How to Perform an SEO Audit

2015 SearchFest – SEMpdx
Performing a Technical SEO Audit

2015 SearchFest – Performing a Highly Technical SEO Audit
About Me
• Senior SEO Strategist, Globe Runner
• Founder, DFWSEM Association
• Brand Ambassador, Majestic.com
• Personal Blog: www.BillHartzer.com
• Practicing Organic/Natural SEO since 1996

Overview
• Gather Data
• Analyze
• Present Results

Before You Begin – Info from Client
• Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools access
• Bing Webmaster Tools access
• Prior history: SEO done in past?
• Prior history: Domain Names used
• List of Domain Names owned
• List of Domain Names redirected
• List of Competitors
• Ask: anything else we need to know?

Gathering Phase
• Gather the Data
• Save the Data (MS Excel, MS Word)
• Start making notes (Notepad)

Google Searches
• site:domain.com
• site:domain.com –site:www.domain.com
• Click last page of SERPs to get page count

Screaming Frog

OptiSpider

Integrity (aka Scrutiny)
What it does:
• Crawls site, reports redirects, 404 errors
• Mac only, finds more errors

Siteliner.com

Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools
• Spot issues to fix

Google Webmaster Tools

Moz Campaign

SEMRush Site Audit

Website Log Files
• Weblog Storming, AwStats

Audit Site Structure
• Internal Link Structure
• Manual Review of Site
• URL Hierarchy
• Grouping of Topics
• GA: In-Page Analytics

Gather Off-Site Data
• It’s not all about on-site and on-page.

Google Webmaster Tools Links

Ahrefs Links

Majestic.com Links

Majestic.com Topic Review

Majestic Trust Flow, Citation Flow
• Trust Flow = Number of clicks from a seed set of
trusted sites to a given URL, or Domain
• Citation Flow = Number of citations to a given URL, or
Domain

Majestic Anchor Text Review

URIValet.com
• Check Server Headers

WebPageTest.org
• Page Performance

Miscellaneous Data to Review
• All sorts of extras

Site Speed, DNS Health
• Tools.Pingdom.com

Site Speed Review – Google
Analytics

Robots.txt Issues
• Default CMS file?
• Disallowing wrong?
• Using “allow”?
• Not specifying sitemap.xml URL
• Directives conflict with other signals

Sitemap Issues
• Google Webmaster Tools sitemaps
• New pages not updated on sitemap
• Issues with multiple sitemaps
• No sitemap file?

Subdomain Issues
• Duplicate content?
• Using subdomain rather than directory
• Wildcard subdomains turned on?
• www versus non-www issues

Canonical Issues
• Review canonical tags
• Not using canonical correctly
• Conflicting signals with canonical, others
• Canonical tags to help with dupe content

Use of Structured Data
• Taking advantage of Schema.org
• Not just for local addresses
• Reviews and Events
• Person, Place, Organization
• Products and Offers

Local Listings – Audit the listings
• Google My Business
• Bing Places for Business
• Yahoo! Local

Local Citations – Separate Audit
• Are citations correct?
• Same address, suite #, phone number?

Analysis Phase
• Analyze the Data
• Make Assumptions
& Recommendations
• You’re Fat!
• You need to exercise!
• OK, well maybe not like that…

Analysis Phase
• Analyze gathered data
• Look for Obvious Issues
• Look for Odd Data Points
• More notes!

Analyze Google Analytics
• Changes over time, year over year data
• Conversion Data
• Bounce Rates
• Pages Per Session
• Drops in Traffic:
Panda or Penguin?

Panda or Penguin Issues?
• Verify with SEMRush, Google Analytics
• Moz Google Algorithm Change History
moz.com/google-algorithm-change
• Panguin Tool
barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

Analyze Keyword Data, Rankings
• Look for keyword opportunities
Anything ranking on 2nd page?
• Review SEMRush Keyword Data
• Review GWT Search Query Report

Analyze On-Site Data
• Title Tags
• Meta Descriptions
• Headings H1, H2, etc.
• Internal Anchor Text
• External Links (outgoing links)
• Google Pages Indexed vs. Crawled

Analyze On-Site Data
• Conflicting signals? Overall Topic focus
• Conflicting signals?
Robots.txt vs. Canonical vs. Meta Robots vs. Nofollow
• Internal Duplicate Content
• Not Enough Unique Content
• Internal links within content present?
• Review Navigation
• Review Footer, footer links, copyright

Analyze Off-Site Data
• Link Velocity Matters (getting new links)
• Review anchor text (over optimized?)
• Diversity of anchor text
• Look for Toxic, Low Quality Links
• Run Link Risk, Link Detox report

Presentation Phase
• Present the Data
• Show the Results
• Make it look great!
• Action Plan
• Implementation Plan

Present The Results
• Use internal or formal doc needed?
• Who will implement?
• Client’s developer? Outside developer?
• Implement changes in-house?
• MS Word doc, spreadsheets with data
• PowerPoint needed for client meeting?

Present The Results - Document
• Cover Page
• Table of Contents
• Overview (summary, positives, negatives)
• Website Crawlability (404s, 301s, One-Page issues)
• Content Optimization (site arch., keyword issues)
• Linking (Internal links, externals links, link profile)
• Overall Recommendations

Finally – Additional Lists
• List of Priority Issues
• Present Action Plan for Implementing

2015 NamesCon– Global SEO & Domain Preference – Thank You
Contact Me
Bill Hartzer
Senior SEO Strategist
Globe Runner SEO
Email: Bill@GlobeRunner.com
Mobile: (214) 236-4378
Office: (972) 538-0260
Web: http://www.globerunner.com
Blog: https://www.billhartzer.com
Twitter: @bhartzer
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bhartzer

How to Perform an SEO Audit

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