Developing SEO audits that maximize growth #dmssconference

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmss by @aleyda from @orainti#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @orainti
Developing SEO audits
that maximize growth

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @orainti
Raise your hand if you have experienced
any of the following scenarios…

“I spent weeks doing an initial in-
depth SEO audit but the client
never implemented the
recommendations”

“The client spent 3 months
implementing the less important
changes of the SEO audit and we
won’t be able to see results soon”

“The client implemented the
specified changes based on the
SEO audit but in the wrong
pages”

“The implementation has been on
hold for months because it was
not clear they needed content
support for it when the SEO audit
was delivered”

“The client developer fixed the
identified issue right away as
specified in the SEO audit but
then said it wasn’t there in the
first place”

“The issue was initially eliminated
as recommended in the SEO audit
but it was again included in one of
the later releases”

“The issue had been documented
and recommended to fix in the
audit, but never executed until
the traffic started to decline”

These SEO challenges start when you develop the
initial SEO audit…

… and it’s your own responsibility to avoid them

* SEO Consultant & Founder at Orainti
* SEO Speaker at +100 Events in +20 countries
* Author “SEO. Las Claves Esenciales.”
* Blogger in Search Engine Land & Search Engine Journal
* Featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Hufﬁngton Post
* European Search Personality of the Year in 2018
I’m Aleyda Solis

I help great brands to do SEO

Today I’m going to share with you how to avoid
these SEO challenges

strategical prioritized actionable continuous
By developing SEO audits that maximize growth

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmss by @aleyda from @orainti
Strategical

Links
POPULARITY
Content
RELEVANCE
Technical Conﬁguration
CRAWLABILITY & INDEXABILITY
Your Site
Don’t start your SEO audit by only identifying
your own site optimization status

You need to
understand how the
top players are
already ranking and
the existing SERP
opportunities along
your own status, to
put your SEO actions
into context to be
competitive

Your Site
Links
POPULARITY 
 
Content
RELEVANCE
Current Organic Search
Performance
Your
Competition
Identify your site status within the context 
to make your SEO audit strategical
Audience Search Behavior and
SERP characteristics with
highest potential

Your Site
Content
RELEVANCE
Links
POPULARITY
Performance
Start with your current organic search
performance, that will be your starting point

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiUSE THE GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
Which are your
already best ranked
queries with the
highest search
volume and
clicks?

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiUSE THE GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
Compare your
mobile vs. desktop
metrics to identify
where are the
biggest
opportunities and
current preferences

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmss by @aleyda from @oraintiUSE THE DATA STUDIO REPORT FOR GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE: http://bit.ly/gscdatastudio
What’s your site top content per device? Identify
for which queries they perform best & worst

Check the queries, pages & areas with recent
increases as well as decreases in rankings
USE SEMRUSH, AHREFS, SISTRIX

For which queries is your site shown in SERPs w/
features? In which are they included?

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiUSE SISTRIX
Check the top categories getting more and better  
rankings for your site from each device results

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiUSE GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Map these with your current top converting  
site pages & categories per device & country

Now you know which are your current most
valuable pages, areas & queries to prioritize
Queries Pages Areas

Your
Competition
Your Site
Links
POPULARITY 
 
Content
RELEVANCE
Take into consideration your competitors ranking
status to prioritize those areas with gaps

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiUSE SEMRUSH, AHREFS, SISTRIX
Verify which are
your main
competitors for
the desired
target market

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiUSE SEMRUSH, AHREFS, SISTRIX
What’s your
organic search
visibility vs.
them in
Mobile &
Desktop?

Which queries are driving more and better organic
visibility to your competitors vs. your own site?

Which are your competitors top pages?  
Are they transactional or informational?

For which search features are your competitors
included that you still haven’t?

No Rankings vs.
Competitors
Too Granular
Existing Pages
Little Existing
Competition
You’ll now identify the gap vs. the competition and
identify more areas to prioritize in the audit

Your Site
Content
RELEVANCE
Links
POPULARITY
highest potential
Identify your audience search behavior and SERP
characteristics to prioritize those with highest potential

Establish the query patterns of your audience
search behavior using existing terms

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiUSE SEMRUSH, KWFINDER, AHREFS
Generate ideas of potential new queries for each
category and area, to identify additional targets

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiUSE SEMRUSH, KWFINDER, AHREFS
Assess their search volume, intent and potential
SERP features to target

Taking into consideration theirseasonality as well as
competition level
USE SEMRUSH, KWFINDER, AHREFS

Prioritizing those for which you already have content
and have the highest growth potential
SEOMONITORUSE SEOMONITOR

You’ll have now those areas with highest potential
besides the ones you’re already targeting
SEOMONITORUSE SEOMONITORUSE SEOMONITOR

Your Site
Links
POPULARITY
Content
RELEVANCE
Your
Competition
Current Organic
Search Performance
Audience Search
Behavior &
Industry Potential
Performance
Your
Competition
highest potential
All this will provide context to focus the audit to
the areas more likely to drive growth faster

Prioritized

Links
POPULARITY
Content
RELEVANCE
 
Your Site
Now you can analyze your site technical, content
optimization and link popularity status
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-ultimate-seo-audit-checklist/196993/

Your Site
Links
POPULARITY
 
Content
RELEVANCE
Prioritizing those areas already identified w/ an
existing gap, more potential & opportunity

Analyzing those speciﬁc pages in parallel  
(faster as they’re fewer) to identify quick wins
Screaming Frog, Deepcrawl, Ryte, Botify, OnCrawl

Connecting the optimization status with the
identiﬁed areas and opportunities to target
Screaming Frog, Deepcrawl, Ryte, Botify, OnCrawl

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiScreaming Frog, Deepcrawl, Ryte, Botify, OnCrawl
Verify if they should self-canonicalize instead if targeting
high potential queries and possibility to optimize contentUnblock the new URLs to be crawled & indexed
301-redirect 4xx errors to new
working URL destinations
High
Update links & 301-redirect to HTTPS
version of the URLs
High
Medium
High
They are meant to be ranked so should be indexable
and differentiated with speciﬁcally relevantcontent
Medium
Update links to go to final URL
destination instead of 301s
Low
Prioritizing the different actions based on how
easy to do and critical towards growth they are

From a
technical,
content as well
as link
popularity
perspective
CognitiveSEO, Ahrefs, Majestic

Taking into consideration the role that each aspect
plays in the site rankings vs. the existing competition
CognitiveSEO, Ahrefs, Majestic

Your Site
Content
RELEVANCE
Links
POPULARITY
High
Medium
Low
As well as the overall site status,  
prioritizing those that matter the most

Actionable

Prioritized SEO recommendations w/ steps to
follow should be provided as a result of the audit
bit.ly/recostemplate

Each
recommendation
should describe the
concept, importance,
identified issue and
recommended
actions for each
scenario,
highlighting if there
are critical areas to
prioritize
bit.ly/recostemplate

They should document each SEO issue scenario with
screenshots, showing how to fix them with examples
Should 301 Redirect
Links to
Should link instead to

While attaching a list with all the relevant instances
found of each issue to fix
Full URL HTTP Status CodeInlink URL Inlink URL Status
https://www.buyma.hk/contents/adidas-3d-bags/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/contents/new_in/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/contents/adidas-3d-bags/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/contents/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/contents/jewelry/aw/bracelets/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/contents/jewelry/aw/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/brands/velentino/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/contents/shoes/aw/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/brands/velentino/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/contents/chanel/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/brands/women/shoes/sneakers/slip-on/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/contents/luxury-sneakers/women/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/brands/bags/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/luxury-outerwear-20170903/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/brand/stussy/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/street-brands-20170814/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/brand/stussy/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/puma-bts-sneakers-20170821/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/brand/stussy/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/anti-social-social-club-20170807/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/brands/chi-chi-london/brands/ 404 https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/party-dress-outfit-20170122/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/spring-dresses-20170210/h/items/find/women/clothing/dresses/?colors=pink&tags=383404 https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/spring-dresses-20170210/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/spring-dresses-20170210/h/items/find/women/clothing/dresses/?colors=pink&tags=168404 https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/spring-dresses-20170210/ follow
https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/spring-dresses-20170210/h/items/find/women/clothing/dresses/?colors=blue&tags=158404 https://www.buyma.hk/newsletter/spring-dresses-20170210/ follow

The recommendations should be summarized in a
prioritized index to make them easier to find & share
Recommendations
Level of
Importance
Current
Optimization
Level
Content
Support
Technical
Support
Promotion
Support
Implementation
Priority
Document Page
No.
Crawling, indexing and internal linking High Low No Yes No 3 31
Canonicalization High Low No Yes No 2 44
Robots.txt configuration High Medium No Yes No 11 52
XML Sitemap configuration High Medium No Yes No 10 57
Structured Data Usage Medium Medium No Yes No 9 61
Pages Speed Medium Low No Yes No 8 66
Mobile Web Configuration Medium Medium No Yes No 12 70
International Web Configuration High Medium Yes Yes No 1 75
Main Content Optimization High Low Yes Yes No 4 81
Title Tags Optimization High Low Yes Yes No 5 100
Meta Descriptions Optimization Medium Low Yes Yes No 6 107
Headings Optimization Medium High Yes Yes No 7 111
Link Popularity High High Yes No Yes 13 115

Which can be also used to coordinate their execution
specifying each action and highlighting priority areas
Recommendations Importance Status Area Priority Resource Person Date
Start canonicalizing and index
color facets
High Low
Listings & product
pages
1 Development Maria 1/9/2018
Deduplicate & Optimize Titles High Medium Blog category pages 2 Content Matt 2/9/2018
Add more content to listings w/
less than 5 products byfeaturing
related ones
Medium Medium
2nd level sub-
categories
3
Development &
Content
Matt &
Maria
3/9/2018

color facets
High Low
Listings & product
pages
related ones
Medium Medium
2nd level sub-
categories
3
Development &
Content
Matt &
Maria
3/9/2018
Defining the teams in charge, as well as the
resources and timings assigned to each action
what why where who when

color facets
High Low
Listings & product
pages
related ones
Medium Medium
2nd level sub-
categories
2
Development &
Content
Matt &
Maria
2/9/2018
Helping to reprioritize them if necessary,
avoiding bottlenecks & do what matter most
what why where who when

color facets
High Low
Listings & product
pages
related ones
Medium Medium
2nd level sub-
categories
2
Development &
Content
Matt &
Maria
2/9/2018
Facilitating the actionability of the audit as well
as the coordination & resource management
How many highly important with
low optimization status have been
reprioritized?
Which teams have been correctly
advancing and which have had
delays?

Which can be also shared and combined with any
project management system you already use

Continuous

Even if the identified SEO issues are fixed,
schedule frequent crawls to verify their status
DEEPCRAWL, RYTE, BOTIFY

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiContentKing, Little Warden
You can also set real time SEO configuration
monitoring systems to check your priority pages

#seoauditsgrowth at #dmssconference by @aleyda from @oraintiContentKing, Little Warden
Which will alert you when something is changed

By sending also notifications via emails
ContentKing, Little WardenContentKing, Little Warden

Which you should also set not only for technical
and content changes, but also link related ones
AHREFS

That should be also correlated w/ rank tracking
changes that now also help to identify problems
SEOMONITOR

Integrate these alerts with your project management
system to facilitate their follow-up
ZAPIER

Remember that SEO is a continuous, incremental/
iterative process and auditing should be too
PRE-RELEASE
VALIDATION: OK?IMPLEMENTATION
YES
NO
YES
ON-GOING
VALIDATION
RELEASE
NO
FIX
POST-
RELEASE
VALIDATION:
OK?
YES
NO
FIXFIX
ON-GOING
VALIDATION: OK?

By doing all this you’ll target your SEO auditing
process to maximize and accelerate growth
strategical prioritized actionable continuous

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