SEO Audit Checklist For Beginners – The Ultimate Checklist
If you are a beginner in digital marketing, you better grasp the idea of an SEO audit checklist. It will teach you how to keep your SEO updated, and you will find out if anything is wrong with your strategy.
The SEO audit will also show you the intricate problems hindering your potential from being a top marketer in the world of online marketing. So, it is better to address those problems and find a solution as soon as possible because you can outshine them all.
What Is An SEO Audit Checklist? – Overview And Definition
The SEO Audit checklist is a tool that can judge the diverse technical aspects of a website to ensure it is abiding by the best practices of search engine optimization. It means there are certain technical aspects present in your website that are proportionate to your rank in search browsers. You can prepare the SEO audit checklist in an MS Excel file.
Now, you don’t need to check every trivial aspect of your SEO marketing in the audit checklist. However, content quality, keyword strategy, onsite best practices are some of the most prominent parameters you must include in an SEO audit.
Once you prepare the checklist, it will be easier for you to conduct a step-wise analysis of your website. When you find the items that are not matching your list, you will find your issues. Now, set those issues aside and prepare some contingent strategies to resolve their underlying concerns.
What Are The Best Free SEO Audit Tools For Beginners In 2021?
Below, we have enlisted the top 5 free SEO tools for beginners. Find out which one is to your liking.
1. Woorank
The most fantastic SEO audit tool is Woorank. Starting from the B2B marketers to the SEO companies and website agencies, everyone is singing the praise of this SEO tool. You will have an in-depth analysis of on-page SEO and off-page SEO through this tool.
Moreover, it will also check the defective web pages and give you suggestions on repairing them. Beginners can learn a lot from this SEO audit tool because it gives you a 14 day free trial period. And, once the trial period is over, it costs $49.00 per month.
2. Semrush
Next on the list for the best SEO audit tool is Semrush. You can track the keyword strategy, backlinks, PPC keywords and find out your competitors’ strategies with this tool. For a beginner measuring these criteria to check their website ranking is essential.
This SEO audit tool is free for a lifetime, but you can only use some limited features if you are using the free version. If your budget permits, you can choose any of the three plans they have (Semrus Pro, Semrush Guru, and Semrush Business). Semrush Pro costs $119.95/month, Semrush Guru costs $229.95/month, and Semrush Business costs $449.95/month.
3. WebCEO
WebCEO is another SEO audit tool that offers a free trial version. Now, beginners need to use a free trial version of SEO tools first to purchase the one that fits their needs the most. The monthly pricing of this SEO tool is $39.00.
From link building to keyword optimization, and from SEO performance report to competitor analysis, you can do everything in this audit tool. This SEO audit tool’s core platform is SaaS; it is user-friendly, and it can monitor all your search engine marketing campaigns crucially.
4. Raven Tools
Raven Tools is an excellent SEO audit tool for getting SEO performance reports and preparing suggestions to better them. In addition, it will aid you in identifying the social media reputation, design, speed, and backlinks of your webpage. It is also easy to use, so it is perfect for beginners.
Like all the other popular SEO tools, this one also offers you a free trial version. But, they have five plans altogether (small business, start, grow, thrive, and lead), ranging from $39/month to $399/ month. So, you can choose one of the plans according to your needs and access the free trial version today.
5. Moz
Finally, we have Moz on the list of free SEO audit tools. All the SEO experts out there prefer this tool for extensive research. From open site explorer to keyword explore, you can check everything on this audit tool.
There are also business consoles, research categories, and business listing options available for you in Moz if you want to expand your checklist categories. In addition, this SEO tool offers you a free trial period of 30 days. And after using that, if you like the tool, you can access several plans ranging from $99/month to $599/month.
What Are The Parameters To Include In A Beginner’s SEO Audit Checklist?
A mobile-friendly site is essential as an SEO audit criteria because if your site is not mobile-friendly, then you lose almost half of the potential customers then and there. More than 50% of the audience search on their mobiles, and Google also uses the mobile version for desktop search. So, it is of utmost importance to check if your site is mobile-friendly or not.
Make sure your content is clear and visible. The content might not be a technical factor to include in the SEO audit, but it indeed is a ranking factor. You need to view the content on your website’s pages, starting from the homepage to your product page. Make sure it is visible to Googlebot and humans alike.
The following important factor in SEO audit is the speed of the website. How much time a site takes to load and how much time it takes to navigate from one page to another is crucial in ranking a website. If customers find that a website is too slow, then they will automatically lose interest in browsing it no matter the content.
You need to access the Google Search Console next. It is a free tool and accessible to anyone who has a website. But, the importance of this tool is compelling because it will check to optimize your website’s visibility and indexing status. In addition, you can contain the manual errors and the server errors both in this SEO audit tool.
Fix the broken links because broken links can create a poor user experience. So, Google does not waste one single breath over broken links. If your website has too many spammy links, it will prove that it is not authentic. Check the index report of your website published by Google Console and check whether you have any broken links or not.
Website architecture is a vital checklist category in the list of SEO audit tools. Because only when your website architecture is organized and flat allows Google to prepare the index report. It also tells Google which pages are the most important in your site, and thus there are chances that you will receive a credible account of your site’s SEO performance.
Conclusion
Now, we have discussed some of the most crucial checklist criteria in SEO audit. We have also outlined some free SEO tools for you to run a free trial and find out the tool that suits you the best. However, there are other categories too that are required in the SEO audit. Competitor analysis, analysis tracking, manual action, site scanning, sitemap visibility, schema markup, security issues, and many more are categories are there that you can include in your SEO audit checklist. But, remember, no matter what you do, it will always be your uniqueness that will make you stand out in the crowd.
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