In SEO, technical aspects play a crucial role in determining how search engines assess and rank your website. Without the proper technical foundation, even the most outstanding content can be undervalued. This guide provides a detailed beginner's manual for conducting a complete technical SEO audit, helping you understand the key aspects that need to be considered to optimize your website for search engines.

Why a Technical SEO Audit Is Needed

For your website to succeed in search engines, it must be informative and appealing to users and technically optimized. Technical issues can slow down page loading speed, create obstacles for content indexing by search engine robots, and degrade user experience. A technical SEO audit helps identify these issues and develop a strategy to address them.

Preparing for the Audit

Before starting the audit, it's important to understand the key metrics and tools that will help you evaluate the technical condition of your website. Utilize analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, as well as specialized SEO auditing tools.

The Best Tools for Technical Audit

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) is a free service provided by Google that offers website owners information on how their sites are indexed in the Google search engine.

Key Features:

• Coverage Reports: View reports on how Google has indexed your site, including any indexing errors.
• Query Analysis: See which keywords users are using to find your site in Google search results.
• Performance Monitoring: Track metrics such as clicks, impressions, and positions of your site in Google search results.

Google PageSpeed Insights

Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool that evaluates the loading speed of a web page on mobile and desktop devices, providing recommendations for performance improvement.

Key Features:

• Loading Speed Assessment: Get a score for the loading speed of your web page based on various factors.
• Optimization Recommendations: Receive recommendations from Google on how to improve loading speed, such as optimizing images, reducing CSS and JavaScript file sizes, etc.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a powerful website auditing tool that allows you to crawl and analyze various technical aspects of your site.

Key Features:

• URL Crawling: Discover broken links, duplicate content, metadata issues, and other technical problems.
• Site Structure Analysis: Explore the structure of your site, including internal linking, page hierarchy, and more.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a comprehensive tool for researching and analyzing a website's backlink profile, competitors, keywords, and other SEO aspects.

Key Features:

• Backlink Research: Analyze external links to your site and competitors to determine their quality and relevance.
• Keyword Analysis: Investigate keyword search volumes, competition, and other metrics to develop a content marketing strategy.
• Rank Tracking: Monitor your site's and competitors' positions in search results for various keywords.

Semrush

Semrush is a versatile tool for competitor analysis, keyword research, rank tracking, and other SEO functions.

Key Features:

• Competitor Analysis: Explore competitors' strategies, keywords, backlinks, and other parameters.
• Keyword Research: Investigate search volumes, competition, and other keyword metrics to optimize content.
• Rank Tracking: Track your site's and competitors' positions in search results for various keywords and phrases.

Step by Step — What to Consider

When conducting a technical SEO audit, it's crucial to follow a systematic approach to ensure comprehensive coverage of all critical aspects of your website's technical optimization. In this section, we'll delve into the essential steps involved in performing a thorough technical SEO audit. By meticulously examining each aspect outlined below, you'll be able to identify and rcorrect any technical issues that could negatively affect user experience and your site's performance in search engine rankings. Let's explore the key steps to take when running a technical SEO audit to optimize your website effectively.

1. Site Structure and URLs

• Check the readability and structure of URLs: Ensure that URLs are easy to read, contain keywords, and reflect the site structure.
• Ensure that URLs do not contain unnecessary parameters that may cause content duplication.

2. Encoding and Metadata

• Check page encoding: Ensure that the page encoding is correct and allows content to be displayed properly on various devices and browsers.
• Make sure that each page has meta tags and that they are correct, including titles, descriptions, and keywords.

3. Indexing and robots.txt File

• Check the robots.txt file: Ensure that it exists and is accessible at your site's address, and that it contains correct directives for indexing pages.
• Ensure that critical pages of your site are not blocked from indexing using robots.txt.

4. Sitemap (sitemap.xml)

• Check for the presence and currency of the sitemap.xml file: Ensure that it contains links to all important pages of your site and is regularly updated.
• Ensure that the sitemap.xml file is accessible to search engine robots and does not contain errors.

5. Redirect Handling

• Check redirects: Make sure that site pages are correctly redirected using HTTP status codes (e.g., 301 for permanent redirection).
• Identify and fix any cyclic or broken redirects that may affect indexing.

6. Error Handling

• Check pages with server errors: Identify and fix pages with server response codes 404 (page not found), 500 (internal server error), etc.
• Fix or redirect broken links to correct pages to improve user experience and prevent traffic loss.

7. Page Loading Speed Optimization

• Assess page loading speed: Use performance analysis tools (e.g., Google PageSpeed Insights) to evaluate your site's loading speed.
• Fix factors that slow down loading, such as large image sizes and unoptimized CSS and JavaScript, and use caching and resource compression.

8. Mobile Friendliness

• Check optimization for mobile devices: Ensure that your site has a responsive design and displays well on all types of devices.
• Check for mobile errors and display issues on different devices using tools such as Google's Mobile-Friendly Test.

9. Security and SSL Certificate

• Check site security: Ensure that your site is protected from hacks and attacks using up-to-date security methods.
• Ensure that an SSL certificate is installed and active, providing a secure connection between the user and your site.

10. HTML Tags and Microformats

• Check the use of HTML tags: Make sure that the main HTML tags, such as headings (h1-h6), meta tags, etc., are correctly used on your site.
• Consider using microformats to help search engines better understand your site's content and increase its visibility in search results.

11. Internal Link Structure and Quality Analysis

• Check the structure of internal links: Ensure that internal links are logical and help search engines better understand and index your content.
• Identify and fix any broken or missing internal links to ensure quality internal interaction on your site.

What to Do After the Check

After analyzing the technical aspects of your website and identifying potential issues, it's time to develop a strategy to address them. In this section, we will discuss the key steps to rectify the problems you have identified and optimize your website for better performance in search engines and enhanced user experience.

• Problem Prioritization: Start by identifying the issues that have the greatest impact on your site's performance and visibility in search results. These may include issues such as broken links, slow page loading speed, or improperly configured robots.txt file.
• Action Plan Development: Create a detailed action plan for addressing each identified problem. Specify the steps required to resolve the issue and set deadlines for each step.
• Technical Error Correction: Implement necessary changes on your website to address the problems. This may involve updating .htaccess files for redirect configuration, optimizing images to improve loading speed, and fixing improperly configured meta tags.
• Reassessment: After making changes, rescan your site to ensure that the problems have been successfully addressed. Verify that the fixes have not caused new issues and that the site continues to be properly indexed by search engines.
• Monitoring and Updating: Continuously monitor the status of your website and conduct regular technical audits to identify new problems and ensure optimal performance. Update strategies and solutions in line with changes in search engine algorithms and user requirements.

Conclusion

Self-conducted technical SEO audits have several drawbacks:

• Limited Resources: You may lack specialized tools and expertise to conduct a comprehensive and exhaustive audit.
• Time-Consuming: Conducting an audit can take a lot of time, especially if you have limited SEO knowledge.

These issues can be addressed by hiring a marketing agency. Furthermore, by turning to professionals, you gain several advantages:

• Expertise and Experience: Professional SEO agencies have extensive experience and expertise in technical audits. Their specialists work with various types of websites and possess practical skills to identify and solve even the most complex issues.
• Specialized Tools: SEO agencies typically have access to a wide range of specialized tools and software solutions, which can significantly streamline and expedite the audit process.
• Tailored Problem Solving: Working with an SEO agency allows you to receive a custom-tailored optimization strategy that takes into account the specific needs and goals of your business.
• Efficiency of Time and Resources: Conducting an audit yourself can be time-consuming and require significant effort. Turning to an agency allows you to save time and energy, as agency specialists can quickly and efficiently identify issues and propose appropriate solutions.
• Continuous Support and Maintenance: Working with an SEO agency may involve not only conducting an audit but also providing ongoing support and maintenance.