How To: Identify Technical SEO Problems Through Technical SEO Auditing

The process of maintaining healthy SEO practices that are beneficial for your online business requires the continued monitoring of progress, as well as the planning of better informed decisions. Apart from content SEO, one should also take care not to neglect the technical aspect as well. To gauge the effectiveness of technical SEO, identify and rectify technical SEO problems, one must perform technical SEO auditing. Here’s how to do so:

Site Loading

The time it takes for pages of your website to load can affect your bounce rate. Most website viewers have an average waiting span of 7 seconds and are likely to leave for other alternatives if they are unable to access information, meaning to say your conversions are likely to drop. Make sure that you perform a technical audit for loading heavy images, excessive script usage, redirects that take more than 3 loops, large file sized videos and more. A general recommendation for website homepages is a weight of 130K to 180K.

Content

Duplicate Content can actually cause your SEO rankings quite a lot of damage. Google has access and indexes a lot of page versions, though it will only retain one version and filter out the rest. Make sure there are no chances of duplicate content on your pages by running your pages through checkers like CopyScape. Make your content different, relevant and useful. You can also make changes to your product descriptions and content so that it is unique.

Navigation

When it comes down to navigation, there are 3 areas to take notice- the navigating of your site, labeling and also directory. Website viewers should be able to use and navigate your website with little to no trouble. They should be able to locate what they desire quickly. As a general recommendation, similar products or contents should be grouped together and labeled clearly with targeted keywords for better organisation. Directories should also not be tedious and hard to find.

Dynamic URLs

Dynamic URLs can sometimes cost more problems when compared to straightforward static ones. Make sure to implement an URL rewrite solution if you find that your URLS are unfriendly (characters that can trap bots).

Indexing

If your website pages cannot be crawled by search engine crawlers, they will not be indexed, therefore losing you a lot of opportunities for a healthier search engine ranking. Make sure you resolve any page errors and rectify any content problem involving links and technologies like Flash so that it isn’t deterring search engine crawlers from crawling through and indexing your website pages.