Is your website broken? Follow this SEO Audit and see!

Technical Site Audit

• Check indexed pages
  • Site: Search in Google
  • Homepage is the first result (or near the top)
• Review number of organic landing pages in Google analytics
  • This is often the best measure of how many pages are indexed AND Google finds valuable
• Search for brand and branded terms
• Is the homepage showing up at the top, or are correct pages showing up?
• Check Google’s cache for key pages
  • Content shows up
  • Navigation links are present
  • Check for hidden content / links
• Do a mobile search for your brand and key landing pages
  • Your listing has the “mobile friendly” label
  • Landing pages are mobile friendly

On­-page SEO

• Title tags are:
  • Optimized
  • Unique
  • 55­60 characters (512 pixels)
• Important pages have click­through rate optimized titles and meta descriptions
• Pages are not missing page titles and meta descriptions
• The on­page content includes the primary keyword phrase multiple times as well as variations and alternate keyword phrases
• There is a significant amount of optimized, unique content on key pages
• The primary keyword phrase is contained in the H1 tag
• Images’ file names and alt text are optimized to include the primary keyword phrase associated with the
• URLs are descriptive and optimized
• URLs are clean:
  • No excessive parameters
  • URLs are static
• URLs are short (115 characters or shorter)

Content Creation

• Homepage is optimized
  • At least one paragraph of text
  • Enough content to give search engines an understand of what the page is about (typically at least 150 words)
  • Content is unique
• Landing pages are optimized
  • At least a couple paragraphs of content ­ enough to help search engines understand what the page is about
  • Is the text templated or completely unique
• Site contains real and substantial content
  • Is there real content on the site or is the “content” simply a list of links
• Proper keyword targeting
  • The intent behind the keywords match the intent of the landing page
  • Pages exist to target head terms, mid­tail terms, and long­tail keywords
• Keyword Cannibalization
  • site:search in Google for important keyword phrases does not reveal a significant amount of pages competing for the same term
  • There is are no duplicate page titles or duplicate content
• Content exists to help users convert and is easily accessible to users
  • Content to help educate users about the product or service
• Content formatting
  • Content is formatted well and is easy to read quickly
  • H tags are used
  • Images are used
  • Text is broken down into easy to read paragraphs
• Good headlines on blog posts
  • Headlines are well written and draw users
• Amount of content versus ads
  • There is significant unique content above the fold
  • There are not an excessive amount of ads above the fold

Duplicate Content

• There should be one URL for each piece of content
  • URL parameters are not used, or are otherwise dealt with
  • The same content doesn’t exist on different URLs (often product/category related)
• Do an in quotes search to check for duplicate content
  • Content does not show up elsewhere on the domain
  • Content has not been scraped
    • If scraped file a content removal request with Google
• The same content does not exist on different sub­domains
• The same content does not exist on a secure version of the site
• The same content is not replicated on other domains owned by the company
• Printer friendly pages are not causing duplicate content

Accessibility  & Indexation

• Entire site, or key pages, have not been blocked in the txt file
• Content displays correctly when JavaScript, cookies, and CSS are turned off
• Navigation & Internal links display correctly when JavaScript, cookies, and CSS are turned off
• Content is the same when you set the user agent to Googlebot
• There are not excessive 4xx or 5xx errors in a crawl report (Moz, Screaming Frog, etc)
• XML sitemaps are listed in the robots.txt file
• XML sitemaps are submitted to Google/Bing Webmaster Tools
• Important pages do not contain the meta robots noindex tag (Moz, Screaming Frog, etc)
• Duplicate / thin content has the noindex command or is disallowed in txt
• Goal pages are prevented from receiving organic visits

Website Architecture

• Number of links on a page is reasonable (100­200 typically)
• Vertical linking structures are in place
  • Homepage links to category
  • Category pages link to sub­category and product pages as appropriate
  • Product pages link to relevant category
• Horizontal linking structures are in place
  • Category pages link to other relevant category
  • Product pages link to other relevant product
• Links are in content
  • Does not utilize massive blocks of links stuck in the content to create internal links
• Footer does not use a block of links instead of proper
• Footer does not link to landing pages with optimized
• Internal anchor text is used appropriately
• No/minimal broken links

Technical issues

• 301 redirects are being used for all redirects
• 302, 307, meta refresh, and JavaScript redirects are not used as they pass little to no
• Redirect chains are not used
• Content is not served using JavaScript
• Links are not served in JavaScript (unless intentionally done so)
• Content is not pulled in via iFrames
• Flash is not used to deliver content
• No errors in Google Webmaster Tools
• XML sitemaps in place
• XML sitemaps are not band aids for poor site architecture
• XML sitemaps are structured to show indexation problems
• XML sitemaps follow proper XML protocols
• Canonical version of the site established through 301s
• Canonical version of site is specified in Google Webmaster Tools
• Rel canonical link tag is properly implemented across the site
• Uses absolute URLs instead of relative URLs

WebsiteSpeed

• Pages load in a reasonable amount of time
• Make sure compression is enabled
• Caching is enabled
• Images are optimized for the web
• CSS/JS/HTML is minified
• There are not excessive number of HTTP requests
• Site is hosted on a fast server

Mobile Responsiveness

• Site renders properly for mobile and tablet visitors
• A mobile experience is set up (responsive design, dynamic serving, dedicated mobile site)
• Analytics is set up properly if separate mobile content exists
• Mobile configuration is specified
  • Responsive ­ The viewport meta tag is used
  • Dynamic serving ­ The Vary HTTP header is used
  • Mobile site ­ Mobile content uses the canonical tag to point to the desktop version
  • Mobile site ­ Desktop content uses the rel alternate tag to point to the mobile version
• Buttons are not too close together for mobile visitors
• The mobile experience matches up with the intent of mobile visitors
• Ensure faulty mobile redirects do not exist

Google Analytics & Tracking

• Analytics tracking code is on every page
• There is only one instance of a GA property on a page
• Analytics is properly tracking and capturing internal searches
• Demographics tracking is set up
• Adwords and Adsense are properly linked if you are using these platforms
• Internal IP addresses are excluded
• UTM Campaign Parameters are used for other marketing efforts
• Meta refresh and JavaScript redirects are avoided
• Event tracking is set up for key user interactions