So if you want to get higher Google rankings, you’ll love the actionable steps in this guide. Only after ensuring your on-page SEO and internal links are strong and confirming that backlinks are indeed the differentiating factor, should you invest in targeted link building. Log files track every visit from search engine bots, like Googlebot or Bingbot. They show which pages are crawled, how often, and what the bots do. To learn more, check out this guide on how to start a link building campaign with the Link Building tool. Having multiple versions of your website accessible to search engines can seriously dilute your SEO efforts.
If you can include your keywords without it feeling unnatural or shoehorned, then go for it. These are pages that are identical or very similar to other pages. The “without canonical” part is a technicality—but needless to say, these issues need fixing. If you have a lot of slow pages—as the website in the screenshot above does—then it’s worth reviewing the most important pages first. One way to do this is to sort by organic traffic from high to low. However, if you started crawling your website with Ahrefs Site Audit (as recommended), then you can see in plain English whether you’re facing any of the issues I mentioned above.
Are there any other issues in Google Search Console?
- In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses — and careers.
- Net Friends turned to WebFX to help them boost their presence in search engines to attract qualified traffic and leads for their business.
- Track the progress of search rankings over time by country, language, search engine and device type.
- I’ve seen this issue most often on newly launched websites that haven’t standardized their URL structure.
- As you know, Google regularly introduces core updates that can impact your rankings.
If you’re going to hire someone, an SEO audit can be a standalone service or a way to test out an agency or consultant before a longer-term engagement. The results you get will vary based on which option you choose. Goals and budgets are often a factor when it comes to which option a company chooses (using tools or hiring a consultant or agency). People who wish to make a blogging career usually believe that popularity and good writing skills are enough for a success. Next, you need to make sure that your content is popular among readers and other bloggers.
Use tools like Google Search Console – or your preferred SEO tool to find broken links on your site. If a page has been permanently removed, set up a 301 redirect to a related page to preserve link equity. Join over 3 million smart website owners who use AIOSEO to improve their website search rankings. Get the #1 most powerful WordPress SEO plugin today and join over 3 million smart website owners who use AIOSEO to improve their website search rankings. This is the same data we used when we started the audit, but now, you should look at the results of the improvements. Once improvements are made, you should monitor their performance for quite BHS Links a while, as some can take a long time to take effect.
Examining these elements lets you assess your website presence and determine improvement areas. By uncovering and addressing weaknesses, a website audit provides actionable direction for streamlining your web initiatives and growing your bottom line. If you’re unsure where to focus your efforts, a website audit is a great place to start.
Audit and improve your backlinks
If your goal is to improve your content’s visibility and relevance, an on-page SEO audit is invaluable, especially for content-heavy websites. They help you easily discover both on-site and off-page SEO related issues on your site. Almost all the tools mentioned here provide you useful recommendations on how to fix those issues for better rankings. We listed some of the best free and premium tools that you can use to perform site audits for website analysis. SEO audits help you identify what needs to be fixed on your website to improve your search engine rankings and organic visibility.
Pay attention to errors like “Submitted URL not found (404)”, “Duplicate without user-selected canonical”, or “Alternate page with proper canonical tag”. These clues tell you if Google is encountering duplicate content and choosing another URL as canonical, or if pages you intended to have indexed aren’t being indexed. After you hit “Compare,” the tool will compare the sets of keywords the analyzed domains are ranking for. In the next two steps, we’ll take a look at how to get the most out of your competitors’ keywords and backlink data. For this step, I recommend using a dedicated SEO crawling tool. Semrush’s Site Audit tool is my personal favorite, as it checks for over 140 technical issues—making it one of the most comprehensive solutions in the industry.
Unlike other SEO audit software, Screaming Frog is a desktop app. With Screaming Frog, you can analyze up to 500 URLs (if you have more than 500 URLs, you’ll need to purchase a Screaming Frog license). It’s important to ensure that the most important pages you want indexed are included in your sitemap. If you don’t have access to Google Search Console, plug any page from your website into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
That’s why a site with 100 pages will pay more for an audit than a website with 50 pages. On average, SEO audits cost $50 – $2,500 per audit on average (76% of businesses). This helps you tackle high-impact quick wins immediately, while planning for bigger projects. After completing your website audit, you’ll likely have a long list of potential fixes. A content audit will uncover pages you need to update if you want to boost their traffic. To improve your LCP, compress bulky resources like hero images or animations.