{"id":689,"date":"2014-03-19T21:40:53","date_gmt":"2014-03-19T21:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iteratemarketing.com\/?p=689"},"modified":"2021-06-11T22:00:53","modified_gmt":"2021-06-12T05:00:53","slug":"diy-seo-audit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iteratemarketing.com\/blog\/diy-seo-audit\/","title":{"rendered":"Do-It-Yourself SEO Audits"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Insanely Quick & Easy Process For Analyzing Your Site For Common SEO Errors<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s no secret that there are plenty of Search Engine Marketing companies out there\u00a0(Iterate included) that will offer you free or paid SEO Audits. In most cases, these\u00a0will include a thorough breakdown of your technical SEO issues, content gap\u00a0analysis, and a look at your search market. When done well, these audits will\u00a0give you plenty of data to work with to improve you search presence and provide\u00a0plenty of value.<\/p>\n

However, if you are just starting out in SEO, or just want to cover the basics\u00a0yourself, there are\u00a04 basics issues<\/strong> that hold most websites back \u2013 with no expensive\u00a0tools or deep technical knowledge required! Here\u2019s what to look for:<\/p>\n

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1. Canonicalization<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Ok, that\u2019s a really long word, but it\u2019s easy to understand. Every page on your\u00a0site needs to be unique! What do I mean by this?\u00a0Google sees each unique URL as a separate page. For instance, if your\u00a0homepage is at www.kittenmittens.com and<\/em> kittenmittens.com and<\/em>\u00a0www.kittenmittens.com\/index.html, you actually have 3 homepages and\u00a0there\u2019s nothing unique about that.<\/p>\n

Multiple versions of the same page can hurt your search performance, show\u00a0up as duplicated content, and make it difficult for analytics programs to track\u00a0user flow.<\/p>\n

How To Check It:<\/h4>\n

Go to your homepage (www.kittenmittens.com for example). In the\u00a0navigation bar delete the \u201cwww\u201d. If the page reloads without the www in the\u00a0URL, you have duplicated pages! Move to an interior page on the site and\u00a0repeat the process, just to check.<\/p>\n

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2. Crawlability<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml – These are files that give search engines\u00a0permission to crawl your website and provide a roadmap to your pages. They\u00a0are easy to find, and should be fixed immediately if they are missing.<\/p>\n

How To Check Them:<\/h4>\n

1) Add \/robots.txt to the URL of your homepage. It should show a plain\u00a0page with a few lines of text. (Do I add it to the end of the url???)\u00a0Check the disallow section. It should be blank, or have a few admin-type\u00a0files.\u00a0If your robots.txt file reads \u201cDisallow: \/\u201d you are blocking search\u00a0engines from everything past your homepage!<\/p>\n

2) Now add sitemap.xml to your homepage URL.<\/p>\n

You should either see a 404 Error page (BAD), or a long string of page urls\u00a0(GOOD).<\/p>\n

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3. Meta Tags<\/strong><\/h3>\n

These are tags that provide information about your page. There are many\u00a0different tags, but Google mainly relies on two of them when it gathers data:<\/p>\n

The Meta Title and Meta Description tag.\u00a0The Meta Title tag is the title of your page. It appears in the search results and\u00a0in the tab at the top of the browser.<\/p>\n

The Meta Description is a concise description of the page\u2019s content. These\u00a0appear in search results and can convince users to choose your page.<\/p>\n

How To Check Them:<\/h4>\n

For an exact count of missing\/duplicated\/wrong-length tags, you\u2019ll want to\u00a0use a SEO crawler (Our favorite: Screaming Frog) but for a quick overview,\u00a0you can just check using your web browser.\u00a0In Google, search \u201csite:www.kittenmittens.com\u201d (example) and look at all your\u00a0pages as they appear in the search engine. If you see titles and descriptions\u00a0that are duplicated, cut off, or too short, you’ve got problems!<\/p>\n

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4. Backlinks<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Backlinks are straight-forward; they\u2019re links to your website from someone\u00a0else\u2019s website. These links are seen as a \u2018vote of confidence\u2019 by search\u00a0engines. By looking at all the people who link to your site, and all the people\u00a0linking to those sites, and so on, search engines can measure \u201cAuthority,\u201d or\u00a0the trustworthiness of your site.<\/p>\n

How To Check Them:<\/h4>\n

There are many free web tools for checking backlinks, but my favorite is Open\u00a0Site Explorer by Moz (www.opensiteexplorer.org), which will allow you to\u00a0check these in your browser, with a limit of 3 reports per day. Simply input\u00a0your URL and look at the linking domains report. Bad links are usually easy to\u00a0spot, go through the list and look for anything that doesn’t seem legitimate.<\/p>\n

Things to check for:<\/h4>\n

Links from sites with \u201cDirectory\u201d, \u201cbiz\u201d or names that\u00a0don\u2019t have anything to do with your business. Open Site Explorer will allow\u00a0you to follow the link back to the originating pages \u2013 Follow any suspicious\u00a0ones and see how many other links are there. If you see more than 20 links, or\u00a0if they are for a wide array of sites that don\u2019t have a common theme, you are\u00a0probably better off getting rid of them!<\/p>\n

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Moving Forward<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Alright, now that you know what you\u2019re doing and you’ve personally checked\u00a0your own website, you probably have a list of issues to be resolved! This audit will\u00a0give you a firm foundation for talking to an SEO expert, assigning tasks to your\u00a0resident \u2018web guy,\u2019 or tackling foundational SEO for yourself!<\/p>\n

The Moz guides below provide plenty of detail about all these issues, and feel free\u00a0to contact us <\/a>with any questions or issues!<\/p>\n