Ultimate Technical SEO Audit Checklist, with 5 New Checks Which are Going to Matter in 2019 for Consistent Growth

When most businesses think about technical SEO, they automatically make the assumption that they have no clue what it is. In reality, they may be using techniques of technical SEO within their marketing strategy without even knowing it. When incorporated, technical SEO can give your website that boost of traffic you have been wanting.

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is slightly more complicated than your on and off page optimization. It focuses on search engine crawlers, to ensure your website is optimized to its peak potential for search engines. This means it follows each of the guidelines, so that crawlers can easily crawl through your website and index it for the search engines.

What is Technical SEO audit?

A technical SEO audit is a process where you ensure that your technique to technical SEO runs as it should. The audit helps you determine the impact the tactic has on your website and allows you to find gaps in it so you can improve it. All so your website is optimized to its fullest potential for search engines.

It is important for businesses to run technical SEO audits once every couple of months.

Technical SEO audit checks to focus on in 2019

How mobile friendly is your website?

In 2018, approximately 52% of internet traffic was from a mobile device. In China, a whopping 98% of internet users accessed it from mobile devices. These stats show the importance of website and mobile device optimization for businesses. Google gives ranking preference to websites that are mobile-friendly, as more users utilize mobile devices on search engines than ever before. Bruce Clay’s SEO Manager, Robert Ramirez weighs in on mobile-friendly websites saying, “As Google’s preferred method of serving content to mobile users, we can assume that responsive sites will be favored by Google search results going forward.”

So, how can you ensure your website is on par with Google’s guidelines for mobile optimization? Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can help audit your website to determine how friendly it is for mobiles. All you have to do is enter your website URL and it will inform you whether or not the website is mobile friendly. It also gives you a detailed report of mobile usability for your whole site, breaking it down page by page.

Do the links you’ve integrated into your content pose a threat to the site ranking?

Most businesses have a blog integrated on their website. If you don’t then you need to consider starting a blog today as it can transform your SEO strategy. One element of blogging and other forms of content marketing is including internal and external links. This plays a vital role in building authority for your content and also the quality of your site pages.

Most of us just put links in left and right without paying much heed to the guidelines Google has set out for link schemes. Some links can have a negative impact on site ranking, so it is important you are aware of the link schemes. This way you don’t end up causing more harm than good.

Is your website speed on par with what it should be?

Websites with a slow load speed are likely to rank lower than faster websites. Google is all about user experience and how fast a site loads up is a major part of it. DoubleClick, by Google, conducted a study that showed websites experienced 70% longer sessions when they loaded within 5 seconds. The same study found that 53% of mobile users abandoned a site if it took longer than 3 seconds to load. Justin Kerby, founder of Cave Social, a digital marketing agency, highlights the importance of a fast website. He says, “If your website does not load quickly, visitors will leave quickly. This tells Google that your page is not relevant to searcher’s queries, and your ranking will suffer.”

To ensure your website is in top shape when it comes to speed, you can use PageSpeed Insights. The tool not only tells you how your website fairs, but it also gives some recommendations on how you can improve site speed.

Make sure there are no errors on your website

There is nothing more frustrating than browsing through a website to find errors on them. The most common are 404 errors, which lead to a dead end, “Page Not Found.” Such pages on a website frustrate not only visitors but search bots too. Neil Patel provides a guide on how you can customize 404 pages, and also helps increase indexed pages of your website for search engines.

Does your website host any duplicate content?

Google is constantly on a lookout for duplicate content. Since it uses search bots to crawl through websites to check content, they can’t determine exactly who duplicated the content. This prompts the search engine to automatically penalize both websites with duplicate content.

There are numerous different tools out there that can help you determine if your content is plagiarised with Copyscape being one of the most popular. The tool can help you identify duplicates so you can then change the content.

The Final Word

Conducting a technical SEO audit helps ensure that your website is in its best shape for search engines. You can have a killer on page optimization strategy. However, if the technical aspects such as speed and indexing aren’t properly done then all your efforts will be in vain. this is why it is important to audit and clean-up of your website almost every other month to ensure it is in top shape for search engines.