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Receiving natural traffic from Google in large quantities… All websites dream of it. This is why you certainly want to embark on an SEO audit.

An SEO audit can help you optimize the natural referencing of your website. It will identify what is working, what is not, and what can be improved. At the end of an audit, you are often led to list your website’s weaknesses and decide on actions to remedy them.

In this article, you will find the 30 questions to ask yourself when doing an SEO audit. For each question, we will see the following:

  • why it matters for your SEO audit?
  • and where to find the answer and with which tool?

SEO Audit Framework

1 / Why do you want to carry out an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit can be conducted several times in the life of a site. Before a first online publication or during a website redesign, for example. Indeed, when you decide to bring your site up to date, you take the opportunity also to overhaul your SEO.

But each SEO audit must take a certain “angle of view,” which can vary according to the needs.

  • Is this SEO audit used to select a particular agency?
  • Or to brief your developers on their “to-do” for the next quarter?
  • Maybe you are doing this SEO audit to improve your content marketing.

Depending on “what you want to do with this SEO audit, the focus may be on one dimension rather than another. This is why you will have to start with this first question.

2 / What is the SMART Objective of your SEO Audit?

Before you start, it is important to define the objectives of your SEO analysis. To determine your objectives, use the famous SMART method. Your goals should be both:

  • S specific: set clear and precise objectives;
  • M Measurable: make sure you can accurately measure the success (or not) of your objectives;
  • A ambitious: your goals must be ambitious enough to warrant an SEO audit;
  • R realistic: they must be achievable so that you don’t give up along the way;
  • T timely defined: set a specific period for your SEO audit.

Thus, SMART Objectives will be Objectives of the type:

  • “Increase my traffic by at least 50% within a year. »
  • “Define the 3 priority projects that will have to be studied by my SEO agency this year”.
  • “Improve the quality of backlinks obtained in the next 3 months.” etc.

3 / What KPIs do you hope to Change with this SEO Audit?

Last phase of the scoping: how will you measure the success of this SEO audit? You will need to establish KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Because the objective is not to obtain a report that will end up on your hard drive: the actions resulting from your SEO audit will impact which business indicator?

  • Do you want more conversions and SEO traffic?
  • Do you have conversion issues behind, which could be achieved through SEO?
  • Or maybe you want more qualified leads on your site who bounce less, spend more time, and explore your site more.

It’s up to you to clarify the metric you will look at to tell if the SEO analysis was a success/failure.

The “Keywords” Part of your SEO Audit

4 / On Which Keywords is your site Currently Positioned?

The first thing to do is to validate the keywords on which your site already appears on Google. You will mainly analyze the following elements:

  • The quality and relevance of your keywords.
  • The adequacy of the keywords with your field of activity.

With Google Search Console, you will be able to know precisely for each keyword:

  • The specific query on which your site appears on Google,
  • how many impressions, clicks and click-through rates do you get for each of them,
  • and finally, the position your site occupies in the search results for each keyword.
Google-search-console-keywords overview

5 / What is the Total Search Volume in your Market?

How big is your market on Google? How many searches are made related to your product category?

These questions are essential for the marketer. The answers allow him to estimate whether there is enough demand on Google to fulfill his business objectives. This information also makes it possible to calculate how much the SEO can “really” bring in.

To quantify the total volume of your market, consider all possible fields in terms of keywords: head-tail, mid-tail, and long-tail. Whether it’s searches done 1 million times a month, or 500 times per month, take them into account.

You can use any professional SEO tool to add this market research to your SEO audit. If you are looking for an accessible alternative to get this data, you can always use the Google Ads Keyword Planner.

6 / What is the Level of competition/difficulty on the Targeted Keywords?

Compare yourself to the competition: developing your keyword strategy based on this is essential.

Because the best SEOs don’t have a magic wand. For some keywords, it will be challenging and costly (even impossible sometimes) to unbolt a well-established competitor…

Ditch the overly competitive keywords and focus on the ones you can rank for in the top search engine results.

You can again use the Google Ads Keyword Planner Competition Index to gauge a keyword’s SEO difficulty. Otherwise, more professional SEO tools, such as ahrefs, will give you more elaborate scorings.

ahref keywords difficulty

7 / What are the most Dangerous Competitors Identified by your SEO Audit?

On Google, the most dangerous competitors are not always the ones you think of!
On Google, specific sites related to your market will occupy the coveted first places: information sites, blogs, institutions, etc. Identifying “who” dominates the keywords you are targeting is essential.

SEO tools can give you accurate maps that automatically identify sites with which you “share” multiple keywords. Instead, look at a sample report available in SERPstats that shows you which areas share the most keywords with yours and the competitive gap between your two domains.

Competitors keyword gap

8 / What are the Trending Keywords in your Market?

When it comes to keyword research, your SEO audit should not only look at search volume and competition but also the dynamics of the main targeted keywords:

  • Which queries are progressing the fastest?
  • Those who decline?

This will allow you to prioritize your SEO efforts later to surf trends and identify “Evergreen” keywords that can bring in traffic today and tomorrow.

You can always look at the Google Trends tool to catch trends in your industry. Focus on a limited number of keywords (10 to 20 on average). Also, look at the “Associated queries – In progress” block.

Keywords Intent Check with google trends

9 / What is the user Intent behind the Targeted Keywords?

In SEO, we must never forget that real humans make requests behind the screen!

Each individual who requests Google has a particular intention, an objective… Of course, he will always favor the results that answer his question and allow him to
achieve his research objective.

In addition, Google’s algorithm has long favored content that “really” answers the question posed by the Internet user. You need to go beyond the “keyword” stage and understand “why” people are doing that particular search.

Keywords intent review

To put you on track, you can analyze the content of the sites that appear on the 1st page for the targeted keyword: what are they talking about? What is the angle of their content? Its length? etc

With this common-sense step in your SEO audit, you will know what type of content you will need to produce to appear in Google’s top positions.

10 / What is the Business Value of Each Keyword for you?

Finally, we cannot talk about keywords without mentioning the analysis of the commercial intent behind each search term.

Because not all requests are created equal, between “mountain bike definition” and “best mountain bike brand,” we know which of these two queries will have the most probability of ending with the purchase of a product…

For most marketers, the fundamental objective of SEO is to ensure a presence on the keywords typed by people “in the market” looking to invest in a given product/service. This is why your SEO audit should not overlook this issue.

You can classify the main keywords of your market and label the purchase intention in a simple spreadsheet (with the content ideas generated during the previous question).

The “Technical and UX” Part of your SEO Audit

11 / Does your Site seem to Satisfy its Users?

The vast question you will say to me… And yet so important.
You will be able to reduce millions of visitors from Google if your site is slow, poorly designed, and on which we never find what we are looking for… So stop your SEO audit here. There is no point in wanting to increase traffic if you don’t have “the right formula” tested and validated on a representative number of customers.

To have an inventory of your performance for your SEO audit, look in Google Analytics how it has evolved:

  • loading time
  • the bounce rate
  • the number of pages/visits
  • conversion rate
  • the initiation rate of an objective (ex: adding a cart)
  • the number of visitors who return month to month

You can take your investigations further. With a free tool like Hotjar, you can analyze the heat maps of your pages and survey your visitors to gain more qualitative feedback. This “voice of the customer” helps explain the “why” behind the numbers.

Without going that far, your Google Analytics account already contains a treasure trove of data. For example, have you ever explored the cohort analysis report? It allows you to zoom in on your site’s ability to “retain” an audience.

12 / Does your Site Adapt to all Screens?

We are talking about responsive design here. It is mandatory because it is through our smartphones that we access the Internet the most nowadays.

To go further, you can create AMP pages. This solution is “designed for mobile.” Pages load instantly, helping AMP pages curry organic favor with Google…

To check your site’s compatibility with mobiles, you can use the “Mobile-Friendly Test” tool by Google.

You can also go to your Google Search Console in the “Mobile Usability” report. You will also find that a piece dedicated to AMP pages (if you have any) is also available.

mobile usability check

13 / Is the Loading Time of Your Site Fast?

We saw it above. The loading speed of your site is essential. It is advisable not to exceed 3 seconds; otherwise, the user leaves the page and goes to a competing site.

To analyze the loading speed of your site and benchmark yourself, use the “Google Page Speed ​​Insights” tool. Attention, the device is intractable! The excellent news: Page Speed ​​Insights gives you a concrete list of possible actions and does the work for you.

Check out the “Page experience” report in Google Search Console for your SEO audit. SEOs suspect Google of making it an increasingly important criterion in ranking search engine results, even if John Mueller (Google SEO Advocate) tends to temper the debate.

page experience report in search console

14 / Are all your URLs Accessible and Indexable?

Of course, that makes sense… If the pages of your site are not indexable (no index tag) or if it’s the little train of 404 errors, don’t expect to climb to the 1st position of the Google podium!

Without wanting to bring too much importance to it, we will also appreciate the presence of a sitemap file and its declaration within the robots.txt file. It’s always “cleaner” for your natural referencing.

To identify all these errors and list your indexable and non-indexable pages, there is nothing like using the “Screaming Frog SEO spider” software.

15 / Have you Cleaned up all your Broken Links?

It is expected, during the life of a site, for some links to be broken. It can be an internal link, which refers to one of your pages that no longer exists, or an outgoing connection, which directs to a site that has disappeared.

Beyond the fact that clicking on a broken link causes a disappointing experience for your visitors, these broken links can harm your natural referencing. A proper SEO audit will verify that all your links are functional.

Why do broken links matter in SEO? Because when Google’s bot crawls a site, it has limited crawl “credit.” If you have many broken links, the crawler will waste that credit crawling the page behind the link to store information that is no longer available. This is a missed opportunity, as the bot could have used its resource to crawl a working page instead.

16 / Are your URLs Written in an Intelligible and Concise way?

Like any other visitor, Google doesn’t like URLs that don’t make sense. For good SEO, you must optimize your permalinks by adding your target keywords. This will significantly facilitate the work of crawling and indexing search engine algorithms.

bad url vs good url example

For this point, no need for very complicated tools. Most CMS gives you the possibility to customize the URL of your pages. Think about it before posting new content! Be careful, however, if you want to change the URLs of already existing pages: you risk doing more harm to your SEO than anything else. If you ever decide to change your permalink, consider doing a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.

17 / Do you have any problems with Redirects?

Exactly, let’s talk about redirects. Because poorly executed, they can potentially harm your SEO. Your SEO audit will, therefore, also have to look at this side.

There are several kinds of redirects that can penalize your SEO. Of the most vicious, I would say that it is undoubtedly that of the 301 redirect chains. They can sometimes cause you to lose 15% of traffic at each link.

It took me a while to figure out how to list these chained 301 redirects when the solution is simply the Screaming Frog SEO Spider software. For the complete tutorial, follow this video (in English) which shows you the step-by-step process.

The “Content” Part of your SEO Audit

18 / Are your Tags (Titles, META) and your Headings Optimized for SEO?

Once the technical audit has been carried out, the SEO analysis should focus on the textual content already present on your site. Make sure it’s relevant and consistent with your keyword strategy. If not, you should rewrite your texts.

But one more thing: are your hn tags and titles optimized for SEO?

  • Your title tag should be intelligible and concise and include your target keywords. This is the most crucial element over which you have control.
  • The META description (text under the link in Google results) should make the user want to choose your impact over another.
  • You must also structure your content with well-marked titles, which take up the semantic field of your keywords.

Finally, your tags and content must be truly unique. Having the same title tag twice on two different URLs is forbidden!

Most professional SEO tools include site audits that can give you this information to verify that you don’t have such errors. This is the case, for example, of SEMRush, whose capture can be seen below.

SEMRush-title-duplicate

19 / Have you Checked in your SEO Audit that you have no Duplicate Content?

As we have seen, your content must first be unique to be of good quality. Indeed, duplicate content, whether on your pages or in your tags, is penalized by Google. It is, therefore, harmful to your organic visibility on Google.

Duplicate content can come from:

  • at least two different URLs of your site whose content would be similar (or almost identical)
  • or even from another website that has “stolen” your content.

One of the most used SEO tools to track down duplicate content on a website is “CopyScape.”

20 / Can you still “Combine” Several Pages that Target the Same Keyword?

It is not uncommon for a site to have two URLs that can potentially “compete” from an SEO perspective. If this is the case, combining the two contents on a single URL may be interesting.

This refocusing work thus makes it possible to obtain pages with more authority for a given keyword, with more challenging content to surpass.

On Google Search Console:

  • Look at the main keywords on which your site is positioned on Google.
  • Then, click on the terms that bring you the most impressions to zoom in.
  • Then click on the “Pages” tab to zoom in on the specific URLs in the SERPs for the query in question.
  • If you notice that multiple URLs are “sharing” impressions, then there may be an opportunity to combine the two pages and produce more robust content.

21 / Is the Internal Mesh of your Site Organized into Watertight Thematic Silos?

In SEO, the links you make between the pages of your site are essential. This is called internal linking. This allows you to distribute the “SEO juice” between your pages, which materializes your site’s SEO value. Links are “roads” that get SEO juice flowing.

internal link example from home page

Internal link analysis should be an integral part of your SEO audit. In particular, you must count for each indexable page the number of internal incoming links (to ensure that your strategic pages have a robust inner mesh). You will also take a look at the anchors of your internal links: they must be diverse and natural.

One of the tools I love for internal linking analysis is My Ranking Metrics (created by Olivier Duffez, the illustrious mastermind behind the famous SEO blog WebRankInfo). The tool can be used for your full SEO audit, but I appreciate how easy it is to get an accurate overview of your internal link distribution.

22 / Did you Identify Orphan Pages during your SEO Audit?

An orphan page in SEO is a URL that does exist (it is accessible and does not return errors), but no other page on your site is pointing to it… It is a page “in orbit” from the rest of your site.

This is a concern from an SEO point of view because, instead of strengthening your thematic clusters and making them contribute to your SEO visibility, the Google bot will have more difficulty crawling these pages (it tends to follow the links, but precisely an orphan page is “dissociated” from your tree structure).

To find orphan pages on your site:

  • List all the URLs of your site visible to search engines (generate an XML sitemap, export the list from Google Analytics and Search Console, and look at the Google index with the command “site:https://mnseoultrapro.com/”)
  • Recover the indexable URLs of your site with a tool like Screaming Frog mentioned above
  • Match the two lists: are there indexable pages that you cannot find in the URLs retrieved in step 1? If so, you have identified your orphan pages.

If you have connected your Google Analytics account to the screaming frog, you have a report in the tool that can directly generate this list of orphan pages.

23 / Are your Images Optimized for SEO?

Images are essential to the user experience; that’s a fact. So that they also contribute to your natural referencing, analyze them during your SEO audit:

  • Are all your images accessible? No broken images?
  • Do your pictures weigh less than 500 KB (so as not to affect your loading time)?
  • Have you filled the ALT tag of each image with the keywords you are targeting?
  • Do you have pictures that call an HTTP file in HTTPS pages?

Again, the Screaming Frog tool can quickly help you audit your images, including checking that all ALT tags are filled out.

The “Backlinks” Component of your SEO Audit

24 / How many backlinks do you have to date, and are they relevant?

The analysis of backlinks (or inbound links) is essential. Since the “popularity” of your site is measured by the number of incoming links pointing to your site, your SEO analysis must be able to tell you about the number of backlinks your site has obtained to date.

Must Read: Off Page SEO Techniques to Increase Organic Traffic

It is usual for a site, over its lifetime, to gain and lose backlinks.

  • But what about the final balance?
  • Are you gaining more backlinks than you are losing?
  • How fast do you manage to acquire new inbound links?
Related Resource: How to Find Quality Backlinks

To analyze your backlinks, use SEO tools like Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, or SEMRush (report presented below).

Backlinks audit-SEMRush

25 / What is the Level of Authority of your Links?

Earning backlinks has a positive impact on your natural referencing. Your SEO audit should look at “how many” inbound links you’ve gotten to date.

But beware, it’s not just the number of inbound links that counts. These must ideally come from authority sites relevant to your market niche.

Professional SEO tools can visualize the distribution of your backlinks according to the authority of the sites (example below of the SEMRush report).

backlinks authority wise

26 / What do your TrustFlow and CitationFlow Look Like?

One way to have a summary of your backlinks analysis is to add to your SEO audit the comments of your TrustFlow and your CitationFlow.

These are two indicators that Majestic SEO created

  • The Trust Flow (TF) gives each of your incoming links a score between 0 and 100, attributed according to the trust that can be granted to it;
  • The Citation Flow (CF) indicates your number of inbound links.

This gives you a visualization of where your site is on an easy-to-digest matrix.

majestic-citation-flow-trust-flow

27 / Do your Incoming Links have different Anchor Text and Refer to Various Pages on your Site?

Too often, when hunting for new backlinks, site editors use “optimized Anchor Text“. Having a few is perfectly acceptable, but having too many can ultimately harm your natural referencing. Why?

Because Google will quickly understand that these links are not natural, he will soon realize your game, know that you force on a particular anchor text, and then consider that you are doing SPAM. It is, therefore, best to ensure in your SEO audit that your backlinks use varied and natural anchors ( most of your backlinks should use an anchor text that matches your brand ) and that everything is not “concentrated” around a single over-optimized text anchor.

In the same way, it is wise to analyze in your audit the destination page of your incoming links. Ideally, your backlinks should refer to various pages on your site (rather than always pointing to the home page, for example). This will give a more natural look and allow you to spread the SEO juice evenly throughout your site.

You can again use professional SEO tools to answer this question. The free and easy alternative is to go to Google Search Console’s “Links” report.

28 / How is your Backlinking Compared to your Competitors?

Do you have many backlinks? It’s a start… But what about your main competitors?
Of course, if they have even more of them (and their inbound links are relevant and from authority sites), their SEO power will likely still outweigh yours.

To carry out these analyses, nothing better than a professional SEO tool. The following video shows you how to perform fundamental competitive analysis on aHrefs.

29 / Do you have Backlinks that it Would be Better to Disavow?

Some backlinks can harm your SEO. Your SEO audit should verify that you are not receiving inbound links from questionable sites.If you find any, assess the risk they represent for your SEO:

  • Are there “really” many?
  • Are these links likely to result in a manual action against your site?

If you answered “yes” to the previous questions, then it may be best to disavow those backlinks via this link (requires choosing a Google Search Console property).

30 / Do you have an Engaged Subscriber Base?

Your SEO audit has every interest in including an analysis dimension on the audience that is loyal to you. This can be the list of subscribers to your newsletter or the community that follows you on social networks.

Not that being popular on a social network or having a large email base automatically propels you to the top of search results, But it’s a proxy for your “sounding board.”
In SEO, it matters. Because the more significant your community, the more powerful your ability to “quickly” gain new backlinks.

BONUS: An SEO audit should not make you lose sight of the strategic course

31 / Am I Confusing SEO Audit and Marketing Strategy?

Type “SEO Audit” into Google: and you will find more than 650,000 results. Thousands of web services promise to deliver the key information to position your site in the first results of Google. All “indicators” are reviewed:

  • On-page analysis,
  • Backlinks,
  • Internal mesh,
  • Crawl,
  • Domain Authority,
  • anchor texts,etc

All these elements are, of course, essential, but the strategy that goes behind the techniques is systematically missing… In the end, these are only points of detail compared to the “real” SEO strategy of an experienced SEO.

Knowing that we have 4000 backlinks and are 1st on “open kitchen” does not mean anything.

It’s not connected to any strategic thinking about business, in which SEO would be seen as a lever for growth and revenue (and not just a way to be “first” on a particular expression).

This last section is intended to open your eyes to the need to “strategize SEO” before going directly into the techniques. It will guide your thinking by asking you the right questions that will allow you to transform your SEO ranking into $.

32 / Is what I Offer on My Site in Line with What People Want?

In my professional life, I had the chance to meet entrepreneurs who launched genuine innovations and created new markets. As powerful as their new inventions are, the fact is that no one was looking for them “as is” on Google. What’s the point of being first on critical expressions typed twice a year?

I will never forget this company which offered a technical room for new houses which combined all renewable energies.

  • This room allowed the new owner to gain comfort and save money on his bills.
  • Of course, no one is looking for a “renewable energy technical room” in Google.
  • And the Internet users who typed “renewable energies” were not necessarily those who bought this type of solution: they were not necessarily owners, nor even while building a house, nor even looking for a product to buy…
  • In short, SEO was not the right lever to publicize and buy this innovation.

Research, by definition, works in the form of questions and answers. So the real SEO question you need to ask yourself is:

What question from Internet users does my content/product/service answer?
If you don’t provide answers to searches, or there isn’t a search for what you have to sell, then SEO isn’t for you. Systematically check the demand for your sector and
which specific keywords make your market.

33 / Does my Site Deserve to be at the Top of Search Results?

SEO audits look at and take the angle of the natural referencing techniques used. But this is superficial: if your offer cannot seduce and convert, sooner or later, you will be dethroned in the search pages by competitors who will win the enthusiasm of the crowds.

Google would not be doing an excellent job if it propelled sites to the first position that were much worse than their competitors or that were not relevant to the user’s request. This is why, before you want to reach the top of the searches, ask yourself the following questions:

What is different and unique about my company?
Why is my site 10 times better than all these names that appear in Google?

The answers to these questions will direct you to the right content to create, the one for which Google & your audience will recognize you. Because you are “special” and “qualitative, ” people will share and make natural links to your content, benefiting your SEO.

34 / Who are the Relays that will Amplify my Content and Accelerate my Backlinks?

As a reminder, more than 209 signals influence positioning in Google. And to build the popularity of a site, it is not a question of sticking thousands of links yourself in forums, comments, and shouting very loudly. You have to “win” your popularity so that it seems more natural than ever in the eyes of Google’s robots.

  • For this, you can rely on your customers and the best ambassadors of your brand.
  • But we must not stop there. Also, discuss with influencers in your industry, bloggers, journalists, and experts.
  • In short, relays can reach your target audience so that the “snowball” effect takes hold, and you garner 10 times more shares on social networks, backlinks, and articles about you…

35 / What is the Complete Marketing Mechanism that allows you to Convert 1st Google positions into Dollars?

Since the beginning of e-business, natural referencing has been a privileged acquisition lever. Indeed, it brings “free” traffic and customers. But SEO is no longer the “single” gateway to the Internet world.

Entrepreneurs can no longer rely solely on their precious 1st Google positions to achieve their sales goals. Indeed, digital uses have greatly expanded. Consequence: the user journey is sometimes long and unstructured. That’s why you must orchestrate multiple touchpoints with your customers rather than relying solely on SEO. And that changes everything.

The natural referencing of your site is only ONE touchpoint, and it does not answer all the essential questions:

  • How do you make yourself known (without having to google anything)?
  • How do you make sure people remember you?
  • How to create a lasting relationship of trust with your audience?
  • How to optimize the conversion rate and get the most out of the traffic you manage to bring in?
  • How to satisfy and make the customers profitable

Conclusion

The best thing is to regularly carry out “SEO audits” to adjust your SEO strategy as you go along and thus maximize your performance (and at the same time obtain a good return on investment).

But strategy and tactics should not be confused.

To succeed in natural referencing, you must find strategic answers before diving into the techniques.

Related Posts

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Receiving natural traffic from Google in large quantities… All websites dream of it. This is why you certainly want to embark on an SEO audit.

An SEO audit can help you optimize the natural referencing of your website. It will identify what is working, what is not, and what can be improved. At the end of an audit, you are often led to list your website’s weaknesses and decide on actions to remedy them.

In this article, you will find the 30 questions to ask yourself when doing an SEO audit. For each question, we will see the following:

  • why it matters for your SEO audit?
  • and where to find the answer and with which tool?

SEO Audit Framework

1 / Why do you want to carry out an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit can be conducted several times in the life of a site. Before a first online publication or during a website redesign, for example. Indeed, when you decide to bring your site up to date, you take the opportunity also to overhaul your SEO.

But each SEO audit must take a certain “angle of view,” which can vary according to the needs.

  • Is this SEO audit used to select a particular agency?
  • Or to brief your developers on their “to-do” for the next quarter?
  • Maybe you are doing this SEO audit to improve your content marketing.

Depending on “what you want to do with this SEO audit, the focus may be on one dimension rather than another. This is why you will have to start with this first question.

2 / What is the SMART Objective of your SEO Audit?

Before you start, it is important to define the objectives of your SEO analysis. To determine your objectives, use the famous SMART method. Your goals should be both:

  • S specific: set clear and precise objectives;
  • M Measurable: make sure you can accurately measure the success (or not) of your objectives;
  • A ambitious: your goals must be ambitious enough to warrant an SEO audit;
  • R realistic: they must be achievable so that you don’t give up along the way;
  • T timely defined: set a specific period for your SEO audit.

Thus, SMART Objectives will be Objectives of the type:

  • “Increase my traffic by at least 50% within a year. »
  • “Define the 3 priority projects that will have to be studied by my SEO agency this year”.
  • “Improve the quality of backlinks obtained in the next 3 months.” etc.

3 / What KPIs do you hope to Change with this SEO Audit?

Last phase of the scoping: how will you measure the success of this SEO audit? You will need to establish KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Because the objective is not to obtain a report that will end up on your hard drive: the actions resulting from your SEO audit will impact which business indicator?

  • Do you want more conversions and SEO traffic?
  • Do you have conversion issues behind, which could be achieved through SEO?
  • Or maybe you want more qualified leads on your site who bounce less, spend more time, and explore your site more.

It’s up to you to clarify the metric you will look at to tell if the SEO analysis was a success/failure.

The “Keywords” Part of your SEO Audit

4 / On Which Keywords is your site Currently Positioned?

The first thing to do is to validate the keywords on which your site already appears on Google. You will mainly analyze the following elements:

  • The quality and relevance of your keywords.
  • The adequacy of the keywords with your field of activity.

With Google Search Console, you will be able to know precisely for each keyword:

  • The specific query on which your site appears on Google,
  • how many impressions, clicks and click-through rates do you get for each of them,
  • and finally, the position your site occupies in the search results for each keyword.
Google-search-console-keywords overview

5 / What is the Total Search Volume in your Market?

How big is your market on Google? How many searches are made related to your product category?

These questions are essential for the marketer. The answers allow him to estimate whether there is enough demand on Google to fulfill his business objectives. This information also makes it possible to calculate how much the SEO can “really” bring in.

To quantify the total volume of your market, consider all possible fields in terms of keywords: head-tail, mid-tail, and long-tail. Whether it’s searches done 1 million times a month, or 500 times per month, take them into account.

You can use any professional SEO tool to add this market research to your SEO audit. If you are looking for an accessible alternative to get this data, you can always use the Google Ads Keyword Planner.

6 / What is the Level of competition/difficulty on the Targeted Keywords?

Compare yourself to the competition: developing your keyword strategy based on this is essential.

Because the best SEOs don’t have a magic wand. For some keywords, it will be challenging and costly (even impossible sometimes) to unbolt a well-established competitor…

Ditch the overly competitive keywords and focus on the ones you can rank for in the top search engine results.

You can again use the Google Ads Keyword Planner Competition Index to gauge a keyword’s SEO difficulty. Otherwise, more professional SEO tools, such as ahrefs, will give you more elaborate scorings.

ahref keywords difficulty

7 / What are the most Dangerous Competitors Identified by your SEO Audit?

On Google, the most dangerous competitors are not always the ones you think of!
On Google, specific sites related to your market will occupy the coveted first places: information sites, blogs, institutions, etc. Identifying “who” dominates the keywords you are targeting is essential.

SEO tools can give you accurate maps that automatically identify sites with which you “share” multiple keywords. Instead, look at a sample report available in SERPstats that shows you which areas share the most keywords with yours and the competitive gap between your two domains.

Competitors keyword gap

8 / What are the Trending Keywords in your Market?

When it comes to keyword research, your SEO audit should not only look at search volume and competition but also the dynamics of the main targeted keywords:

  • Which queries are progressing the fastest?
  • Those who decline?

This will allow you to prioritize your SEO efforts later to surf trends and identify “Evergreen” keywords that can bring in traffic today and tomorrow.

You can always look at the Google Trends tool to catch trends in your industry. Focus on a limited number of keywords (10 to 20 on average). Also, look at the “Associated queries – In progress” block.

Keywords Intent Check with google trends

9 / What is the user Intent behind the Targeted Keywords?

In SEO, we must never forget that real humans make requests behind the screen!

Each individual who requests Google has a particular intention, an objective… Of course, he will always favor the results that answer his question and allow him to
achieve his research objective.

In addition, Google’s algorithm has long favored content that “really” answers the question posed by the Internet user. You need to go beyond the “keyword” stage and understand “why” people are doing that particular search.

Keywords intent review

To put you on track, you can analyze the content of the sites that appear on the 1st page for the targeted keyword: what are they talking about? What is the angle of their content? Its length? etc

With this common-sense step in your SEO audit, you will know what type of content you will need to produce to appear in Google’s top positions.

10 / What is the Business Value of Each Keyword for you?

Finally, we cannot talk about keywords without mentioning the analysis of the commercial intent behind each search term.

Because not all requests are created equal, between “mountain bike definition” and “best mountain bike brand,” we know which of these two queries will have the most probability of ending with the purchase of a product…

For most marketers, the fundamental objective of SEO is to ensure a presence on the keywords typed by people “in the market” looking to invest in a given product/service. This is why your SEO audit should not overlook this issue.

You can classify the main keywords of your market and label the purchase intention in a simple spreadsheet (with the content ideas generated during the previous question).

The “Technical and UX” Part of your SEO Audit

11 / Does your Site seem to Satisfy its Users?

The vast question you will say to me… And yet so important.
You will be able to reduce millions of visitors from Google if your site is slow, poorly designed, and on which we never find what we are looking for… So stop your SEO audit here. There is no point in wanting to increase traffic if you don’t have “the right formula” tested and validated on a representative number of customers.

To have an inventory of your performance for your SEO audit, look in Google Analytics how it has evolved:

  • loading time
  • the bounce rate
  • the number of pages/visits
  • conversion rate
  • the initiation rate of an objective (ex: adding a cart)
  • the number of visitors who return month to month

You can take your investigations further. With a free tool like Hotjar, you can analyze the heat maps of your pages and survey your visitors to gain more qualitative feedback. This “voice of the customer” helps explain the “why” behind the numbers.

Without going that far, your Google Analytics account already contains a treasure trove of data. For example, have you ever explored the cohort analysis report? It allows you to zoom in on your site’s ability to “retain” an audience.

12 / Does your Site Adapt to all Screens?

We are talking about responsive design here. It is mandatory because it is through our smartphones that we access the Internet the most nowadays.

To go further, you can create AMP pages. This solution is “designed for mobile.” Pages load instantly, helping AMP pages curry organic favor with Google…

To check your site’s compatibility with mobiles, you can use the “Mobile-Friendly Test” tool by Google.

You can also go to your Google Search Console in the “Mobile Usability” report. You will also find that a piece dedicated to AMP pages (if you have any) is also available.

mobile usability check

13 / Is the Loading Time of Your Site Fast?

We saw it above. The loading speed of your site is essential. It is advisable not to exceed 3 seconds; otherwise, the user leaves the page and goes to a competing site.

To analyze the loading speed of your site and benchmark yourself, use the “Google Page Speed ​​Insights” tool. Attention, the device is intractable! The excellent news: Page Speed ​​Insights gives you a concrete list of possible actions and does the work for you.

Check out the “Page experience” report in Google Search Console for your SEO audit. SEOs suspect Google of making it an increasingly important criterion in ranking search engine results, even if John Mueller (Google SEO Advocate) tends to temper the debate.

page experience report in search console

14 / Are all your URLs Accessible and Indexable?

Of course, that makes sense… If the pages of your site are not indexable (no index tag) or if it’s the little train of 404 errors, don’t expect to climb to the 1st position of the Google podium!

Without wanting to bring too much importance to it, we will also appreciate the presence of a sitemap file and its declaration within the robots.txt file. It’s always “cleaner” for your natural referencing.

To identify all these errors and list your indexable and non-indexable pages, there is nothing like using the “Screaming Frog SEO spider” software.

15 / Have you Cleaned up all your Broken Links?

It is expected, during the life of a site, for some links to be broken. It can be an internal link, which refers to one of your pages that no longer exists, or an outgoing connection, which directs to a site that has disappeared.

Beyond the fact that clicking on a broken link causes a disappointing experience for your visitors, these broken links can harm your natural referencing. A proper SEO audit will verify that all your links are functional.

Why do broken links matter in SEO? Because when Google’s bot crawls a site, it has limited crawl “credit.” If you have many broken links, the crawler will waste that credit crawling the page behind the link to store information that is no longer available. This is a missed opportunity, as the bot could have used its resource to crawl a working page instead.

16 / Are your URLs Written in an Intelligible and Concise way?

Like any other visitor, Google doesn’t like URLs that don’t make sense. For good SEO, you must optimize your permalinks by adding your target keywords. This will significantly facilitate the work of crawling and indexing search engine algorithms.

bad url vs good url example

For this point, no need for very complicated tools. Most CMS gives you the possibility to customize the URL of your pages. Think about it before posting new content! Be careful, however, if you want to change the URLs of already existing pages: you risk doing more harm to your SEO than anything else. If you ever decide to change your permalink, consider doing a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.

17 / Do you have any problems with Redirects?

Exactly, let’s talk about redirects. Because poorly executed, they can potentially harm your SEO. Your SEO audit will, therefore, also have to look at this side.

There are several kinds of redirects that can penalize your SEO. Of the most vicious, I would say that it is undoubtedly that of the 301 redirect chains. They can sometimes cause you to lose 15% of traffic at each link.

It took me a while to figure out how to list these chained 301 redirects when the solution is simply the Screaming Frog SEO Spider software. For the complete tutorial, follow this video (in English) which shows you the step-by-step process.

The “Content” Part of your SEO Audit

18 / Are your Tags (Titles, META) and your Headings Optimized for SEO?

Once the technical audit has been carried out, the SEO analysis should focus on the textual content already present on your site. Make sure it’s relevant and consistent with your keyword strategy. If not, you should rewrite your texts.

But one more thing: are your hn tags and titles optimized for SEO?

  • Your title tag should be intelligible and concise and include your target keywords. This is the most crucial element over which you have control.
  • The META description (text under the link in Google results) should make the user want to choose your impact over another.
  • You must also structure your content with well-marked titles, which take up the semantic field of your keywords.

Finally, your tags and content must be truly unique. Having the same title tag twice on two different URLs is forbidden!

Most professional SEO tools include site audits that can give you this information to verify that you don’t have such errors. This is the case, for example, of SEMRush, whose capture can be seen below.

SEMRush-title-duplicate

19 / Have you Checked in your SEO Audit that you have no Duplicate Content?

As we have seen, your content must first be unique to be of good quality. Indeed, duplicate content, whether on your pages or in your tags, is penalized by Google. It is, therefore, harmful to your organic visibility on Google.

Duplicate content can come from:

  • at least two different URLs of your site whose content would be similar (or almost identical)
  • or even from another website that has “stolen” your content.

One of the most used SEO tools to track down duplicate content on a website is “CopyScape.”

20 / Can you still “Combine” Several Pages that Target the Same Keyword?

It is not uncommon for a site to have two URLs that can potentially “compete” from an SEO perspective. If this is the case, combining the two contents on a single URL may be interesting.

This refocusing work thus makes it possible to obtain pages with more authority for a given keyword, with more challenging content to surpass.

On Google Search Console:

  • Look at the main keywords on which your site is positioned on Google.
  • Then, click on the terms that bring you the most impressions to zoom in.
  • Then click on the “Pages” tab to zoom in on the specific URLs in the SERPs for the query in question.
  • If you notice that multiple URLs are “sharing” impressions, then there may be an opportunity to combine the two pages and produce more robust content.

21 / Is the Internal Mesh of your Site Organized into Watertight Thematic Silos?

In SEO, the links you make between the pages of your site are essential. This is called internal linking. This allows you to distribute the “SEO juice” between your pages, which materializes your site’s SEO value. Links are “roads” that get SEO juice flowing.

internal link example from home page

Internal link analysis should be an integral part of your SEO audit. In particular, you must count for each indexable page the number of internal incoming links (to ensure that your strategic pages have a robust inner mesh). You will also take a look at the anchors of your internal links: they must be diverse and natural.

One of the tools I love for internal linking analysis is My Ranking Metrics (created by Olivier Duffez, the illustrious mastermind behind the famous SEO blog WebRankInfo). The tool can be used for your full SEO audit, but I appreciate how easy it is to get an accurate overview of your internal link distribution.

22 / Did you Identify Orphan Pages during your SEO Audit?

An orphan page in SEO is a URL that does exist (it is accessible and does not return errors), but no other page on your site is pointing to it… It is a page “in orbit” from the rest of your site.

This is a concern from an SEO point of view because, instead of strengthening your thematic clusters and making them contribute to your SEO visibility, the Google bot will have more difficulty crawling these pages (it tends to follow the links, but precisely an orphan page is “dissociated” from your tree structure).

To find orphan pages on your site:

  • List all the URLs of your site visible to search engines (generate an XML sitemap, export the list from Google Analytics and Search Console, and look at the Google index with the command “site:https://mnseoultrapro.com/”)
  • Recover the indexable URLs of your site with a tool like Screaming Frog mentioned above
  • Match the two lists: are there indexable pages that you cannot find in the URLs retrieved in step 1? If so, you have identified your orphan pages.

If you have connected your Google Analytics account to the screaming frog, you have a report in the tool that can directly generate this list of orphan pages.

23 / Are your Images Optimized for SEO?

Images are essential to the user experience; that’s a fact. So that they also contribute to your natural referencing, analyze them during your SEO audit:

  • Are all your images accessible? No broken images?
  • Do your pictures weigh less than 500 KB (so as not to affect your loading time)?
  • Have you filled the ALT tag of each image with the keywords you are targeting?
  • Do you have pictures that call an HTTP file in HTTPS pages?

Again, the Screaming Frog tool can quickly help you audit your images, including checking that all ALT tags are filled out.

The “Backlinks” Component of your SEO Audit

24 / How many backlinks do you have to date, and are they relevant?

The analysis of backlinks (or inbound links) is essential. Since the “popularity” of your site is measured by the number of incoming links pointing to your site, your SEO analysis must be able to tell you about the number of backlinks your site has obtained to date.

Must Read: Off Page SEO Techniques to Increase Organic Traffic

It is usual for a site, over its lifetime, to gain and lose backlinks.

  • But what about the final balance?
  • Are you gaining more backlinks than you are losing?
  • How fast do you manage to acquire new inbound links?
Related Resource: How to Find Quality Backlinks

To analyze your backlinks, use SEO tools like Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, or SEMRush (report presented below).

Backlinks audit-SEMRush

25 / What is the Level of Authority of your Links?

Earning backlinks has a positive impact on your natural referencing. Your SEO audit should look at “how many” inbound links you’ve gotten to date.

But beware, it’s not just the number of inbound links that counts. These must ideally come from authority sites relevant to your market niche.

Professional SEO tools can visualize the distribution of your backlinks according to the authority of the sites (example below of the SEMRush report).

backlinks authority wise

26 / What do your TrustFlow and CitationFlow Look Like?

One way to have a summary of your backlinks analysis is to add to your SEO audit the comments of your TrustFlow and your CitationFlow.

These are two indicators that Majestic SEO created

  • The Trust Flow (TF) gives each of your incoming links a score between 0 and 100, attributed according to the trust that can be granted to it;
  • The Citation Flow (CF) indicates your number of inbound links.

This gives you a visualization of where your site is on an easy-to-digest matrix.

majestic-citation-flow-trust-flow

27 / Do your Incoming Links have different Anchor Text and Refer to Various Pages on your Site?

Too often, when hunting for new backlinks, site editors use “optimized Anchor Text“. Having a few is perfectly acceptable, but having too many can ultimately harm your natural referencing. Why?

Because Google will quickly understand that these links are not natural, he will soon realize your game, know that you force on a particular anchor text, and then consider that you are doing SPAM. It is, therefore, best to ensure in your SEO audit that your backlinks use varied and natural anchors ( most of your backlinks should use an anchor text that matches your brand ) and that everything is not “concentrated” around a single over-optimized text anchor.

In the same way, it is wise to analyze in your audit the destination page of your incoming links. Ideally, your backlinks should refer to various pages on your site (rather than always pointing to the home page, for example). This will give a more natural look and allow you to spread the SEO juice evenly throughout your site.

You can again use professional SEO tools to answer this question. The free and easy alternative is to go to Google Search Console’s “Links” report.

28 / How is your Backlinking Compared to your Competitors?

Do you have many backlinks? It’s a start… But what about your main competitors?
Of course, if they have even more of them (and their inbound links are relevant and from authority sites), their SEO power will likely still outweigh yours.

To carry out these analyses, nothing better than a professional SEO tool. The following video shows you how to perform fundamental competitive analysis on aHrefs.

29 / Do you have Backlinks that it Would be Better to Disavow?

Some backlinks can harm your SEO. Your SEO audit should verify that you are not receiving inbound links from questionable sites.If you find any, assess the risk they represent for your SEO:

  • Are there “really” many?
  • Are these links likely to result in a manual action against your site?

If you answered “yes” to the previous questions, then it may be best to disavow those backlinks via this link (requires choosing a Google Search Console property).

30 / Do you have an Engaged Subscriber Base?

Your SEO audit has every interest in including an analysis dimension on the audience that is loyal to you. This can be the list of subscribers to your newsletter or the community that follows you on social networks.

Not that being popular on a social network or having a large email base automatically propels you to the top of search results, But it’s a proxy for your “sounding board.”
In SEO, it matters. Because the more significant your community, the more powerful your ability to “quickly” gain new backlinks.

BONUS: An SEO audit should not make you lose sight of the strategic course

31 / Am I Confusing SEO Audit and Marketing Strategy?

Type “SEO Audit” into Google: and you will find more than 650,000 results. Thousands of web services promise to deliver the key information to position your site in the first results of Google. All “indicators” are reviewed:

  • On-page analysis,
  • Backlinks,
  • Internal mesh,
  • Crawl,
  • Domain Authority,
  • anchor texts,etc

All these elements are, of course, essential, but the strategy that goes behind the techniques is systematically missing… In the end, these are only points of detail compared to the “real” SEO strategy of an experienced SEO.

Knowing that we have 4000 backlinks and are 1st on “open kitchen” does not mean anything.

It’s not connected to any strategic thinking about business, in which SEO would be seen as a lever for growth and revenue (and not just a way to be “first” on a particular expression).

This last section is intended to open your eyes to the need to “strategize SEO” before going directly into the techniques. It will guide your thinking by asking you the right questions that will allow you to transform your SEO ranking into $.

32 / Is what I Offer on My Site in Line with What People Want?

In my professional life, I had the chance to meet entrepreneurs who launched genuine innovations and created new markets. As powerful as their new inventions are, the fact is that no one was looking for them “as is” on Google. What’s the point of being first on critical expressions typed twice a year?

I will never forget this company which offered a technical room for new houses which combined all renewable energies.

  • This room allowed the new owner to gain comfort and save money on his bills.
  • Of course, no one is looking for a “renewable energy technical room” in Google.
  • And the Internet users who typed “renewable energies” were not necessarily those who bought this type of solution: they were not necessarily owners, nor even while building a house, nor even looking for a product to buy…
  • In short, SEO was not the right lever to publicize and buy this innovation.

Research, by definition, works in the form of questions and answers. So the real SEO question you need to ask yourself is:

What question from Internet users does my content/product/service answer?
If you don’t provide answers to searches, or there isn’t a search for what you have to sell, then SEO isn’t for you. Systematically check the demand for your sector and
which specific keywords make your market.

33 / Does my Site Deserve to be at the Top of Search Results?

SEO audits look at and take the angle of the natural referencing techniques used. But this is superficial: if your offer cannot seduce and convert, sooner or later, you will be dethroned in the search pages by competitors who will win the enthusiasm of the crowds.

Google would not be doing an excellent job if it propelled sites to the first position that were much worse than their competitors or that were not relevant to the user’s request. This is why, before you want to reach the top of the searches, ask yourself the following questions:

What is different and unique about my company?
Why is my site 10 times better than all these names that appear in Google?

The answers to these questions will direct you to the right content to create, the one for which Google & your audience will recognize you. Because you are “special” and “qualitative, ” people will share and make natural links to your content, benefiting your SEO.

34 / Who are the Relays that will Amplify my Content and Accelerate my Backlinks?

As a reminder, more than 209 signals influence positioning in Google. And to build the popularity of a site, it is not a question of sticking thousands of links yourself in forums, comments, and shouting very loudly. You have to “win” your popularity so that it seems more natural than ever in the eyes of Google’s robots.

  • For this, you can rely on your customers and the best ambassadors of your brand.
  • But we must not stop there. Also, discuss with influencers in your industry, bloggers, journalists, and experts.
  • In short, relays can reach your target audience so that the “snowball” effect takes hold, and you garner 10 times more shares on social networks, backlinks, and articles about you…

35 / What is the Complete Marketing Mechanism that allows you to Convert 1st Google positions into Dollars?

Since the beginning of e-business, natural referencing has been a privileged acquisition lever. Indeed, it brings “free” traffic and customers. But SEO is no longer the “single” gateway to the Internet world.

Entrepreneurs can no longer rely solely on their precious 1st Google positions to achieve their sales goals. Indeed, digital uses have greatly expanded. Consequence: the user journey is sometimes long and unstructured. That’s why you must orchestrate multiple touchpoints with your customers rather than relying solely on SEO. And that changes everything.

The natural referencing of your site is only ONE touchpoint, and it does not answer all the essential questions:

  • How do you make yourself known (without having to google anything)?
  • How do you make sure people remember you?
  • How to create a lasting relationship of trust with your audience?
  • How to optimize the conversion rate and get the most out of the traffic you manage to bring in?
  • How to satisfy and make the customers profitable

Conclusion

The best thing is to regularly carry out “SEO audits” to adjust your SEO strategy as you go along and thus maximize your performance (and at the same time obtain a good return on investment).

But strategy and tactics should not be confused.

To succeed in natural referencing, you must find strategic answers before diving into the techniques.

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Receiving natural traffic from Google in large quantities… All websites dream of it. This is why you certainly want to embark on an SEO audit.

An SEO audit can help you optimize the natural referencing of your website. It will identify what is working, what is not, and what can be improved. At the end of an audit, you are often led to list your website’s weaknesses and decide on actions to remedy them.

In this article, you will find the 30 questions to ask yourself when doing an SEO audit. For each question, we will see the following:

  • why it matters for your SEO audit?
  • and where to find the answer and with which tool?

SEO Audit Framework

1 / Why do you want to carry out an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit can be conducted several times in the life of a site. Before a first online publication or during a website redesign, for example. Indeed, when you decide to bring your site up to date, you take the opportunity also to overhaul your SEO.

But each SEO audit must take a certain “angle of view,” which can vary according to the needs.

  • Is this SEO audit used to select a particular agency?
  • Or to brief your developers on their “to-do” for the next quarter?
  • Maybe you are doing this SEO audit to improve your content marketing.

Depending on “what you want to do with this SEO audit, the focus may be on one dimension rather than another. This is why you will have to start with this first question.

2 / What is the SMART Objective of your SEO Audit?

Before you start, it is important to define the objectives of your SEO analysis. To determine your objectives, use the famous SMART method. Your goals should be both:

  • S specific: set clear and precise objectives;
  • M Measurable: make sure you can accurately measure the success (or not) of your objectives;
  • A ambitious: your goals must be ambitious enough to warrant an SEO audit;
  • R realistic: they must be achievable so that you don’t give up along the way;
  • T timely defined: set a specific period for your SEO audit.

Thus, SMART Objectives will be Objectives of the type:

  • “Increase my traffic by at least 50% within a year. »
  • “Define the 3 priority projects that will have to be studied by my SEO agency this year”.
  • “Improve the quality of backlinks obtained in the next 3 months.” etc.

3 / What KPIs do you hope to Change with this SEO Audit?

Last phase of the scoping: how will you measure the success of this SEO audit? You will need to establish KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Because the objective is not to obtain a report that will end up on your hard drive: the actions resulting from your SEO audit will impact which business indicator?

  • Do you want more conversions and SEO traffic?
  • Do you have conversion issues behind, which could be achieved through SEO?
  • Or maybe you want more qualified leads on your site who bounce less, spend more time, and explore your site more.

It’s up to you to clarify the metric you will look at to tell if the SEO analysis was a success/failure.

The “Keywords” Part of your SEO Audit

4 / On Which Keywords is your site Currently Positioned?

The first thing to do is to validate the keywords on which your site already appears on Google. You will mainly analyze the following elements:

  • The quality and relevance of your keywords.
  • The adequacy of the keywords with your field of activity.

With Google Search Console, you will be able to know precisely for each keyword:

  • The specific query on which your site appears on Google,
  • how many impressions, clicks and click-through rates do you get for each of them,
  • and finally, the position your site occupies in the search results for each keyword.
Google-search-console-keywords overview

5 / What is the Total Search Volume in your Market?

How big is your market on Google? How many searches are made related to your product category?

These questions are essential for the marketer. The answers allow him to estimate whether there is enough demand on Google to fulfill his business objectives. This information also makes it possible to calculate how much the SEO can “really” bring in.

To quantify the total volume of your market, consider all possible fields in terms of keywords: head-tail, mid-tail, and long-tail. Whether it’s searches done 1 million times a month, or 500 times per month, take them into account.

You can use any professional SEO tool to add this market research to your SEO audit. If you are looking for an accessible alternative to get this data, you can always use the Google Ads Keyword Planner.

6 / What is the Level of competition/difficulty on the Targeted Keywords?

Compare yourself to the competition: developing your keyword strategy based on this is essential.

Because the best SEOs don’t have a magic wand. For some keywords, it will be challenging and costly (even impossible sometimes) to unbolt a well-established competitor…

Ditch the overly competitive keywords and focus on the ones you can rank for in the top search engine results.

You can again use the Google Ads Keyword Planner Competition Index to gauge a keyword’s SEO difficulty. Otherwise, more professional SEO tools, such as ahrefs, will give you more elaborate scorings.

ahref keywords difficulty

7 / What are the most Dangerous Competitors Identified by your SEO Audit?

On Google, the most dangerous competitors are not always the ones you think of!
On Google, specific sites related to your market will occupy the coveted first places: information sites, blogs, institutions, etc. Identifying “who” dominates the keywords you are targeting is essential.

SEO tools can give you accurate maps that automatically identify sites with which you “share” multiple keywords. Instead, look at a sample report available in SERPstats that shows you which areas share the most keywords with yours and the competitive gap between your two domains.

Competitors keyword gap

8 / What are the Trending Keywords in your Market?

When it comes to keyword research, your SEO audit should not only look at search volume and competition but also the dynamics of the main targeted keywords:

  • Which queries are progressing the fastest?
  • Those who decline?

This will allow you to prioritize your SEO efforts later to surf trends and identify “Evergreen” keywords that can bring in traffic today and tomorrow.

You can always look at the Google Trends tool to catch trends in your industry. Focus on a limited number of keywords (10 to 20 on average). Also, look at the “Associated queries – In progress” block.

Keywords Intent Check with google trends

9 / What is the user Intent behind the Targeted Keywords?

In SEO, we must never forget that real humans make requests behind the screen!

Each individual who requests Google has a particular intention, an objective… Of course, he will always favor the results that answer his question and allow him to
achieve his research objective.

In addition, Google’s algorithm has long favored content that “really” answers the question posed by the Internet user. You need to go beyond the “keyword” stage and understand “why” people are doing that particular search.

Keywords intent review

To put you on track, you can analyze the content of the sites that appear on the 1st page for the targeted keyword: what are they talking about? What is the angle of their content? Its length? etc

With this common-sense step in your SEO audit, you will know what type of content you will need to produce to appear in Google’s top positions.

10 / What is the Business Value of Each Keyword for you?

Finally, we cannot talk about keywords without mentioning the analysis of the commercial intent behind each search term.

Because not all requests are created equal, between “mountain bike definition” and “best mountain bike brand,” we know which of these two queries will have the most probability of ending with the purchase of a product…

For most marketers, the fundamental objective of SEO is to ensure a presence on the keywords typed by people “in the market” looking to invest in a given product/service. This is why your SEO audit should not overlook this issue.

You can classify the main keywords of your market and label the purchase intention in a simple spreadsheet (with the content ideas generated during the previous question).

The “Technical and UX” Part of your SEO Audit

11 / Does your Site seem to Satisfy its Users?

The vast question you will say to me… And yet so important.
You will be able to reduce millions of visitors from Google if your site is slow, poorly designed, and on which we never find what we are looking for… So stop your SEO audit here. There is no point in wanting to increase traffic if you don’t have “the right formula” tested and validated on a representative number of customers.

To have an inventory of your performance for your SEO audit, look in Google Analytics how it has evolved:

  • loading time
  • the bounce rate
  • the number of pages/visits
  • conversion rate
  • the initiation rate of an objective (ex: adding a cart)
  • the number of visitors who return month to month

You can take your investigations further. With a free tool like Hotjar, you can analyze the heat maps of your pages and survey your visitors to gain more qualitative feedback. This “voice of the customer” helps explain the “why” behind the numbers.

Without going that far, your Google Analytics account already contains a treasure trove of data. For example, have you ever explored the cohort analysis report? It allows you to zoom in on your site’s ability to “retain” an audience.

12 / Does your Site Adapt to all Screens?

We are talking about responsive design here. It is mandatory because it is through our smartphones that we access the Internet the most nowadays.

To go further, you can create AMP pages. This solution is “designed for mobile.” Pages load instantly, helping AMP pages curry organic favor with Google…

To check your site’s compatibility with mobiles, you can use the “Mobile-Friendly Test” tool by Google.

You can also go to your Google Search Console in the “Mobile Usability” report. You will also find that a piece dedicated to AMP pages (if you have any) is also available.

mobile usability check

13 / Is the Loading Time of Your Site Fast?

We saw it above. The loading speed of your site is essential. It is advisable not to exceed 3 seconds; otherwise, the user leaves the page and goes to a competing site.

To analyze the loading speed of your site and benchmark yourself, use the “Google Page Speed ​​Insights” tool. Attention, the device is intractable! The excellent news: Page Speed ​​Insights gives you a concrete list of possible actions and does the work for you.

Check out the “Page experience” report in Google Search Console for your SEO audit. SEOs suspect Google of making it an increasingly important criterion in ranking search engine results, even if John Mueller (Google SEO Advocate) tends to temper the debate.

page experience report in search console

14 / Are all your URLs Accessible and Indexable?

Of course, that makes sense… If the pages of your site are not indexable (no index tag) or if it’s the little train of 404 errors, don’t expect to climb to the 1st position of the Google podium!

Without wanting to bring too much importance to it, we will also appreciate the presence of a sitemap file and its declaration within the robots.txt file. It’s always “cleaner” for your natural referencing.

To identify all these errors and list your indexable and non-indexable pages, there is nothing like using the “Screaming Frog SEO spider” software.

15 / Have you Cleaned up all your Broken Links?

It is expected, during the life of a site, for some links to be broken. It can be an internal link, which refers to one of your pages that no longer exists, or an outgoing connection, which directs to a site that has disappeared.

Beyond the fact that clicking on a broken link causes a disappointing experience for your visitors, these broken links can harm your natural referencing. A proper SEO audit will verify that all your links are functional.

Why do broken links matter in SEO? Because when Google’s bot crawls a site, it has limited crawl “credit.” If you have many broken links, the crawler will waste that credit crawling the page behind the link to store information that is no longer available. This is a missed opportunity, as the bot could have used its resource to crawl a working page instead.

16 / Are your URLs Written in an Intelligible and Concise way?

Like any other visitor, Google doesn’t like URLs that don’t make sense. For good SEO, you must optimize your permalinks by adding your target keywords. This will significantly facilitate the work of crawling and indexing search engine algorithms.

bad url vs good url example

For this point, no need for very complicated tools. Most CMS gives you the possibility to customize the URL of your pages. Think about it before posting new content! Be careful, however, if you want to change the URLs of already existing pages: you risk doing more harm to your SEO than anything else. If you ever decide to change your permalink, consider doing a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.

17 / Do you have any problems with Redirects?

Exactly, let’s talk about redirects. Because poorly executed, they can potentially harm your SEO. Your SEO audit will, therefore, also have to look at this side.

There are several kinds of redirects that can penalize your SEO. Of the most vicious, I would say that it is undoubtedly that of the 301 redirect chains. They can sometimes cause you to lose 15% of traffic at each link.

It took me a while to figure out how to list these chained 301 redirects when the solution is simply the Screaming Frog SEO Spider software. For the complete tutorial, follow this video (in English) which shows you the step-by-step process.

The “Content” Part of your SEO Audit

18 / Are your Tags (Titles, META) and your Headings Optimized for SEO?

Once the technical audit has been carried out, the SEO analysis should focus on the textual content already present on your site. Make sure it’s relevant and consistent with your keyword strategy. If not, you should rewrite your texts.

But one more thing: are your hn tags and titles optimized for SEO?

  • Your title tag should be intelligible and concise and include your target keywords. This is the most crucial element over which you have control.
  • The META description (text under the link in Google results) should make the user want to choose your impact over another.
  • You must also structure your content with well-marked titles, which take up the semantic field of your keywords.

Finally, your tags and content must be truly unique. Having the same title tag twice on two different URLs is forbidden!

Most professional SEO tools include site audits that can give you this information to verify that you don’t have such errors. This is the case, for example, of SEMRush, whose capture can be seen below.

SEMRush-title-duplicate

19 / Have you Checked in your SEO Audit that you have no Duplicate Content?

As we have seen, your content must first be unique to be of good quality. Indeed, duplicate content, whether on your pages or in your tags, is penalized by Google. It is, therefore, harmful to your organic visibility on Google.

Duplicate content can come from:

  • at least two different URLs of your site whose content would be similar (or almost identical)
  • or even from another website that has “stolen” your content.

One of the most used SEO tools to track down duplicate content on a website is “CopyScape.”

20 / Can you still “Combine” Several Pages that Target the Same Keyword?

It is not uncommon for a site to have two URLs that can potentially “compete” from an SEO perspective. If this is the case, combining the two contents on a single URL may be interesting.

This refocusing work thus makes it possible to obtain pages with more authority for a given keyword, with more challenging content to surpass.

On Google Search Console:

  • Look at the main keywords on which your site is positioned on Google.
  • Then, click on the terms that bring you the most impressions to zoom in.
  • Then click on the “Pages” tab to zoom in on the specific URLs in the SERPs for the query in question.
  • If you notice that multiple URLs are “sharing” impressions, then there may be an opportunity to combine the two pages and produce more robust content.

21 / Is the Internal Mesh of your Site Organized into Watertight Thematic Silos?

In SEO, the links you make between the pages of your site are essential. This is called internal linking. This allows you to distribute the “SEO juice” between your pages, which materializes your site’s SEO value. Links are “roads” that get SEO juice flowing.

internal link example from home page

Internal link analysis should be an integral part of your SEO audit. In particular, you must count for each indexable page the number of internal incoming links (to ensure that your strategic pages have a robust inner mesh). You will also take a look at the anchors of your internal links: they must be diverse and natural.

One of the tools I love for internal linking analysis is My Ranking Metrics (created by Olivier Duffez, the illustrious mastermind behind the famous SEO blog WebRankInfo). The tool can be used for your full SEO audit, but I appreciate how easy it is to get an accurate overview of your internal link distribution.

22 / Did you Identify Orphan Pages during your SEO Audit?

An orphan page in SEO is a URL that does exist (it is accessible and does not return errors), but no other page on your site is pointing to it… It is a page “in orbit” from the rest of your site.

This is a concern from an SEO point of view because, instead of strengthening your thematic clusters and making them contribute to your SEO visibility, the Google bot will have more difficulty crawling these pages (it tends to follow the links, but precisely an orphan page is “dissociated” from your tree structure).

To find orphan pages on your site:

  • List all the URLs of your site visible to search engines (generate an XML sitemap, export the list from Google Analytics and Search Console, and look at the Google index with the command “site:https://mnseoultrapro.com/”)
  • Recover the indexable URLs of your site with a tool like Screaming Frog mentioned above
  • Match the two lists: are there indexable pages that you cannot find in the URLs retrieved in step 1? If so, you have identified your orphan pages.

If you have connected your Google Analytics account to the screaming frog, you have a report in the tool that can directly generate this list of orphan pages.

23 / Are your Images Optimized for SEO?

Images are essential to the user experience; that’s a fact. So that they also contribute to your natural referencing, analyze them during your SEO audit:

  • Are all your images accessible? No broken images?
  • Do your pictures weigh less than 500 KB (so as not to affect your loading time)?
  • Have you filled the ALT tag of each image with the keywords you are targeting?
  • Do you have pictures that call an HTTP file in HTTPS pages?

Again, the Screaming Frog tool can quickly help you audit your images, including checking that all ALT tags are filled out.

The “Backlinks” Component of your SEO Audit

24 / How many backlinks do you have to date, and are they relevant?

The analysis of backlinks (or inbound links) is essential. Since the “popularity” of your site is measured by the number of incoming links pointing to your site, your SEO analysis must be able to tell you about the number of backlinks your site has obtained to date.

Must Read: Off Page SEO Techniques to Increase Organic Traffic

It is usual for a site, over its lifetime, to gain and lose backlinks.

  • But what about the final balance?
  • Are you gaining more backlinks than you are losing?
  • How fast do you manage to acquire new inbound links?
Related Resource: How to Find Quality Backlinks

To analyze your backlinks, use SEO tools like Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, or SEMRush (report presented below).

Backlinks audit-SEMRush

25 / What is the Level of Authority of your Links?

Earning backlinks has a positive impact on your natural referencing. Your SEO audit should look at “how many” inbound links you’ve gotten to date.

But beware, it’s not just the number of inbound links that counts. These must ideally come from authority sites relevant to your market niche.

Professional SEO tools can visualize the distribution of your backlinks according to the authority of the sites (example below of the SEMRush report).

backlinks authority wise

26 / What do your TrustFlow and CitationFlow Look Like?

One way to have a summary of your backlinks analysis is to add to your SEO audit the comments of your TrustFlow and your CitationFlow.

These are two indicators that Majestic SEO created

  • The Trust Flow (TF) gives each of your incoming links a score between 0 and 100, attributed according to the trust that can be granted to it;
  • The Citation Flow (CF) indicates your number of inbound links.

This gives you a visualization of where your site is on an easy-to-digest matrix.

majestic-citation-flow-trust-flow

27 / Do your Incoming Links have different Anchor Text and Refer to Various Pages on your Site?

Too often, when hunting for new backlinks, site editors use “optimized Anchor Text“. Having a few is perfectly acceptable, but having too many can ultimately harm your natural referencing. Why?

Because Google will quickly understand that these links are not natural, he will soon realize your game, know that you force on a particular anchor text, and then consider that you are doing SPAM. It is, therefore, best to ensure in your SEO audit that your backlinks use varied and natural anchors ( most of your backlinks should use an anchor text that matches your brand ) and that everything is not “concentrated” around a single over-optimized text anchor.

In the same way, it is wise to analyze in your audit the destination page of your incoming links. Ideally, your backlinks should refer to various pages on your site (rather than always pointing to the home page, for example). This will give a more natural look and allow you to spread the SEO juice evenly throughout your site.

You can again use professional SEO tools to answer this question. The free and easy alternative is to go to Google Search Console’s “Links” report.

28 / How is your Backlinking Compared to your Competitors?

Do you have many backlinks? It’s a start… But what about your main competitors?
Of course, if they have even more of them (and their inbound links are relevant and from authority sites), their SEO power will likely still outweigh yours.

To carry out these analyses, nothing better than a professional SEO tool. The following video shows you how to perform fundamental competitive analysis on aHrefs.

29 / Do you have Backlinks that it Would be Better to Disavow?

Some backlinks can harm your SEO. Your SEO audit should verify that you are not receiving inbound links from questionable sites.If you find any, assess the risk they represent for your SEO:

  • Are there “really” many?
  • Are these links likely to result in a manual action against your site?

If you answered “yes” to the previous questions, then it may be best to disavow those backlinks via this link (requires choosing a Google Search Console property).

30 / Do you have an Engaged Subscriber Base?

Your SEO audit has every interest in including an analysis dimension on the audience that is loyal to you. This can be the list of subscribers to your newsletter or the community that follows you on social networks.

Not that being popular on a social network or having a large email base automatically propels you to the top of search results, But it’s a proxy for your “sounding board.”
In SEO, it matters. Because the more significant your community, the more powerful your ability to “quickly” gain new backlinks.

BONUS: An SEO audit should not make you lose sight of the strategic course

31 / Am I Confusing SEO Audit and Marketing Strategy?

Type “SEO Audit” into Google: and you will find more than 650,000 results. Thousands of web services promise to deliver the key information to position your site in the first results of Google. All “indicators” are reviewed:

  • On-page analysis,
  • Backlinks,
  • Internal mesh,
  • Crawl,
  • Domain Authority,
  • anchor texts,etc

All these elements are, of course, essential, but the strategy that goes behind the techniques is systematically missing… In the end, these are only points of detail compared to the “real” SEO strategy of an experienced SEO.

Knowing that we have 4000 backlinks and are 1st on “open kitchen” does not mean anything.

It’s not connected to any strategic thinking about business, in which SEO would be seen as a lever for growth and revenue (and not just a way to be “first” on a particular expression).

This last section is intended to open your eyes to the need to “strategize SEO” before going directly into the techniques. It will guide your thinking by asking you the right questions that will allow you to transform your SEO ranking into $.

32 / Is what I Offer on My Site in Line with What People Want?

In my professional life, I had the chance to meet entrepreneurs who launched genuine innovations and created new markets. As powerful as their new inventions are, the fact is that no one was looking for them “as is” on Google. What’s the point of being first on critical expressions typed twice a year?

I will never forget this company which offered a technical room for new houses which combined all renewable energies.

  • This room allowed the new owner to gain comfort and save money on his bills.
  • Of course, no one is looking for a “renewable energy technical room” in Google.
  • And the Internet users who typed “renewable energies” were not necessarily those who bought this type of solution: they were not necessarily owners, nor even while building a house, nor even looking for a product to buy…
  • In short, SEO was not the right lever to publicize and buy this innovation.

Research, by definition, works in the form of questions and answers. So the real SEO question you need to ask yourself is:

What question from Internet users does my content/product/service answer?
If you don’t provide answers to searches, or there isn’t a search for what you have to sell, then SEO isn’t for you. Systematically check the demand for your sector and
which specific keywords make your market.

33 / Does my Site Deserve to be at the Top of Search Results?

SEO audits look at and take the angle of the natural referencing techniques used. But this is superficial: if your offer cannot seduce and convert, sooner or later, you will be dethroned in the search pages by competitors who will win the enthusiasm of the crowds.

Google would not be doing an excellent job if it propelled sites to the first position that were much worse than their competitors or that were not relevant to the user’s request. This is why, before you want to reach the top of the searches, ask yourself the following questions:

What is different and unique about my company?
Why is my site 10 times better than all these names that appear in Google?

The answers to these questions will direct you to the right content to create, the one for which Google & your audience will recognize you. Because you are “special” and “qualitative, ” people will share and make natural links to your content, benefiting your SEO.

34 / Who are the Relays that will Amplify my Content and Accelerate my Backlinks?

As a reminder, more than 209 signals influence positioning in Google. And to build the popularity of a site, it is not a question of sticking thousands of links yourself in forums, comments, and shouting very loudly. You have to “win” your popularity so that it seems more natural than ever in the eyes of Google’s robots.

  • For this, you can rely on your customers and the best ambassadors of your brand.
  • But we must not stop there. Also, discuss with influencers in your industry, bloggers, journalists, and experts.
  • In short, relays can reach your target audience so that the “snowball” effect takes hold, and you garner 10 times more shares on social networks, backlinks, and articles about you…

35 / What is the Complete Marketing Mechanism that allows you to Convert 1st Google positions into Dollars?

Since the beginning of e-business, natural referencing has been a privileged acquisition lever. Indeed, it brings “free” traffic and customers. But SEO is no longer the “single” gateway to the Internet world.

Entrepreneurs can no longer rely solely on their precious 1st Google positions to achieve their sales goals. Indeed, digital uses have greatly expanded. Consequence: the user journey is sometimes long and unstructured. That’s why you must orchestrate multiple touchpoints with your customers rather than relying solely on SEO. And that changes everything.

The natural referencing of your site is only ONE touchpoint, and it does not answer all the essential questions:

  • How do you make yourself known (without having to google anything)?
  • How do you make sure people remember you?
  • How to create a lasting relationship of trust with your audience?
  • How to optimize the conversion rate and get the most out of the traffic you manage to bring in?
  • How to satisfy and make the customers profitable

Conclusion

The best thing is to regularly carry out “SEO audits” to adjust your SEO strategy as you go along and thus maximize your performance (and at the same time obtain a good return on investment).

But strategy and tactics should not be confused.

To succeed in natural referencing, you must find strategic answers before diving into the techniques.

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Receiving natural traffic from Google in large quantities… All websites dream of it. This is why you certainly want to embark on an SEO audit.

An SEO audit can help you optimize the natural referencing of your website. It will identify what is working, what is not, and what can be improved. At the end of an audit, you are often led to list your website’s weaknesses and decide on actions to remedy them.

In this article, you will find the 30 questions to ask yourself when doing an SEO audit. For each question, we will see the following:

  • why it matters for your SEO audit?
  • and where to find the answer and with which tool?

SEO Audit Framework

1 / Why do you want to carry out an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit can be conducted several times in the life of a site. Before a first online publication or during a website redesign, for example. Indeed, when you decide to bring your site up to date, you take the opportunity also to overhaul your SEO.

But each SEO audit must take a certain “angle of view,” which can vary according to the needs.

  • Is this SEO audit used to select a particular agency?
  • Or to brief your developers on their “to-do” for the next quarter?
  • Maybe you are doing this SEO audit to improve your content marketing.

Depending on “what you want to do with this SEO audit, the focus may be on one dimension rather than another. This is why you will have to start with this first question.

2 / What is the SMART Objective of your SEO Audit?

Before you start, it is important to define the objectives of your SEO analysis. To determine your objectives, use the famous SMART method. Your goals should be both:

  • S specific: set clear and precise objectives;
  • M Measurable: make sure you can accurately measure the success (or not) of your objectives;
  • A ambitious: your goals must be ambitious enough to warrant an SEO audit;
  • R realistic: they must be achievable so that you don’t give up along the way;
  • T timely defined: set a specific period for your SEO audit.

Thus, SMART Objectives will be Objectives of the type:

  • “Increase my traffic by at least 50% within a year. »
  • “Define the 3 priority projects that will have to be studied by my SEO agency this year”.
  • “Improve the quality of backlinks obtained in the next 3 months.” etc.

3 / What KPIs do you hope to Change with this SEO Audit?

Last phase of the scoping: how will you measure the success of this SEO audit? You will need to establish KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Because the objective is not to obtain a report that will end up on your hard drive: the actions resulting from your SEO audit will impact which business indicator?

  • Do you want more conversions and SEO traffic?
  • Do you have conversion issues behind, which could be achieved through SEO?
  • Or maybe you want more qualified leads on your site who bounce less, spend more time, and explore your site more.

It’s up to you to clarify the metric you will look at to tell if the SEO analysis was a success/failure.

The “Keywords” Part of your SEO Audit

4 / On Which Keywords is your site Currently Positioned?

The first thing to do is to validate the keywords on which your site already appears on Google. You will mainly analyze the following elements:

  • The quality and relevance of your keywords.
  • The adequacy of the keywords with your field of activity.

With Google Search Console, you will be able to know precisely for each keyword:

  • The specific query on which your site appears on Google,
  • how many impressions, clicks and click-through rates do you get for each of them,
  • and finally, the position your site occupies in the search results for each keyword.
Google-search-console-keywords overview

5 / What is the Total Search Volume in your Market?

How big is your market on Google? How many searches are made related to your product category?

These questions are essential for the marketer. The answers allow him to estimate whether there is enough demand on Google to fulfill his business objectives. This information also makes it possible to calculate how much the SEO can “really” bring in.

To quantify the total volume of your market, consider all possible fields in terms of keywords: head-tail, mid-tail, and long-tail. Whether it’s searches done 1 million times a month, or 500 times per month, take them into account.

You can use any professional SEO tool to add this market research to your SEO audit. If you are looking for an accessible alternative to get this data, you can always use the Google Ads Keyword Planner.

6 / What is the Level of competition/difficulty on the Targeted Keywords?

Compare yourself to the competition: developing your keyword strategy based on this is essential.

Because the best SEOs don’t have a magic wand. For some keywords, it will be challenging and costly (even impossible sometimes) to unbolt a well-established competitor…

Ditch the overly competitive keywords and focus on the ones you can rank for in the top search engine results.

You can again use the Google Ads Keyword Planner Competition Index to gauge a keyword’s SEO difficulty. Otherwise, more professional SEO tools, such as ahrefs, will give you more elaborate scorings.

ahref keywords difficulty

7 / What are the most Dangerous Competitors Identified by your SEO Audit?

On Google, the most dangerous competitors are not always the ones you think of!
On Google, specific sites related to your market will occupy the coveted first places: information sites, blogs, institutions, etc. Identifying “who” dominates the keywords you are targeting is essential.

SEO tools can give you accurate maps that automatically identify sites with which you “share” multiple keywords. Instead, look at a sample report available in SERPstats that shows you which areas share the most keywords with yours and the competitive gap between your two domains.

Competitors keyword gap

8 / What are the Trending Keywords in your Market?

When it comes to keyword research, your SEO audit should not only look at search volume and competition but also the dynamics of the main targeted keywords:

  • Which queries are progressing the fastest?
  • Those who decline?

This will allow you to prioritize your SEO efforts later to surf trends and identify “Evergreen” keywords that can bring in traffic today and tomorrow.

You can always look at the Google Trends tool to catch trends in your industry. Focus on a limited number of keywords (10 to 20 on average). Also, look at the “Associated queries – In progress” block.

Keywords Intent Check with google trends

9 / What is the user Intent behind the Targeted Keywords?

In SEO, we must never forget that real humans make requests behind the screen!

Each individual who requests Google has a particular intention, an objective… Of course, he will always favor the results that answer his question and allow him to
achieve his research objective.

In addition, Google’s algorithm has long favored content that “really” answers the question posed by the Internet user. You need to go beyond the “keyword” stage and understand “why” people are doing that particular search.

Keywords intent review

To put you on track, you can analyze the content of the sites that appear on the 1st page for the targeted keyword: what are they talking about? What is the angle of their content? Its length? etc

With this common-sense step in your SEO audit, you will know what type of content you will need to produce to appear in Google’s top positions.

10 / What is the Business Value of Each Keyword for you?

Finally, we cannot talk about keywords without mentioning the analysis of the commercial intent behind each search term.

Because not all requests are created equal, between “mountain bike definition” and “best mountain bike brand,” we know which of these two queries will have the most probability of ending with the purchase of a product…

For most marketers, the fundamental objective of SEO is to ensure a presence on the keywords typed by people “in the market” looking to invest in a given product/service. This is why your SEO audit should not overlook this issue.

You can classify the main keywords of your market and label the purchase intention in a simple spreadsheet (with the content ideas generated during the previous question).

The “Technical and UX” Part of your SEO Audit

11 / Does your Site seem to Satisfy its Users?

The vast question you will say to me… And yet so important.
You will be able to reduce millions of visitors from Google if your site is slow, poorly designed, and on which we never find what we are looking for… So stop your SEO audit here. There is no point in wanting to increase traffic if you don’t have “the right formula” tested and validated on a representative number of customers.

To have an inventory of your performance for your SEO audit, look in Google Analytics how it has evolved:

  • loading time
  • the bounce rate
  • the number of pages/visits
  • conversion rate
  • the initiation rate of an objective (ex: adding a cart)
  • the number of visitors who return month to month

You can take your investigations further. With a free tool like Hotjar, you can analyze the heat maps of your pages and survey your visitors to gain more qualitative feedback. This “voice of the customer” helps explain the “why” behind the numbers.

Without going that far, your Google Analytics account already contains a treasure trove of data. For example, have you ever explored the cohort analysis report? It allows you to zoom in on your site’s ability to “retain” an audience.

12 / Does your Site Adapt to all Screens?

We are talking about responsive design here. It is mandatory because it is through our smartphones that we access the Internet the most nowadays.

To go further, you can create AMP pages. This solution is “designed for mobile.” Pages load instantly, helping AMP pages curry organic favor with Google…

To check your site’s compatibility with mobiles, you can use the “Mobile-Friendly Test” tool by Google.

You can also go to your Google Search Console in the “Mobile Usability” report. You will also find that a piece dedicated to AMP pages (if you have any) is also available.

mobile usability check

13 / Is the Loading Time of Your Site Fast?

We saw it above. The loading speed of your site is essential. It is advisable not to exceed 3 seconds; otherwise, the user leaves the page and goes to a competing site.

To analyze the loading speed of your site and benchmark yourself, use the “Google Page Speed ​​Insights” tool. Attention, the device is intractable! The excellent news: Page Speed ​​Insights gives you a concrete list of possible actions and does the work for you.

Check out the “Page experience” report in Google Search Console for your SEO audit. SEOs suspect Google of making it an increasingly important criterion in ranking search engine results, even if John Mueller (Google SEO Advocate) tends to temper the debate.

page experience report in search console

14 / Are all your URLs Accessible and Indexable?

Of course, that makes sense… If the pages of your site are not indexable (no index tag) or if it’s the little train of 404 errors, don’t expect to climb to the 1st position of the Google podium!

Without wanting to bring too much importance to it, we will also appreciate the presence of a sitemap file and its declaration within the robots.txt file. It’s always “cleaner” for your natural referencing.

To identify all these errors and list your indexable and non-indexable pages, there is nothing like using the “Screaming Frog SEO spider” software.

15 / Have you Cleaned up all your Broken Links?

It is expected, during the life of a site, for some links to be broken. It can be an internal link, which refers to one of your pages that no longer exists, or an outgoing connection, which directs to a site that has disappeared.

Beyond the fact that clicking on a broken link causes a disappointing experience for your visitors, these broken links can harm your natural referencing. A proper SEO audit will verify that all your links are functional.

Why do broken links matter in SEO? Because when Google’s bot crawls a site, it has limited crawl “credit.” If you have many broken links, the crawler will waste that credit crawling the page behind the link to store information that is no longer available. This is a missed opportunity, as the bot could have used its resource to crawl a working page instead.

16 / Are your URLs Written in an Intelligible and Concise way?

Like any other visitor, Google doesn’t like URLs that don’t make sense. For good SEO, you must optimize your permalinks by adding your target keywords. This will significantly facilitate the work of crawling and indexing search engine algorithms.

bad url vs good url example

For this point, no need for very complicated tools. Most CMS gives you the possibility to customize the URL of your pages. Think about it before posting new content! Be careful, however, if you want to change the URLs of already existing pages: you risk doing more harm to your SEO than anything else. If you ever decide to change your permalink, consider doing a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.

17 / Do you have any problems with Redirects?

Exactly, let’s talk about redirects. Because poorly executed, they can potentially harm your SEO. Your SEO audit will, therefore, also have to look at this side.

There are several kinds of redirects that can penalize your SEO. Of the most vicious, I would say that it is undoubtedly that of the 301 redirect chains. They can sometimes cause you to lose 15% of traffic at each link.

It took me a while to figure out how to list these chained 301 redirects when the solution is simply the Screaming Frog SEO Spider software. For the complete tutorial, follow this video (in English) which shows you the step-by-step process.

The “Content” Part of your SEO Audit

18 / Are your Tags (Titles, META) and your Headings Optimized for SEO?

Once the technical audit has been carried out, the SEO analysis should focus on the textual content already present on your site. Make sure it’s relevant and consistent with your keyword strategy. If not, you should rewrite your texts.

But one more thing: are your hn tags and titles optimized for SEO?

  • Your title tag should be intelligible and concise and include your target keywords. This is the most crucial element over which you have control.
  • The META description (text under the link in Google results) should make the user want to choose your impact over another.
  • You must also structure your content with well-marked titles, which take up the semantic field of your keywords.

Finally, your tags and content must be truly unique. Having the same title tag twice on two different URLs is forbidden!

Most professional SEO tools include site audits that can give you this information to verify that you don’t have such errors. This is the case, for example, of SEMRush, whose capture can be seen below.

SEMRush-title-duplicate

19 / Have you Checked in your SEO Audit that you have no Duplicate Content?

As we have seen, your content must first be unique to be of good quality. Indeed, duplicate content, whether on your pages or in your tags, is penalized by Google. It is, therefore, harmful to your organic visibility on Google.

Duplicate content can come from:

  • at least two different URLs of your site whose content would be similar (or almost identical)
  • or even from another website that has “stolen” your content.

One of the most used SEO tools to track down duplicate content on a website is “CopyScape.”

20 / Can you still “Combine” Several Pages that Target the Same Keyword?

It is not uncommon for a site to have two URLs that can potentially “compete” from an SEO perspective. If this is the case, combining the two contents on a single URL may be interesting.

This refocusing work thus makes it possible to obtain pages with more authority for a given keyword, with more challenging content to surpass.

On Google Search Console:

  • Look at the main keywords on which your site is positioned on Google.
  • Then, click on the terms that bring you the most impressions to zoom in.
  • Then click on the “Pages” tab to zoom in on the specific URLs in the SERPs for the query in question.
  • If you notice that multiple URLs are “sharing” impressions, then there may be an opportunity to combine the two pages and produce more robust content.

21 / Is the Internal Mesh of your Site Organized into Watertight Thematic Silos?

In SEO, the links you make between the pages of your site are essential. This is called internal linking. This allows you to distribute the “SEO juice” between your pages, which materializes your site’s SEO value. Links are “roads” that get SEO juice flowing.

internal link example from home page

Internal link analysis should be an integral part of your SEO audit. In particular, you must count for each indexable page the number of internal incoming links (to ensure that your strategic pages have a robust inner mesh). You will also take a look at the anchors of your internal links: they must be diverse and natural.

One of the tools I love for internal linking analysis is My Ranking Metrics (created by Olivier Duffez, the illustrious mastermind behind the famous SEO blog WebRankInfo). The tool can be used for your full SEO audit, but I appreciate how easy it is to get an accurate overview of your internal link distribution.

22 / Did you Identify Orphan Pages during your SEO Audit?

An orphan page in SEO is a URL that does exist (it is accessible and does not return errors), but no other page on your site is pointing to it… It is a page “in orbit” from the rest of your site.

This is a concern from an SEO point of view because, instead of strengthening your thematic clusters and making them contribute to your SEO visibility, the Google bot will have more difficulty crawling these pages (it tends to follow the links, but precisely an orphan page is “dissociated” from your tree structure).

To find orphan pages on your site:

  • List all the URLs of your site visible to search engines (generate an XML sitemap, export the list from Google Analytics and Search Console, and look at the Google index with the command “site:https://mnseoultrapro.com/”)
  • Recover the indexable URLs of your site with a tool like Screaming Frog mentioned above
  • Match the two lists: are there indexable pages that you cannot find in the URLs retrieved in step 1? If so, you have identified your orphan pages.

If you have connected your Google Analytics account to the screaming frog, you have a report in the tool that can directly generate this list of orphan pages.

23 / Are your Images Optimized for SEO?

Images are essential to the user experience; that’s a fact. So that they also contribute to your natural referencing, analyze them during your SEO audit:

  • Are all your images accessible? No broken images?
  • Do your pictures weigh less than 500 KB (so as not to affect your loading time)?
  • Have you filled the ALT tag of each image with the keywords you are targeting?
  • Do you have pictures that call an HTTP file in HTTPS pages?

Again, the Screaming Frog tool can quickly help you audit your images, including checking that all ALT tags are filled out.

The “Backlinks” Component of your SEO Audit

24 / How many backlinks do you have to date, and are they relevant?

The analysis of backlinks (or inbound links) is essential. Since the “popularity” of your site is measured by the number of incoming links pointing to your site, your SEO analysis must be able to tell you about the number of backlinks your site has obtained to date.

Must Read: Off Page SEO Techniques to Increase Organic Traffic

It is usual for a site, over its lifetime, to gain and lose backlinks.

  • But what about the final balance?
  • Are you gaining more backlinks than you are losing?
  • How fast do you manage to acquire new inbound links?
Related Resource: How to Find Quality Backlinks

To analyze your backlinks, use SEO tools like Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, or SEMRush (report presented below).

Backlinks audit-SEMRush

25 / What is the Level of Authority of your Links?

Earning backlinks has a positive impact on your natural referencing. Your SEO audit should look at “how many” inbound links you’ve gotten to date.

But beware, it’s not just the number of inbound links that counts. These must ideally come from authority sites relevant to your market niche.

Professional SEO tools can visualize the distribution of your backlinks according to the authority of the sites (example below of the SEMRush report).

backlinks authority wise

26 / What do your TrustFlow and CitationFlow Look Like?

One way to have a summary of your backlinks analysis is to add to your SEO audit the comments of your TrustFlow and your CitationFlow.

These are two indicators that Majestic SEO created

  • The Trust Flow (TF) gives each of your incoming links a score between 0 and 100, attributed according to the trust that can be granted to it;
  • The Citation Flow (CF) indicates your number of inbound links.

This gives you a visualization of where your site is on an easy-to-digest matrix.

majestic-citation-flow-trust-flow

27 / Do your Incoming Links have different Anchor Text and Refer to Various Pages on your Site?

Too often, when hunting for new backlinks, site editors use “optimized Anchor Text“. Having a few is perfectly acceptable, but having too many can ultimately harm your natural referencing. Why?

Because Google will quickly understand that these links are not natural, he will soon realize your game, know that you force on a particular anchor text, and then consider that you are doing SPAM. It is, therefore, best to ensure in your SEO audit that your backlinks use varied and natural anchors ( most of your backlinks should use an anchor text that matches your brand ) and that everything is not “concentrated” around a single over-optimized text anchor.

In the same way, it is wise to analyze in your audit the destination page of your incoming links. Ideally, your backlinks should refer to various pages on your site (rather than always pointing to the home page, for example). This will give a more natural look and allow you to spread the SEO juice evenly throughout your site.

You can again use professional SEO tools to answer this question. The free and easy alternative is to go to Google Search Console’s “Links” report.

28 / How is your Backlinking Compared to your Competitors?

Do you have many backlinks? It’s a start… But what about your main competitors?
Of course, if they have even more of them (and their inbound links are relevant and from authority sites), their SEO power will likely still outweigh yours.

To carry out these analyses, nothing better than a professional SEO tool. The following video shows you how to perform fundamental competitive analysis on aHrefs.

29 / Do you have Backlinks that it Would be Better to Disavow?

Some backlinks can harm your SEO. Your SEO audit should verify that you are not receiving inbound links from questionable sites.If you find any, assess the risk they represent for your SEO:

  • Are there “really” many?
  • Are these links likely to result in a manual action against your site?

If you answered “yes” to the previous questions, then it may be best to disavow those backlinks via this link (requires choosing a Google Search Console property).

30 / Do you have an Engaged Subscriber Base?

Your SEO audit has every interest in including an analysis dimension on the audience that is loyal to you. This can be the list of subscribers to your newsletter or the community that follows you on social networks.

Not that being popular on a social network or having a large email base automatically propels you to the top of search results, But it’s a proxy for your “sounding board.”
In SEO, it matters. Because the more significant your community, the more powerful your ability to “quickly” gain new backlinks.

BONUS: An SEO audit should not make you lose sight of the strategic course

31 / Am I Confusing SEO Audit and Marketing Strategy?

Type “SEO Audit” into Google: and you will find more than 650,000 results. Thousands of web services promise to deliver the key information to position your site in the first results of Google. All “indicators” are reviewed:

  • On-page analysis,
  • Backlinks,
  • Internal mesh,
  • Crawl,
  • Domain Authority,
  • anchor texts,etc

All these elements are, of course, essential, but the strategy that goes behind the techniques is systematically missing… In the end, these are only points of detail compared to the “real” SEO strategy of an experienced SEO.

Knowing that we have 4000 backlinks and are 1st on “open kitchen” does not mean anything.

It’s not connected to any strategic thinking about business, in which SEO would be seen as a lever for growth and revenue (and not just a way to be “first” on a particular expression).

This last section is intended to open your eyes to the need to “strategize SEO” before going directly into the techniques. It will guide your thinking by asking you the right questions that will allow you to transform your SEO ranking into $.

32 / Is what I Offer on My Site in Line with What People Want?

In my professional life, I had the chance to meet entrepreneurs who launched genuine innovations and created new markets. As powerful as their new inventions are, the fact is that no one was looking for them “as is” on Google. What’s the point of being first on critical expressions typed twice a year?

I will never forget this company which offered a technical room for new houses which combined all renewable energies.

  • This room allowed the new owner to gain comfort and save money on his bills.
  • Of course, no one is looking for a “renewable energy technical room” in Google.
  • And the Internet users who typed “renewable energies” were not necessarily those who bought this type of solution: they were not necessarily owners, nor even while building a house, nor even looking for a product to buy…
  • In short, SEO was not the right lever to publicize and buy this innovation.

Research, by definition, works in the form of questions and answers. So the real SEO question you need to ask yourself is:

What question from Internet users does my content/product/service answer?
If you don’t provide answers to searches, or there isn’t a search for what you have to sell, then SEO isn’t for you. Systematically check the demand for your sector and
which specific keywords make your market.

33 / Does my Site Deserve to be at the Top of Search Results?

SEO audits look at and take the angle of the natural referencing techniques used. But this is superficial: if your offer cannot seduce and convert, sooner or later, you will be dethroned in the search pages by competitors who will win the enthusiasm of the crowds.

Google would not be doing an excellent job if it propelled sites to the first position that were much worse than their competitors or that were not relevant to the user’s request. This is why, before you want to reach the top of the searches, ask yourself the following questions:

What is different and unique about my company?
Why is my site 10 times better than all these names that appear in Google?

The answers to these questions will direct you to the right content to create, the one for which Google & your audience will recognize you. Because you are “special” and “qualitative, ” people will share and make natural links to your content, benefiting your SEO.

34 / Who are the Relays that will Amplify my Content and Accelerate my Backlinks?

As a reminder, more than 209 signals influence positioning in Google. And to build the popularity of a site, it is not a question of sticking thousands of links yourself in forums, comments, and shouting very loudly. You have to “win” your popularity so that it seems more natural than ever in the eyes of Google’s robots.

  • For this, you can rely on your customers and the best ambassadors of your brand.
  • But we must not stop there. Also, discuss with influencers in your industry, bloggers, journalists, and experts.
  • In short, relays can reach your target audience so that the “snowball” effect takes hold, and you garner 10 times more shares on social networks, backlinks, and articles about you…

35 / What is the Complete Marketing Mechanism that allows you to Convert 1st Google positions into Dollars?

Since the beginning of e-business, natural referencing has been a privileged acquisition lever. Indeed, it brings “free” traffic and customers. But SEO is no longer the “single” gateway to the Internet world.

Entrepreneurs can no longer rely solely on their precious 1st Google positions to achieve their sales goals. Indeed, digital uses have greatly expanded. Consequence: the user journey is sometimes long and unstructured. That’s why you must orchestrate multiple touchpoints with your customers rather than relying solely on SEO. And that changes everything.

The natural referencing of your site is only ONE touchpoint, and it does not answer all the essential questions:

  • How do you make yourself known (without having to google anything)?
  • How do you make sure people remember you?
  • How to create a lasting relationship of trust with your audience?
  • How to optimize the conversion rate and get the most out of the traffic you manage to bring in?
  • How to satisfy and make the customers profitable

Conclusion

The best thing is to regularly carry out “SEO audits” to adjust your SEO strategy as you go along and thus maximize your performance (and at the same time obtain a good return on investment).

But strategy and tactics should not be confused.

To succeed in natural referencing, you must find strategic answers before diving into the techniques.

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