7 steps to perform SEO analysis of a site
Carry out an in-depth SEO (natural referencing) analysis of your site is a must for any company wishing boost your visibility on Google. However, many websites neglect this in-depth work, due to a lack of clear methodology or a lack of time and expertise.
This is a strategic mistake! Without a precise diagnosis of the SEO health of your site, it is impossible to define a relevant action plan to progress. You risk missing technical problems that penalize your visibility or keywords with high potential.
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Fortunately, there is a proven methodology in 7 steps to audit in depth the natural referencing of your site or e-commerce. On this factual basis, you would identify your main areas of progress. And you will define a prioritized SEO roadmap for the coming months. This article details this methodology for you complete 7-step SEO audit. Follow the guide to carry out or order an in-depth diagnosis of your website's SEO!
Table of contents
Analyze traffic statistics in depth
A thorough analysis of a site's traffic statistics is essential as part of an SEO audit. It allows you to evaluate the current performance of the site in terms of traffic acquisition and to identify opportunities for improvement. By connecting your website to an analytics tool like Google Analytics, you will be able to collect and exploit valuable data on your visitors.
The first step is to analyze the distribution of traffic by acquisition channels: organic search engines, social networks, referring sites, emailing, direct access. This allows you to estimate the impact of your current SEO strategy compared to other channels, and to allocate your efforts accordingly.
Then look at the monthly evolution of total traffic over the last half-year or year. Identify the boom periods, the slumps, and the pivotal moments that have had a lasting impact on the growth of visits. Determine the potential seasonality of your activity. Metrics such as bounce rate, number of page views, and average session duration tell you about the interest shown by visitors in your content. A high bounce rate should alert you to the poor quality of the user experience.
Entry and exit pages and conversion rates tell you about the conversion funnel your prospects are going through. Optimize the content and call-to-action of entry pages. The expressions entered on search engines and having generated a click show the actual queries of Internet users interested in your offer. These are keywords to optimize as a priority.
In summary, a meticulous analysis of traffic statistics measured over time is essential to initiate effective data-driven SEO actions and focus your efforts on the most impactful optimizable levers for your site. Tools like Google Analytics et Search Console provide all this valuable data. It is recommended to retrieve 12 to 24 months of history to identify long-term trends.
In-depth audit of the netlinking profile
Netlinking optimization is a major pillar of natural search engine optimisation. This in-depth technical audit is based on SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Majestic, Semrush or Moz. The objective is to precisely identify the strengths and weaknesses of the site's current netlinking profile. Start by listing the main websites that link to your pages, with for each the number of backlinks, the date of the first citation, the pagerank and the approximate monthly traffic.
For each major referring site, analyze in more detail the strength of the domain on your theme, the diversity of textual anchors for your different pages, the strategic locations of certain backlinks in the content. UsingSEO tools, Look at the distribution of backlinks by type of referring site: .edu, .gov, news sites, directories, forums, blogs. The more diverse the sources, the better. Also, keep an eye on 301 redirects are functioning properly.
Inspect for inbound links from dubious sources, private networks, with generic anchor text like "link" or placed on pages that exploit duplicate or spam content. Such unnatural backlinks risk penalizing your site. Based on the information collected, establish a plan to gradually strengthen your backlink profile by exploiting your privileged relationships with certain sites, by identifying new relevant targets and by producing attractive content. Follow the evolution over time of SERP positions to measure the impact.
Check on-page optimization from A to Z
The optimization "on site" brings together all the best SEO practices to implement directly on the site pages:
🔰 Title tags and meta descriptions
The title is the tag that defines the title of a web page. It is displayed in the browser tab and appears in bold in search engine results. The title should contain the main keywords that describe the content of the page. It should not exceed approximately 60 characters to ensure good visibility in the engines of research. A concise and catchy title improves click-through rate.
The meta description is a tag that allows you to write a summary or a description of a web page. Unlike the title, the meta description does not appear on the page itself but under the title in search results. The meta description must be approximately 155 characters and incorporate secondary keywords. It serves to summarize the content of the page and encourage the user to click on the result. An engaging description improves click-through rate.
🔰 Optimization of Hn titles (from H1 to H6)
The H1 to H6 heading tags are used to structure the content of a web page. The H1 usually contains the main title, the H2 the subtitles, H3 the sub-sections, etc. These titles are important for SEO. The H1 should contain the main keywords describing the subject of the page. There should be no only one H1 per page. This title will serve as a hook and summarize the content for search engines.
The titles H2, H3... Up to H6 allow you to structure the page into sections and subsections. They must include certain secondary keywords. Robots will give more importance to content located near these titles. Titles must be concise, decreasing in length from H1 to H6. It is recommended to place the Hn at the beginning of the paragraphs or sections to which they refer.
🔰 Editorial content
Editorial content refers to all the texts and articles that make up a website. It's about " editorial content » original created by the publisher. The objective of editorial content is to provide relevant information and added value for the Internet user. It also allows you to optimize natural referencing by using keywords related to the subject of the website.
Editorial content is the keystone of a site. Quality, engaging and search engine optimized texts help improve user experience and natural referencing. The challenge is to regularly produce relevant content.
🔰 Loading speed
Loading speed refers to the time it takes for a web page to be fully displayed in the user's browser. A fast site takes less than 3 seconds to load. Loading speed is a key factor for user experience and natural referencing. A slow site discourages visitors who leave before the loading is complete. Engines like Google also penalize websites that are too slow.
Several optimizations help improve loading speed:
- Reduce page weight by compressing images
- Use web hosting performance and good throughput
- Minify and optimize the code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
- Limit redirects
- Activate thehas caching from the browser
Fast loading speed is essential for visitor satisfaction and SEO. Regular technical optimizations help to ensure a responsive and pleasant site to view.
🔰 Internal linking
Le internal mesh refers to all the hyperlinks present on a website and pointing to other pages of the same site. The objective is to allow Internet users and robots to easily navigate the site structure. Start by establishing the list of pages considered to be the most important according to several criteria: traffic, bounce rate, thematic relevance, conversions, etc. These are the pages priority to be interlinked.
Browse the site architecture to detect all relevant opportunities to add deep links: in the intro or conclusion of blog articles, in sidebars, FAQs, etc. Check that each page has links to the site's associated content. For each internal link, it is recommended to use text anchors that correspond precisely to the theme of the destination page and are contextually integrated into the text.
Once new internal links have been implemented or existing anchors have been optimized, monitor the positive impact on the SEO of the pages concerned and the user journey through a detailed analysis of analytics statistics. In summary, a quality, rich and strategic internal mesh between pages contributes to a better user experience, optimization of robot crawling and improved SEO. It is a SEO work continues.
🔰 Mobile-friendliness
Mobile-friendliness consists of optimize user experience of a website on mobile devices such as smartphones. This is essential today since more than half of connections are made via mobile. Validate via Google testing tools that the pages are displayed and work perfectly on all mobile devices: smartphones, tablets, all OS combined. Zoom in to validate responsiveness.
Measure page load speed on mobile using tools like Pagespeed Insights. A slow site penalizes SEO and bounce rate. Optimize code, images, CSS, JS to gain speed. On mobile, each click/tap is problematic. Minimize the number of actions needed to convert via short forms, clickable CTAs, limiting redirects, etc. Display the breadcrumb menu and site map well for intuitive navigation. The internal search engine also helps visitors.
Enable HTTPS and follow Google's recommendations for mobile security: encryption of forms, CSRF token on sensitive transactions, etc.
Ultimately, while 60% of traffic comes from mobile devices, optimizing the mobile experience must be a top priority in your digital strategy, otherwise it will seriously hamper acquisition and conversion. A mobile-friendly site is unavoidable. Mobile-friendliness is therefore become essential to offer a good experience to mobile visitors and achieve natural referencing.
🔰 Quality standards
The analysis of all these on-page elements can be automated by SEO tools to save time: Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, SEO, etc. This rigorous technical audit makes it possible to detect priority points of improvement for each page and optimize the user experience.
Audit the popularity of the site and its pages
Many popularity signals are taken into account by Google to assess the interest of a website and its content. The evolution of the total traffic of the site over 12-24 months provides information on the overall popularity trend. Also compare & contrast with the statistics of your sector of activity over the same period. Sort the pages by decreasing volume of visits. You will obtain the top 10-20 allowing 80% of traffic. Complete by analyzing bounce rate and average duration per page to precisely measure their popularity and interest for visitors.
Use SEO tools to identify keywords that bring the most paid and free traffic. Evaluate the number of visits, average position, and improvement opportunities for the most strategic in terms of search volume. Search the web for user feedback on your brand: consumer reviews, ratings on app stores, forums, etc. They give a precise indication of your popularity and your perceived image, fundamental for trust.
In short, accurately auditing the popularity of a site and its fundamental pages requires cross-referencing several quantitative indicators (traffic over time, by page, by keyword) and qualitative indicators (engagement rate, customer reviews) that are essential for undertaking targeted actions to optimize customer satisfaction.
Methodically check the site's indexing
For a site to be found on search engines, its pages must be correctly indexed. Use the search "site: www.yourdomain.com" on Google to identify the URLs of your site not yet referenced by the engine. Complete the verification in Bing and other engines if relevant to you. For missing pages, study in your analytics tool the server status code (403, 404, 410 indicate problems), the robots.txt file (access blocked?) and indexing metadata. Correct these technical anomalies.
Some SEO tools can spot over-optimized pages indexed multiple times under slightly different URLs, parameters or slugs. Ask Google Search Console to keep only the canonical version to avoid duplicate content. Google Search Console reports the number of indexed pages and the crawl rate by Googlebot. A complete site should be fully crawled and indexed. Recurring obstacles should alert you to structural problems.
In conclusion, meticulously checking the current and potential indexing of all pages, identifying blockages, correcting and preventing technical problems encountered by robots will allow you to be correctly referenced by the engines. This is a optimization work unending.
Analyze the position of target keywords
A complete SEO analysis of a website involves analyzing traffic statistics in depth, including the position of target keywords. The goal is to understand how your site ranks in search results for those specific keywords.
To perform this analysis, it is essential to use SEO analysis tools which allow you to track the position of your target keywords over time. These tools will provide you with valuable data on your website's ranking in search engines such as Google. By reviewing these statistics, you will be able to identify keywords which your site ranks well for and which ones there might be opportunities for improvement. You will also be able to assess the competition for these keywords and adjust your SEO strategy accordingly.
Analyzing the position of target keywords is a crucial aspect of SEO optimization. It allows you to measure effectiveness of your efforts and make informed decisions to improve the visibility and ranking of your website in search results.
Summarize strengths and areas for improvement
A complete SEO analysis of a website allows you to summarize strengths and areas for improvement of your website in terms of search engine optimization. Strengths are the elements of your website that contribute to its high ranking in search results, while areas of improvement are the elements that could be optimized to improve your ranking. It is important to conduct a thorough SEO analysis using professional SEO analysis tools. These tools will allow you to identify the keywords for which your site ranks well, as well as those for which there may be opportunities for improvement.
You can also evaluate the quality of your content, your website structure, page loading speed, and other elements that contribute to SEO optimization. Once you have identified your website's strengths and areas for improvement, you can begin implementing an SEO optimization strategy to improve your ranking in search results.
Conclusion
In conclusion, carrying out a complete SEO analysis of your website is essential to optimize your visibility and ranking in search results. This involves analyzing traffic statistics in depth, monitoring the position of target keywords and identifying strengths and areas for improvement.
To perform a complete SEO analysis, it is recommended to use professional SEO analysis tools that provide valuable data on keyword ranking, content quality, website structure, and many other important aspects. The complete SEO analysis will allow you to highlight The strong points of your website, such as high-ranking keywords and quality content, while identifying areas for improvement, such as keywords with high untapped potential and issues with page structure or loading speed.
By following the recommendations from this analysis, you will be able to put in place a solid SEO optimization strategy that will help you attract more organic traffic, improve your online visibility and achieve your business goals. To quickly improve loading speed and user experience, using a plugin such as WP Rocket on WordPress is very efficient.
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FAQ about a complete SEO analysis of a website
Q: What is SEO analysis of a website?
A: SEO analysis of a website involves evaluating and optimizing different aspects of the site to improve its visibility and ranking in search results. This includes analyzing keywords, content, site structure, page loading speed, inbound links, etc.
Q: Why is it important to perform a comprehensive SEO analysis?
A: A comprehensive SEO analysis helps identify your website’s strengths and areas for improvement in terms of search engine optimization. This allows you to take concrete steps to improve your ranking, attract more organic traffic, and increase your online visibility.
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