What is Technical SEO Audit and how you benefit from technical SEO consultant services
There are many variables that influence a website’s technical SEO performance. A technical SEO consultant has the experience necessary to recognize what is wrong and to give advice on how to improve it. Technical SEO requires people who understand all the SEO dynamics and have experience to spot the issues that cause websites to underperform in organic results. Many times, fixing technical SEO issues takes time and, depending on the way a website is built, it might be necessary for the developers to do significant work to SEO optimize the website structure.
Which areas the Technical SEO Audit Monitors
To get an idea of what a technical SEO service includes please continue reading.
Server errors: Server errors are oftentimes responsible for the poor indexation of a website. There are several types of such errors that we need to pay attention to. Technical SEO helps us find them and solve any issues that cause SEO problems.
Navigation: Navigation is a very important variable that influences a website’s SEO performance. A website with poor navigation structure will not perform well in the organic results or will perform worse than it could if the navigation improved. Poor navigation is often an issue in ecommerce websites where SEO marketing research was not done prior to creating the website. It can stem from a content analysis issue and/or from a technical problem related to the urls of the products as well.
Redirects: This is a very common SEO technical problem which is not always easy to spot. There are types of redirects that seem to be working as intended and send the users to the page we want them to see, but they don’t adhere to SEO principles and do not transfer any SEO juice. This is especially common in websites in which users need to be redirected to new pages, or in ecommerce websites with seasonal products and products that are no longer offered. It is important to know which redirects we should be using and why, otherwise we might end up losing valuable SEO power.
Canonical urls: In case your website has different pages that contain the same text or almost the same text it is important to set canonical urls. This is how we inform the bots which page is to be crawled and it let’s us redirect all the SEO juice of the content to one page, making it more powerful in terms of SEO.
Page titles: Page titles are very important for targeting the right set of keywords as well as increasing the users interest to click on our articles.
Page urls: Page urls or permalinks are also very important elements in targeting the right set of keywords / topics.
Duplicate content: Duplicate content, especially when it originates in a website because of a technical error, can lead to big sections of the website not being indexed. This is a common technical SEO mistake that many websites have.
Metas: The meta description and even the meta keyword/s play a very important role in what the robots read and understand when visiting a website. Particularly when a website is new or there is a lot of competition in the keywords we are targeting, the correct content in the metas can be very powerful SEO ally.
H1, H2, strong etc.: The tags used inside the content of each page is another important element on our SEO efforts that a lot of websites overlook.
Sitemaps: Sitemaps help us inform the bots about all the content of a website we want the bots to read and index. Many websites still do not have sitemaps, or the sitemaps have some errors and cannot be read properly by the bots.
Schema markup: Schema markup helps us inform the bots about certain types of content that a website contains. The schema types are predetermined and they help the bots read the content of a website in a faster and more structured way.
Google Penalties: Apart from many of the points mentioned above, the technical SEO audits allow webmasters to spot any issues related to penalties. There are several types of Google penalties and, depending on the type, they can impact the organic traffic of a website in a way that can be anywhere from somewhat important to extremely significant. It is crucial to be able to spot these issues so we can fix them ASAP.
Image SEO: Another important SEO factor that the majority of websites do not include or even take into consideration is image SEO. Image SEO usually requires additional time to be perfected but the payoff in the organic traffic can be huge.
Video SEO: For the websites that host videos and those that use other domains to upload videos, there are some additional SEO tactics that can help us improve organic traffic.
Robots.txt: This is another hidden element which many website owners are not familiar with and it can impact the success of our SEO efforts significantly.
Speed: Slow page speed can negatively affect a website’s organic traffic and the user experience.
Mobile SEO: Websites that aren’t mobile friendly are also negatively affected in SEO terms.
Does every website need a Technical SEO Audit?
The answer to this question is yes. Every website needs a technical SEO audit. What may differ between small and big websites is how often it is necessary to do it. For small websites that are not renewed very frequently, a technical SEO audit should be done at least once. For larger websites with ongoing projects I recommend a full SEO audit done every 6 to 12 months or every time a big change happens in the website.
Are you interested in a Technical SEO Audit for your website?
If you are interested in a technical SEO audit for your website, please fill in the ‘Request and Offer’ form and I will come back to you with an estimated offer. In case you are wondering why I do not have fixed pricelists for my SEO services, it is because – depending on the size of a website, the topic and the competition, – the same type of SEO service takes a different amount of time and all my costs are estimated based on the time that I will need to complete the requested service. Thus, I believe giving price quotations on demand is a methodology that ensures a high standard of service, always according to the needs of every client and not just limited to a few SEO packages that usually provide the full SEO services only when someone buys the most expensive packages…
Additional professional SEO consultant services
Want to learn more about all the types of SEO services I offer? If so, please follow any of the below links.
SEO consulting services per website type
You might be wondering if all the websites require the same type of SEO consulting services and how these services might differ per website. From my years of experience, I can say that the SEO principles are the same but the effort and continuity that is needed are definitely different not only per website type, but also per business industry, size, location and even the CMS that is used. If you would like to learn more please follow any of the links below.
