Technical SEO Audits - SEO Consultant Bill Hartzer - Triangle Marketing Club

Technical SEO Audits

About Me
• SEO Consultant, Hartzer Consulting
• Blogger/Writer BillHartzer.com
• Founder, DFWSEM Association (2004)
• US Brand Ambassador, Majestic.com
• Brand Ambassador, OnCrawl.com
• Practicing Organic/Natural SEO since 1996
• Formerly Senior VP, Advice Interactive (Advice Local)
• Senior SEO Strategist, Globe Runner
• Director of SEO, Standing Dog

SEO Audit Experience
• Started SEO auditing in 2008-ish
• SEO Audit Services, agency level
• SEO Audits as one-off projects
• SEO Audits at start of ongoing monthly SEO
• Full-time SEO Auditing started in 2016
• 100+ SEO Audits in past 4 years
Official New Words in 2008:
• Bitcoin
• burner phone
• dumpster fire
• mansplain
• photobomb

Overview – Technical SEO Audits
• Common SEO Mistakes I See
• Choosing Which Recommendations to Provide
• Overall SEO audit process
• Presenting Results and Recommendations
@bhartzer

What Isn’t an SEO Audit?
• Lots of SEO Tools out there. Over 90+ on my list.
• Audits are NOT just running some software or SaaS tool.
• It’s NOT an audit if you just run software or crawl a site.
@bhartzer

So What Is An SEO Audit?
It’s a process…
• It starts with crawling, gathering lots of data.
• It’s knowing which SEO software or SaaS tool to run, when.
• It’s Interpreting data and providing recommendations.
@bhartzer

SEO Audits are only as good as the experience
of the person doing the analysis.
@bhartzer

Recommendations must be implemented in
order for you to get value from an SEO Audit.
@bhartzer

Common Mistakes Most Sites Make
@bhartzer

Common Mistake: Bad HTTP/HTTPs Migration
@bhartzer
Check and Fix:
• Internal links pointing to HTTP
• Images load via HTTP
• Ad networks loading via HTTP
• Redirects from HTTP to HTTPs
• Verify HTTPs version in GSC
• Update Analytics Settings

Common Mistake: Duplicate Content
@bhartzer
Check and Fix:
• Run the Siteliner.com Crawler
• Common content on pages
Is common content longer on pages?
• Check Canonical Tags
Improper or no canonical tags.

Common Mistake: Mega Menus
@bhartzer
Check and Fix:
• Review Internal Link Structure
• Review Use of Topic Silos
• Review Content clusters
• Off-topic pages link together.

Common Mistake: Site Structure Issues
@bhartzer
Fix: Run Sitebulb
• Internal Link Structure
• Review Topic Silos

Common Mistake: Orphaned Content & Pages
@bhartzer
Analyze Log File Data
• Find pages not in site structure
• Combine in analysis:
- log files
- Google Search Console
- Analytics Data
OnCrawl.com

Common Mistake: Link Issues, Bad & Low
Quality Links
@bhartzer

Common Mistake: Over Optimization
On-page and onsite over optimization
• Keyword stuffing
• Poorly written meta data
• Not using proper heading tags, lists, etc.
• Poorly implemented Schema markup
@bhartzer

Choosing Which Recommendations to Provide
• Run the SEO tools, gather the data.
• We get information & data overload!
• What do you recommend? What do you fix?
• Focus on what will make an impact for the site.
@bhartzer

What Will Make an Impact?
• SEO tools provide & show potential issues
(Sitebulb, SEMrush, Screaming Frog)
• Read and understand the issues.
@bhartzer

What Will Make an Impact?
• Make decisions based on the site.
• Size of site, type of site, content, current
rankings, other issues, can all play a role.
• It’s OK to ignore some issues!
• Some analysis just comes with experience.
@bhartzer

Overall SEO Audit Process
• Before You Begin
• Gather Data
• Analyze
• Present Results
@bhartzer

Before You Begin – Info to Gather
• Access to website (if possible) & Log file data
• Google Analytics, Search Console, Google My Business access
• Bing Webmaster Tools access
@bhartzer

• Prior history: What SEO was done in past?
• Prior history: Domain Names used
• List of Domain Names owned, redirected
@bhartzer

• List of Competitors
• Understand offline competitors vs. online competitors
• Use list for keyword research, content research, content ideas
@bhartzer

Most important question to ask:
• Anything else we need to know?
Psychologically, this question causes site owners to reveal more information about
their site, marketing done in the past… oftentimes important details.
@bhartzer

Content – Review Content on Site & Rankings
• Google Search Console – Performance Reports
• SEMrush.com keyword data
• Review Current Rankings
• SimilarWeb Traffic and Data
• SERPStat Data
• Google Analytics Data
@bhartzer

Google Search
Console
> Performance
> Queries
What does
Google think?
@bhartzer

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

Google Searches
• site:domain.com
• site:domain.com –site:www.domain.com
• Click last page of SERPs to get page count
• Review SERPs listings, look for issues
@bhartzer

Crawlers
• OnCrawl
• Screaming Frog
• Sitebulb
• Deep Crawl
• Siteliner
@bhartzer

Siteliner.com
@bhartzer

SEMRush Site Audit
@bhartzer

Website Log Files, Crawl & Analytics
• OnCrawl combines all three
@bhartzer

Screaming Frog
SEO Spider
Adjust to crawl
large site over
100k pages
@bhartzer

Compare:
Pages Crawled
vs
Pages Indexed
SERPS Redux
bookmarklet,
compare lists of
URLs in MS Excel
@bhartzer

Bing Webmaster Tools
@bhartzer

Bing Webmaster Tools
• Spot issues to fix
@bhartzer

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

Run Sitebulb
• Review Silos
• Other SEO audit issues
Sitebulb.com
@bhartzer

Run Cora SEO Software
• Measures over 880 SEO factors
• Calculates which ones matter most
• Run on site’s main keywords
• See the most important factors for each keyword
• On-site, on-page, and offsite factors included
• Shows you what factors your site is missing based on
correlation data of top 100 results for that keyword
• https://www.hartzer.com/cora/
@bhartzer

Sample Cora SEO Software Results
• Roadmap for keyword
@bhartzer

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

@bhartzer
Link Data
• Google Search Console Links
• Majestic
• Open Site Explorer
• Link Research Tools
• Ahrefs

Ahrefs Links
@bhartzer

Majestic.com Links
@bhartzer

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

Majestic Anchor Text Review
@bhartzer

Majestic.com Topic Review
@bhartzer

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

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

Miscellaneous Data to Review
• All sorts of extras
@bhartzer

Site Speed: Pingdom
• Tools.Pingdom.com
@bhartzer

Site Speed: GT Metrix
• GTMetrix.com
@bhartzer

Page Load Speed: Google Pagespeed
Insights
• https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
@bhartzer

Site Speed Review – Google Analytics
@bhartzer

Robots.txt Issues
• Default CMS file?
• Disallowing wrong?
• Not specifying sitemap.xml URL
• Directives conflict
with other signals
@bhartzer

Coverage and Sitemap Issues
• New pages not updated on sitemap
• Multiple sitemap issues
• No sitemap file?
@bhartzer

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

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

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

Analysis Phase
• Analyze the Data
• Make Assumptions
• Make Recommendations
• Analyze the road
• Analyze the conditions…
@bhartzer

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

Analyze Keyword Data, Rankings
• Look for keyword opportunities
Anything ranking on 2nd page?
• Review SEMRush Keyword Data
• Review GSC Performance
@bhartzer

Analyze On-Site Data
• Title Tags
• Meta Descriptions
• Headings H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.
• Internal Anchor Text
• External Links (outgoing links)
• Canonical Tags
• Hreflang Issues
• Google Pages Indexed vs. Crawled
@bhartzer

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
@bhartzer

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

Present The Results
• Use internal or formal doc needed?
• Who will implement?
• Implement changes in-house? Outsource?
• MS Word doc, spreadsheets with data
• PowerPoint needed for presentation?
@bhartzer

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
@bhartzer

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

Contact
Bill Hartzer
Hartzer Consulting
Email: Bill@BillHartzer.com
Phone: (214) 236-4378
Web: https://www.hartzer.com
Twitter: @bhartzer
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bhartzer
@bhartzer

Technical SEO Audits - SEO Consultant Bill Hartzer - Triangle Marketing Club

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