There are a number of processes involved in a technical SEO audit of a website. These include redistribution of internal linking structures and redistributing equity to pages that need it most. In some cases, a website can suffer from duplicate content and internal link problems. To ensure that your website is getting the right amount of organic traffic, you should have a professional SEO audit performed. In this article, we will discuss the processes involved in an SEO audit.

Problems With Duplicate Content

A website may have problems with duplicate content in several places. Duplicate content can be in the form of blog posts, editorial content, or product information pages. A common cause is scrapers republishing blog content. Duplicate content is also common for e-commerce sites, since many websites will use the same manufacturer's description or similar content when selling the same products. Fixing this issue can be as simple as specifying the correct content for all relevant locations.

Duplicate content is a major SEO problem, as it may send visitors to the wrong page. Because of the context in which duplicate content is used, Google may misinterpret the meaning of the content. In one case, Google could not distinguish between London, Ontario, Canada, and London, UK. Additionally, ecommerce websites typically run into duplication problems when they implement faceted navigation, which lets users filter and sort products in the search results.

Duplicate content is a major SEO problem, as it is a common on-page error. While it won't negatively affect your Google rankings, it can greatly weaken your website's SEO performance. Therefore, it's smart to control duplicate content. Here's how. Duplicate content refers to content that has the same URL and appears on more than one page. Sometimes you may do it on your own but when your website starts to grow, managing all that may be a real challenge and therefore, getting a company to do the SEO work is the best option.

When Google finds duplicate content on a site, it looks for the intent behind the similarity. For instance, if the same page is published on a different domain, then the site will be flagged as violating Google's guidelines. If the site is intentionally publishing duplicate content, Google will likely send a manual action review to review the site. Even if the duplicate content is only published once, it's still important to add a canonical tag so that Google will be able to distinguish it from other pages.

Internal Link Problems

The first step of a technical SEO audit is to identify any internal link problems on your website. In the case of a complex site, internal link structures can become disorganized and messy. Anchor texts with no keywords, inconsistent volume and URL linking, and links that do not always point to the canonical version of a page are all signs of a messy website. These issues send mixed signals to search engine crawlers and can harm your rankings.

One of the most important parts of a technical SEO audit is XML sitemap optimization. This file lists each article or page on your website, with a title and date of last revision. This file is used by search engines as a reference. Internal link problems are a common problem on many websites. Keeping a website in top condition is essential to improving organic search results. You can optimize your website's XML sitemap by making it a point to fix problems that are found there.

Broken links can be caused by deleted or moved web pages. Check your click depth to see how far visitors must click before they can access the relevant pages. Ideally, your click depth is below three. Besides, broken links will confuse visitors. They will also waste your crawl budget. If this is the case, you need to implement technical SEO measures immediately. If you notice any broken links, don't forget to add a "noindex" tag to your pages.

While internal link structures are crucial, the quality of the links can also affect the performance of your website. Without strong internal linking, search engine bots will not know what to crawl or index. The longer your site is, the harder it will be for search engines to crawl it. If you're serious about improving search engine rankings, technical SEO is critical. If it isn't done, it will negatively impact your website's search engine visibility and profitability.

Issues With A Website's Code

Having issues with a website's code is not uncommon. There are many different reasons a site may have errors, from default issues to outdated browsers. Sometimes, a website's look and feel changes, but the functionality stays the same. Other times, a website may be not compatible with the most recent browser, resulting in broken functionality. The last version of Internet Explorer from Microsoft is the last one to receive security updates, so if you are running an old version of IE, you may be compromising your HTML.

Lighthouse

A lighthouse SEO technical audit of a website can identify any site issues and make recommendations for improvement. It is also an excellent tool for progressive web applications. It is available within Chrome and is easy to use. To perform the audit, right-click on a webpage and select "Lighthouse." Lighthouse can also be installed as a Node module or as a web UI and can be run from there as well. It checks for performance, accessibility, and best practices. The result is a color-coded score.

A Lighthouse audit of a website can highlight any issues related to mobile. This tool provides information about all mobile issues and can identify problems related to loading times. It can also emulate a smartphone using cellular data and simulate how the site would load if it were used on a slow mobile connection. This tool examines several important metrics, such as "First meaningful paint" and "First interactive" to determine how well a website performs and helps users.

Performing a technical audit using Lighthouse is a good idea for any website, regardless of size or complexity. The free tool is designed to help you measure the performance of a website and to improve the quality of its pages. Unlike traditional manual SEO audits, Lighthouse is open-source and requires no technical knowledge. It also makes recommendations for improvements based on the results of the audit. Lighthouse also offers many useful tips for improving the performance of your site.

Canonicalization is a key part of the technical SEO audit. This process tells search engines which version of a page is the "master version" of the site. Because a single page can have many URLs, canonicalization lets search engines know which one is the "master version." By following these guidelines, your website can improve its ability to be indexed and understand the site better.

Tools For Performing Technical SEO Website Audit

As a free lancer who provides SEO services for small and local businesses in Houston Texas, I have used a bunch of tools for auditing clients’ websites over a period of 15 years.

My contention is that there is no bad SEO tool out there. Each creator of those tools has their own criteria, resources and even preferences. For instance, a tool may be very accurate in discovering broken links while being not as accurate in discovering missing image alt attribute. On the other hand, a tool may be very poor in churning out slow loading pages but may be very accurate when fishing out flaws in the HTML code.

Well not to waste your precious time, let's move forward

Screaming Frog

While Screaming Frog is by no means the best SEO tool in my opinion, it happens to be the best tool I have ever come across in my 15 years of performing SEO technical audit of a website. Again in my 15-year experience as an SEO specialist. Screaming Frog can be used to find HTTP issues. Google Search Console can be used to identify more serious security issues, which can affect a website's rankings and traffic. The report generated from both tools can be exported to Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Once you've completed the technical SEO audit, the next step is to re-crawl your site.

Technically sound websites are fast and secure, have clear navigation, are free of duplicate content and images, and have systems to engage users. Another important part of a technical SEO audit is the content. Structured data allows search engines to understand your content and is useful to web crawlers. It can be in the form of XML sitemaps or schema graphs. Ensure that your website is secure by implementing the security features that Google and other search engines prefer.

A tech audit of a website will look for issues with content, structure, domain name, and platform migration. It should also check that your website is properly using Google Search Console's change of address tool. For many websites, this tool can be very quick, but it can also be one of the most important parts of a technical audit. So, how do you get started with a technical SEO audit of a website?

Take Away From This Blog Post

The first process of the technical SEO audit of a website is to run a Google search. A simple Google search will show you where your site appears in overall search results, as well as in relevant search results. A site's Google ranking can be determined by performing a site:rootdomain search, which will reveal where the site is listed in the overall search results. If the search engine returns only a few pages, this means the site is not providing the content that visitors want.

The technical SEO audit you performed should provide you with enough information to rectify the anomalies and errors that may have been hampering your website from performing better and probably you may be losing a lot of generated revenue. My advice is to get a very good SEO expert to help you out with this.