Let’s go back in time to better grasp SEO analysis. Do you remember phone books? Yellow pages, in particular, were printed business directories organized into categories, and individuals would consult these guides for any service needs.
Paying attention to SEO is akin to seeking to be listed in the yellow pages and attempting to meet their requirements. It’s a little more technical, but in this post, we’ll go through the principles of SEO analysis and how to do a website SEO analysis, perhaps making it clearer for you.
What exactly is SEO analysis?
SEO analysis is a review of your website’s general health, structure, content, and other aspects that affect your search engine rankings. In other words, consider it as consulting an expert on how to draw more attention and be better noticed on the internet’s “yellow pages,” or search engine result pages (SERPs). The findings show areas that may be changed to enhance your ranking on SERPs, as well as how to create the best SEO plan for your business.
How to do an SEO analysis of a website ?
An SEO analysis consists of several technical facts that may be divided into three categories:
On-page SEO include text (quality and keyword utilization) as well as structural concerns, HTML source code, pictures, and meta-tags.
Off-page SEO refers to things outside your website that still pertain to you and can be managed through link building, getting listed and featured on reliable websites, and guest blogging.
Technical SEO is concerned with the structure and functionality of the website, as well as optimizing it for crawlers. Mobile optimization is also included.
To begin, prepare a list of the components that will be checked and prioritized. Then, decide who will be assigned certain aspects of the analysis and which will be outsourced to agencies.
Some tasks can be performed using SEO tools and others cannot.
What to check in a website’s SEO analysis ?
Now that we’ve covered the fundamentals and why you should absolutely do an SEO audit, we’ll go through the technical aspects to give you a better picture. What should you look for in a complete SEO analysis? What is included in a full SEO analysis? Let’s get into the specifics.
URL structure
The URL of your website is your company’s “digital address,” and it is an important factor in SEO tactics. The URLs to different pages on your website aid in the organization of your content and allow access to the various sorts of material you provide. They act similarly to shop signage that refer to different aisles and product categories, making it easier for visitors to navigate.
What should you check for when it comes to URL structure ? Here are some of the greatest URL structure SEO practices:
If at all feasible, make the URLs understandable and relevant to the content, rather than a random collection of characters, letters, and numbers. Usually, any variation of the title is a suitable choice.
In order to improve your ranks, include your goal keywords in the URL.
The better the URL, the shorter it is. Consider shortening your URLs if they are longer than 100 characters.
Content
Content is likely the most important aspect of any SEO analysis, and it has been recognized by Google as one of the top three ranking criteria. It’s how you communicate your message and how search engine crawlers learn about you. Content concerns include your copywriting, keywords, creativity and value supplied, and relevancy.
- Prior to developing content, conduct keyword research. Choose the top keywords with the highest search volume and density. There are several tools available for keyword research, as well as expert assistance.
- Conduct a content gap analysis on a regular basis. Examine your rivals’ rankings to determine which keywords and subjects they are ranking for. Close the gap and stay up with them if you are deficient in any of the categories.
- Enhance your photographs. Large, high-resolution photos might cause your page to load slowly. But you also don’t want low-resolution photos.
- Add 10-15 phrases relating to the image as alt texts to all of your photographs. Also, while naming your picture files, use relevant and descriptive adjectives, and use hyphens to separate the words.
- Create attractive page names and title tags that incorporate the main keyword for which you want to rank. Title tags should be between 50 and 60 characters in length. Your headers and title tags should be distinct, which will allow you to add more keywords.
Meta descriptions
Meta descriptions, often known as meta-tags, are concise summaries of your website that you submit to search engines. It aids bots in indexing your pages based on relevant keywords and has a significant impact on SEO.
Check to see whether you have a meta description for each page and if there are any duplicates. The target keywords should be included in the descriptions, which should be between 135 and 160 characters long.
Blocked resources
Blocked resources are files that have been blocked from, and hence are not available to, GoogleBot. These are not crawled or indexed by search engines. When you add an SSL protocol to your website, search engines re-crawl it in order to index it. This procedure is hampered and your rankings suffer as a result of constrained resources. Here’s how to make it right:
- Find blocked resources using Google Search Console.
- Find the line that is blocking the resource in the robots.txt file.
- Update the line and allow GoogleBot to access the files.
Internal links
- When you have two articles that are linked to each other, or phrases and concepts that are related to other material on your website, be sure to include links and highlight those connections. This is known as contextual linkage.
- You may increase your internal link building by including a “similar posts” and a “popular posts” section.
- Don’t leave any pages or material “orphaned,” and make sure that all of your pages have backlinks or internal links so that they may be found in search results.
- Do regular checks on the health of your links, fix broken links and prevent errors.
- Make certain that your anchor texts are acceptable. Anchor texts are hyperlinked text that may be clicked on. They should not be spammy or long, but should be relevant to the material in the link and capable of capturing the reader’s attention. Also, avoid utilizing the same hyperlink on the same page more than once.
Backlinks
As part of your SEO analysis, check your backlink profile to discover if you have any problematic inbound connections. If required, contact the site administrators to get yourself removed. You may browse through your list of backlinks and look at the spam ratings of the sites.
Website structure
- List all of your important pages towards the top of your website in a navigation bar so that users and crawlers can quickly discover them.
- Create an XML sitemap (your website’s directory, roadmap) to assist spiders in understanding the structure of your website.
- Check to see if the material mentioned in your sitemap is truly present.
- Create strong internal connections so that visitors may easily go from one page to the next.
Reactivity on mobile devices
Currently, mobile devices are used by the vast majority of internet users. Without effective mobile optimization, you will lose a large amount of potential traffic and make it more difficult to convert your visitors. Mobile-friendly websites are rewarded by search engines and are ranked higher on the results pages. Here are some mobile optimization tips:
- Examine your website in mobile mode to assess how well it functions.
- Make sure the font and design are easy to read and display on mobile devices. Choose ease of use and quickness above complicated, difficult-to-load designs.
- Insert responsive meta tags into your HTML text.
- Layout should use media queries.
- Make photos and videos embedded responsive.