It’s no secret that in order to have a successful SEO campaign, you first have to have a solid website that is optimized and built correctly. Even if you have a great link building strategy, a sub-par site won’t help you achieve much success. The first step in improving an already existing site for SEO is to first conduct a site audit, or in other words, find out what’s wrong and what components it might be missing. Here are 10 quick steps that you can follow for a brief site audit that will give you a basic overview of how well a site is doing in terms of SEO. Keep in mind that this list isn’t the end-all check lists of site audits, but it can help you get a great head-start on a site makeover.
1. Check for Flash
Flash is not SEO friendly. Because Flash sites are created in a format that can’t be crawled by search engines, there isn’t much you can do to optimize it. If you’re unsure whether a site is built entirely with Flash, just go into the site code and do a text search for “Flash.” Flash sites should be reconfigured to HTML before an SEO campaign is started.
2. Check for broken links
Excessive broken links are not ideal for SEO. An easy tool you can use to quickly check for broken links across a particular site is Xenu Link Sleuth. Fix as many broken links that show up in the report as possible.
3. Check site load time
Sites that have an excessive load time can be at risk for less than ideal SEO success. One free tool can be found at tools.pingdom.com. If the site load time is more than 5 seconds, some improvements should be made to fix it.
4. Have an Idea of keywords to look for
Before you start checking the on-site optimization, it’s important to have an idea of what keywords the site should be using in its content by having a good idea of the products, services, or information that it offers. You should also be aware of whether or not the site should be using geographic keywords or not.
5. Check meta tags
Title tags and meta description tags are essential for a well-optimized site. To easily see both of these elements at a glance, just go into the site coding. To see the content of the title tag, do a text search for: <title>. Title tags should generally incorporate the targeted keywords and should be around 60 characters. To see the content of the meta description, do a text search for: “description”. Meta descriptions should also incorporate the keywords and should be around 160 characters.
6. Check for alt image attributes
The alt image tag is another important on-site element where keywords can be utilized. These tags show in the case of broken images on the site, but can also be found in the site code. You can check to see if the HTML images on the site are utilizing the keyword in the alt attribute by going into the site code and searching for: alt=”.
7. Check for <h1> tag
<h> tags should also incorporate keywords as part of a site’s on-site optimization strategy. The text in <h> tags is typically used as page titles or sections titles on a page, and they can be numbered starting from 1 all the way to 5, 6, or 7. The most important element is the <h1> tag, so you should check in the site coding to determine whether or not the keyword is being utilized there.
8. Content length and keyword usage
Search engines like content – especially relevant content. Sites with the hope of ranking high in the SERPs will need to have a decent amount of quality, relevant content on the home page and other main pages that links are being sent to. A general rule of thumb is for these pages to have at least 200-300 words of content that includes keywords and keyword variations in moderation. Be sure that this content also includes internal linking with keyword-rich anchor text.
9. Check for sitemap
If your site isn’t being indexed by search engines, or has very few pages indexed, a missing sitemap could be the reason. Sitemaps provide an easy way for search engines to have access for all of the pages on your site. An easy way to check for a sitemap is to visit the /sitemap.xml subpage. If you receive a “page not found” error, there is a good chance that no sitemap exists.
10. Check URL format
It’s important that the site uses “clean” URLs, or in other words, URLs that are descriptive and not full of jargon. For example, if your site has a services page, it should be listed clearly as www.yourdomain.com/services, not www.yourdomain.com/=34&s?. Make sure that all of the subdomains have descriptive URLS – this is important for both SEO and user-friendliness.
You should also check for duplicate home page URLs. For example, it’s common for the home page to show under three different URL variations: http://yourdomain.com, http://www.yourdomain.com, and http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html (or something similar). While it seems like the exact same page to viewers, search engines view these as completely separate pages. It’s important that redirects be implemented to ensure that the home page can only be found under one authoritative version of the URL.
Well, there you go! Once you get in the habit of searching for these 10 elements, you’ll be able to complete this quick site audit in a matter of minutes. As mentioned previously, though, remember that this isn’t the end-all list of site audits. There are a lot more in-depth elements you may need to look out for depending on the site, and you will also want to conduct keyword research and a thorough competitive analysis before starting any SEO campaign.