No website is perfect. Your website too probably has some kind of technical issues. There are a lot of technical issues, which might appear on your website even though you optimise it. A large number of websites have broken link errors and duplicate content. Technical SEO is all about fixing errors which occur on your website and may negatively affect rankings. This blog lists 8 steps which you can implement to perform a technical SEO audit in a better way.

The technical part of Search Engine Optimisation is quite important. If the technical foundation of your SEO strategy is not right, both on page and off page optimisation strategies may bring no results at all. Technical SEO deals with the aspects of a website which affect user experience, indexation, and crawling. All these ultimately have an affect on the rankings of a website.

With this in mind, the evaluation of technical aspects of a website will allow you to fix errors. It will make your website rank better. As a result, get you more traffic and conversions. Mentioned below are 8 steps that will help you to maximize site optimisation.

Identify crawl errors 8 STEPS TO A BETTER TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT

1. Technical SEO audit: Identify crawl errors

In particular, one of the first steps for performing a technical SEO audit is to make sure that all important resources are crawlable. Use an SEO crawler to run a crawlability check to find pages on resources which are restricted from indexing and orphan pages. There are many reasons like the no-index tag, x-robots tag, or JavaScript and CSS files that could be the reason for any crawl errors. Sometimes the errors run deep and can harm a website, so crawl errors need to be fixed immediately. 

The advanced SEO tactic that helps search engine crawlers to interpret the content of your web page, is using schema markup. Read our blog on HOW TO USE SCHEMA MARKUP TO BOOST SEO ACTIVITIES.


Look for HTTPS status codes 8 STEPS TO A BETTER TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT

2. Look for HTTPS status codes

When you do an evaluation of technical aspects of a website, the site crawl result comes up with a list of errors. It is important to look for HTTPS status codes and check if most of them are 200 OK messages or error messages. If there are a lot of error status codes showing up, it can negatively affect the rankings and so it is important to keep check on the codes.

You may also like to read our blog on WHAT IS HTTP2: IMPACT ON SEO AND HOW TO IMPLEMENT IT that explains the usage of HTTP to improve customer experience, performance and rankings.


Analyse site load time 8 STEPS TO A BETTER TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT

3. Analyse site load time in technical SEO audit

Test page loading time through PageSpeed Insights. Speed is a ranking signal and has huge impact on the user experience. Web pages which load slowly have high bounce rates and less conversion rates which may affect the overall site rank. 


Check XML sitemap status 8 STEPS TO A BETTER TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT

4. Check XML sitemap status

XML sitemaps help search engine crawlers to find website pages. For this reason, make sure that the XML sitemaps are formatted properly, they follow sitemap protocol, and have all the new or important pages of your website. Besides, all URLs in the XML sitemap must return 200 status code and have canonical.


Check for keywords cannibalization 8 STEPS TO A BETTER TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT

5. Technical SEO audit: Check for keywords cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization is when more than one web page on the same website is relevant for a same keyword. Google chooses one of those web pages which is relevant to the search query. Keyword cannibalization has a negative impact on the conversion rate and content quality. To resolve keyword cannibalization, use canonical and redirects to make sure the search engines know which web page to index.


Check robots.txt

6. Technical SEO audit requires checking robots.txt

In case some pages are not being indexed, check your robots.txt file. Sometimes website owners accidentally block pages from crawlers. When performing a technical SEO audit, it is extremely important to check robots.txt. Make sure that none of the pages which are relevant to the visitors are being blocked.


Look for duplicate metadata: 8 STEPS TO A BETTER TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT

7. Look for duplicate metadata

Duplicate meta data is quite common, especially for e-commerce websites and websites with a lot of webpages. An audit will help you to know which regions have duplicate meta description issues. Creating unique meta descriptions might seem hard work but at the end it is worthwhile as it brings more visitors and conversions. Click here to know about the other ways to generate leads for your business. 


Check for duplicate content

8. Technical SEO audit: Check for duplicate content

A large number of websites have duplicate content issues. Making duplicate content is one of the 8 WORST SEO PRACTICES TO AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Morever, it is one of the biggest reasons for wastage of crawl budget. There are a number of online tools like screaming frog, copyscape etc. which allow you to run a technical SEO audit and filter out any duplicate content. Get rid off the pages with duplicate content or block access of search engine bots.

In short, knowing how to do website audit for SEO is important because it helps you to identify issues which might be harming the website. It allows you to see how your current website ranks. You will gain insights on what to do so that you can improve your rankings.

Hence, the above mentioned steps are crucial to a technical SEO audit and must be implemented so that the most pressing issues can be fixed.

UNI SQUARE CONCEPTS

Uni Square Concepts is an advertising agency located in New Delhi, India. By initiating The Uni Square Blog, we aim to provide a comprehensive portal where readers can educate themselves about the various aspects of advertising and marketing. The articles and blogs are written by our professional team of content writers, under the guidance of senior leaders of Uni Square Concepts including its CEO, Uday Sonthalia.