Are you overwhelmed with the SEO guides which tend to be for beginners but are way too technical to understand? We have created this basic SEO site audit and optimization which will help you get started and do a basic SEO for your company’s website so that you step your foot in the right direction before hiring an SEO expert or a marketing company.
1. Page title, description, and URL
For every page that you want to rank, the page title, description, and URL need to be optimized in a correct way which makes it easier for humans as well as search engines to understand what your page is all about.
Title:
Ask the following question to yourself to see if the title is optimized:
i) Is the title between 40 to 70 characters? This is the recommended character limit for Google. If your title exceeds this limit, it is truncated.
ii) Does the title contain your keyword which you want to rank for? Include the keyword in your title for which you want to rank.
iii) Is the title informative?
Description:
i) Is the description between 120-150 characters? Again, Google truncates description which crosses the character limit depending on the screen size.
ii) Is it informative?
iii) Does the description include the keyword?
iv) Is the description compelling enough to make the visitor click on your website link? For e.g. if you are running an e-commerce website, a description like “Best quality running shoes with free shipping across the US. Order Now!” works better than just plain “Best quality running shoes”
URL:
i) Does your site have HTTPs?
ii) Are all the characters lowercase and does not contain underscores? If yes then replace underscores with hyphens.
iii) Does the page URL has the keyword for which you want to rank? If possible, then add a keyword in the URL.
iv) Does the URL have any unconventional character or is too long? Trim the URL length and remove unconventional characters.
2. Content Quality
Adding relevant keywords isn’t the only part of content optimization. Google and other search engines use a lot of factors in determining content quality. The following are primary factors you need to look to optimize your content further:
i) Is the content relevant to the industry, product or the service?
Irrelevant content will attract irrelevant visitors. For e.g., IoT companies writing about E-commerce or other verticals won’t be the best bet.
ii) Does the content provide value to the readers?
Writing content for search engines isn’t the best optimization technique. Aim the content to provide value to your readers and you will create content that will be shared and re-shared among your target market.
iii) Are you using the keyword consistently and avoiding keyword stuffing?
Keep a healthy content to keyword ratio. There are various calculation to find out the keyword density but the most common is
(Number of keywords/ Total number of words) * 100
Ideally, a keyword density of 2-3% works best. Spread your keywords evenly over the content with the first keyword in the first few lines of the content.
Along with these, avoid spelling mistakes, copied content, too many links, use a few images etc. to optimize the content.
3. Page speed and functionality
Speed:
Does your landing page take forever to load? Check what is slowing down your site and try to fix the issues. Search engines prefer a faster loading site and it is one of the ranking factors that affect your ranking. You can check for issues using Google’s PageSpeed Insight tool- https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/.
Links:
Does your landing page have any broken links? Check all the links on your page and ensure that none of the links point to a non-existent URL.
Mobile friendly:
It’s 2017 and a responsive website is a primary requirement as more than 50% of visitors browsing the internet are using a smartphone. No one can afford to lose 50% of the visitors because of a really old website.
Ensuring that the above mentioned basic audit and optimization are taken care of will help you in the long run for your business. Comment your views on the guide and let us know if you have any questions. Contact us today for a free SEO report from industry experts.
