With more than 50% of online experiences starting with a search engine, it is obvious that ranking high on search engines is important to a business’s success. While search rankings are determined by over by a multitude of factors, the ideal place to begin is by having an on-page SEO audit done to see where your website stands at present.
In this article, we have put together a list of some of the most important items of any on-page SEO audit, and also a few suggestions that explain why each factor is important.
1.Keyword Research
This is vital to any SEO foundation, and pinpointing the target keyword theme of every page needs to be the number one element of your on-page SEO audit.
Search engines like Google use keywords to really know what a site is about, which helps them begin to understand, which sites do the best work of offering the things that somebody is searching for. Take for instance, if you are a wine shop that often discusses Italian wine on your site, and somebody searches for “Italian wine,” your site is most likely to appear as one of the top search results.
Keyword research includes identifying a list of phrases, which best define your company. This means identifying which of these will get the topmost number of searches monthly with the very least amount of competition and utilize them all through your site to help search engines know that your site relates to those keywords. Some of the tools you can use for keyword research are Google’s Keyword Planner and SEMRush.
2.On page SEO Website Crawl
After identifying the keyword theme for every page of your website, you need to pull existing data on each one of your pages, such as:
- Meta descriptions: a brief description of every page of your website, which shows up in search engines
- Title tags: the title of each of your site pages when they show up in search results
- Alt text: a description of each image on your website, which helps search engines to know what the image is about
- Header tags: the title and subtitles of every page of your website, which shows up when somebody visits your website
- Inlinks: the number of how many times you link to a certain page on your website
3. Website Structure
Creating the right website structure will help search engines better understand what your site is all about, which makes it simpler for you to rank for the terms, which will be most relevant to your website. Alp Perez , founder of A Plus Digital, states that the simplest way to help make your website structure easy to understand is by using the right URL formatting and set up your URLs in a manner that helps search engines to have an understanding of your website’s flow.
Below are some quick tips that you can use to make your URL structure understandable:
- You should not use numbers or symbols unnecessarily. If you are not sure, try reading the URL of a page’s out loud. If it is simple for you to say it, it will probably be easy for search engines to read it
- Incorporate relevant keywords early in the URL
- Length (to some extent) is important. Aim to keep it under a hundred characters
4. Quality of Content
SEO involves creating great content that will be helpful to your readers. Some of the most effective methods to begin are to use websites such as Quora and Reddit to know what topics your target prospects have an interest in, and the questions they are asking regarding those topics. After that, you can create content that talks about those issues. You can also use Google Analytics to understand what pages are doing well on your website. As soon as you identify a series of pages, search for any common themes between those pages performing well, and attempt replicating those themes in upcoming blog content.
5. 301Rredirects and 404 Errors
Have you ever had the experience of reaching a dead end while driving or walking? 404 errors are the online equivalent of a dead-end and are a problem that can harm your search rankings. You should fix these errors by creating a 301 redirect to the new URL of the page, or the next nearest URL on your page. This will give the site visitors with what they are searching for.
6. Duplicate Content
This is usually described as a penalty, which search engines can throw at your website. But the best way of understanding duplicate content would be to view it as a filter, which search engines employ to only display the “original” version of the content. When duplicate content is found by search engines, they try to understand which page is the original source of the content and decide to just show that original version in search engine results. Steven Robinson, a digital marketing consultant at a local web design company states that “to be able to help search engines, you can create canonical tags to point search engines to one of a series of duplicate pages. Also, you can use canonical tags to tell search engines if they need to consider the www or non-www version of your website”.
7. Sitemaps
Picture yourself attempting to navigate through a new area without a map. You may most likely find your way to the key destinations; however, it may take you a bit more time to locate them, and you definitely would not manage to find whatever you were looking for. Without a map, search engines experience the same problem: they can often locate the most vital pages on your website; however, they will most likely fail to spot lots of other essential pages. You can solve this by creating a sitemap, to allow search engines to understand where to locate the different pages on your website. After creating your sitemap and uploading it to your website, enter Search Console and submit your sitemap to Google.
Also Read Website Audit Tool
8. Website Speed
Recently, website speed has turned out an essential on-page ranking factor both directly and indirectly. A site that is fast gets a direct boost in rankings, whilst also reducing bounce rate, which informs search engines that the contents of your page are topically useful and relevant to the reader. A few of the simplest methods to decrease website speed are:
- Permit browser caching (enable browsers to “save” earlier versions of the website for returning visitors so they have to load less information)
- Reduce file sizes of images
9. Mobile Friendly
Google stated that over half of Google searches are currently taking place on mobile devices. If over 50 percent of the people who visit your site achieve this from a phone, then you need to make your site user-friendly on phones?
It is possible to test your mobile-friendliness on Google’s Pagespeed Insights; however, the best test would be to visit your site from your phone and observe how simple it is to use. In case you have trouble reading text or clicking buttons, consult a developer regarding making your site mobile-friendly.
Conclusion: Applying these audit suggestions will greatly improve your organic search rankings; however, know that these changes will need time. SEO is a lasting effort, so if you are seeking to leap to Google’s first page right away, you must explore other options. If you are seeking for gains that are short-term, PPC services might be a lot more closely aligned with what you are searching for.
