SEO, How to start with?

How much time do you think it takes to build an SEO strategy?

What tools to use?

What are the keywords?

Are your pages indexed on google?

Many questions that you need to answer to create the best SEO solution for your company.

In reality, it might take days, weeks or months to create a proper SEO plan and execute them.

With the help of the right tools and auditing, you have created a plan which gives you the best solution in just hours.

So, How the auditing should be done?

Steps 1 - 4: We will be discussing the issues on the site.

Step 5 - 9: How to fix these problems

Steps 10 - 12: taking into account organic traffic.

Steps 13 - 14: Finding more about backlinking and Analysis of content.

The objective of this blog is to provide comprehensive knowledge on how SEO actually works ad how to start with.

So, here is the list of the tools that might be required by your team to continue with the process of auditing.

1. Google Analytics (For Insights)
2. Google search console (For Indexes and Keywords)
3. Google PageSpeed Insights.
4. Google's Structured data testing tool.
5. Copyscape
6. SERP Simulator
7. Web page word counter.

Every tool has its own importance and, save a lot of time.

So let see them together!!!

Step 1: Make sure that only one version of your site is accessible.

Try to look at all the ways that a visitor will type the name of your domain.

Example:

• https://www.sandeepboddupalli.com
• https://sandeepboddupalli.com
• https://sandeepboddupalli.com
• https://www.sandeepboddupalli.com

The rule is to make only of them to be browse-able.

Use 301 redirections to connect other domains to the one which is in use.

Step 2: Website crawling

You can use a third party SEO crawlers to spider your site.

This works the same as what google spider does.

You can use paid tools such as Screaming frog or a free tool Beam Us Up

It will help in auditing your site and check the internal and external links on your site.

Step 3: Are you Indexed on Google.

If you are not indexed then you are not ranked.

To know whether your site is Indexed or no, you can search it on google search console.

In search console go to google Index and then select Index status.

If you don't have an account on google index then you can simply use google search.

Go to the Google browser and search site:Yourdomain.com

Here I took the example of France.com

So, the total number of indexes is 61. Which means that Google has indexed 61 pages of the website.

To cross-check this, you can verify with the number of Internal pages that you found in crawling face.

If in case you find any pages which are not indexed it means there is a problem with the page, either it is broken or redirected.

Step 4 - Use your brand name as a keyword.

Try searching in google your brand name.

Hopefully, you will be seen as the first organic result unless its a new site.

Normally most of these would be a home page.

What if you don't rank on number one and someone else is raked for that?

It means that Google thinks that another website is appropriate than yours for the given name.

For example Beamer.

When you search for this brand name in google search, most of the times it does not even show the company we are looking for.

You will find them on page 2.

This is a problem when we use a generic word as a brand name.

The solution for this would be,

Link Building and brand building.

How to do them?

• Building strong brand inks.
• Run a public relation campaign
• Creating some citations on enterprise directories.
• Make sure that you are listed on google business listing.
• And, Social media presence.

These are the basic SEO things for visibility.

But, what if one cannot find you in the SERP?

Then, there must be a serious problem with manual penalties and algorithm.

Google search console has an option to check if there are any penalties.

Step 5 - Perform manual on-page SEO.

Firstly find the most important pages on our website and conduct an SEO audit for every page.

Then, to make things even easier. Go to the home page of your website and right-click to find an option called view page source.

A page of HTML code will appear and then check a few things among them -

• Is the title of the page clickable?
• Is the meta description optimized?
• How many header tags does it have and are they optimized?
• And, most importantly check spellings.

Your brand name or the business name could act as a keyword for your organic traffic.

It is always better to know the search volume. To do that we can use paid tools such as Ahref's, SEMrush and Keyword planner by Google.

To do it for free you can use tools such as Search volume

A meta description can only increase the chances of clicks but will not have any influence on the organic traffic.

So, it is very much important to have a well-written meta description.

It is like an advertisement for your business. When people write about their company, what do they sell and their USP (Unique selling proposition). The chances are high that people would like to click and know more.

A very good example of a meta description is Amazon. It talked about its products and prices and delivery options which are considered to be the USP of Amazon.

The H1 tag which is the header tag is very important for the on-page ranking.

So, it is always suggested to use a simple, easy and understandable header.

What are the things that should be included on the home page?

• The purpose of the website.
• Few relevant keywords.
• Clear navigation.

And, never try to use any generic phrases such as know more, more info, etc in the header or subheader.

Step 6: Use crawl reports for more insights about on-page SEO.

Crawling a page is a time-consuming process.

You can use paid tools such as screaming frog to crawl all the pages.

This will even provide you will the possible errors, warnings, and suggestions in case you need improvements.

Step 7: Check the duplicate content

The main aim of Google panda is to know about the quality of a site. Low-quality sites are often ranked very badly in the SERP.

To know whether your content has been copied by other pages or there exists some of your content which was copied from the other pages, then it is going to create a huge problem for both.

To check if the content is copied you can use a tool such as copyscape.

Sometimes, the issue can be any disclaimer any pre-written cautious texts.

And check the number of words that your page. High number and low number can impact your page performance.

It is advisable to have a minimum of 300 words on a page for the purpose of SEO.

Step 8: Speed test

No one likes to wait.

We are living in 2019 with high-speed internet and still the page is loading.

It means there must be some problem with the website data. There can be images and videos which can take time to load.

You can use free tool from Google which is PageSpeed Insights, It will provide you the avg loading time for your domain.

The same job can be done by google analytics. There is a category to see the results by search browser, in that column you can even see a row which says "time of loading".

Step 9: Structured errors of the data.

There is a structure that can be followed to make the SERP look more organized.

Here is the pattern which worked for many companies.

• Reviews
• Product information
• Events

To see if our site is well structured you can use the tool from google. Just copy & paste the URL and RUN

By this google will tell you if there are any errors or everything is good!!!

If in case you find any errors then here is the guide for you to solve it.

Take it is free!!!

Step 10: Organic traffic

The main goal of SEO auditing is to support our organic traffic.

You should always see how your site is performing. Google Analytics helps you to see different types of data.

For a clear understanding, visualize the graphs in the analytics reports, it gives a clear indication in the traffic. Like, on which day you had a lot of traffic and on which day there was a drop in the traffic.

As discussed earlier, if there is a drop in the traffic then it can be google penalties.

Step 11: Check your ranking

With Google Analytics, you can see the amount of organic traffic that your website is generating.

But, can you see you ranking?

There are tools such as Ahref which is a premium tool if not tool such as serprobot.com does help you.

If in case you find a drop in the ranking, then it means there is some problem with your keywords and backlinks. Check with the references. Try to find where the problem lies.

You can even try to find what makes your competitors rank high.

Just go their page and try to find the keywords. You don't need to read each and every line to find the keywords.

Simply go to their page, as you are in the same industry you would already have a list of keywords which works for your company. Use ctrl + F and search for words.

Though their website has all the keywords that you do, then most chances is they might be having even more.

Normally when you look at the pages who are ranked at 5th or 6th position, you can find some huge amount of keywords waiting for you to use.

Step 12: Analysis of Backlinks

Marketers say it takes 8- 9 Hours for a backlinking audit. Given that they are using some high-end premium tools.

But, it is all not necessary, good tools which help you with good traffic will work 3X times more than normal links.

You can use tools such as smallseotools or SEMrush to find the backlinks and external links.

Step 13: Fix the links which are broken

It is quite frustrating when you can't load the page or when it shows you an error.

This is due to the backlinks that are carrying your visitor into your page.

To check if your backlink is working fine or to find out all the backlink that is currently published in your site.

You can use tools such as Brokenlink check and deadlink check

How to fix them?

• Make the required changes in the content.
• 301 redirection - redirect your broken links to a new URL.
• Create a 404 error page.

Step 14: Conduct a content analysis

New content is created by companies on a daily basis.

And, people are reading the new content more regularly.

Old content will not serve people for a long time, the preferences of consumer changes and so should be our content.

The best tool to analyze the content is by doing a "CONTENT GAP" analysis with the tool SEMrush.

With this tool, you can see what the top 10 pages of google say about your content.

Based on that you can customize and create your own content which the visitors might be looking for.

FINISH...

That's it, the SEO audit is over.

Keep learning about your companies performance, what is working and what is not.

Try different things, and see which one works for your company.