Seo audit

An SEO audit of the website is the first thing that needs to be done. Even the most flawless-looking site can hide numerous technical shortcomings and errors that are not visible upon a superficial inspection. When it comes to a new site that hasn’t been adequately tested for functionality due to a lack of resources, its analysis must be conducted with great care.

If a webmaster who created the site has even basic SEO knowledge, they understand what aspects to consider when working on the internal optimization of the site to avoid elementary technical mistakes. However, if the site was developed by a third party and later passed to an optimizer, they will have to independently check for shortcomings that may negatively affect the promotion process.

Technical errors on the site can lead to the search engines interpreting the site differently than expected. The scenario may be such that the site doesn’t move even slightly from its position, or worse, gets banned. Additionally, due to the carelessness of the webmaster, information may leak from the site that should only be accessible to the resource owner.

The following points should be checked with utmost attention:

• The robots.txt file — check what is open and what is hidden from indexing by search robots; it may happen that target pages are not available for indexing while administrative pages are open, presenting to search engines everything that should be carefully concealed;
• CMS (Content Management System) — if improperly configured, it may automatically create page duplicates, which is highly undesirable; another aspect is the configuration in the CMS for each page to have SEO-friendly URLs, which will positively affect users and be beneficial for promotion if the page’s address includes keywords;
• HTML code — errors in the markup can also negatively impact how search robots perceive the site; unclosed tags, hidden text, overuse of headings, and many other coding flaws will hinder successful promotion;
• Error 404 — the presence of internal links (in navigation, menus, content) on non-existent pages is an error to avoid; promoted pages should open correctly and return a server response of 200 OK;
• Specification of the primary domain — search engines identify URLs with and without www as two different sites, so it’s essential to specify in the HOST directive of the robots.txt file which domain will be primary and to consider this when promoting; it would also be beneficial to indicate the primary domain in the settings of Yandex.Webmaster.

In addition to the above points, attention should also be paid to the implementation of internal linking on the site, as it is significant for SEO; the so-called “breadcrumbs” facilitate better site indexing and enhance user-friendliness. We should not forget about usability in general and the quality of landing pages in particular. Examples of excellent landing pages can be found in one of Oli Gardner’s reviews, and his advice can be taken into account.

If you are not confident in your abilities, you can entrust the audit to a specialist. The next step will be working with the site’s content.