How do you perform a site audit for SEO?

@clarabelle 

Performing a site audit for SEO involves analyzing various aspects of a website to identify issues and opportunities for improvement. Here are the steps to perform a comprehensive site audit:

1. Review the site structure: Examine the overall structure and navigation of the website. Check if the site is properly organized with clear categories, logical hierarchy, and user-friendly URLs.
2. Analyze keyword usage: Assess how well the website uses targeted keywords. Check if keywords are included in essential elements like page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and body content. Identify any keyword stuffing or irrelevant keyword usage that may harm SEO.
3. Evaluate site speed: Page loading speed is crucial for user experience and search engine rankings. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to measure site speed and identify areas for improvement, such as compressing images, enabling browser caching, or minimizing CSS and JavaScript files.
4. Check mobile compatibility: With the increasing number of mobile users, it's essential to ensure that a website is mobile-friendly. Test the site's responsiveness and compatibility across different devices and screen sizes. Consider using Google's Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
5. Assess site architecture and internal linking: Examine how well the website is organized internally. Ensure that there is a clear and logical structure with proper linking between pages to help search engines understand the hierarchy and flow of content.
6. Analyze content quality: Review the quality, relevance, and uniqueness of the website's content. Identify duplicate content, thin or low-quality pages, and outdated information. Ensure that all content is optimized for target keywords and provides value to users.
7. Check for broken links: Look for any broken internal or external links on the website. Broken links negatively impact user experience and can harm SEO. Use tools like Screaming Frog or brokenlinkcheck.com to identify and fix broken links.
8. Evaluate metadata and schema markup: Examine meta tags and schema markup on the website to ensure they are properly optimized for search engines. Check if title tags, meta descriptions, and schema markup accurately represent the content on each page.
9. Assess URL structure: Analyze the URL structure to ensure it is clean, descriptive, and includes relevant keywords. Avoid lengthy URLs or ones that contain random characters or numbers.
10. Review backlink profile: Analyze the website's backlink profile to identify the quality and quantity of inbound links. Use tools like Moz, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to identify potentially toxic or low-quality backlinks that may harm SEO.
11. Monitor site analytics: Utilize tools like Google Analytics to analyze site traffic, bounce rates, user behavior, and conversions. Look for areas that need improvement, such as high bounce rates or low engagement, and optimize accordingly.

By conducting a thorough site audit, you'll be able to identify critical SEO issues and develop an actionable plan for improving your website's search engine visibility and user experience.