The main objective of an SEO audit is to locate the crawling and content indexing barriers that prevent search engine robots from accessing your website and negatively influence the ranking of your products or services when a user performs a search related to them.<\/p>\n
Any potential problems you encounter can be turned into opportunities for improvement that will set you apart from your competitors.<\/p>\n
Structure of an SEO audit<\/b><\/h2>\n
At Human Level we know that there is no perfect structure for writing an SEO audit and this is the philosophy we apply to each of our clients. Each agency and each SEO professional implements their expertise to present the results of the audit according to their way of interpreting SEO and with the objective that the client understands the aspects to be improved on their site.<\/p>\n
Analysis of each positioning factor<\/b><\/h3>\n
In an SEO audit, all aspects that influence the positioning of<\/strong> your website in search engine results<\/strong> are analyzed in depth. It is important to explain each step that the SEO consultant carries out so that as a client you know and understand the procedure performed in each analysis and at all times.<\/p>\n An example of how we present anSEO audit report at Human Level<\/span> is as follows:<\/p>\n At the beginning of the SEO audit white paper we consider it good practice to write an executive report<\/b> in which non-technical language is used to explain the main problems\/opportunities <\/b>that have been found throughout the SEO audit for you to understand all the analysis that the SEO consultant has carried out.<\/p>\n We know from experience that listing all of the problems\/opportunities encountered without suggesting a order of priority <\/b>how to attack them does not add value to the SEO audit, for this reason we usually accompany the executive report with a road map <\/b>where we indicate which points will be worked on according to the expected results and, above all, the resources that will have to be invested in the corresponding actions.<\/p>\n Finally, it is advisable to conclude the executive report by indicating and explaining the benefits we expect to obtain<\/b> once we have implemented the optimizations proposed <\/b>in the roadmap.<\/p>\n The data collected during the different phases of the SEO audit and used to support and justify the suggested recommendations are collected in documents external<\/strong> to the audit report itself, e.g. Excel sheets or Google Sheets. We like to list the documents in the annexes section of the technical document to present them to you in a clear and orderly fashion.<\/p>\n In an SEO audit, all aspects and factors of your website are analyzed in detail to detect those problems that prevent a correct positioning of your content, products and services in Google search results.<\/p>\n Almost all SEO audits agree on six major areas of analysis<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Let’s take a detailed look at each of them in order to explain the actions that are usually performed in an SEO audit.<\/p>\n It is the accessibility that allows search engine robots to discover, crawl and finally index the content and then rank it when a user performs a search according to their intent.<\/p>\n In this phase of the SEO audit, technical barriers that prevent easy crawling by search engine bots are detected.<\/p>\n In Indexability, the key point is how robots see us. And, among other aspects, we reviewed the following.<\/p>\n To determine the health of a website, it is essential to know its saturation index<\/strong>: the ratio between the total indexable pages of the site and the pages actually indexed by Google. Our goal will be to achieve 100%.<\/p>\n It is a file that lists all the important URLs of a website<\/strong><\/a>. It is very beneficial in very large websites to take full advantage of the crawl-budget<\/a> of the bots, the resources that search engines allocate to crawl our site. It must be exhaustive and updated.<\/p>\n Content or blocks of content similar or equal to others<\/a> that belong to our site or to other websites. Google bots do not like to read the same content more than once<\/strong> because they understand that we are not providing a differential value to the user.<\/p>\n In an ecommerce we usually find paginated content<\/a> in the product listings<\/strong>. It is a very delicate point and one that confronts many SEOs, since there are different ways of conceiving how to optimize them. They should facilitate the user experience as well as allow tracking of all pages of the site.<\/p>\n It is a recommendation we make to Google bots when we have two or more pages with the same or similar content to indicate to search engines which of them is the main one. It is important to avoid indexing duplicate content<\/strong>. It is especially important when applying sorting filters on product listing pages, for example.<\/p>\n It is an HTML tag<\/strong> that allows us to control the indexing of a page<\/strong>, blocking the passage of Google bots when it is convenient for us.<\/p>\n It is Google’s short-term memory<\/strong> where it stores the latest version of all pages accessible to its robot. Content, date, uncrawlable links and images without alternative text are some of the factors that can be analyzed by simply consulting the Google cache.<\/p>\n The ever more diffuse use of JavaScript technology<\/strong> and its higher resource requirements impact the behavior of Google bots when crawling a website. Browsing a website by disabling JavaScript helps to uncover potential problems for its crawlability and indexing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n When a browser makes a request to a server to view the content of a page, the server responds with codes. The user, on the other hand, only has access to its graphical representation “painted” on his screen: what is technically called rendering<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n It is a simple text<\/strong> file where we can include instructions<\/strong> for Google bots<\/strong> to have access or not to certain sections of our website. Thanks to the robots.txt file<\/a> we can modulate the crawling and indexing of certain content.<\/p>\n It is an attribute<\/strong> that is given to one or more links on our website to stop link to stop the transfer of link juice from one<\/a> <\/strong>from one page to another.<\/p>\n The URLs<\/strong> of our website should be semantic<\/strong> and include the most important concepts of the page.<\/p>\n Content plays a fundamental role in SEO as it is a relevant positioning factor for Google. Nowadays it is highly recommended to offer quality content to our users to satisfy their needs and search intentions and, consequently, to be able to be in the first positions in Google results.<\/p>\n Content is not just text: content is any image, video or program that can be accessed on the Internet through a web browser.<\/p>\n Page titles are a relevant factor<\/strong> for SEO positioning<\/a>. They must be unique, contain the keyword and meet the length criteria dictated by Google.<\/p>\n The meta-description<\/strong><\/a> is not a factor of relevance but it influences the CTR<\/strong><\/a> (click through rate), the number of clicks a link gets in relation to its number of impressions on search engine results pages (SERPs).<\/p>\n The Hn titles<\/strong><\/a> are an SEO resource that provides an additional semantic layer to the content. If we correctly implement its hierarchy, the bots will better understand the content of our landing page in a way that positively influences the positioning of a certain content.<\/p>\n HTTP response codes<\/strong> determine the status of the message sent by the server to the browser that requested a URL. These codes can be grouped into different categories. The following is a list of the most popular ones:<\/p>\n Correct requests: Redirections:<\/p>\n Customer errors:<\/p>\n Server errors:<\/p>\n If an IP<\/strong> address is “blacklisted”<\/strong> as a source of spam<\/strong> it can give the search engine a negative signal and could affect the website’s ranking.<\/p>\n If the site shares a server with other domains<\/strong>, it is good practice to know who the potentially dangerous neighbors are, since this factor could sometimes affect the positioning, slowing down your download or causing frequent server crashes.<\/p>\n Websites must implement the SSL certificate<\/strong> so that the requests from the browser to the server and vice versa are encrypted and the information travels in a secure way, as protected as possible from computer attacks.<\/p>\n Nowadays Google spiders crawl websites as if they were mobile, so the importance of having a site compatible with the different screen widths of the different devices on the market and with a fast download is fundamental.<\/p>\n Mobile-First: today mobile comes first<\/p>\n There are different ways to make our website compatible so that it can be viewed correctly on a smartphone. This is what mobile SEO<\/a> is all about.<\/p>\n A single HTML code and URL (presence of the viewport tag, only the CSS changes).<\/p>\n Two HTML codes and two different URLs (HTML markup: canonical tag from the mobile to the desktop version, alternate tag from the desktop to the mobile version, different CSS)<\/p>\n Two HTML codes and one URL (depending on the technology\/device used to access the site: different user Agent tag, different CSS)<\/p>\n A copy of the website stored on Google servers (recommended for media only):<\/p>\n If the site we are auditing targets users from different countries and languages or users of different languages living in the same country or users who speak the same language but live in different countries, we must verify the correct implementation of Google’s international SEO guidelines.<\/p>\n International SEO: do we meet Google’s standards?<\/p>\n In Google Search Console<\/strong> we have the possibility of configuring a geographic orientation<\/strong><\/a> for our domain, subdomain or subdirectory.<\/p>\n The CDN<\/strong><\/a> (Content Delivery Networks) are mirror servers<\/strong> present in different territories around the world whose function is to accelerate download speed. They are often used when the website’s audiences are located in different countries around the world. This spreads the load among different servers and reduces latency by being closer to your users.<\/p>\n It is an HTML attribute<\/strong> to specify the language<\/strong> and geographic target<\/strong> of a web page. If there are different language versions of a website, we must verify the correct implementation of this attribute.<\/p>\n\n
Executive Report<\/b><\/h3>\n
Execution priorities<\/b><\/h3>\n
Expected benefits<\/b><\/h3>\n
Annexes<\/b><\/h3>\n
What is analyzed in an SEO audit?<\/b><\/h2>\n
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Indexability <\/b><\/h3>\n
Pages indexed in Google<\/span><\/h4>\n
![\"Pages](\"https:\/\/www.humanlevel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/paginas-indexadas-en-google-search-console.png\")
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\n<\/a><\/h4>\nSitemap file<\/span><\/h4>\n
Duplicate content<\/span><\/h4>\n
Paginated contents<\/span><\/h4>\n
Canonical<\/span><\/h4>\n
Meta robots<\/span><\/h4>\n
Google Cache<\/span><\/h4>\n
![\"cache](\"https:\/\/www.humanlevel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/cache-de-google-de-una-web.png\")
<\/a><\/h4>\nJavaScript disabled<\/span><\/h4>\n
Page rendering<\/span><\/h4>\n
robots.txt file<\/span><\/h4>\n
Nofollow links<\/span><\/h4>\n
Search engine friendly URLs<\/span><\/h4>\n
Content <\/b><\/h3>\n
Titles in SERPs<\/span><\/h4>\n
![\"title](\"https:\/\/www.humanlevel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Captura-de-pantalla-2021-06-10-a-las-22.38.56.png\")
<\/a><\/h4>\nSnippet in SERPs<\/span><\/h4>\n
![\"meta](\"https:\/\/www.humanlevel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/meta-description-de-una-URL.png\")
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\n<\/a><\/h4>\nHierarchy of Hn<\/span><\/h4>\n
HTTP header analysis<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Satisfactory answers (2xx)<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"response](\"https:\/\/www.humanlevel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/codigo-de-respuesta-200-ok-1.png\")
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Redirections (3xx)<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"301](\"https:\/\/www.humanlevel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/codigo-de-respuesta-301-redireccion.png\")
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Customer errors (4xx)<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"error](\"https:\/\/www.humanlevel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/codigo-de-respuesta-error-404.png\")
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Server errors (5xx)<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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IP blacklisting<\/span><\/h4>\n
IP Neighborhood<\/span><\/h4>\n
HTTP\/HTTPS protocol<\/span><\/h4>\n
Mobile-first <\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"web](\"https:\/\/www.humanlevel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/web-optimizada-para-moviles.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nMobile version<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Responsive<\/i><\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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m.site<\/i><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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Dynamic<\/i><\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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AMP<\/i><\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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International<\/b><\/h3>\n
Geographic orientation of the domain<\/span><\/h4>\n
Use of CDN<\/span><\/h4>\n
Label hreflang<\/span><\/h4>\n
![\"hreflang](\"https:\/\/www.humanlevel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/etiqueta-hreflang-es-un-atributo-html.png\")
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