site data is imported, you will need to use Ahrefs to get data about the backlinks of your website. These backlinks will only be on the followed pages. Here you will be able to know the links that are related to your website and the particular web pages it points to.
The next part of the report will consist of using the SEMRush tool, which will find out the rankings of the keywords present in your website. The report will also mention the web pages on which these keywords are present.
(Source : Google Images)
Google Analytics is used to derive data related to traffic, sales, and conversions aligned with your website. This data is based only on the organic performance of your website. Lastly, you will have to pull data through the Google Search Console. Here your report will include the SERP impressions derived from Google clicks.
How Do You Clean The Website Quality Audit Report?
Once you have used all the necessary tools, you will be presented with a complete report comprising different fields. Some of these are unnecessary and would not be required to continue your analysis. Whether you are the one doing the analysis or you are taking the help of professionals, you need to get rid of the unnecessary data.
Cleaning the report would consist of deleting the formulas that are present in the data. When you do so, you will be left with only important information related to your website. To do this, you can copy the complete report and paste special on a new tab of the excel sheet and click on values only.
After this, you can delete the other tabs manually, as you will not require those anymore. For a better-looking report, you can format the rows and columns with different colours to emphasize the different categories.
Different Category Types Present In the Report
After you have cleared your audit report, you can segment it using different kinds of category tags. These category tags will lead you to analyze the information in a disciplined manner. You can follow each tag and then analyze it and move on to the next.
This way, neither will you leave any page by mistake, but you will also be able to address the problems of the pages properly depending on their type. Moreover, you can compare two different web pages with the same tag. The same pages will have the same objectives, and this will give you accurate results.
Here eight kinds of category types have been mentioned. You can use many more category tags depending on the results that you have derived from the audit.
• Product Page – Just like the name suggests, this type is only applicable for sites which are selling products to their audience. It just means that if you are an e-commerce website, then you will require this tag.
• Product Category – Just like the ‘Product’ tag, this is also used only for e-commerce websites. This section will consist of the different types or categories of products you sell on your website.
• Local Lander – This category is for the local landing pages of the website. If your organization is based in different locations, then you will have multiple landing pages for each of these locations. If the organization operates only in one location, then the local lander category would be applied to the home page.
• Lead Generation – The web pages that would fall under this category are aimed towards generating leads. They are mostly similar to the landing pages or the Local Lander category. The only difference is that the lead generation category is given to the pages that focus on national audiences rather than local.
• Blog Post – Assigning this category is very simple as you will only have to focus on the web pages or sites that have blog content, articles, or news-related items. These can be a series of web pages present on your website.
• Blog Category – This tag mostly applies to websites with different blog sections. If you have a huge number of content that is categorized into different sections or themes, then you can use this tag for those blog types.
• Guide or Resource – These are web pages that provide in-depth content related to any topic. They are mostly stand-alone pages and are not connected to any other web page or section.
• Site Info – This tag can be applied to many different kinds of web pages such as shipping, terms, and conditions, cart, about page, FAQs, etc. These pages are a must-have to complete any website and may or may not contain SEO material.
To assign these tags, you will have to create another column with the title of Category Type. This process may be time-consuming but is essential for a well-structured audit report. You will have to check each URL that is present in the report and assign them the necessary category tags.
Different Types of URL Actions in the Website Quality Audit Report
After you have decided on the different categories that these URLs fall under, you will have to decide upon the course of action. These actions will be based on the type of category and the problem it is facing. Remember that these actions will be taken to add SEO value to your website.
Nine URL action types and their meaning have been mentioned here. These are given to provide an idea about the kind of actions that you can add to your spreadsheet. You can add your URL actions depending on the kind of problems that have been mentioned in your spreadsheet.
• Leave As Is – You will be assigning this tag to the web page where you do not wish to make any changes. It can either be a web page that fulfills the necessary standards or does not provide any SEO value to your websites such as the ‘Terms and Conditions’ page.
• Update On Page – This action will be designated to those web pages where you wish to update any information. They can be given to resource guides or even blog pages where you have to change the information based on recent findings.
• Target with Links – These are for pages that are of SEO value but have no rankings.
• 301 – These are the pages that have no importance to the website. You need to redirect them to a more relevant web page of the website to create value.
• Canonicalize – There may be certain pages that have the same type of information, but both of these pages are important for your website. In such cases, you need to determine one page which will be ranked. You will have to add this tag to that particular page.
• Block Crawl – Some web pages are important for the audience but serve no value when it comes to search engine rankings. You will have to block these pages from crawling so that it is not taken into consideration while ranking.
• No Index – Similar to Block Crawl, but specifically used for stand-alone web pages, the No Index action is used for pages that are of low quality. This is done so that you can restrict the indexing of these pages by Google.
• 404 – This action means to delete a particular page which is of no use to the website.
(Source : Google Images)
• Update – This is an SEO based action where you need to update or increase the number of keywords in the content of your website.
These URL actions will be assigned to the web pages manually. You will have to check out the category tags and analyze the web pages individually to check which action would be suitable for it. You can assign more than one URL action to each web page.
Building Action Items For The Website Quality Audit Report
Now that you have set up the URL actions for each of your web pages based on their category type, your audit report is complete. But how do you make sure that the actions are carried out properly? The audit report may be confusing to read and analyze for some people.
If you have other people on your team, then the best thing to do is to assign these actions to your team members. To do this, you will have to create another spreadsheet where you will mention the URL actions, web pages, and the actual actions that need to be taken for each of these pages.
Here you can create two columns that mention the priority of the action and the person this is assigned to. In the action tab, you can write in detail the steps that need to be taken for each of the web pages. This will create a more structured data and will be easy to work on.
You can add the links of the report spreadsheet to different action tabs if needed. Once done, you can share this spreadsheet with your team members. Set up a deadline for each action so that it is followed in a timely manner.
One important thing to remember in the final action spreadsheet is that you have to take into consideration the primary URL action. If you have more than one URL actions designated to a certain web page, then consider the first action as the final one.
Creating A Presentation Deck Of The Website Quality Audit Report
If you are an agency that is conducting the website audit for a client, then you would require to create a presentation deck. A presentation deck is basically a PowerPoint presentation, wherein, you provide a summarized version of the audit report.
Most clients are not interested in the different sections of the audit report. What matters to them is the findings and the actions that you will take to make the necessary changes. That is what will be included in your presentation.
You will have to start your presentation with a brief introduction to what website quality is along with the importance of conducting a website quality audit. Next, you will have to mention the different inputs that go into the report and the ways to analyze them.
The outputs of the report will also include the explanation of the different category tags, and the URL actions will be mentioned. This will help the client to understand the findings that you will summarize in the presentation.
Mention only those actions which need immediate attention of the client. If you have any additional insights that you wish to share with the client, you can add those as well. Do not pile up the presentation with unnecessary data. Include those which are of the utmost importance.
Finish the presentation with an action tracker that will contain information about the necessary actions that you will take. Also, include the next plan that you have set up to successfully move ahead with the campaign.
Once the website’s quality is in tip-top shape, our niche edits will be even more effective than if you didn’t fix up the site first. There are a lot of moving pieces in SEO, and we’re here to help you align everything to make the biggest impact possible with each and ever link.
A ServiceNow wizard by trade, Gaby quit her 9-5 to pursue the world of search marketing. As a Customer Success Manager at SERPninja, she makes sure your projects get the attention they deserve. She is a certified Google Campaign Manager, HubSpot Inbound Marketing Expert and a SEMrush Expert – it is safe to say she knows exactly what she is talking about. She swears by “The 5 Hour Work Week” but ends up working 80 hours a week to make sure your SEO is handled right.
