Tips and Techniques for Performing an SEO Audit

Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
Tips and Techniques
for an SEO Site Audit

About Me
• SEO Consultant, Hartzer Consulting
• Blogger/Writer BillHartzer.com
• Founder, DFWSEM Association (2004)
• US Brand Ambassador, Majestic.com
• The 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

Overview – SEO Audits
• 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 access
• Bing Webmaster Tools access
• Prior history: What SEO was done in past?
• Prior history: Domain Names used
• List of Domain Names owned, redirected
• List of Competitors
• Ask: anything else we need to know?
@bhartzer

Content – Review Content on Site &
Rankings
• Google Search Console - Search Analytics
• SEMrush.com Keyword Research
• Review Current Rankings
• SimilarWeb Traffic and Data
• SERPStat Data
• Google Analytics Data
@bhartzer

Google
Search Console
> Search Analytics
> Pages Analysis
What does
Google think?
@bhartzer

Current rankings, Focus on Pages Ranking 5th to
20th
@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
@bhartzer

Screaming Frog
SEO Spider
Adjust memory 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

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

Siteliner.com
@bhartzer

Bing Webmaster Tools
@bhartzer

Bing Webmaster Tools
• Spot issues to fix
@bhartzer

@bhartzer
Google Search Console
• Search Analytics
• Structured Data
• HTML Improvements
• Search Traffic
• Crawl Data

SEMRush Site Audit
@bhartzer

Website Log Files
• Weblog Storming, AwStats
@bhartzer

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

Website Log Files, Crawl & Analytics
• Deep Crawl combines all three, as well
@bhartzer

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

Run Sitebulb
• Internal Link Structure
• Review Silos
• Review Content clusters
• Other SEO audit issues
Sitebulb.com
@bhartzer

Run Cora SEO Software
• Measures over 300 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

Google Search Console Links
@bhartzer

Ahrefs Links
@bhartzer

Majestic.com Links
@bhartzer

Majestic.com Topic Review
@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

WebPageTest.org
• Page Performance
Check:
• Time to first byte
• Compress images
• Caching
• Use of CDN
• Waterfall
@bhartzer

Miscellaneous Data to Review
• All sorts of extras
@bhartzer

Site Speed, DNS Health
• Tools.Pingdom.com
@bhartzer

Site Speed Review – Google Analytics
@bhartzer

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

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

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

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

Panda, Penguin, Search Engine Traffic Issues
From Past?
• Verify with SEMRush, Google Analytics, SimilarWeb
• Moz Google Algorithm Change History
moz.com/google-algorithm-change
• Marie Haynes Google Algo Update History
mariehaynes.com/algo-changes-and-more/
@bhartzer

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

SEO Audit Toolset
• Google Page Speed Test
• Mobile Friendly Test
• Google Search Console - time downloading a page (if slower
than 2 seconds to get the code, they'll abandon the crawl)
• Webpagetest.org (diversity of testing environments is
helpful... browser types, locations, connection speeds)
@bhartzer

SEO Audit Toolset
• WebPageTest
• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• GPSi page speed insights
• G Structured Data Test
• GSC Disavow
• GSC Fetch & Render
• Marie Haynes' Disavow Blacklist
@bhartzer

SEO Audit Toolset
• Google Mobile Test
• Google AMP Test
• Bing Mobile Test
• W3c mobileOK Checker
• Deep Crawl
• Google AW Keyword Planner
• Moz Keyword Explorer
• What is my IP
@bhartzer

SEO Audit Toolset
• Builtwith
• Server Software Detection
• SEO Server Header Checker Tool
• SSL Server Test powered by Qualsys SSL Labs
• Redirect Checker
• Serpstat
• semrush
• GA Code Checker
@bhartzer

SEO Audit Toolset
• W3c CSS Validator
• W3c Markup Validator
• hreflang testing tool
• tracker map
• OSE, Majestic, Ahrefs, Link Research Tools, Kerboo
• Bing Webmaster Tools
• Panguin tool
• OnCrawl
@bhartzer

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

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