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action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/aacmain/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114In our SEO Audit’s for clients (big or small), we check over one hundred individual items. We go as deep as we can.<\/p>\n
I’d like to share at a high level what we check for when we’re running an audit on a website. Here are the “buckets” of our SEO audit and a brief description of each so anyone can take this and expand on it. And let us know if you check something above and beyond that we simply forgot about:<\/p>\n
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We know from Google that its search engine may or may not respect your entries in a robots.txt file, but it’s a great place to start.<\/p>\n
Here are some of the things we look for in this bucket: <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Canonical references (aka “canonical tags,” “canonical links,” or “canonicals”) are one of my favorite, underrated SEO items. In my experience, major ranking corrections have happened simply from fixing canonicals.<\/p>\n A few examples of what we look for with canonicals:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A URL structure really aids in customer experience. I know a lot of large content management systems (or custom enterprise websites) have unwieldy URL structures. There might note be anything you can do about it. However, if you are able to build out a great taxonomy and information architecture… DO IT!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n Some hints of what we’re looking at with URL Structure:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Google Search Operators are designed to help users add logic to their search queries on google.com. Ahrefs has a good blog post that catalog’s a list of operators in use as of the time of this writing<\/a>. Google’s search operators can really give some major clues on what wrong with a site. We have over twelve different operator queries we use to try and find issues.\u00a0You should start with the “site:” and “inurl:” operators first.\u00a0<\/strong>HINT: A good place to start is trying to find “admin” pages that shouldn’t be indexed. <\/em>Start playing around with different queries (combine them) and see what you find.\u00a0Share your operator combinations and I’ll share some of ours as well. \ud83d\ude09<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A simple SEO checklist for a website sitemap:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n External tools can help identify trends and patterns you might not think of. Yes, most of them cost money, but they’re worth the annual fee. Most of the SEO tools all do the same thing, so it’s a preference between Moz, Majestic, Alexa, Semrush, Ahrefs, etc. etc. etc. Find one that works for you; they all have an introductory trial.<\/p>\n A glimpse into the list of things we look out with external tools:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This can be a double-edged sword. You’re insanely excited to find performance issues with your site, however, fixing site performance issues found is where your challenge begins<\/strong>. Especially since at the beginning of 2020, Google’s search engine decided to really crack down on WordPress sites with bloated themes. Most of the performance tests guide you on how to fix the issues, the first two performance tests we use on a site are GTmetrix<\/a>, and Google Page Speed. Google Page Speed test is more of a check after you’ve fixed everything from GTMetrix.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is another task where there are a million tools that conduct this sort of activity. If you’re new to using site crawls to find SEO issues, I might recommend using Ahrefs’ Site Scanning Tool called Site Audit<\/a>. It’s easier to jump into vs. a scanner software tool you download to your desktop.\u00a0SEO site scanners allow for a lot of technical SEO issues to be found without a lot of manual effort.<\/strong><\/p>\n Here’s an entry-level list of items we look for with an SEO Site Crawl:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This one is interesting, a lot of people forget about this. Social Markup is important because it controls how users see your content when someone else shares it. More shares = more visits. And with each share you want to try to control the experience. You might not be able to control everything or what the user says<\/em>, but you can do your best to specify imagery, links, titles, and descriptions. Ensure the following is installed: OG (Open Graph) tags, twitter card, and Pinterest. LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok use the OG tags (where applicable), but that might change.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Schema is over ten years old now and we’re all still neglecting to use it. Schema helps tell engines what your page is about and the important items on the page to take note of. In another article about website mistakes to avoid<\/a>, I gave an example of a recipe blog page and how important it is to tell google a specific page is a recipe so it’s not left trying to figure things out on its own!<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Here’s a peek at what we look for on a site when it comes to schema:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hopefully, this checklist of ten items is a great place to start. Feel free to share it with whomever and if you ask questions, I will dive deeper into a topic if you’d like.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n It’s also important to note that we ensure Google Analytics and Search Console are set up and we also suggest other tools (e.g. Quantcast) if we feel they’ll help as well. Or Mobile-first checklist items, this is a common problem with most clients<\/strong><\/span>. We also dive deeper depending on the type of site. If it’s a blog, we might ensure post authors and dates are present (with the appropriate schema). Ecommerce we dive really deep (breadcrumbs, internal search, gridwalls, oh my…). OR international sites it’s really important to get HREFLANG implemented.\u00a0 The list goes on and on. The Gist? Get started with our list of ten SEO checklist items and BUILD FROM THERE!\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>In no time, you’ll have a list that dwarfs ours and I look forward to hearing all about it!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you liked these tips, please consider subscribing to ENDURANCE:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Subscribe to more tips like these by following the\u00a0#ENDURANCEtips<\/strong>\u00a0hashtag. This specific article was shared using\u00a0#SEOTips<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
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2. Canonicals<\/h3>\n
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3. URL and Site Structure<\/h3>\n
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4. Google Search Engine Operators<\/h3>\n
5. Sitemap<\/h3>\n
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6. External Tools<\/h3>\n
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7. Performance Testing<\/h3>\n
8. Site Crawl (includes Meta information)<\/h3>\n
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9. Social Markup<\/h3>\n
10. SCHEMA (aka Microdata, aka Structured Data)<\/h3>\n
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Other SEO Audit items and how to start your own audit\/analysis<\/h2>\n
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