A robots.txt file tells search engine spiders which pages they can crawl so they won’t overload your site. The free version can also find broken links and redirects so that you can troubleshoot them right away. Input your business details, and you’ll get data on the quality of your company’s data online. Equipped with this intel, you can optimize your online presence by adding details or photos to your Google Business Profile or updating directories with your store hours.
Step 6. Checking external links
You should only use the SEO Anomaly disavow tool if you have received a manual penalty from Google for unnatural links. Canonical tags tell search engines which version of a page should be prioritized when dealing with duplicate or near-duplicate content. This is particularly important for websites like online stores that often generate multiple URLs for the same product due to filters or session variables.
Maybe you have lots of links from irrelevant directories or questionable foreign domains. Finally, go to the “Referring Domains” tab and look at the types of sites linking to you. The report labels pages as “Good,” “Needs improvement,” or “Poor.” Expand each issue to see the affected pages. Here, you’ll find separate reports for “Desktop” and “Mobile.” Click “Open Report” at the top of either chart for more details.
- Luckily, most of the fixes to the issues discussed in this guide are self-explanatory.
- The more profitable your project is, the more expensive each error costs.
- The robots.txt file placed in the root of a website prevents web spiders from accessing specific folders on your website.
How to perform an SEO audit
Choosing the right tool can be the difference between making minor tweaks and undergoing a full-scale SEO overhaul. By understanding your requirements and comparing the strengths of these tools, you can ensure that you’re making the most informed decision for your website’s SEO strategy. Are the pages of your website loading quickly to create a good user experience? Most websites today load within a few seconds, and searchers are used to that. Around half of searchers won’t even wait for your site to load if it takes longer than three seconds.
That’s why this step of the SEO audit checklist is extra important. Technical SEO involves optimizing the technical aspects of a website to meet search engine standards and improving organic rankings and user experience. Key components include optimizing site speed, enhancing mobile-friendliness, structuring URL paths, implementing HTTPS, and ensuring proper site crawling and indexing. Google Search Console is a tool that checks your site’s indexing status and how it appears on SERPs. It offers performance reports, your site’s indexing status, and insights into core web vitals like interactivity and loading performance. Use Google Search Console to perform an SEO audit and determine if you’re hitting target keywords.