External links are often used to back up sources in the form of citations. For example, if I am writing a blog post and discussing metrics from a study, I’ll externally link to where I found that authoritative source. External links are hyperlinks within your pages that link to another domain. That means all of your backlinks—the links to your website from another one—are someone else’s external links.
Once you identify them, fixing them is a matter of determining how important each link is to your linking structure and user experience. Have a page which no longer exists, or which now exists at a new URL? It’s a good idea to make sure all high-traffic pages which formerly linked to that page now 301 redirect to the new page; or, that they at least redirect back your home page.
Step 7: Address duplicate content issues
- Though Bing doesn’t have anywhere near the same market share as Google, millions of people still use it every day to search for local businesses.
- This is particularly important for websites like online stores that often generate multiple URLs for the same product due to filters or session variables.
- At the highest level, the comprehensive SEO audit covers everything.
- To improve your score, seek external links from high-authority pages that outrank yours.
- Last but not least, make sure that canonical URLs are properly implemented to avoid duplicate content issues.
I’m glad that you mentioned those five tools which could be beneficial for people like me to do a proper SEO audit. The best level of SEO audit for your needs depends on your goals, budget, and website complexity. Start with a basic audit if you’re just getting started or have limited resources. Gradually progress to higher levels as your site grows and your objectives become more ambitious. To perform an SEO audit, you can either use software tools or hire an SEO professional, consultant, or agency.
Step 1: Preparing an SEO audit
Make your SEO Anomaly content helpful and original to increase the chances of Google indexing those pages. You’ll see all the keywords your competitors’ domains rank for, but your domain doesn’t. You can also find broken URLs with backlinks in Site Explorer. If you’re facing any of these issues and haven’t performed an SEO audit in the last six months, it’s a good time to run one. Check your backlinks and their value, see competitors’ backlinks and new & lost links. A high bounce rate or a generally poor experience causes your site to lose relevance for Google.
Benchmarking allows you to see exactly where you stand when compared to your competitors and identify opportunities for improvement. Check the Google Search Console “Search results” report from the sidebar to see your total clicks and traffic trends over time. Organic traffic represents visits to your site from organic (unpaid) search results. Next, look at the anchor text distribution of your backlinks.
As such, improving these aspects can lead to higher rankings and better visibility. At this step of the SEO audit checklist, you should audit your Core Web Vitals. GrowthBar has a number of features, but it really excels in content auditing. Resolve this by frequently updating content to keep it high-quality, relevant, and up to date.
This is the entry-level audit suitable for beginners or those with limited resources. It focuses on fundamental issues like meta tags, keyword optimization, and site speed. A basic audit is a great starting point, ensuring your website’s essential SEO elements are in place. This can be done through various methods that include everything from robots.txt files to sitemaps.
Track and analyze traffic data
First and foremost, if a person is unable to browse freely, he will quickly bounce from your website. In that regard, it is important to improve your website speed. First thing that you have to determine is whether your website is working properly. Before anything else, you need to create a viable strategy that will help you establish your goals.
Note that AI tools may hallucinate and generate incorrect information. Verify any information you get from AI tools before using them. It also tells you the good characteristics of the page for ranking, so you keep them as is. This free SEO tool lets you look at the search term’s popularity per region and other related search queries on Google. While Ahrefs has a suite of paid and powerful tools, it also offers free SEO tools like Keyword Difficulty Checker. Try Webflow for as long as you like with our free Starter plan.
This can lead to improved performance — both on the search results pages and how visitors engage with your website. It automatically pulls information from your Google Search Console property. And provides you with a breakdown of keywords and phrases your website ranks for and gets clicks for. If your competitors rank for these keywords, you have a good chance to rank for them too. Based on factors like the quantity AND quality of your backlinks. And it’s something you need to prioritize as part of your SEO audit checklist.