![\"SEO](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/initial-optimization-score.png\")
<\/p>\nGoogle is a complex beast. For every search query, there are literally HUNDREDS of signals that determine where your site will rank.<\/p>\n
And while some signals are more important than others\u2026<\/p>\n
…they ALL count. Each one is a part of the SEO pie.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the thing:<\/p>\n
Checking all of these signals manually just isn\u2019t possible. This is where SEO audit tools (like Seobility) come in.<\/p>\n
An SEO audit tool will crawl your site in the same way Google does. And it will highlight the issues that might be holding you back in search.<\/p>\n
Most SEO audit tools will also give your site a score that looks something like this:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As well as an overview of the most important things holding your site back.<\/p>\n
![\"list](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/list-of-errors.png\")
<\/p>\n
In this guide, I\u2019m going to show you:<\/p>\n
Let’s get started!<\/p>\n
An SEO audit is a structured method for getting a clear overview of how well your website is optimized. In essence, it\u2019s a report consisting of a long list of SEO factors and how well your site or page is optimized for each one.<\/p>\n
SEOs and webmasters use audits to get a clear picture of a website and uncover the most important improvement points, helping them develop their SEO strategy and prioritize tasks. Without a clear picture of the current situation, it\u2019s nearly impossible to develop an effective SEO strategy. This is why audits play such an important role in SEO.<\/p>\n
Now, this may lead you to think that an SEO audit is a one-time thing where, once you\u2019ve completed the most important fixes, you can simply sit back and watch the money roll in.<\/p>\n
But, as we\u2019ll discuss next, this is far from the case\u2026<\/p>\n
Nobody\u2019s perfect. And neither is any website.<\/p>\n
There. I said it.<\/p>\n
You can spend days, weeks, and months tweaking things. But there will always be SOMETHING you can improve.<\/p>\n
I can guarantee that every SEO on the planet has received a message like this:<\/p>\n
\u201cHi,<\/em><\/p>\n I was just sent a free report by {some SEO company sending out automated emails} and it says we have 23 images missing alt text? I thought you optimized the website?<\/em><\/p>\n Hugs and kisses,<\/em> They\u2019re not wrong. But the chances are you:<\/p>\n Because when it comes to SEO, there\u2019s a hierarchy. It goes something like this:<\/p>\n Critical > Important > We should probably do that > Would be nice to fix > Yeah, alt text\u2026 um… pass the beer nuts…<\/em><\/p>\n Most time and effort will go into \u201ccritical\u201d and \u201cimportant\u201d. As it should. The clue is in the name.<\/p>\n And as most healthy sites are growing, building, adding new content, there will always be new critical\/important tasks to work on. Basically, unless a site is COMPLETELY static, SEO is an ongoing process.<\/p>\n Before diving into the technical audit, there are a number of manual checks I recommend performing on any site.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll run this in the form of a checklist (you can click to jump to each section):<\/p>\n Before starting the audit, it\u2019s a good idea to assess your website\u2019s key metrics.<\/p>\n Which metrics you want to track may vary from one site to the other, but some of the most common metrics to track include:<\/p>\n Since audits are something you do regularly, keeping track of your most important metrics will help you understand the results of the changes you make over time.<\/p>\n Note: Seobility allows you to track your rankings and backlinks, so you can use our software for monitoring these metrics. Google Analytics and Google Search Console can be used for the others.<\/p>\n Unless your website is very new, or you have a dictionary word\/common phrase as your company name, you should always rank for your brand.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t? That\u2019s a big red flag that your site might be under penalty.<\/p>\n So Google your brand name and make sure you\u2019re up top.<\/p>\n In this case, it\u2019s all good.<\/p>\n Although Google asks us if we meant \u201cnoobnorm\u201d with no space. So let\u2019s check that too.<\/p>\n Yup.<\/p>\n There are a few other things worth checking in the SERPs too, namely:<\/p>\n Brand searches are an important way for people to find you online and branded SERPs also provide you with a good insight into how Google sees your brand. Issues with any of the things mentioned above are vital to include in an audit.<\/p>\n Your website should only be accessible one way.<\/p>\n What does that mean? Well here are 4 ways people might try and pull up (or link to) your website:<\/p>\n If each of these was independently accessible, we could have problems with:<\/p>\n Confused? Don\u2019t worry, when you run an SEO audit with Seobility we’ll check this for you.<\/p>\n If it’s all good, you’ll see a green “Ok” in the checklist on the right-hand side of your dashboard…<\/p>\n And we also have a free, stand-alone tool that makes this a piece of cake to test!<\/p>\n Head over to our Redirect Check<\/a>, enter your website address, and choose your preferred URL format (Target Base-URL):<\/p>\n In this case, we can see that everything is set up correctly.<\/p>\n But if you see any errors, then check out our guides to www redirects<\/a> and HTTP to HTTPS migration<\/a> for details on how to configure your redirects.<\/p>\n Or if you\u2019re running WordPress, there are some useful plugin recommendations in this guide from WP Engine<\/a>.<\/p>\n Indexation problems are one of the big technical issues that SEO audits can uncover. And they most definitely fall into the \u201ccritical\u201d category.<\/p>\n They can work both ways.<\/p>\n A site could have too many pages indexed, or too few. Both issues need urgent attention.<\/p>\n A deeper audit will surface specific problems. But I recommend a quick check to make sure that Google\u2019s reported number of indexed pages is \u201cabout\u201d right.<\/p>\n You can find the number of indexed pages for your site in Google Search Console\u2019s \u201cCoverage\u201d report.<\/p>\n In this case, we have 266 indexed URLs.<\/p>\n Which closely matches the total number of posts, pages, and categories on the site. So on a quick check, all is well with indexation.<\/p>\n Tip: When checking this report, it\u2019s also worth checking whether there are any strange drops or spikes in indexed\/excluded pages. These things aren\u2019t always a cause for concern, but if you see any major fluctuations it\u2019s important to know why they occurred. <\/p>\n There\u2019s no getting away from it.<\/p>\n Speed matters.<\/p>\n It\u2019s one of the few confirmed ranking factors<\/a>.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s been becoming more important for SEO over the past few years<\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to go too in-depth here. We’ve covered the topic in detail in this Page Speed Optimization Guide<\/a>. But I will say that speeding up your site is something that\u2019s worth spending time on.<\/p>\n I recommend testing your site\u2019s speed in both Google\u2019s PageSpeed Insights<\/a> tool and GTmetrix<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pay attention to what those tools tell you.<\/p>\n The Waterfall report in GTmetrix is particularly helpful for finding out which scripts\/requests are slowing things down.<\/p>\n Ultimately, you want your site to be as fast as possible.<\/p>\n But a good target is scoring 90+ in Google PageSpeed Insights (mobile and desktop), and a load time of under 2 seconds in GTmetrix. For a more detailed answer, check out this article: How fast should your website load?<\/a><\/p>\n Noob Norm currently scores between 95 and 99 on mobile (depending on the page).<\/p>\n And 99-100 on desktop (again depending on the page).<\/p>\n Load times are generally under 1 second in GTmetrix.<\/p>\n To get under a second took a fair amount of work. But for most content sites running on WordPress, a load time of between 1 and 2 seconds should be achievable.<\/p>\n Here are some tips:<\/p>\n For more tips, check out our full page speed guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2021, Google\u2019s Core Web Vitals<\/a> became an official ranking factor.<\/p>\n So… what are Core Web Vitals?<\/p>\n Well, they\u2019re all about page (read user) experience.<\/p>\n Speed is a big part of that. Specifically:<\/p>\n We\u2019ve already covered speed above.<\/p>\n But another important metric is \u201cCumulative Layout Shift\u201d.<\/p>\n Ever browsed a site, tried to click something, and all of a sudden the layout changed as ads (or something else) load? You\u2019ve experienced cumulative layout shift.<\/p>\n It\u2019s annoying right? And Google wants you to keep it to a minimum.<\/p>\n The good news is that Google will tell you whether you\u2019ve passed or failed their Core Web Vitals assessment in Search Console.<\/p>\n Google Search Console > Experience > Core Web Vitals<\/em><\/p>\n The report will look something like this:<\/p>\n You can find out more by clicking on “open report” and then click on an issue to see the individual pages affected:<\/p>\n As you can see, LCP and CLS issues are common culprits. When I ran this report for Noob Norm, CLS happened to be the main issue:<\/p>\n You can use this cool stand-alone tool<\/a> to test and debug a page\u2019s CLS.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve fixed any issues on your site, you can click into the Search Console report and hit \u201cValidate Fix\u201d to let Google know you\u2019ve been paying attention \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019re getting a bit layered now\u2026<\/p>\n Page Speed is part of Core Web Vitals. And Core Web Vitals is actually part of a wider ranking signal called \u201cPage Experience\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n The page experience section of GSC can be found in Search Console > Experience > Page Experience<\/em>.<\/p>\n So in addition to speed and CLS, you should also check the following:<\/p>\n Hopefully, the answer here is yes. If not, then stop anything else you\u2019re doing and work on that. It\u2019s 2023.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no excuse for not running HTTPS.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re not then grab a free certificate from Let\u2019s Encrypt and follow our guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing wrong with ads. They\u2019re an essential part of the online economy.<\/p>\n But annoying interstitials<\/a>, pop-unders etc need to go the way of the dodo.<\/p>\n Follow the guidelines from the Coalition For Better Ads<\/a> to make sure your ads are user-friendly and you\u2019ll be golden.<\/p>\n Google Search Console is a treasure trove of information.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, not every single report can be covered here. But here are a number of important ones including where they can be found:<\/p>\n Shows you whether the site has any manual actions preventing it from ranking.<\/p>\n The crawl stats report is a hidden gem that gives you an insight into how Google is crawling your website. The most important things to look out for in this report are spikes or gaps in crawl requests, download size and response times.<\/p>\n When was the last time you updated WordPress? Which version of PHP does your server run?<\/p>\n If the answer is\u2026 um\u2026 dunno, then this section is important!<\/p>\n The main things to focus on here are your:<\/p>\n Making sure everything is up to date helps reduce the likelihood of your website being hacked and helps to maintain your website speed.<\/p>\n Note:<\/strong> If you\u2019re not comfortable with making these changes yourself (or are on shared hosting), ask your hosting provider to help.<\/p>\n And\u2026 ALWAYS make backups before upgrading server\/CMS software.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the server.<\/p>\n According to W3 Techs<\/a>, 77% of websites currently run on PHP.<\/p>\n But only 12% are running PHP version 8.<\/p>\n Why does this matter? Because old versions of PHP are no longer patched and are open to exploitation.<\/p>\n But it gets worse.<\/p>\n Because we\u2019re actually now on PHP 8.2. And everything up to (and including) PHP 7.4 has reached \u201cend of life\u201d. So even if you run PHP 7.4, your site is vulnerable.<\/p>\n And according to the official WordPress stats<\/a>, an alarming 77% of WordPress sites are running outdated versions of PHP\u2026<\/p>\n What does this have to do with SEO?<\/p>\n Well firstly, getting hacked ain\u2019t going to do much for your rankings. But if that doesn\u2019t convince you\u2026<\/p>\n Upgrading PHP will speed up your site<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you’re using WordPress, you can find out which version of PHP your site is currently running in the WordPress \u201cSite Health\u201d report:<\/p>\n While you\u2019re there, take note of your WordPress version (under WordPress) and database version (under Database) as we\u2019ll be using them in a moment.<\/em><\/p>\n Again, this is all about speed and security.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll want to make sure that your website is running MySQL 5.6 or higher, as previous versions have reached end of life.<\/p>\n Alternatively, if you\u2019re an open source fan, you might want to switch to MariaDB. Personally I also think MariaDB is also a little faster, but that\u2019s up for debate.<\/p>\n Click here to skip this section if you’re not using WordPress.<\/a><\/p>\n If you log in to WordPress and see this\u2026<\/p>\n …then don\u2019t ignore it!<\/p>\n Again, keeping your WordPress install up to date will help to keep your site secure and fast.<\/p>\n Generally, it\u2019s going to be a \u201cone click\u201d job.<\/p>\n But as always, take a backup first in case anything goes wrong.<\/p>\n Speed, security\u2026 you know the drill by now.<\/p>\n If you see something like this, it ain\u2019t good.<\/p>\n So fix it.<\/p>\n You can update all outdated plugins in a couple of clicks from the \u201cUpdate Available\u201d tab.<\/p>\n Take a backup first \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n And to finish cleaning things up, I\u2019d also recommend deleting any inactive plugins. Clear out the clutter!<\/p>\n Like speed, trust is a topic in its own right.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the most important aspect of E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authority, Trust), which is an important aspect of Google\u2019s Quality Rater Guidelines<\/a>. We go into this in more detail in our post on E-E-A-T<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, the key takeaway is that if both Google and your users trust your site, then good things happen. And part of building that trust is being transparent about:<\/p>\n So make sure your site has:<\/p>\n And make sure they are easy to find\/clearly displayed.<\/p>\n There are many different types of SEO audits, ranging from basic auto-generated reports to huge documents that take SEOs weeks of full-time work to produce.<\/p>\n In this section, I\u2019ll walk you through a general technical SEO audit using the Seobility website audit<\/a> and a number of other tools. You can add or remove different factors covered in this audit to tailor it to your own situation.<\/p>\n Before we get started, however, we need to get everything set up\u2026<\/p>\n There are hundreds of factors an SEO audit can cover, which is why audit tools are so important.<\/p>\n So, before diving into any individual factors, let\u2019s run a website crawl with Seobility..<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have a Seobility account already, then grab one here<\/a> to follow along. The free plan will allow you to crawl up to 1,000 pages\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026but I\u2019d recommend signing up for a 14-day Premium trial.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n Because you\u2019ll be able to re-crawl as you fix things. Otherwise, you\u2019ll need to wait for 3 days to verify your fixes and will have limited access to analysis results.<\/p>\n This is not the end of the world\u2026 but will slow things down.<\/p>\n Got your account? Great! Let\u2019s run a crawl.<\/p>\n Head over to your dashboard and click \u201cAdd Project\u201d.<\/p>\n Seobility > Dashboard > Add Project<\/em><\/p>\n While there are plenty of advanced options (including verifying your site for faster crawls, and crawling as Googlebot), we\u2019ll keep things simple for now.<\/p>\n Just add your site\u2019s URL, give your project a name, and hit \u201cAdd project and start crawling\u201d.<\/p>\n Once the crawl is complete, you\u2019ll get an overall optimization score, along with subscores for \u201cTech. & Meta\u201d, \u201cStructure\u201d, and \u201cContent\u201d.<\/p>\n Throughout this post, I will use one of my own sites (noobnorm.com<\/a>) as an example.<\/p>\n The initial crawl revealed there were no huge disasters. But there were a ton of issues in the \u201cshould fix\u201d, \u201cnice to fix\u201d, and \u201clet\u2019s ignore this… look a squirrel\u201d buckets.<\/p>\n We got a score of 77% for \u201cTech. & Meta\u201d.<\/p>\n And 67% for \u201cStructure\u201d.<\/p>\n Definitely room for improvement!<\/p>\n Before we dig into the details, let\u2019s skip to the chorus. Here are the final scores after the audit and fixes.<\/p>\n 96% for \u201cTech. & Meta\u201d (19% improvement)<\/p>\n And 98% for \u201cStructure\u201d (31% improvement)<\/p>\n A solid improvement right?<\/p>\n So let\u2019s see how we got there.<\/p>\n Now let’s dive into the audit generated by Seobility…<\/p>\n Clicking into the \u201cTech & Meta.\u201d report gives us an optimization score, and a breakdown of all issues uncovered during the crawl.<\/p>\n Seobility > Dashboard > Your Site > Tech & Meta.<\/em><\/p>\n The most important issues are highlighted at the top. And we can click on \u201cShow more\u201d to expand the list.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll tackle them one at a time.<\/p>\n But first\u2026<\/p>\n …let\u2019s make our life a little easier.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no getting round it, fixing technical SEO issues is time consuming.<\/p>\n The good news is, there\u2019s a nifty plugin that can help speed up the process a ton on WordPress sites.<\/p>\n WP Sheet Editor<\/a> lets you edit WordPress fields in a spreadsheet format.<\/p>\n Which saves you having to go into each individual post, make your edits, update, bang your head against the wall, then repeat…<\/p>\n Believe me, you don\u2019t want to do that.<\/p>\n The basic version of Sheet Editor is free. But I\u2019d recommend adding the categories extension (paid<\/a>), the media extension (paid<\/a>), and the YOAST add on (free<\/a>).<\/p>\n The cost for the paid extensions (I paid around $60 for both) is more than worth the time saved.<\/p>\n If pages on your site are returning 404 errors<\/a>, server (5xx) errors, or are timing out, they\u2019ll show up in this report.<\/p>\n You should look into why these errors are occurring and fix them as a priority.<\/p>\n Although that being said\u2026<\/p>\n Sometimes there are valid reasons for allowing a page to return a 404 status. But if so, make sure that you have a custom 404 page and that you update any internal links (i.e. don\u2019t link internally to the 404 page).<\/p>\n However\u2026<\/p>\n If the 404 page has backlinks, then I\u2019d definitely recommend 301 redirecting<\/a> it to a relevant page. Otherwise you\u2019re throwing that lovely link equity<\/a> in the trash!<\/p>\n Let\u2019s find out what\u2019s up with our title tags.<\/p>\n Seobility > Dashboard > Your Site > Tech. & Meta > Problems With Titles<\/em><\/p>\n Looks like we have a mix of titles that are:<\/p>\n As the title tag remains one of the most important on-page ranking factors, it\u2019s in our interest to fix all of the above.<\/p>\n Note<\/strong>: to find out more about title tags and how to optimize them in 2023, jump over to the Meta Title page on our wiki<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s bring up all our title tags in WP Sheet Editor.<\/p>\n First we\u2019ll select \u201cEdit Posts\u201d from the WP Sheet Editor menu.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll get an editable spreadsheet with all posts and fields.<\/p>\n To make it a little easier to use, let\u2019s filter it down by clicking on \u201cHide \/ Display \/ Sort columns\u201d under \u201cSettings\u201d.<\/p>\n And let\u2019s just show \u201cTitle\u201d, \u201cSEO Description\u201d and \u201cSEO Title\u201d.<\/p>\n Now we\u2019re ready to start editing.<\/p>\n The bad news:<\/p>\n We\u2019re going to have to run through all the problematic title tags found by Seobility and fix\/rewrite them.<\/p>\n The good news:<\/p>\n Working in a spreadsheet format makes the job much faster. And you can also use the \u201cLocate cell\u201d box to find a specific post quickly.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019re done hit \u201cSave\u201d. But leave the sheet open in its current form, as we\u2019ll tackle meta descriptions next.<\/p>\n While not directly influencing rankings, meta descriptions remain an important part of SEO.<\/p>\n We explained why in our complete guide to optimizing meta descriptions<\/a>.<\/p>\n But in summary: they can help to improve your click-through rate from search.<\/p>\n Shorter summary: more traffic!<\/p>\n So let\u2019s take a look at issues Seobility found with our meta descriptions.<\/p>\n We have several that are too long…<\/p>\n They were easy to fix.<\/p>\n But we also have a number of pages that are completely missing meta descriptions.<\/p>\n Depending on the other issues the audit uncovers, this is likely going to be an important fix. Luckily it\u2019s a reasonably quick one – all you have to do is add meta descriptions to these pages!<\/p>\n You can use our SERP snippet generator<\/a> to check what your title\/meta description would look like in the SERPs and whether it\u2019s not too long.<\/p>\n Further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n This will generally be a sign that:<\/p>\n Either way, it\u2019s something you\u2019ll want to fix.<\/p>\n Bottom line:<\/p>\n Each page on your site should have a unique title and meta description.<\/p>\n Ok, so here\u2019s a good example of not needing to fix everything.<\/p>\n Sorting out errors, and improving your meta titles and descriptions for most posts, pages, and categories is 100% worthwhile.<\/p>\n But once you\u2019re done, you might end up with something like this:<\/p>\n Our \u201cAbout\u201d, \u201cPrivacy\u201d, and \u201cContact\u201d pages are throwing up \u201cToo short\u201d warnings for their title tags.<\/p>\n Now I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019m not particularly interested in grabbing search traffic for a privacy policy.<\/p>\n So we can pretty much ignore these warnings.<\/p>\n An SEO audit tool will do a good job notifying you about \u201cerrors\u201d with your meta tags.<\/p>\n You should definitely pay attention to, and fix these errors.<\/p>\n But doing so (and getting a perfect score) doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that your metas are perfectly optimized.<\/p>\n After all, if a title tag is too short you could just add some \u201clorem ipsum\u201d text at the end to fill it out…<\/p>\n …you\u2019ll get a green tick, but it will do zip for your rankings.<\/p>\n So don\u2019t just fix for the sake of fixing. Take the time to make each title and meta description as \u201cclickable\u201d as possible.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll get pretty green ticks AND more traffic.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how to do it for meta descriptions<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every SEO\u2019s worst nightmare:<\/p>\n Missing alt text<\/a>.<\/p>\n Seobility > Dashboard > Your Site > Tech. & Meta > Pages with missing alt attributes for images<\/em><\/p>\n “Ma\u00f1ana, Ma\u00f1ana”<\/p>\n You can ignore this right?<\/p>\n Well\u2026 perhaps not.<\/p>\n Because notwithstanding the opportunity to…<\/p>\n …this site audit highlighted an interesting example of where fixing missing alt text could make a difference to general optimization.<\/p>\n And I\u2019ll bet that a ton of sites running on WordPress have the same issue.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all to do with Google\u2019s first link priority rule<\/a>.<\/p>\n The first link priority rule (part theory, but confirmed to have been a part of Google\u2019s algorithm at one point) states that:<\/p>\n If page A links to page B multiple times, then Google will only take into account the anchor text from the first link.<\/p>\n Anchor text helps Google \u201cunderstand the context<\/a>\u201d of pages. Which is Googler speak for \u201cmakes them rank higher for that keyword\u201d.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s just as important (possibly more so) for internal links as it is for backlinks (links from other websites).<\/p>\n For a full deep dive on internal linking check out our internal linking wiki page<\/a> and our guide on how to optimize your website’s internal links<\/a>.<\/p>\n But in short, if you want to rank for \u201cgreen bananas\u201d you should include the phrase \u201cgreen bananas\u201d in your internal links to that page.<\/p>\n So what\u2019s this got to do with missing alt text?<\/p>\n We have this one straight from<\/a> the horse\u2019s mouth<\/a>:<\/p>\n “Google uses alt text along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page to understand the subject matter of the image. Also, alt text in images is useful as anchor text if you decide to use an image as a link.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Which means:<\/p>\n No alt text on an image link\u2026 no anchor text!<\/p>\n And if your category pages look anything like this\u2026<\/p>\n …then that could be a problem.<\/p>\n Because each of those featured images is also a link. The first link.<\/p>\n Bottom line:<\/p>\n If first link priority applies, any featured image that\u2019s missing alt text is creating a \u201cfirst link\u201d with ZERO anchor text.<\/p>\n Bad times.<\/p>\n This is why the first thing I did was fill in alt text for all featured images. Again, WP Sheet Editor can speed up the process if you use WordPress (more on that in a moment).<\/p>\n Afterwards, I added alt text to all other images that were missing it.<\/p>\n Further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n If you don\u2019t want to manually go into each post and edit, you\u2019ll need WP Sheet Editor\u2019s media add on (or an equivalent alternative).<\/p>\n Once installed you\u2019ll see the option to edit media in the menu.<\/p>\n This will bring up a spreadsheet with all images currently contained in the uploads folder of your site, and will also let you know which posts they are attached to.<\/p>\n Clicking on \u201cSearch\u201d and then checking \u201cEnable advanced filters\u201d allows us to filter the sheet to show only images which are currently used as the featured image.<\/p>\n It\u2019s then just a case of running down the sheet, filling them all in, and hitting save.<\/p>\n Remember this alt text will also be the anchor text for your featured images. So I would recommend just using your \u201cmain\u201d keyword for each of them.<\/p>\n If your WordPress site has a lot of images, there\u2019s a good chance that:<\/p>\n So I\u2019d recommend filtering the sheet to only show images that are missing alt text and included in at least one post.<\/p>\n You can do that by running an advanced search and setting the alt text field to blank and \u201cAttached to this post\u201d to not blank (!=).<\/p>\n In our case, this returned 1,128 images which were missing alt text.<\/p>\n And then it was just a case of running through them all and adding short, descriptive alt texts for each.<\/p>\n Fun. Fun. Fun.<\/p>\n But a few hours later\u2026<\/p>\n Done. Done. Done.<\/p>\n The lesson?<\/p>\n Always add alt text to your images at the time of posting! You\u2019ll save yourself a world of pain in the future.<\/p>\n The H1 tag<\/a> is still pretty important for on-page SEO. This means that it\u2019s definitely somewhere you should be using your main keyword(s).<\/p>\n On WordPress sites, posts should generally be fine (the H1 will be the post\u2019s title). But category archives can be a little sub-optimal.<\/p>\n Why? Because \u201cout of the box\u201d, WordPress will simply show the name of the category, or \u201c{category name} Archives\u201d.<\/p>\n And for top-level categories that can mean a very short, or even one-word H1 tag. Which is leaving a fair bit of room on the SEO table.<\/p>\n All the H1 problems picked up by our audit were related to this issue, so this didn’t take too much time to fix.<\/p>\n Further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n A robots meta tag<\/a> with the noindex<\/a>, nofollow directive instructs Google and other crawlers to:<\/p>\n If it\u2019s a regular page on your site the \u201cnofollow\u201d part can create a bottleneck (and loss of PageRank) since Google won\u2019t crawl the links. And generally you don\u2019t want that.<\/p>\n But in this specific case it wasn\u2019t really an issue. The nofollow page was created by Cloudflare\u2019s email address protection<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nYour client\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n
Pre Audit Checklist<\/h2>\n
\n
1. Know your key metrics<\/h3>\n
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2. Does the website rank for its brand name?<\/h4>\n
![\"ranking](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/ranking-for-brand-1024x594.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"ranking](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/ranking-for-brand2-1024x549.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
3. Do URL variants 301 redirect to the preferred URL?<\/h3>\n
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\n
![\"project](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/project-checklist.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"redirect](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/redirect-check.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"redirect](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/redirect-check-results-1024x896.png\")
<\/p>\n4. Does Google\u2019s reported number of indexed pages look \u201cabout\u201d right?<\/h3>\n
![\"google](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/gsc-indexed-pages.png\")
<\/p>\n5. Does the site have speed issues?<\/h3>\n
How to test your site\u2019s speed<\/h5>\n
![\"waterfall](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/gtmetrix-waterfall-1024x575.png\")
<\/p>\nHow fast should your site be?<\/h4>\n
![\"pagespeed](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/pagespeed-insights-mobile.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"pagespeed](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/pagespeed-insights-desktop.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"gt](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/gtmetrix-1024x365.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
6. Does the site pass Google\u2019s Core Web Vitals assessment?<\/h3>\n
\n
What is cumulative layout shift?<\/h4>\n
How to test core web vitals<\/h4>\n
![\"Core](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/core-web-vitals-report.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"why](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/why-urls-arent-considered-good.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"CLS](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/cls-issues.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"validate](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/gsc-validate-fix.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
7. Does the website pass Google\u2019s other Page Experience factors?<\/h3>\n
![\"Page](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/page-experience-overview.png\")
<\/p>\nIs the website mobile-friendly?<\/h4>\n
Is the website secure?<\/h4>\n
Does the website feature intrusive interstitials?<\/h4>\n
8. Are there any other issues in Google Search Console?<\/h3>\n
Manual actions (Security & Manual Actions > Manual actions)<\/h4>\n
Google Crawling Stats (Settings > Crawl stats)<\/h4>\n
9. Is the website\u2019s tech up to date?<\/h3>\n
\n
Upgrading PHP<\/h4>\n
![\"usage](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/php-versions.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"wp](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/site-health-php.png\")
<\/p>\nUpgrading database<\/h4>\n
Make sure WordPress is up to date<\/h4>\n
![\"update](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/update-wordpress.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"one](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/one-click-wp-update.png\")
<\/p>\nMake sure all plugins are up to date<\/h4>\n
![\"out](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/out-of-date-plugins.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"bulk](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bulk-update-plugins-1024x593.png\")
<\/p>\n10. Does the website look trustworthy?<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
Technical SEO audit walk-through<\/h2>\n
Getting started<\/h3>\n
![\"Seobility](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/seobility-pricing.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"seobility](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/dashboard-add-project.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"add](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/add-project-1024x497.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"tech](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/initial-score-1024x592.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"initial](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/structure-report-1024x628.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"tech](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/tech-and-meta-final1-1024x483.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"structure](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/structure-final3-1024x346.png\")
<\/p>\nStage 1: Analyzing your website’s “Tech & Meta”<\/h3>\n
![\"initial](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/initial-score-1-1024x592.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"initial](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/initial-problems-1024x327.png\")
<\/p>\nSpeeding up bulk editing in WordPress with WP Sheets Editor<\/h4>\n
![\"wp](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wp-sheet-editor.png\")
<\/p>\nPages with technical problems<\/h4>\n
![\"technical](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/technical-problems.png\")
<\/p>\nIssues with title tags<\/h4>\n
![\"page](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/title-problems-1024x634.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
\n
Bonus tip for WordPress users: Fixing titles with WP Sheet Editor (Click here to skip this section<\/a>)<\/h5>\n
![\"edit](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wp-sheet-editor-menu.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"wp](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wp-sheet-editor-hide-columns-1024x663.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"wp](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wpsheets-columns-manager.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"wp](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wpsheets-seo-columns-1024x485.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"search](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wpsheets-search2-1024x635.png\")
<\/p>\nIssues with meta descriptions<\/h4>\n
![\"meta](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/metas-too-long-1024x482.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"missing](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/meta-problems-1024x748.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
Duplicate page titles \/ meta descriptions<\/h4>\n
\n
![\"duplicate](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/duplicate-titles-and-descriptions.png\")
<\/p>\nYou can probably ignore warnings for some pages<\/h4>\n
![\"problematic](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/problematic-page-titles-1024x336.png\")
<\/p>\nSidenote: a perfect score doesn\u2019t necessarily mean perfect optimization<\/h5>\n
![\"placeholder](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/filler-text-snippet-1024x734.png\")
<\/p>\nIssues with alt text<\/h4>\n
\n
What\u2019s the first link priority rule?<\/h5>\n
\n
For image links, Google uses alt text as the anchor<\/h5>\n
![\"category](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/category-page-1024x703.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
Bonus tip for WordPress users: Finding featured images with missing alt text (WP Sheet Editor) (Click here to skip this section<\/a>)<\/h5>\n
![\"wp](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wp-sheet-editor-media.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"wp](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wpsheets-find-featured-images.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"wp](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wpsheets-featured-images-1024x740.png\")
<\/p>\nFinding (and adding) all other missing alt texts<\/h5>\n
\n
![\"wp](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wpsheets-advanced-filter.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"images](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/wpsheets-no-alt-attached-1024x468.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"missing](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/missing-alt-texts.png\")
<\/p>\nIssues with H1 headings<\/h4>\n
![\"h1](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/h1-before-1024x392.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
Pages with robots meta Tag \u201cNofollow\u201d<\/h4>\n
\n