February 29, 2024
Image created with Dall-E to represent the website audit.
Table of contents hide
1 My advice for choosing your service provider
2 Site audit on WordPress or tailor-made!
3 Hosting and indexing: audit of the technical SEO of your site
4 SEO on your site (onsite): content audit
5 Offsite SEO: auditing the popularity of your site
“If you start building walls on a shaky and cracked screed, mexico whatsapp you may not be able to finish your house properly.” Old proverb (or not)
Translation: before wanting to work on the content of your site (and therefore call on a web editor) to improve your natural referencing , it is essential to check that it is well constructed technically (well, rest assured, it is never too late to do an SEO audit, and I recommend that you do one regularly).
And for that, there is the website audit !
Is your site well optimized?
My advice for choosing your service provider
Lots and lots of people offer site audits (sometimes without having enough skills to do them) and you will find them at all prices.
But how do you know if an audit is complete?
How can you be sure that your service provider is competent and will be able to identify the problems first and then give you the keys to correct them (and in some cases correct them themselves)?
A first clue: what does the audit include?
An audit may include different checks.
This may be an editorial audit and in this case, the service provider will only give you feedback on the content of your site and give you advice on how to improve it .
An audit can be directed towards the user experience if you find that your conversions are not good and want to understand why. This is what Tiffany Brillard offers for example .
An audit can also be focused on optimization for natural referencing and in this case, it will take into account the 3 pillars of SEO , namely technique, content (from an SEO point of view) and popularity.
Second line of thought: the experience of your service provider
Has your service provider been trained in the audit they offer?
For example, a web editor does not have sufficient knowledge in SEO at the base if he has not been specifically trained in natural referencing auditing . On the other hand, he will be competent to do an editorial audit for you for example.
For my part, I followed the great Rédacteur+++ training (affiliate link) by Matthieu Verne, a recognized SEO expert.
The same goes for a web developer: some do not have the skills necessary to do the job well on the SEO side (unfortunately, I know some, even though it is part of the basics of the job for me).
SEO auditing is a skill that is more logically found in SEO .
Through this article, I will enlighten you on part of my methodology and on what you will find if you decide to use my services to verify that your website is well technically constructed for SEO.
I'll give you a rough outline of what you need to check and you can even do some things yourself. The trick is not to be afraid to open the hood and inspect the machine ^^
Otherwise, don't hesitate, that's what I'm here for!
An SEO audit please!
Site audit on WordPress or tailor-made!
Well, first of all, let me be clear: if your site was created with a CMS other than WordPress, the first thing I would advise you to do is to migrate to WordPress (unless of course your site was custom created).
Among sites using a CMS (a website creation platform), 64% use WordPress
There are over 57,900 WordPress plugins that allow you to customize your site almost endlessly.
SEO is much better on WordPress.org than on Joomla or Wix (help)
It's intuitive and easy to use.
If you don't code, this is the best alternative to be able to move up in search results and improve your positioning by working on your natural referencing for search engines.
Hosting and indexing: audit of the technical SEO of your site
As part of a full audit, I obviously go further in my analyses and recommendations.
Hosting your site and measurement tools
I start by checking your domain name. So, yes, it's normally too late to change it but I give you advice if necessary for the next company you create (always have ambition in life!).
One thing you can already do yourself is connect your site to Google Analytics and Google Search Console . These are two very useful measurement tools to monitor your results.
Indexing your site
Then I check the indexing of your site .
The presence or absence of the sitemap.xml and the correct indexed pages
Robots.txt and the presence of the sitemap
404 errors
The presence of a custom error page
Broken links and other indexing errors
Redirection errors
Securing the site with https (another thing you can do on your own)
The adaptability of the site to smartphones and tablets (responsive site or not)
I draw your attention to this last point. More than 70% of the world's population connects to the internet from a mobile phone in 2020 (source: Hubspot). 53% of emails sent are opened on mobile (newsletters that can redirect to your website for a purchase).
The smartphone is gaining ground every year. It is therefore unimaginable not to have a responsive site today!
SEO on your site (onsite): content audit
In terms of content, there are multiple checks to ensure that the content of your site has a good influence on the SEO of a site:
Checking the internal mesh, the number of internal and external links, the presence of a favicon (the icon that appears in the address bar of your site).
Checking Yoast SEO Settings
Markup: respect the hierarchy (H1, H2, H3…), duplicate titles, too long, too short or empty, same for meta-descriptions (even if it is not serious if a meta is duplicated), same for H1
Sufficient presence of content,
The structure of the urls,
Image weight, image name selection, and filling in alternative tags.
I also study your keywords and give you ideas for improving the editorial content of your site (marketing and a bit of UX – user experience).