Slow Site? Try a Quick SEO Audit

Your content’s SEO elements determine where you rank on a SERP. These elements are so important that 61 percent of marketers consider SEO the primary concern when crafting a platform.

SEO isn’t an easy topic to tackle. When you’re trying to weave SEO elements into your work as naturally as possible, you’re probably going to miss something, if only due to the nature of the beast.

If you want to avoid a grievous SEO error, you’ll want to conduct an SEO audit. The good news is that these audits don’t need to be lengthy ordeals. You can run an audit and develop an SEO action plan in little to no time at all—as long as you have the right tools at your disposal.

Start with a Website Crawl

The easiest way to start an SEO tutorial is to demand a site crawl. You can use any of the following third-party tools to crawl your website and detect any SEO oversights:

• SEMrush
• Ahrefs
• Deepcrawl

The most common errors these crawlers will find include:

• Doubled URLs and extraneous content
• Ineffective keywords
• Broken links
• Poor or uncompressed images
• Over-long titles and headers
• Unlinked pages
• Unnecessary redirects

Note that you’ll have to take the time to fix each of error individually. An SEO audit only takes a few minutes; the work that comes after may dig into your schedule.

Test Your Site Speed

You’ll also want to verify the speed of your platform when running an SEO audit. Not only does the loading speed of your platform impact its mobile compatibility, but you’ll also drive away 47 percent of potential consumers if your platform takes more than two seconds to load.

To test the speed of your site, take advantage of PageSpeed Insights through Google. When using PageSpeed Insight, all you need to do is input your site’s URL and let the algorithm spit out your site’s speed rating.

Note that you want your site to hit 80 at a minimum. Scores of 80 and above indicate that your platform will load within 2 seconds, preventing consumer bounces. Lower scores indicate that your site requires more time to load and that you’re more likely to lose your audience.

PageSpeed will outline the elements of your site that are slowing your load speed in red below your score so that you can fix them. These can include:

• Uncompressed HTTP
• Unstructured HTML
• Uncompressed images and text

Utilize Schemas

Finally, schema tags make it easier for Google’s crawlers to process your content. You’ll need to examine your existing site map to ensure that you’ve properly structured your data.

To do this, you’ll want to use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.

Enter your URL into the prompt box. Then, highlight any of the content available on the display page. Google Markup Helper will provide you with a drop-down list of available schema categories to consider. Once you’ve categorized your essential data, you can save and download your HTML for later upload to your site.

Just like that, you’ve completed a basic SEO site audit!

Conclusion

Is your company in need of help with an SEO Audit? MV3 Marketing Agency has numerous Marketing experts ready to assist you. Contact MV3 Marketing to jump-start your business.

image attribution: Olivier Le Moal – stock.adobe.com