Go to โReportsโ > โAcquisitionโ > โTraffic acquisition.โ
Look for โOrganic Searchโ as the primary channel group.
You can tweak the timeframe to see your organic traffic performance over a longer time period.
Before we move on to the next step, identify which pages on your site drive the most clicks from Google. Do this using the โPerformanceโ report in Google Search Console.
And going to the โPagesโ tab.
Understanding which pages perform bestโand which pages need workโwill help you prioritize your efforts during and after your SEO audit.
Now:
If your organic traffic is flat (or declining), donโt worry.
The goal in this step is just to establish benchmarks.
The entire point of this SEO audit is to improve your websiteโs performance.
Step #2: Run a Full Site Crawl
Running a website crawl is the most efficient way to gather lots of useful data about every page of your website.
You can gain insights about your websiteโs:
Crawlability
Loading speed
Internal linking
Structured data
On-page SEO
And more.
Weโll discuss a few of these areas in more detail throughout this guide. But performing a site crawl is a quick way to assess lots of aspects at once.
How do you do it?
There are a few different tools out there to help you perform a site crawl. One is Screaming Frog.
Itโll give you insights on aspects of your site like title tags, meta descriptions, and images. And itโll help you identify broken links, understand your websiteโs architecture at a deep level, and much more.
It is a paid tool, but you can run an audit of 500 URLs for free.
Semrush is a full SEO suite that offers a great site audit tool. Conveniently named Site Audit, itโs another option for crawling your site. As the name suggests, it is a comprehensive auditing tool, not just a crawler.
Itโll assess your site for more than 140 issues. Covering site performance issues, internal linking optimization, and even international SEO.
To run your site crawl, just enter your domain name and click โStart Audit.โ
Youโll then need to configure your crawler settings. You can set crawl limits, choose different user agents, and schedule automatic site audits.
So you can stay on top of future issues before they hurt your organic search performance.
The โOverviewโ tab showcases your siteโs overall health. Along with how many errors, warnings, and notices you have.
Click any of the linked numbers under these headers to learn more.
Go through and fix each of these issues to improve your websiteโs performance. You can also click โWhy and how to fix itโ or โLearn moreโ to get advice on solving the issue.
Internal linking is one of the most underrated SEO strategies on the planet.
The question is:
How do you internal link the right way?
Itโs simple:
Make sure you link to high-priority pages as much as possible.
But:
Donโt just link to what you think are the most important pages. Ideally, every page should have at least one relevant internal link pointing to it.
This helps avoid โorphaned pages.โ Making it easier for search engines (and users) to find your content.
While thereโs no hard number of internal links to include, aiming for 5+ per page is a good start. As long as theyโre all relevant.
Often, youโll find yourself including way more than this. For example, hereโs a snippet of one of our other posts where we have three useful internal links all close together:
As long as the links are relevant and add value for the reader, theyโre worth adding.
Adding internal links also minimizes your websiteโs crawl or click depth.
Essentially:
How many clicks it takes for a reader to get from your homepage to any given post or page on your site.
Ideally, keep your crawl depth to 3 clicks at most. At least for your most important content.
You can quickly find out if you have pages that are deeper than 3 clicks using the Semrush Site Audit tool.
Step #5: Optimize for UX Signals
Whether or not Google uses user experience (UX) signals (like clicks) in its rankings algorithms has long been a topic of discussion in the world of SEO.
The 2023 U.S. vs. Google antitrust trial revealed slides that suggest Google does indeed use clicks for ranking. At least for training their algorithms, if not specifically for ranking individual pages.
Many in the SEO industry have thought this was the case for a while, based on RankBrain. Which is part of Googleโs overall ranking systems, and was introduced in 2015.
RankBrain measures how users interact with your site. To help the algorithms understand which pages meet search intent.
Which means:
To rank well in Google, you should optimize for UX signals.
In other words, your content needs to make users happy.
When you do, you can improve your rankings in search results.
For example:
A while back we noticed that this SEO campaign post on the site wasnโt ranking that well (note the date: it needed an update!).
It was hovering between the 10th and 15th spots for our target keyword: โSEO Campaignโ.
And when we looked at the content, we realized whyโฆ
The content didnโt give people searching for โSEO campaignโ what they wanted.
Instead of steps, they got a case study of ONE specific strategy:
Our post also had lots of outdated screenshots:
In short:
Because our content wasnโt optimized for UX signals (read: clicks and user satisfaction), Google buried it.
So we decided to overhaul the entire post.
Specifically, we:
Replaced the case study with a step-by-step guide
Included more actionable tips for beginner and intermediate SEOs
Added examples from several different industries
Lots more
In the end, we had a piece of up-to-date content that was a PERFECT fit for someone searching for โSEO campaignโ:
Sure enough, because our content is designed to make Google searchers happy, the page quickly went from #15 to the #4 spot in Google.
In a while, it hit the #1 spot and itโs currently ranking as a featured snippet:
Step #6: Optimize for Featured Snippets
Featured snippets can DRAMATICALLY increase your organic traffic.
Rendering is one of the stages of the overall process Google uses to analyze your content. To determine whether it should be indexed and, if so, where it should rank.
Rendering occurs after the crawling stage:
This involves Google rendering the page as a user would see it. By executing your JavaScript.
This is a programming language used to enhance webpages and add functionality. Beyond the HTML.
If there are issues with your JavaScript, Google (and potentially your users) wonโt be able to see your pages properly. This could be a broken reviews section. Or interactive buttons that donโt work.
Check how Google renders your pages using Google Search Console. Specifically, using the โURL Inspection Tool.โ
Just test a page and then click the โView Tested Pageโ button. Youโll see a screenshot on the right-hand side that shows how Google โseesโ your rendered page.
Look for differences between that and how your page should appear.
Tip: The Semrush Site Audit tool can quickly highlight any issues with your siteโs JavaScript.
For now, here are some tips to improve your siteโs mobile friendliness:
Use a responsive design: Essentially, make sure your site functions properly on mobile devices. If youโre using a CMS like WordPress, many themes are built to be responsive out of the box.
Create mobile-friendly content: Use short sentences and paragraphs for better readability on smaller screens. And ensure all your CTAs are clear and buttons or menus are easy to tap and navigate.
Use high-quality images: Ensure all graphics and photos look crisp and clear on mobile. Avoid using lots of text-heavy images, as they may be hard to read on smaller screens.
Step #9: Check Google Is Indexing Your Site Correctly
Did you know itโs possible to have different versions of your site indexed in Google?
Itโs true.
For example, here are 4 different versions of the same site:
http://yoursite.com
https://yoursite.com
http://www.yoursite.com
https://www.yoursite.com
To many people, those URLs are pretty much the same.
But not to Google.
And unless you redirect these versions properly, Google will consider them completely separate websites.
(Not good.)
Fortunately, this is easy to checkโand fix.
Just type each of the 4 different versions into your browser.
They should all end up on the same URL:
In our case, the โWWWโ version of the site redirects to backlinko.com.
And when someone tries to visit the HTTP version of the site, they get redirected to the HTTPS version.
All good.
If a version of your site isnโt redirecting properly, no worries.
Just 301 redirect it to the version you want to use.
And in 2018 they rolled out a new update that made speed even MORE important. As now mobile page speed would be used too.
So this is nothing new. And itโs something you need to prioritize as part of your SEO audit checklist.
But Google is also continuously adapting how they assess your siteโs speed. Like the introduction of the INP Core Web Vital in 2024. Which measures how fast your website responds to user interactions.
Hereโs how to get your site to load REALLY fast:
This test will also show you how youโre performing in terms of your Core Web Vitals.
These are three metrics that cover how fast your site loads, how responsive it is to user interactions, and whether there are any unexpected layout shifts as your page loads.
Pro tip: Deleting Zombie Pages also makes the rest of this SEO audit MUCH easier. Fewer pages=fewer problems
Step #12: Find and Fix Indexing Problems
Next, itโs time to find webpages that Google isnโt indexing.
To do that, head back to Google Search Console. And click the โPagesโ report under โIndexing.โ
This report provides information about pages Google hasnโt indexed.
Clicking into any of these reasons will show you a list of the pages with that issue.
For example, itโs not uncommon to accidentally block a page with your robots.txt file. Or with a noindex tag.
Note: Not everything you see in this report is an issue to fix. You might want to block some pages with robots.txt. And pages that no longer exist should return a 404 error.
But to avoid sending your readers to these pages, follow the next step.
Step #13: Fix Broken Links
A few years back Google stated that they donโt โlose sleepโ over broken links.
That said:
Broken links are bad for user experienceโฆ which CAN hurt your SEO.
With that in mind, hereโs how to fix broken links on your site:
And now itโs time to analyze your own backlink profile.
Hereโs how:
First, enter your domain into a backlink analysis tool.
Weโre using Semrush for this step (the Backlink Analytics tool in particular). But there are other tools that can do this as well.
And youโll get a report on your links:
Pay particular attention to how many referring domains you have pointing to your site.
Referring domains = the number of different websites that link to you.
You also want to take a look at your domainโs Authority Score.
This tells you how much authority your site has. Based on factors like the quantity AND quality of your backlinks.
Donโt sweat the exact numbers too much. Youโre just benchmarking where youโre at.
Finally, look for toxic links.
You want backlinks from REAL (and relevant) websites.
For example, you can see that many of our links come from blogs and news sites that write about digital marketing and SEO.
(Which is good.)
But if you notice that most of your links are from shady sites, you might want to disavow those links. (But be careful: you usually wonโt need to use this tool, unless you have received a manual action.)
Semrushโs Backlink Audit tool has a built-in feature to help you identify potentially harmful backlinks:
Pro tip: Spammy links are a normal part of any link profile. So donโt stress if you see a few suspicious links. Google is quite good at filtering for these anyway.
Step #15: Analyze Your Competitors
Now itโs time to spy on your competitors.
Hereโs how to do it:
First, find your competitorsโ best keywords.
You can easily find this info using a tool like Semrush.
If your competitors rank for these keywords, you have a good chance to rank for them too.
Which makes them GREAT keywords to target.
Second, check out the pages that are ranking for those terms.
Then, figure out what those pages have in common. That way, you know what type of content works best in your niche.
For example, if you look at some of our highest-ranking pages…
…youโll notice that our content:
Is long-form (3k+ words)
Contains custom visuals and illustrations
Cites research studies, data and statements from Google
Isnโt super technical
Then, analyze those competitorsโ backlink profiles.
You can do this by jumping back into Semrushโs Backlink Analytics tool for each page.
This doesnโt just tell you what content gets links. It also tells you what kinds of websites already link to the kind of content you might want to create.
Just repeat this for your main competitors and their top performing pages.
Then itโs time to create that content…
Step #16: Find Opportunities to Create 10x Better Content
To rank in 2024, your content needs to provide mega value for your readers.
With that, here are some easy ways to make your pages 10x better than anyone else in the search results:
1. Write VERY short intros
No one wants to read long-winded introductions like these:
Instead, keep your intros short and sweet:
2. Use Short Paragraphs
People donโt read online. They skim.
And small paragraphs help skimmers consume your content with ease.
3. Add Lots of Subheaders
Relevant subheaders help break up your content into digestible chunks.
They also help Google and users understand what the surrounding content is about.
4. Use Visuals, Images and Video
Multimedia makes your content MUCH more compelling.
Bonus Step #1: Analyze Your Siteโs Topical Authority
Topical authority has become a bit of a buzzword in the SEO space.
No matter how you define it: thereโs no doubt that making it clear to users and Google that youโre a trustworthy authority on a given topic is essential if you want to rank well.
How can you check your websiteโs topical authority?
It automatically pulls information from your Google Search Console property. And provides you with a breakdown of keywords and phrases your website ranks for and gets clicks for.
Helping you understand where your topical authority lies. And in which areas you can expand or exploit your authority.
Bonus Step #2: Think About Information Gain
In broad terms, information gain refers to the additional value you add to the overall search results with your content.
Do you just rehash the top 10 results and call it a day?
Or do you take the time to meet the search intent, while going beyond what is already on the SERP?
Lily Ray made the important point that information gain requires effort.
To use the concept of information gain to your advantage, consider where you can:
Cater to the search intent better than your competitors: Perhaps other posts follow a format that isnโt optimal for the target keyword. Or theyโre not fully answering usersโ questions.
Add useful visuals: Donโt just add stock images for the sake of it. Think about how you could enhance your explanations or stories with helpful visuals.
Discuss and link to relevant entities: Ensure your content clearly identifies and links to key entities (people, places, and things) relevant to your topic. Use structured data to help search engines understand these relationships.
Add unique insights: This could be through your own (or your teamโs own) expertise and first-hand experience. Or through original research, surveys, case studies, or interviews.
Note: Adding โnewโ discussions or topics to a post where they donโt actually add value for the reader is not information gain.
Take Your Siteโs SEO to the Next Level
Thatโs it for the SEO audit process. But itโs just the first step in improving your siteโs SEO.
Here are three resources to help you implement the guidance in this checklist:
SEO Marketing Hub: Check out this selection of guides to help you form a winning SEO strategy. No matter your level of expertise.
SEO Strategy: Learn how to craft the perfect SEO strategy for your website. With a step-by-step guide to boost your organic visibility.
SEO Trends: Stay on top of everything happening in the world of SEO. So you can understand which strategies you should be using right now.