Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Performing a website audit is important for a number of reasons. By doing so, you can evaluate the healthiness of a web site in various aspects. You can then identify the problematic areas that need to be improved and come up with an action plan to correct them. It is also a way to see if your website is up-to-date with the latest developments and trends in search marketing.
Nowadays, there are various tools that you can use
to audit a particular website. However, the best approach is to do the audit
using a guide. By having a checklist, you can come up with recommendations of
what needs to be done so that the performance of the website in search engines
is improved. Below is a site audit checklist
that covers almost all aspects of a website.
Quick
overview
·
Check indexed pages
·
Review the number of organic landing pages
in Google Analytics
·
Search for the brand and branded terms
·
Check Google's cache for key pages
·
Do a mobile search for your brand and key
landing pages
On-page
optimization
·
Title tags are optimized
·
Important pages have click-through rate
optimized titles and meta descriptions
·
Check for pages missing page titles and meta
descriptions
·
The on-page content includes the primary
keyword phrase multiple times as well as variations and alternate keyword
phrases
·
There is a significant amount of optimized,
unique content on key pages
·
The primary keyword phrase is contained in
the H1 tag
·
Images' file names and alt text are
optimized to include the primary keyword phrase associated with the page.
·
URLs are descriptive and optimized
·
Clean URLs
·
Short URLs
Content
·
Homepage content is optimized
·
Landing pages are optimized
·
Site contains real and substantial content
·
Proper keyword targeting
·
Keyword cannibalization
·
Content to help users convert exists and is
easily accessible to users
·
Content formatting
·
Good headlines on blog posts
·
Amount of content versus ads
Duplicate
content
·
There should be one URL for each piece of
content
·
Do a search to check for duplicate content
·
Sub-domain duplicate content
·
Check for a secure version of the site
·
Check other sites owned by the company
·
Check for "print" pages
Accessibility
& Indexation
·
Check the robots.txt
·
Turn off JavaScript, cookies, and CSS
·
Now change your user agent to Googlebot
·
Check the SEOmoz PRO Campaign
·
XML sitemaps are listed in the robots.txt
file
·
XML sitemaps are submitted to Google/Bing
Webmaster Tools
·
Check pages for meta robots noindex tag
·
Do goal pages have the noindex command
applied?
Site
architecture and internal linking
·
Number of links on a page
·
Vertical linking structures are in place
·
Horizontal linking structures are in place
·
Links are in content
·
Footer links
·
Good internal anchor text
·
Check for broken links
Technical
issues
·
Proper use of 301s
·
"Bad" redirects are avoided
·
Redirects point directly to the final URL
and do not leverage redirect chains
·
Use of JavaScript
·
Use of iFrames
·
Use of Flash
·
Check for errors in Google Webmaster Tools
·
XML Sitemaps
·
Canonical version of the site established
through 301s
·
Canonical version of site is specified in
Google Webmaster Tools
·
Rel canonical link tag is properly
implemented across the site
·
Uses absolute URLs instead of relative URLs
Site speed
·
Review page load time for key pages
·
Make sure compression is enabled
·
Enable caching
·
Optimize your images for the web
·
Minify your CSS/JS/HTML
·
Use a good, fast host
·
Optimize your images for the web
Mobile
·
Review the mobile experience
·
Make sure analytics are set up if separate
mobile content exists
·
If dynamic serving is being used, make sure
the Vary HTTP header is being used
·
Review how the mobile experience matches up
with the intent of mobile visitors
·
Ensure faulty mobile redirects do not exist
·
Ensure that the relationship between the
mobile site and desktop site is established with proper markup
International
·
Review international versions indicated in
the URL
·
Enable country based targeting in webmaster
tools
·
Implement hreflang / rel alternate if
relevant
·
If there are multiple versions of a site in
the same language (such as /us/ and /uk/, both in English), update the copy
been updated so that they are both unique
·
Make sure the currency reflects the country
targeted
·
Ensure the URL structure is in the native
language
Analytics
·
Analytics tracking code is on every page
·
There is only one instance of a GA property
on a page
·
Analytics is properly tracking and capturing
internal searches
·
Demographics tracking is set up
·
Adwords and Adsense are properly linked if
you are using these platforms
·
Internal IP addresses are excluded
·
UTM Campaign Parameters are used for other
marketing efforts
·
Meta refresh and JavaScript redirects are
avoided
·
Event tracking is set up for key user
interactions
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