How can you audit and fix technical issues for better search engine optimization?
Technical issues can affect your website's performance, user experience, and ranking on search engines. If you want to optimize your site for better visibility and traffic, you need to audit and fix the common problems that might be holding you back. In this article, we will show you how to do a technical SEO audit and how to address the most important issues.
A technical SEO audit is a process of checking your website for errors, issues, and opportunities that affect how search engines crawl, index, and rank your pages. A technical SEO audit can help you identify and fix problems such as broken links, slow loading speed, duplicate content, poor mobile-friendliness, and more. A technical SEO audit can also help you improve your site's structure, navigation, security, and accessibility.
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Technical SEO audit: Identifying website errors, issues, and opportunities impacting search engine crawl, index, and ranking. Aim: Detect and resolve broken links, slow loading speed, duplicate content, poor mobile-friendliness, etc. Benefits: Enhance site structure, navigation, security, and accessibility for improved search engine performance.
When conducting a technical SEO audit, there are numerous tools and methods to use, but some basic steps should be followed. Utilizing a crawler tool such as Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Ahrefs to scan your website and generate a report of all the pages, links, images, and other elements is a must. Analyzing the report and looking for errors, warnings, or notices that indicate potential issues such as 404 errors, redirect loops, missing meta tags, or orphan pages is crucial. It's important to prioritize the issues based on their impact and urgency. For instance, 404 errors and redirect loops should be fixed as soon as possible as they can damage user experience and ranking. Google Search Console can be used to see how Google views and indexes your site and if there are any issues that need attention. Lastly, creating a list of action items and assigning them to the responsible team members or contractors is recommended. This could include updating your sitemap, optimizing your images, rewriting title tags, or implementing HTTPS.
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Screaming Frog, SEMrush or ahref and Google search console should help creating the technical audit. Issue prioritisation is crucial, you can start by mapping each error in effort vs impact chart, it will help to prioritise high impact issues. E.g. broken link, http urls are high priority and easy to fix issues. I would start with looking at crawled pages vs pages in sitemap. If count is higher, you will get some crawling optimisation insight. Once crawling is done, you can find common errors. E.g- One broken url in footer which is giving broken link error for all pages. Such issues can be fixed faster. Finally on search console, analyse page indexing report and check if indexing can be improved for website.
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Use tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Ahrefs to scan the website thoroughly. Analyze the generated report for errors, warnings, and notices. Prioritize issues by impact and urgency; fix 404 errors and redirect loops promptly. Monitor the website's status on Google Search Console for indexing issues. Compile a comprehensive action list for tasks like updating the sitemap, optimizing images, rewriting title tags, and implementing HTTPS.
Identifying and resolving technical SEO issues on your website is essential for optimizing it for search engines. Common technical SEO issues include broken links, slow loading speed, duplicate content, poor mobile-friendliness, and low security. Broken links can be fixed by removing them, replacing them with valid links, or redirecting them to relevant pages. Slow loading speed can be improved by using a fast hosting service, compressing images, minifying code, enabling caching, and using a content delivery network (CDN). Duplicate content can be avoided by using canonical tags, 301 redirects, or noindex tags. Poor mobile-friendliness can be improved by using a responsive design, testing the site on different devices, and following the best practices for mobile SEO. Low security can be enhanced by using HTTPS, updating software, and following the best practices for web security. By auditing and fixing the technical issues on your site, you can benefit from improved performance, user experience, ranking, traffic, leads, and conversions.
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To effectively address common technical SEO issues, start with a comprehensive website audit, prioritizing issues such as broken links, slow page speed, and improper indexing. Utilize tools like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog for in-depth analysis. Focus on optimizing site structure, implementing proper redirects, and ensuring mobile-friendliness. Don't overlook XML sitemaps and robots.txt, and always prioritize a user-friendly experience alongside search engine requirements. Regular timely updates, and a proactive approach to emerging trends are key to maintaining a healthy, high-performing website.
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Chinyerepk is a clothing brand. Challenge: Declining organic traffic due to unresolved technical SEO issues. Approach: Comprehensive audit with Google Search Console and SEO tools. Prioritized fixes for broken links, site speed, and mobile optimization. Restructured site architecture for improved navigation and indexability. Results: Within six months: Organic traffic surged by 40%, leading to increased sales. Improved search rankings for key product pages. Enhanced user engagement and experience metrics. Conclusion: Strategic technical SEO implementation revitalized Chinyerepk clothing brand online visibility, positioning them as an industry leader.
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