Introduction
One great way to practice and learn more about SEO is by evaluating another website or doing an SEO site audit. A true site audit takes a long time, but for practice, I suggest auditing only about 7-10 pages on a website. Below is a basic outline for conducting an SEO site audit with some sample questions to ask.
How to SEO Audit
- Pick a website. The website could be a competitor’s or a random website.
- Note: Evaluating another website that you aren’t familiar with may make the audit easier because you are approaching it with fresh eyes.
- Audit a website manually before using SEO checkers. Then, explore the website and note its characteristics.
- Structure: Do they have alt-text? Where do they link to? Are there any broken links or images?
- Usability: How would a user interact with the website? What are the interactive elements? What is the site architecture?
- Legibility: Is the text dense and crowded? Are there clear headers and subheadings? Are the words up to industry standards?
- Indexability: How does the website appear in SERPs? What is the title, blurb, link structure?
- Content: What are the keywords they use? Are the ads or other mentions relevant to the content? What is the quality of the content?
- Appearance: Is the brand consistent across the website? How aesthetic is it? Are there any standout features?
- Check website data. For example, page loading speed, click-through rate (CTR), site maps, crawlability all require data measurements.
- Use Google analytics and Google Search Console
- Use an SEO Site auditor such as YOAST and Semrush.
Conclusion
This is just a brief overview of an SEO audit with a few questions as an example. For more helpful questions, I suggest using AI to generate more questions. Although AI is extremely helpful, I recommend manually auditing websites because ultimately, the goal of an SEO audit is to answer: how helpful is the website for humans?
After observing how others optimize their website, check out my other articles to learn how to implement and improve your website.
3 Responses
Your point about auditing a website manually before using AI checkers is so important. AI can miss so much, especially when it comes to what a human would focus on versus a bot.
Awesome content. I love how you ended it. People do have to add a personal edge to the content, or people will not be as engaged or the content will not be as high quality.
Love this post, Anna! You do a really great job at breaking these topics down. I think auditing is so useful, and i enjoyed learning about it.