Writing meta descriptions and optimized title tags will help with SEO by encouraging users to click on your page and telling Google what your page is about. For example, it’s suggesting that we rewrite our list of the best keyword tools because it used to rank in the top three for its target keyword SEO Anomaly but now doesn’t even rank in the top 100. You can also double-check your organic search performance in Google Search Console. This is important to do because Ahrefs organic traffic numbers are estimations. Make sure your site uses HTTPS, which encrypts data and protects user information. If your site is still running on HTTP, install an SSL certificate and update all internal links accordingly.
Demonstrating strong E-E-A-T is essential for ranking any piece of content in Google’s organic search results. Contrary to popular belief, duplicate content doesn’t result in a Google penalty, though it does force search crawlers to make a decision about which page should be indexed and ranked. Technical SEO is the collective term for all the factors and best practices that affect the ability of search crawlers and users to access your website content. There are many tools you can use to perform the items in this checklist.
Use Visuals, Images and Video
This helped align the content with both user needs and search engine requirements. The first step we took was a thorough backlink audit to identify the toxic links that triggered the penalty. Using Ahrefs and Search Console data combined, we compiled a list of several thousand domains. Each backlink was the typical nonsensical blog post with anchor text scattered throughout.
An SEO audit helps achieve higher rankings, more website traffic, and greater user engagement. Fixing issues improves site speed, indexing, and mobile usability. A thorough SEO audit shows how well a site follows best practices. It highlights errors that prevents a website from reaching its full potential in search rankings. Doing an audit helps website owners create a plan for improvement, supporting long-term success in organic search results.
Properly optimized alt text allows screen readers to inform site users with visual impairments exactly what they are seeing. Alt text, or alternative text, describes an image on a website. It is an incredibly important part of image optimization, as it improves accessibility on your website for millions of people throughout the world who are visually impaired. Plus, as clusters of multiple-language pages share each other’s ranking signals, using hreflang tags correctly can have a direct impact as a ranking factor. New pages—as well as those that are not linked internally or externally, e.g., those found on newer sites—may not be crawled as frequently, if at all. A crawl budget refers to how many pages and how rapidly a search engine can crawl.
Top free on-page SEO tools
To do this, go to the Mobile Usability report in Google Search Console. It will tell you whether any URLs have errors that affect mobile usability. If your traffic’s gone to zero, you may need to check for a manual action.
- With countless variables in the search engine algorithms, a free audit is usually of minimal value and seldom proves the value of the SEO agency.
- I covered the importance of internal anchor text in the section on fixing issues with alt text.
- SEO tools make our work faster, easier, and more efficient, but they still can’t fully replicate human analysis or insight.
- Still—whenever possible, you should make sure all your pages are as optimized as possible for keywords that will help them show up in organic search.
- So, if you need someone to walk your developers through a fix or need someone to explain a fix, we’re here to assist.
In HTML, you can use H1-H6 subheaders to provide some structure and hierarchy to your pages. If you have a relatively small site (fewer than twenty pages), you can check all of the above manually with ease. The issue with PageSpeed Insights is that you can only check one page at a time. That’s more than annoying if you have a website with tens, hundreds or even thousands of pages. Lets Encrypt is a non-profit organization that provides free SSL certificates, and it’s backed by some of the biggest players in the industry—including Google. If you have a small website (under ten pages), then I wouldn’t worry too much about either of these files.
Investing a little extra time in improving your internal links is always worth it. They’re one of the easiest yet most powerful SEO tools you have. Everyone talks about backlinks from external sites, but internal linking – when done correctly – can actually make a huge impact. Many websites rush straight into link building, generating hundreds or even thousands of low-quality backlinks with exact-match anchor texts, before laying any SEO groundwork. You can label almost anything – products, articles, reviews, events – to clearly explain relationships and context. This clarity helps search engines understand why your content is relevant for a given query.
Site speed can be impacted when image files are too large or HTML and CSS needs to be cleaned up. For those with more technical experience, Semrsh’s Site Audit Tool is a very thorough reporting option, but getting started for free does require jumping through a few hoops. Assessing both the content and technical aspects of your website will open up opportunities to drastically improve the traffic and conversions your website generates. As a result, an audit will give you a chance to inspect the robustness of your website’s technical framework and infrastructure. A data privacy audit verifies that you’re following applicable data privacy laws and ensures you’re creating a safe space for website visitors.