How do you perform a technical SEO audit?

A technical SEO audit is a comprehensive review of your website’s technical elements to ensure they are optimized for search engines and provide a seamless user experience. Technical SEO focuses on elements like website speed, crawlability, mobile-friendliness, and structured data, which all play crucial roles in determining how well your site ranks in search engine results.

Performing a technical SEO audit helps you identify issues that could be negatively impacting your site’s performance, so you can fix them and improve your search rankings. This article will walk you through the key steps involved in conducting a thorough technical SEO audit.

Step 1: Check Website Crawlability

Crawlability refers to how easily search engine bots (like Googlebot) can navigate and index your site. If search engines can’t crawl your site, your pages won’t show up in search results, regardless of the quality of your content. Start your audit by ensuring your site is crawlable.

How to Check Crawlability:

1. Robots.txt File: This file tells search engines which pages they can or cannot crawl. Make sure your robots.txt file isn’t blocking important pages from being crawled. You can check this by visiting yourwebsite.com/robots.txt.
2. Google Search Console: Use the Coverage Report in Google Search Console to see if Google is having issues crawling or indexing any part of your site. Look for errors like "404 not found" or "server errors" and fix them.
3. Crawl Budget: For larger sites, it’s essential to ensure that your crawl budget is optimized. This is the number of pages that search engines will crawl on your site within a specific period. Use internal linking, sitemaps, and an efficient website structure to help search engines crawl your site more efficiently.

Step 2: Ensure Proper Indexing

Indexing refers to search engines storing your pages in their database so they can appear in search results. If your pages aren’t being indexed, they can’t rank. During your audit, you’ll want to check if all the important pages of your site are indexed properly.

How to Check Indexing:

1. Google Search Console: The "Index Coverage" report shows which pages are indexed and which are not. Ensure important pages are indexed and that no duplicate or unnecessary pages are being indexed.
2. Site: Search Operator: Use the site:yourdomain.com search operator in Google to see how many pages are indexed by Google. Compare this to the actual number of important pages on your site to ensure there are no major discrepancies.
3. Noindex Tags: Check that important pages don’t have a noindex tag in their HTML, which tells search engines not to index the page.

Step 3: Optimize Website Speed and Performance

Website speed is a crucial ranking factor. A slow website can lead to poor user experience, higher bounce rates, and lower search rankings. Google’s Core Web Vitals focus on site speed, responsiveness, and visual stability as key elements in determining a site’s user experience.

How to Improve Website Speed:

1. Google PageSpeed Insights: Use this tool to test your website’s speed and get recommendations for improving it. Focus on reducing your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), improving First Input Delay (FID), and minimizing Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
2. Compress Images: Large images slow down page load times. Use compression tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to reduce image file sizes without compromising quality.
3. Enable Browser Caching: Ensure that your website allows browsers to store cached versions of pages, which helps improve load times for returning visitors.
4. Minimize CSS, JavaScript, and HTML: Reduce the size of your code by removing unnecessary spaces, comments, and code blocks. Tools like UglifyJS can help with this.
5. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN distributes your website’s files across multiple servers around the world, allowing users to download files from the server closest to them, improving site speed.

Step 4: Ensure Mobile-Friendliness

Mobile-friendliness is a critical part of SEO due to Google’s mobile-first indexing, meaning Google primarily uses the mobile version of a site for ranking and indexing. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, it could seriously hurt your search rankings.

How to Check Mobile-Friendliness:

1. Google Mobile-Friendly Test: Use this tool to check how well your site performs on mobile devices. The tool will highlight issues such as small fonts, unclickable buttons, or improper viewport settings.
2. Responsive Design: Ensure your site uses responsive web design, which automatically adjusts the layout based on the screen size. This ensures that your content is accessible and easy to navigate on mobile devices.

Step 5: Audit Site Structure and Internal Linking

A clear, logical site structure helps both users and search engines navigate your website more easily. Well-organized content and proper internal linking can improve your site’s crawlability and user experience, leading to better rankings.

How to Improve Site Structure:

1. Sitemap: Ensure your XML sitemap is up to date and submitted to Google Search Console. This helps search engines find and index your important pages.
2. URL Structure: Use clean, descriptive URLs that reflect the content of the page. Avoid long, confusing URLs with unnecessary parameters.
3. Internal Linking: Implement an internal linking strategy that helps users and search engines navigate your site. Make sure important pages are easily accessible through multiple internal links.
4. Breadcrumbs: Use breadcrumb navigation to help users understand where they are on your site and make it easier for search engines to crawl your pages.

Step 6: Fix Duplicate Content Issues

Duplicate content can confuse search engines and hurt your rankings. It occurs when multiple URLs lead to the same or similar content, making it difficult for search engines to know which version to index.

How to Address Duplicate Content:

1. Canonical Tags: Use canonical tags to tell search engines which version of a page is the preferred one. This is especially useful for sites with similar product pages or multiple versions of the same content.
2. 301 Redirects: If you have duplicate pages, use 301 redirects to send users and search engines to the correct version of a page.
3. URL Parameters: If you use URL parameters (e.g., for tracking or sorting), use canonical URLs or Google Search Console’s parameter handling tool to avoid creating duplicate content.

Step 7: Review and Optimize On-Page SEO Elements

On-page SEO elements like meta tags, headers, and content play a significant role in your site’s search performance. Make sure these elements are optimized for search engines.

Key On-Page Elements to Optimize:

1. Meta Titles and Descriptions: Ensure each page has a unique, keyword-optimized meta title and description that accurately reflects the content of the page.
2. Header Tags (H1, H2, etc.): Use clear and descriptive header tags to structure your content. The H1 tag should be unique to each page and contain the main keyword.
3. Alt Text for Images: Use descriptive alt text for all images to improve accessibility and help search engines understand the content of the images.
4. Keyword Optimization: Ensure that your primary keywords are naturally integrated into the content, meta tags, and headers of each page.

Step 8: Check for Broken Links

Broken links can negatively affect both user experience and SEO. Search engines penalize websites with many broken links because they hinder smooth navigation and crawlability.

How to Find and Fix Broken Links:

1. Screaming Frog SEO Spider: This tool helps you crawl your website to identify broken internal and external links.
2. Google Search Console: The Coverage Report will also highlight 404 errors on your site. Fix these by either updating the links or implementing 301 redirects.

Step 9: Optimize Structured Data

Structured data (also known as schema markup) helps search engines understand your content better. By adding structured data to your pages, you can make your content eligible for rich results like featured snippets, product information, and reviews.

How to Optimize Structured Data:

1. Google Structured Data Testing Tool: Use this tool to check if your structured data is implemented correctly.
2. Schema Markup: Add schema markup to relevant pages, such as product pages, blog posts, events, and recipes, to enhance visibility in search results.
3. Monitor Errors: Check Google Search Console for any structured data errors or warnings and fix them accordingly.

Step 10: Monitor Your Site with Google Search Console and Analytics

Finally, it’s essential to continuously monitor your site’s performance after conducting a technical SEO audit.

1. Google Search Console: Keep an eye on your site’s indexing, crawl errors, and coverage reports. Set up alerts for any major issues.
2. Google Analytics: Monitor user behavior, traffic patterns, and bounce rates to identify any areas where your site could be further optimized.
3. Regular Audits: Conduct technical SEO audits regularly (e.g., every 6 months or after major updates) to ensure your site remains optimized for search engines.

Conclusion

Performing a technical SEO audit is an essential part of maintaining a healthy, high-ranking website. By addressing issues related to crawlability, speed, mobile-friendliness, content, and structure, you ensure that your site is fully optimized for both users and search engines. Regular technical SEO audits will not only help you improve search rankings but also enhance user experience, ensuring your website performs at its best.