May 2019

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of increasing quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results. SEO audit is the process of analyzing how well your web presence relates to SEO best practices. Learning how to do an SEO audit is the first step of developing an SEO plan and strategy. Let’s get started with the basics. What is quality traffic? Of course your website has a lot of potential to attract visitors, but if Google tells foodies to visit your site because your restaurant MANGO is supposed to be a chill frill place with good ambience and delicious food, but actually you are the owner of a mango garden, it is not quality traffic. Quality traffic is when people with a relevant interest or intent visit your site. Quantity traffic – Once you get the right people clicking through from those search engine result pages, more traffic is better. However, quantity without quality can backfire, as it’d mean a very high bounce rate and lower reputation for Google’s algorithms. Organic results – Traffic that comes to your site from a search engine, without any paid advertisement campaign. What is the meaning of SEO audit then? It is the process of determining a website’s friendship with search engines. It evaluates how well the website is optimized for generating high quality and quantity organic traffic. And why on earth do you need to conduct an SEO audit of your website? In real life you adjust a bit to maintain relationships. You bow, you abide by certain customs, you cooperate, and this is how relationship go. The same is the case with search engines and your website. They are friends, right? Your website need to abide by the basic rules, principles and adjust a bit according to Google’s requirements, so that Google (as well as other search engines) keep sending you traffic! So how do you do an SEO audit? For that we need to go through the steps of SEO audit. SEO AUDIT STEPS: 1) CHECK FOR GOOGLE PENALTIES Yes, you read it right. As your teacher penalized you in your school for not obeying rules, Google could penalize your website. You may lose your Google traffic if you are in the blacklist. For avoiding this, you must know that there are 2 types of Google penalties. A) Manual penalty Remember how your classmates use to complain about you when you were a kid. In the same way users (mostly web spam team) can impose a penalty to your site. You can check what the complaint is by logging in Google search console >> search traffic >> manual actions. There you can find the message which discloses the reason why you are penalized, and also the solutions to recover it. Follow it and then send a reconsideration request. B) Algorithm penalty This penalty lies in darkness. You will not be able to find out the exact reason why your site is penalized. You need to be updated to all the amendments that take place with Google’s algorithm. For that you can get to Google analytics, compare your traffic which may have increased or decreased in comparison to prior to the date of update and take action accordingly. What to do if your site is blacklisted by Google? Go through the changes that Google has made and adjust your SEO strategy accordingly. For example – thin content issues are very common, so ensure you improve or change your content and make it relevant for the visitors. 2) SEARCH APPEARANCE It is all about how your website shows up in search results. You must check the following. Does your homepage appear first in the search results when you search your brand? Does it show the site links along with your listing? Is the small description below your homepage accurate? Are the rest of the pages listed on the first page relevant to your brand? If all the points are not ticked by you then the best approach to get it are Review and optimize your site structure Review your homepage on-site description, meta-tags, etc. Claim your Google my business page and give all the information correctly and accurately. 3) TECHNICAL SEO A) Search console – Is your website registered with Google search console? No? Then stop reading, go ahead and get it registered. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. It is a free tool provided by Google that discloses a ton of information and data that Google has for your site. It answers questions like – How many pages are submitted to Google? – How many pages are actually indexed? – Which keywords will generate Google traffic? It helps you to determine coverage by showing total clicks, total impressions, average click through rate (CTR) and average position, your web search clicks, your logos and many more. B) Site maps – The next thing you must check is your sitemap. Have you created a sitemap? But wait, what is a sitemap anyway? Sitemap is an XML file that contains the list of all webpages on your site. It allows Google to detect and crawl your website. If you want to control what must be crawled, then create a robot.txt file. A mistake in robot.txt file can cause some serious indexing issues. So getting your robot.txt file optimized should be a high priority for you. C) Are URLs SEO friendly? Pay good attention to your URLs. They must be perfectly formatted. Poorly formatted URLs are keyword-stuffed and messy, while a good URL is separated by hyphens and slashes. E.g. Bad URL – https://www.notgoodurl.com/12/badformattedurl/121358898 Good URL – https://www.example.com/good-formatted-url A secured website always has an upper hand over non-secure websites. Make sure your URL is of https version by having an SSL certificate installed on your site. Also never use ‘underscore’ (_) in your URLs, use hyphens (-) instead. D) Check your breadcrumbs You may have liked to prepare an index for your notebooks. You simply fill up the