How to give your site an SEO health check

Any digitally aware business owner will be conscious of the ever-changing landscape that is SEO and how difficult it can be to stay on top of the latest advancements. It seems like just a few years ago we were ‘Googling’ using only a few key words to find the information we were after, whereas now long search queries and voice searches are becoming the norm. And with this user behaviour change, Google has also had to change and evolve.

We’ve been beavering away behind the scenes building InSITE™, an SEO and social audit tool which will provide any business with a comprehensive health check of their website and social media, showing you whether you’re up to date with the latest changes in SEO.

Just input your website and InSITE™ will check your online performance and give you an action-oriented report, listing out where improvements can be made to those all-important SEO elements which will enhance site and social performance.

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Good SEO is built on strong foundations

SEO is an ever-evolving specialism that comprises of various online and offline actions to help with the website ranking, and our InSITE™ audit tool covers all technical factors; the perfect foundation on which a full SEO strategy can be built with your target audience at the heart of it.

From keywords to content, URLs to analytics, there are many things to get right, and the report you receive will tell you more. But the checklist below covers the main points which a well optimised website should have ticked off:

URL structure – When you’re creating a new page make sure the URL structure doesn’t contain repetitive words; it’s best when URLs are short, simple, and generic so you can reuse the page if you need to update the content at a later stage.

Alt tags – Search engines can’t see your images, but they can read text, so make sure you add descriptive alt text to your images.

Meta data – Meta tags tell search engines what your website is about, so it’s important to use appropriate and unique keywords to optimise the pages across your site. Meta description may not necessarily improve your rankings but it will provide insight to the user about the information they will find if they click on your organic listing.

H1, H2, H3 – These tags should be used across the pages of your website, in that order. This is how a search engine will read your pages in terms of the headings and sub-headings.

Backlinks – It’s important to regularly review external sites that are linking to your website to make sure they are credible and of good quality.

Internal links – It’s good practice to use links from one page to another as it provides your users with further reading options and also can help improve rankings for certain keywords.

Site load speed and user experience – Review the load speed of your site on all devices and check whether you could change anything to make it load more quickly. Also, don’t forget to frequently review the user journey and bounce rate to identify whether there are pages that require improvement.

Quality and length of content – It’s important to run regular content audits for your website to identify any duplicate, thin or missing content that needs to be addressed. Remember, Google will penalise sites that contain duplicate content, so make sure your content is always unique.

Mobile-friendliness – As per one of the latest Google algorithms, mobile-friendliness is an important ranking factor. Make sure you have a responsive website that provides the best possible user experience on all devices.

Local search factors – Make sure you set up a Google My Business profile and optimise for location-based keywords to help local customers find your business quickly and easily.

Unsure about your SEO performance? Get your free audit now to find out how you can help your website work harder for you in the search results.