{"id":1083,"date":"2018-12-24T13:30:12","date_gmt":"2018-12-24T10:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esfirum.com\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2021-11-30T10:53:22","modified_gmt":"2021-11-30T07:53:22","slug":"seo-site-audit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esfirum.com\/en\/blog\/seo-site-audit\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO site audit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comprehensive website analysis<\/h2>\n

Why do you need a comprehensive website analysis? First of all, it is needed to understand what may be getting in the way of your website rising in the search results. Gone are the days when you could push a site into the Google TOP-10 simply by stuffing texts with key phrases and getting a large number of inbound links. Today that does not work.
\nDo you want to grow faster than your competitors? You cannot do without a detailed SEO audit of the website.
\nSo, let's get started.
\nToday Google's search algorithms rely on artificial intelligence, namely on \u00abdeep learning\u00bb.
\nIn my opinion the main Google search algorithm since 2015 is \"RankBrain\". It is a self-learning algorithm designed to analyse new content on a website for more relevant results. It is very closely connected with two algorithms that I call the \u00abcontrollers\u00bb - \u00abPanda\u00bb and \u00abPenguin\u00bb.<\/p>\n

\"panda<\/p>\n

The \u00abPanda\u00bb algorithm<\/strong> is designed to analyse the content of a site for spam and check its quality. To avoid its filter you need to write quality content (with images, tables, contacts and links) that will be useful to the reader. The \u00abPanda\u00bb kicks in and checks a site when the bounce rate on its pages is high.<\/p>\n

\"penguin<\/p>\n

The \u00abPenguin\u00bb algorithm<\/strong> - has been working since 2012 and is designed to fight websites that use \u00abspam\u00bb techniques when building their link mass. Do you have many anchor links, far too many links from poor quality resources? You are a client of the \u00abPenguin\u00bb. Do not take risks - 10% anchor links and 90% non-anchor and branded links to your resource will be the safest strategy.<\/p>\n

The \u00abQuality Scores\u00bb of a website<\/h2>\n

The primary ranking factor is the \u00abQuality Scores\u00bb that Google assigns to your website. The higher the site's \u00abQuality Scores\u00bb, the easier it will be to promote the web resource.<\/strong>
\nThe \u00abQuality Scores\u00bb consist of:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • the quality of the content presented on each page of the website that is in the index - compared with other high-ranking sites;<\/li>\n
  • CTR (click-through rate) - the ratio of clicks to impressions compared with other websites;<\/li>\n
  • the bounce rate of the website - put simply, when a visitor comes to the site, takes no action and leaves, the bounce rate grows, and that is a bad sign;<\/li>\n
  • new visitors to the site and visitors who returned to it;<\/li>\n
  • the average amount of time a visitor spends on the site;<\/li>\n
  • traffic metrics - how many visitors come from your inbound links, including traffic from social media;<\/li>\n
  • the number and quality of inbound links - the relevance of the links, the naturalness of the links, the growth rate of the total number of links.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Technical website audit<\/h2>\n

    The elements of a website you need to look at at the start of a technical audit:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • The age of the website \/ domain - older sites enjoy more trust from search engines, but only if the on-page and off-page factors are set up correctly and the site has not been under filters. If a site has fallen under Google filters then, regardless of its age, it will no longer regain the trust of the search engine. Over-optimised and filtered sites are worthless in the eyes of search engines.
      \nAs for drop domains (domains that were used by someone before) - when you register a domain after it was not renewed, it loses the trust that came with its age, but you keep the trust from the inbound links (if they are of good quality). Topical and trusted drop domains are good to use when building a PBN (private blog network). You can check the age of domains on webarchive.<\/li>\n
    • An SSL certificate is a must today to increase trust from search engines! Websites with https have more trust and a better ranking than those with plain http. For e-commerce websites an SSL certificate is mandatory. Without it Chrome users will see \"Not secure\" when they open the site, which reduces the number of visits and increases the bounce rate.<\/li>\n
    • The robots.txt file - how well structured the robots.txt file is. Whether important pages are closed from indexing. Or, on the contrary, whether service pages of the site are left open to indexing. You can include or exclude the pages of the site from the index with this file or with meta tags inside the pages themselves. Today the \"noindex\" directive no longer works in robots.txt. If you need to be sure that a page will not appear in the index of the search engines, the best option is to close it with a meta tag. This meta tag is inserted into the pages. To check that the robots.txt file is filled in correctly<\/li>\n
    • Friendly URLs - all urls on the website must be readable and should have the page's key query built into them. Avoid urls like -? postid = 23345. The right permalink structure is very important for Google, it helps it understand what content will be on the page of the website.<\/li>\n
    • Sitemap.xml is the sitemap file that shows the Google bot which pages to crawl and how often, when a page appeared and when a page of the site was updated. You have the option to request the indexing of the site's pages from Google Search Console. The WordPress plugin Yoast creates sitemaps automatically. You can read about the best plugins in our article \u00abTop 10 best plugins for CMS WordPress\u00bb<\/li>\n
    • Check the site in the index - type the site: operator into the Google search bar, for example site: oktenweb.com (if your pages appeared in search, everything is fine). Checking the site in the index is very important in order to understand which pages have been indexed and which have not. You must be sure that all the pages you need are indexed and that you have no pages with a 404 error<\/li>\n
    • A basic check of the site for filters - Google has a web spam team, and there is also a complex algorithm for automatic spam checks that sends messages to Google Search Console warning webmasters about the problems found on a site. The messages can be of the \u00abAction Against Site\u00bb or \u00abAction Against Links\u00bb type. If you received a message of the \u00abAction Against Site\u00bb type, then your site is completely excluded from the search results, it is de-indexed. In that case you need to fix the errors Google pointed out, send a message about the fixes and ask for the site to be returned to the index. If you received a message of the \u00abAction Against Links\u00bb type, then you will need to clean up the low-quality inbound links to the site and wait until the Google robots crawl the whole site again. That can take quite a long time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Content SEO audit<\/h2>\n

      To rise in the search results you need to write quality text content for the website that is interesting to visitors. And that attracts natural links as well as social signals such as shares.
      \nWhat to avoid:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Low information value of pages (text under 300 words, no images);<\/li>\n
      2. Duplicated internal content on the website (where needed we use the \"canonical\" tag);<\/li>\n
      3. Duplicated external content - copying texts from other websites.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        A short checklist of the number of elements that good quality content should have:<\/p>\n

          \n
        • Original text (unique only).<\/li>\n
        • Original images (unique only).<\/li>\n
        • A minimum of 700+ words (from 1250 to 3000 words is recommended, depending on the purpose of the page).<\/li>\n
        • From 4 to 6 images per page.<\/li>\n
        • Video - 1 per page<\/li>\n
        • Up to 70 characters including spaces in the \"title\" tag.<\/li>\n
        • The \"h1\" tag - 1 per page.<\/li>\n
        • The \"h2\" - \"h3\" tags - from 3 to 8 per page depending on the amount of text.<\/li>\n
        • Correct grammar.<\/li>\n
        • Supporting content (sidebar).<\/li>\n
        • Visible menu navigation on the website.<\/li>\n
        • The \"title\" tag with keywords - the heading must contain the key phrase. You also need to make the heading memorable so that the user wants to click on it. Do not overstuff it with keywords - that risks a filter.<\/li>\n
        • The \"title\" tag must not repeat across the pages of your website. Make it different from your competitors.<\/li>\n
        • The \"description\" tag - must be unique and written for all pages in the index. Do not spam in the \"description\", Google will lower your ranking. The length of the \"description\" is up to 160 characters including spaces, but currently the Google results cut the \"description\" to 140-145 characters!<\/li>\n
        • Every page should contain one \"h1\" tag with the key query and \"h2\" - \"h4\" tags, where it is also advisable to place additional keywords.<\/li>\n
        • Be sure to put unique, high quality images on the website - you can check uniqueness on the official Google resource. The image file name is a keyword (low or micro frequency). The \"alt\" tag must be filled in with the key phrase. Per 1000 words - 4-6 images at least.<\/li>\n
        • Place a link to your youtube channel, this will raise the overall rating of the site.<\/li>\n
        • The desired word count for content is 1250. However, you can look at how many words your competitors in the niche use. Sometimes a quality article of 5000 words is needed. Be ready to position yourself as an expert in the niche. Content shorter than 800 characters is not very good for getting a page into the Google top.<\/li>\n
        • Keyword density is the percentage of keyword occurrences relative to the total number of words on the page. 2-3% per 1200 words will be received well by a search engine. Supporting words (LSI) are also a must to confirm the keywords.<\/li>\n
        • Internal links built into the texts on the website. Very good for passing page weight to the important pages of the site. They also show the search engine which pages on the site are important. Internal links can take the form of images.
          \nIt is very important to link all the pages of the website to each other; be sure to place links from high-traffic pages to the pages that matter to you. In all internal links write the keywords you want the target page of the link to rank for. Do not be afraid of over-optimisation because of the anchors in the links - inside the site Google allows it.<\/li>\n
        • Content freshness - update the content on the website, add new paragraphs. Google rewards recently updated content with a quick push to the top of the results.<\/li>\n
        • Secondary content is content that is hidden from the user or from the Google bot. Content such as an accordion or a slider, that is, content you have to click on to see. Until recently it was believed that Google would not see text that is secondary content. However, on mobile devices Google treats secondary content as primary, and so it reads and indexes it. And given that the mobile index now comes first for Google, secondary content with a large amount of text can be hidden in accordions or sliders, which lets you interact with users properly. You should not hide content under images, Google will find it and problems may arise.<\/li>\n
        • There should be no ads above the \u00abfold\u00bb of the first screen of the website. Google does not punish you for showing ads on a site, but if you break the site's UX with ads - that is a \u00abred flag\u00bb.<\/li>\n
        • If the website is regional, put the region in the page \"title\" tag - this is very important.<\/li>\n
        • The key pages of the site, or pages that contain a large amount of content, should have outgoing links to trusted sites (like wiki) that match the content by topic. Just not to competitors in your niche!<\/li>\n
        • The website must be responsive. Google made it clear that without a responsive version of a site you are going \u00abnowhere\u00bb when it introduced the Mobile First Index.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          Audit of website usability and structure<\/h2>\n

          Website usability is a quality indicator of a website that consists of the presence and the correct placement of the elements that affect how convenient the site is for the user.<\/strong><\/p>\n