The number of sites is staggering across the world today. Each one of them is fighting for the top spot in the SERPs. The top position means better visibility and more eyeballs. If you do everything right, you can turn those eyeballs into loyal customers.
To get to the top, conducting an annual technical SEO audit is essential. Google’s algorithms are constantly changing. Time and your website can also get new features, and you must make adjustments. From the start, it is essential to realize that developing SEO strategies for your company is an ongoing task that can’t be completed in a single instance. Continuous improvement is essential. To do this efficiently, you must know the best ways to improve. This is why a technical SEO auditing service can help you with.
What is SEO optimization on-site?
Every successful marketer would like to increase the ranking of their sites. To achieve this, they must improve the content of their site for search engines. This is known as on-site SEO. On-site SEO optimization is called SEO optimization on-page.
This is a series of technical tasks. It involves ensuring that your websites and meta tags, the content, and the overall design of your website are optimized to your desired keywords. In simple terms, SEO optimization on-site is what you implement on your website to increase the visibility of your website. On the other hand, off-site SEO are actions you take outside of your site to increase your site’s visibility and improve search engine rankings.
What is an SEO audit?
The process of ranking high in search results isn’t rocket science. However, it takes a lot of perseverance. Before, website owners could fool Google’s algorithm by adding keywords and backlinks from micro-sites. The days of this are gone. If you’re looking to rank on top, you must refine and refine your SEO strategy.
A technical SEO audit employs your eyes on Google to scrutinize your site. It’s a digital health test which allows you to evaluate the ability of your site to rank. Imagine it as testing the technical aspects of your site’s SEO.
Before ranking, the search engine crawls the web to locate web pages and websites. The websites will then be examined for ranking factors. Google algorithm employs over 200 signals for ranking. Backlinko has covered most of the most recent Google rank factors. Whatever industry you’re in, the competition follows the latest SEO trends, which is why you should, too.
Why is it worth doing an SEO check regularly instead of just once?
Google’s algorithm for search changes constantly, and it is important to be able to adapt to it. If you want to be the leader in your market, you need to look for new developments in the digital world. To achieve this, it is necessary to constantly conduct a thorough SEO audit and adjust to changes.
A regular audit of your website’s performance for technical aspects is essential to ensure that your digital assets are aligned with Google’s best practices. These are the areas to be examined when conducting the course of an SEO audit.
What is an SEO technological audit must cover?
There are various types of SEO audits. Certain focus on the structure of the website’s content, and others include external and internal linking. A technical SEO audit differs. It helps you understand how Google’s robots look at and rank your site and how specific elements of your site affect the speed of crawling and the user experience.
An excellent technical audit examines the technologies utilized, languages, and frameworks for JS and the quality of the external resources available on the site. The more skilled and skilled the engineer, the more specific recommendations for changes you should receive.
Visibility and accessibility for search engines
Websites are created to be used by users, not only for search engines. Google strives to improve the UX of sites, favouring those who care about their users.
That’s why it is important to keep your visitors in mind when designing your website. And this includes those who do not use the JavaScript browser.
Indexing
indexing refers to arranging the data on the web page and then saving them in the search engine database. This allows search engines to respond instantly to queries made by visitors. For instance, Google uses the XML sitemap to determine what’s important to a website, even if Google won’t list web pages that aren’t listed on your sitemap.
Core Web Vitals
“Everyone is discussing Core Web” Vitals. Google has begun to incorporate these parameters as ranking factors. The company also provided developers with a better understanding of the state of this metric by making modifications to Search Console in which there are the “Page Experience” and “Core Web Vitals” tools.
What do you mean by Core Web Vitals? In simple terms, according to Google, they are three crucial metrics that let you assess how your site is optimized for the user experience. They are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Let’s take a look at each one of them.
Page loading time
It is crucial to determine how quickly your website or page loads. If your website takes less than five minutes to open, you may lose many visitors. Per Portent, the first 0-4 seconds of website loading time are the best for conversion.
The conversion rates on your website decrease by 4.42 per cent for each additional second of loading time.
Canonical URLs
Canonical URLs notify search engines to prevent duplicate content by integrating indexing and linking properties into the same URL. This is crucial if you have content on your website with different URLs, which could harm each other. When you set the canonical URL, you can tell Google which URL you believe is more relevant to the content you are presenting and the keyword.
External resources loaded
You can create the most optimized site, providing pure HTML on your page without any JavaScript (although it’s not currently possible, so don’t utilize JS). However, you must connect numerous external resources, and the performance of your website will drop.
Let me provide you with an example. Hotjar is a tool, that you’re already familiar with the Hotjar tool, aren’t you? It’s an excellent tool. However, it’s unimportant to your site. It’s an illustration of an external JavaScript that requires downloading to the browser used by the user and can impact the performance.
Another example is chatbots. It’s also a wonderful tool that can help you to achieve more conversions. However, to get it to work, it is often required to load JavaScript downloaded via an outside server.
Optimizing image files
When optimizing images, there are several factors to consider. First, the size is important in this case. It is not logical to upload large images that have been reduced to smaller dimensions. It is better to reduce the size to fit the needs of a specific area. It is also helpful when you utilize the “srcset” “srcset” tag that will show the appropriate image for your device – it’s different for phones and a computer.
The second aspect concerns the ratio of compression. It’s better to upload images that are correctly compressed. However, if you’re unable to have this option, you could use the features provided by your CMS or use software that can do it by utilizing the server.
Lazy Loading
Lazy Loading is an extremely smart solution. In simple terms, Lazy Loading allows you to load elements while they scroll on the screen. The elements (for instance, images) are loaded even when the page is used, making the initial load of your page quicker.
Redirect loops and chains
Sometimes the requested URL passes through multiple redirects before its final URL can be served. This is often called”the redirect chain. Your site could get in trouble with crawling issues such as delayed crawling, a decrease in speed and loss of the equity of your links due to the overuse of redirects.
Too big JavaScript and CSS
You probably already know that CSS will be responsible for the styling (appearance) of the elements on your website, and JavaScript allows for interactivity and a few functions. This is, naturally, an immense reduction. Every website today utilizes two types of files. It’s a simple rule the smaller the file size, the better their loading times.
Tools that aid in technical audit
SEO is such a huge business today that numerous tools aid in SEO auditing. But, specialized technical auditing (especially for the JS field) is a specialized task that tools must be considered only as a way to accomplish the objective. Each of the tools that are listed below can be helpful and aid in identifying areas that require more attention and analysis. I have found Chrome Dev Tools to be the most useful of these tools. When used properly, the Dev Tools will detect the most common technical issues on a site.
Chrome Dev Tools
Chrome Dev Tools is a powerful tool included in the Google Chrome browser. I won’t review every feature here, but I’ll list those worth checking out. To conduct technical analysis, it’s usually recommended to activate the option of viewing the website using GoogleBot. GoogleBot. Another option is to deactivate JavaScript to determine what content is generated without JS. Google can render JS; however, in my view, it’s better when the key elements of the content work without JS. You can also simulate the load time of a page across different devices and at different speeds on networks. It is extremely useful.
Another helpful feature is the examination of resources loaded in the “Network” tab. Here, we identify the most elements that load on the page, like CSS and js files or external resources that speed up the load time for the page.
Page Speed Insights
Pagespeed Insights gives you a comprehensive view of your website’s speed. Simply entering an URL, Google Page Insights will review your website’s content and suggest ways to improve your page’s speed of Loading.
Today, the speed of loading pages is among the factors determining your position on the SERP. If it takes a long time to load your site, it will probably have an excessive bounce rate. If your visitors don’t interact with your site before leaving, you’ll often have poor conversion rates and a bad user experience.
The technical SEO audit team and the process of activities Good methods
After each major website update or implementation of any new functions, a tech SEO audit is recommended. It’s also essential when you launch a new website. How do you form the best team to carry out the audit?
A person is familiar with this site (on the client’s side). The ideal team should comprise an individual responsible for the site’s growth. This person must be able to identify recent changes and outline goals and expectations to be met during the review. Knowledge of SEO matters is not needed at this point on a broad level. However, it’s best to have a manager who is knowledgeable about the area. Kontakt with the decision maker is crucial because, at times, you have to figure out compromises regarding functionality, appearance and performance. This could also include an executive responsible for marketing or presence on the internet. For instance, we can set up good procedures for using third-party tools codes embedded in websites like Hotjar or Hotjar.
Intermediate Tech SEO Specialist Audit tasks to be completed, creating assumptions, formulating outcomes, and creating the tools we’ll use. This is why an SEO specialist who isn’t highly technical but can assign specific tasks to be completed, and creating and communicating the results to the client would help. Furthermore, such a person can assist in forming suggestions for changes that are needed to the website.
Specialist in highly technical SEO or Web developer – someone to perform specific tasks and is the most significant portion that the auditor will be able to perform. Ideally, this individual is an expert in programming or thoroughly knows HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Because of that, they can identify problems but also, e.g. provide specific solutions and methods to address the most pressing issues. One example could be a suggestion for the best SSR implementation technology (e.g. Nuxt js or Next js). The technical auditor will work to conduct technical talks along with the team of developers, who will then implement the suggested changes.
Following the audit, deciding what modifications will affect the site is important. Of course, this will depend on whether the website owners have their development team or if it is required to employ a dedicated group of developers.
