Let’s take a look at the past to understand SEO analysis. Do you remember phone books? The yellow pages were specifically printed business directories that were divided into categories. People would consult these guides for any service requirements.

Search engines are doing the same thing as editors of the yellow pages but in a more dynamic and complex way. Their “directories”, or the search engine result pages or Kurz SERPs, follow certain rules and logic. It is not alphabetical nor by industry.

SEO analysis is like applying for a listing on the yellow pages and trying to meet their standards. Although it is more technical than that, we will cover the basics of SEO analysis as well as how to perform a website SEO assessment in this article.

What is SEO analysis?

SEO analysis is a site check to determine if your website structure, content, or other factors are relevant to search engine rankings. It is a consultation with an expert to help you attract more attention to your website and be found on the “yellow” pages of the internet, also known as search engine result pages (SERPs). These results will reveal areas where you can improve your ranking in SERPs and how to build the best SEO strategy.

SEO analysis: Why is it important?

SEO analysis is the first step in a bulletproof SEO strategy. This will reveal your strengths and weaknesses, and help you to improve your SERP ranking.

You may also perform an SEO competitor analysis to identify trends and where your SEO competitors are located and to develop a strategy that will shine.

SEO analysis is essential if you want to rank high in your industry, increase your website traffic, and achieve your business goals and growth goals. An extensive SEO report can provide you with actionable insights that will help you plan a solid SEO strategy.

How to perform an SEO analysis on a website

SEO analysis is comprised of many technical details that can be combined into three categories:

• On-page SEO: Includes content (the quality, keyword usage, and structural issues), the HTML source code and images, as well as meta-tags.

• Off-page SEO: This refers to elements that are not on your website but still have a connection to you. These can be controlled through link building, guest blogging, listing, and being featured on credible websites and getting listed. Here are the differences between off-page and on-page SEO.

• Technical SEO The technical aspects of SEO concern the structure and operation of websites and how to optimize them for crawlers. Mobile optimization is also included.

You will first need to create a list of elements you plan on checking and prioritizing. Next, you should plan who will be responsible for which parts of your analysis and which you want to outsource.

Many SEO tools and SEO testers can help you manage certain steps. There are many tools and keyword explorers that you can use to locate keywords. These tools also have suitable alternatives for all budgets, some even free. An automated scan can be used to identify technical and basic issues in the page structure.

For a thorough and high-quality technical SEO audit, however, you might want to consider outsourcing the technical details to professionals.

What should you look for in an SEO analysis of a website?

After we have covered the basics of SEO audits and the reasons why they are important, we now provide technical details that will help you get a better understanding. What are the main elements of a comprehensive SEO audit? What is a comprehensive SEO analysis? Let’s get into the details.

URL structure

Your website URL is your “digital address”, and an important element of SEO. Your URLs to various pages on your website organize your content and allow you to access the different types of content. These URLs function in the same way as signs that are placed in stores to indicate different aisles or categories of products, allowing visitors to navigate easily.

What are the best SEO practices for URL structure? These are the top SEO techniques for URL structure.

• Make sure URLs are legible and related to content. A title version is usually a good choice.

• To increase your ranking, include your target keywords in your URL.

• The shorter the URL, the better. You can shorten URLs that exceed 100 characters.

• To separate words from URLs, use hyphens (-), or underscores

• Choose an SSL ( SSL Layer) app and HTTPS over HTTP. This encrypts your connection and offers extra security against hackers. SSL improves your search engine rankings and user preference.

Content

Google has confirmed that content is one of the top three ranking factors in SEO analysis. It is how you communicate your message and how search engine crawlers learn about you. Content issues include your copywriting, keywords, originality, value, and relevance.

Search engines are becoming more sophisticated in recognizing spammy content and penalizing them in their rankings. Attention to detail can help you improve your content, and consequently, your SERP ranking. These are some things to keep in mind:

• Before you start writing content, do your keyword research. Choose the keywords that have the highest search volume or density. You have many options for keyword research. Professional help is also available.

• Regularly conduct a content gap analysis. Compare your competitors to see what keywords and topics are they ranking for. You can close any gaps and keep up with your competitors if you are not proficient in one of these areas.

• Optimize your images. High-resolution images can slow down page loading times. But you don’t want low-resolution images either.

• Alt texts are textual descriptions that contain 10-15 words about the image. When naming your images, make sure to use descriptive and relevant words. Use hyphens when separating the words.

• Make sure to come up with catchy page titles. Title tags should be between 50-60 characters in length. You should have different headings than the title tags. This will allow you to include different keywords.

• Avoid duplicate content. Duplicate content can be detected by search engine bots and flagged. Your website could be ranked lower, or removed from the index if it is detected.

Meta descriptions

Meta-tags, also known as meta descriptions, are shorts you give search engines to describe the content of your website. It allows search engines to index pages based on the relevant keywords and can have a significant impact on SEO.

You should have a meta description and no duplicates for every page. You should have between 135 and 160 characters, as well as the target keywords.

Blocked resources

Blocked resources refer to files that GoogleBot cannot access because they are not accessible from the internet. These files cannot be crawled or indexed by search engines. Search engines will crawl your website again to index it, especially if you have added an SSL protocol. This can slow down the process and impact your rankings. Here are some ways to fix it:

• Google Search Console allows you to find blocked resources.
• Locate the blockage in the robots.txt files.
• Allow GoogleBot access to the files by updating the line

Links

Links are links between pages or websites. They are essential to your website’s structure and relationship with other websites. SEO analysis can be done at two levels: on-page (internal), and off-page, (inbound, or incoming) backlinks. These are the points to pay attention to:

Internal Links

• If you have articles that are related or terms and ideas that are relevant to another article on your website, be sure to include links and highlight those connections. This is known as contextual linking.

• To improve your internal link building, you can include a section for “related posts” and “popular posts”.

• Do not leave pages or content unattended. Make sure all pages have backlinks and internal links to ensure they appear in SERPs.

• Regularly check the health of your link, fix broken links, and prevent any errors.

• Anchor texts should be appropriate. Anchor texts should be clickable text with hyperlinks. They should not be long or spammy, but they should relate to the content of the link and be able to grab the reader’s attention. Avoid using the same hyperlink on more than one page.

Backlinks

• As part of the SEO Analysis, check your backlink profile to see if there are any poor inbound links. If necessary, contact the site administrators to have yourself removed. You can review the list of backlinks and see the spam scores for the sites.

• You can also distinguish between do-follow and unfollow backlinks to manage them. You can ask an admin to change the code to make the inbound link a “no follow” link. This will stop search engines from considering it as an inbound link to a website. 

Website structure (architecture)

Your website’s architecture is what will make your visitors feel at home. It affects how crawlers navigate the website and help them understand what you offer and where each element is located. There are several things you can do to optimize the structure of your website.

• You should list all your main pages at your website’s top, in a navigation bar so that visitors and crawlers can find them easily.

• To help crawlers understand your website’s structure, create an XML website map.

• Verify that all the content in your sitemap is there.

• Make sure you have good internal links so visitors can easily navigate to the next page.

Overall friendliness and load time

When ranking websites, search engines consider how user-friendly they feel. In SERP rankings, pages that load faster and are more friendly to users are rewarded. There are a few things you can do to speed up your loading time and friendliness.

• Optimize your images. Don’t use too many or too large images.

• Too much JavaScript can slow down a page. Use a JavaScript compression program to load JavaScript at the footer.

• Use a CDN or Content Delivery Network. This saves your pages on servers all over the world and speeds up visitor response times.

• Check the backend of your website to find any issues. If you find bugs, fix them.

Mobile responsiveness

The majority of internet users log on to the web from their mobile devices. Mobile optimization is essential to maximize your potential traffic and convert visitors. Mobile-friendly websites are rewarded by search engines and ranked higher on the results pages. These are some tips to optimize mobile sites:

• To see how your website works in mobile mode, view it in mobile mode.

• Make sure typography and design are easily readable on mobile devices. Simple, fast designs are preferred over complicated, slow-loading designs.

• In HTML documents, add responsive metatags

• Apply media queries to the layout

• Images and embedded videos can be made responsive

After discussing what SEO analysis is and how to do it, and went over the main elements of an SEO audit. We hope this article will help you to plan an SEO analysis and improve the ranking of your pages and website.