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What Are The Best Social Media Sites For SEO?

Two words: social media. Two more words: love hate.

Whether you love or hate social media, the fact remains that out of a total worldwide population of 7.710+ billion (according to Worldometers, June 2019):

3.499 billion active social media users.

What’s more, the average time those 3.499 billion active social media users (we can’t stop saying it) are spending on social media every day? Two hours and 22 minutes. 142 minutes. A lot of time. (Digital Information World)

What this tells us is that, regardless of SEO considerations, your brand can’t afford to not be on social media. About those SEO considerations, though, social media can help there too – although it might not be in the way you think.

Let’s dive into how (spoiler alert: or even if) social media affects search rankings; why you should use social media as a part of your SEO strategy (regardless of the answer to the first question); how to optimize your social media sites for SEO; and, finally the top 10 social media sites for SEO.

Does Social Media Affect Search Rankings?

Back in 2014 Matt Cutts, then the head of Google’s web spam team, released a video saying that social signals – things like FB page likes and Twitter followers – didn’t matter a jot in terms of search rankings.

Then, in August 2015, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller released another video in which he stated, categorically, that Google does not use social signals in its search ranking factors.

Let’s spell this out for you then: social media in and of itself is NOT a direct ranking factor.

Google has told us this numerous times.

That doesn’t mean it can’t help with SEO, though. As John Mueller went on to say: “What you do sometimes see, however, is that the social posts do show up in the search results. They can be content like any other piece of content, and they can rank for keywords, they can rank for your product names, so they can show up in the search results as well, which in turn maybe gives you a little more presence, maybe provides some context for users as well in the search results.”

The key here lies within that little word, “content”. As we’ve explored in numerous other blog posts recently, SEO these days revolves around quality content. Authentic content. Content which earmarks you as an authoritative voice on your subject of choice. And this is where your social media can boost your efforts.

Start there on your social media sites. Make them yet another portal for quality content related to your product and brand, and the rest will follow.

Why use Social Media for SEO?

So, we’ve established that you need to think of your social media accounts in terms of content if you want them to help your marketing, and SEO, efforts.

By thinking of your social media accounts, and the content thereon, as an extension of your brand, your voice, and your website, only on a much more personal, approachable level, you can really leverage the power of social media as the tool that garnered a new user every 6.4 seconds between April 2018 and April 2019. (Hootsuite, We Are Social – The Global State of Digital in 2019 Report)

Well-managed social media accounts can boost your SEO efforts in a number of ways:

1. Social media sites can build your audience

Long gone are the days when “Build it and they will come” was considered a good business, and marketing, motto. With 4.4 billion internet users, searching 1.94 billion websites (the number of websites on the internet as of January 2019, according to WebsiteHostingRating.com), a greatly superior better motto might go something like: “Build an audience, and they will come.”

Where do you build that audience? Where do you go to find them and draw them in? Well, do the math: 3.5 billion social media users out of 4.4 billion internet users amounts to close to 80% of your internet users… Yes, you’ll find your audience on social media.

Growing your audience on social media platforms is directly correlated with an increase in traffic to your website. Which brings us rather neatly to point number 2.

2. Social media sites can increase traffic

It is a fairly simple, systematic formula: The more people who find you on social media, the more people will know who you are, the more people will end up visiting your website. Now add in quality content. More people will end up sharing that content and the people they share it with will end up on your website. More traffic equals more recognition from search engines, and this results in improved search engine rankings.

3. Social media sites can encourage backlinks

Search engines love a good link. A link which makes sense, which provides users with useful content, which is a natural, organic extension of the content from which it sprang. It’s well known and well documented that great backlinks can do all kinds of magic to your SERP rankings. And while Matt Cutts’ 2014 video was quite clear that social signals are excluded from Google’s search algorithm, he did say that Google crawls social websites in the same way that it would any other site: “Facebook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index, and so if something occurs on Twitter or occurs on Facebook and we’re able to crawl it then we can return that in our search results.”

If you’re publishing quality content on your social media channels, and including links back to your website – more specifically links which make sense – then search engines may well recognize these links as credible, and this could help improve your page ranking on SERPs. Even better? If that audience you’ve now tapped into include links to your website on their social media posts, recognizing your site, and voice, as an authoritative one. Speaking of which…

4. Social media sites can establish your influence – and your personality

When your audience recognizes you as an authoritative or influential voice on a subject, search engines are more likely to as well. Again, the path from well-managed social media site to SEO-win follows a simple formula: Topic authority equals brand authority, equals more clicks. More clicks – to relevant, authoritative, excellent content, equals better rankings.

People are also more likely to turn to you as an authority if they know who you are, if they can get a sense of your personality. Your social media pages and profiles offer your audience a more personal picture of who you are as a brand. By using your social media sites as a channel for users to get to know your brand in a more engaging, intimate way, you’re allowing them to ‘know’ you better. And to know you is to love you, isn’t it? Knowing you, and liking you, translates to more engagement. More engagement means more clicks. More clicks means, you guessed it, more search engine love. (You’re starting to get the picture now, right?)

5. Social media sites can serve as your own personal search engine

Not only are social media pages and profiles frequently among the top results on SERPs for searches done on brand names as well as significant, relevant keywords, they also serve as the search engines themselves.

Google may still be Goliath, with Bing offering up a smaller, quieter, but equally powerful David-sized alternative, but they’re not the only players on the search engine field. More and more, people are turning to social media sites to find what they’re looking for.

Optimize your social media channels to perform well within their own search functions, and the positive effects can only but trickle into ‘traditional’ search results.

How to Optimize Your Social Media Sites for SEO

With search engine algorithms changing constantly, by the minute it seems for some (yes, you, Google), SEO as a whole can feel like rocket science. Optimizing your social media sites for SEO, though, can be boiled down to 10, fairly simple, steps.

  1. Make your profiles consistent. Use consistent images and brand colours across all your social media channels. This increases brand recognition and shows you care about your brand. If you don’t, why should anyone else?
  2. Make your bio relevant to your business, but make it interesting. Social media sites are a prime place to play, to have a little fun, to show a little flair.
  3. Claim your stake. When searching for a brand on Facebook or Twitter you will often see several different pages or profiles pop up, all claiming to be said brand. Which one is the real deal? Claim your business page and get rid of duplicates. Make it obvious for your audience to see that your page is the official one.
  4. Include a relevant link. To your website. To a landing page. To a newsletter signup. But link you must.
  5. Post regularly. Be active. Show your social media sites, and their audience, that you care enough to keep them up to date. Social media is marketing version of fast food: updates come and updates go. Take a look at the shelf life for posts on each of the following platforms: Twitter – under 20 minutes; Facebook – maybe 5 hours; Instagram – 20 hours, if you’re lucky; LinkedIn – 24 hours tops. If you’re posting infrequently, you’re not yesterday’s news, you’re no news at all.
  6. Engage. Answer user questions, respond to comments, thank followers for shares or retweets. Take part in conversations on your particular platform. Search for Twitter chats within your industry and have your say. Engage with others to receive engagement back. Aside from being good manners, your responses also help social media algorithms recognize that your content is active, which improves its potential reach.
  7. Love your neighbour. Share industry-related or local-related content that you believe in or find interesting. Share links to receive link love back. Find real, relevant influencers and talk to them.
  8. Create quality content.
  9. Share it.
  10. Then create some more.

The Top 5 Social Media Sites for SEO (Plus 2 Secret Weapons)

The Usual Suspects

1. YouTube

Telling numbers: YouTube has over 1.9 billion active logged-in users every month, and every day people watch over a billion hours of video and generate billions of views. (YouTube)

Studies show that 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support (HubSpot). So for goodness sake, give them what they want! Whether it’s a purely promotional video, a ‘how-to’ video relevant to your product or service, or a #FridayFun behind-the-scenes team video giving viewers an insight into your company personality, videos can potentially rank organically in the SERPs and they can lead to links. Double win.

2. Facebook

Telling numbers: As of the first quarter of 2019, Facebook has 2.375 billion users. (Statista)

As beleaguered as Facebook is, it continues to be a powerful player not only on the social media scene, but on the internet as a whole. With 51% of those 2.375 billion Facebook users more likely to buy from brands they follow, your FB Business page has the potential to be a great lead generator. Pay attention to that page, post compelling content, use targeted keywords, and always, always, stay on brand.

3. Instagram

Telling numbers: They say a picture paints a thousand words… Get your pictures painting that many words to over one billion monthly Instagram users – 500 million of which are using the platform DAILY! (Hootsuite) – and some of them just have to stick!

Instagram is a great place to showcase products, tell a story, show your true colours… in their best light of course. Naturally, with over 95 million photos uploaded every day, to stand out from the crowd you’re going to have to bring your A-game. Again, it’s all about staying on brand, being authentic, and showing some personality. Oh, and do your research on hashtags, then use them!

4. Twitter

Telling numbers: With 330 million active, logged in, users, Twitter may not boast the most impressive numbers, but they sure do boast an astounding level of engagement.

You better believe Tweeps are passionate about the things they Tweet about. (Twitter trolls too, unfortunately.) And with 77% of Twitter users feeling more positive about a brand when their Tweet has been replied to (Twitter), and companies using Twitter for customer service seeing a 19% increase in customer satisfaction (WebFX), this could be a game changer in getting your name out there in a positive – or negative – way.

5. LinkedIn

Telling numbers: 93% of B2B marketers consider LinkedIn to be the most effective site for lead generation. (LinkedIn)

Once considered primarily a social media station for job seekers, this professional site is now widely considered one of the best social media sites for SEO, precisely because it is ‘professional’. It’s more than 610 million users are almost all, to a user, professional, polished, qualified and distinctively un-troll-like. Not only does this make it a wonderful networking site, it makes it a great source to see, and be seen as, authoritative voices within your particular industry. With the B2B market booming, it’s also excellent for generating leads as per the statistic above, and for converting sales. Use it wisely, though. If your activity is too salesy and pushy, you’ll very quickly lose followers.

The Secret Weapons

6. Quora

Telling numbers: As of September 2018, Quora had 300 million monthly users. More importantly, those users are asking questions that you could be answering.

The power of Quora lies less in its volume of users, and more in its user model. Quora is in the business of asking, and answering, questions. If you’ve learnt anything from our recent blogs, you’ll know that answering question-based search terms are, well, key in modern SEO. Quora not only provides a living, breathing, holy grail home base for finding the questions being asked online – about everything, including your industry, product or service – but an opportunity for you to answer those questions, and establish yourself as the go-to on your area of expertise. Establishing yourself, or your brand, as an authority on this platform can pay off with clicks to your website or, at the very least, increased direct searches for your brand name. But remember: nobody likes a showoff. Asking questions is just as important as responding to them. Asking interesting questions can drive as much traffic to your site as answering questions well can. Finally, as with all content, anywhere on the web, quality is key: whether you’re asking or answering the questions, make sure you’re adding value by making them useful and insightful.

7. Pinterest

Telling numbers: 90% of weekly users use Pinterest to make purchase decisions (Pinterest) and 98% of users go out and try the ideas they find on Pinterest (Pinterest).

With 265 million users (Statista), Pinterest is another social media site which doesn’t boast the numbers, but certainly boasts the purchasing power! The statistics above tell their own story, especially when you compare the 98% statistic to the 71% average across social media platforms. Pinterest also seems to have escaped much of the social media scandal scene as well as the need by people to regularly purge themselves of their online presence and bent for oversharing. If you have a product or service that lends itself to visual representation, Pinterest can be an immensely valuable tool for increasing your audience, stimulating your sales, and, ultimately, upping your search engine rankings.

Get Social (Media)

As with everything Google, things may change. Their algorithms are a mythical beast known only to themselves (and even then we wonder…), so it’s entirely possible that come tomorrow they may well begin to include more social media signals in their ranking algorithm. Or maybe they won’t.

Regardless of the cards Google may, or may not, play in the future, there are a few key points to remember about using social media sites – whether you have SEO in your sights or not:

  1. Google may not currently include social signals, but Bing, for example, with its 24% share of search queries, does use social likes and shares as a direct ranking factor. Google is not the only player in the game.
  2. More importantly, quality content on well-managed social media sites can only but garner you friends and fans, allowing your brand, business and website to be found online. And isn’t that, ultimately, what SEO is all about?

If you still have questions about Social Media and SEO,  please call our SEO experts here at 1st on the List at 1-888-262-6687 or contact us online.

 

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Benefits of Link Building

Popularity; being well-liked is important to some people. It’s also important to businesses. Generally, one can assume that if a business is popular that it is good and provides a valuable service or product. But, is that always the case?

If you can make a thousand people say you’re the most popular person, are you really the most popular person? If you can create a system to have a thousand websites link to your website, does that mean your website provides the most valuable information? That was something Google and other search engines had to fix when link-building was at its height of popularity.

If you own a website and have undertaken any sort of SEO over the years, you’ve likely heard the term ‘link-building’. When SEO first became a method of marketing, link-building was one of the most important tasks an SEO professional would undertake.

As with many things, some took it too far and all of a sudden directories build specifically for link-building were created. People began offering link-building services and the entire process could be automated for $10 to $100. Those who didn’t understand the reasoning behind getting links to a website never cared where the link came from, they simply wanted more links. Because of this, links became diluted.

Although link building got a bad rap, it’s still an important part of the SEO process. But, even as was the case back then, it’s important to seek quality links to your website and/or to help links develop naturally.

Why Links Are Important

The idea behind link building stems from popularity and authority. If your website is popular, provides authority in your industry and has relevant topics, people will like it, share it and link to it.

This signal shows Google and other search engines that your website is valuable and valid and can help in ensuring your website ranks well for popular keyword search terms.

In addition, if your website is linked to from another website, that’s another avenue of traffic for you.

Both of these can help increase your SEO rankings. So, in turn, link building is still good for SEO. But more importantly, it’s good for your website traffic and to gain potential targeted leads.

Search engines use links for two fundamental reasons:

The first is to help them discover new pages for their databases. Every time your website publishes an article or a blog, the search engine needs to find it before they rank it. If your internal linking system is well-structured and you have a good xml sitemap, this might be easy. But, the more websites that also link to this content, the easier and quicker it might be for the search engines to find.

Search Engines also use links to help determine how a page should rank for a particular keyword. A link can be seen as confidence about the content and information that is to come.

It’s important to keep both of these linking fundamentals in mind when you begin to build links for your website.

Link Building Benefits & SEO

White hat link building has long-since been touted as an effective part of an SEO strategy. It’s otherwise known as link-juice and is one of many ranking signals used by Google and other search engines to determine the validity of a website for a specific keyword phrase.

Link metrics are calculable. There are programs designed to help you determine the quality of a website and link from that page. Alternatively, you can seek out new links by hand. But, it’s not wise to rely solely on link metrics alone. Natural links may not have passed your link metric test; however, they can prove to be invaluable. The same goes for a link that actually drives valuable visitors and potential leads to your website.

Having websites point back to your domain improves your domain authority. It provides search engines with a signal that your content is worth linking to. In turn, if you’re generating website traffic from these links, this too can help with your SEO.

The Indirect Benefits of Link Building

Link building should be a task on every SEO professional’s to-do list. Yes, because it helps with SEO and ranking on search engines. But, and perhaps even more importantly, the real benefit of additional links is more indirect.

Builds Trust – When someone links to your content, it’s their way of saying they trust you enough to share you. This influencer traffic is an important citation for your website. The more industry authority you can have, the more serious your website will be taken. Consumers today are looking for trust signals before they make a connection with a business. This comes from testimonials, citations and authoritative content.

Builds Branding – The more your business is mentioned elsewhere, the more known your brand will be. You might not derive a sale from a link; however, there is a subconscious act of knowing that takes place and the more a person sees your business name or website, the more likely they are to subconsciously begin building trust in your brand.

Increases Visitors – A well-earned link on another niche or popular website can increase targeted visitors to your own website.

Increases Leads – While some think about link building primarily from an SEO standpoint, when you curate links for the benefit of actually building business, this is when you really win. There are local websites, directory websites, resource websites etc. that people visit every single day. If you have related content, or a related link, you could actually earn business, rather than just link juice. And, that’s the real point, right?

As an example, let’s imagine you are a mortgage broker. You can list your business in local directories. Perhaps you exchange links with fellow mortgage brokers across the country as part of a referral network. You may have a link on your main company’s website. As you start to create good content (video, podcasts, articles and blogs) you may find that people begin sharing your content. Now, think about places where your content could naturally live:

  • Real estate agent websites
  • Home design websites
  • Home builder websites
  • Real estate lawyer websites
  • Financial planning websites

The link authority from any of those types of websites would be good. But, the visitors to those websites likely have a vested interest in your service. So, if your content is excellent and authoritative, if people begin to trust your brand, you can use this opportunity for more than just the link juice. You can use this link to actually generate visitors and business leads.

And, that’s why, when it comes to link building, good content is always stressed. Know your audience. Know your target. Know their target keywords and ensure that your content is authoritative, different and relatable.

Natural vs Curated Links

A natural link is one that happens more by accident. You haven’t done anything to secure the link; rather, someone has liked something on your website and has chosen to link to it from their own.

A curated link is a link you have specifically requested. Maybe this is on a local website or an industry-leading informative website. Maybe you have created relative content for a related industry.

Both natural and curated links can be valuable for your business and for your website.

How to Get Natural Links  

Have good content – this is the best advice for when you want to get links to your website. Have well-written, easy-to-read shareable content on your website that is unique from what a person could find anywhere else. Answer questions. Have a unique solution to a common problem. Update your blog regularly. Make your content so good that people want to share it or source it on their own websites.

Write guest blog posts – find niche websites and request to write a blog or article for them. Be sure to include keyword rich backlinks to your own website when applicable.

How to Curate Good Links

Link Requests – It’s ok to ask for links still; you just want to be sure that you’re asking for links on a quality page that isn’t a ‘link building’ page. If content is related and your website would be a valuable resource, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Directories – Local or niche directories provide a valuable service for visitors. So, ensure your site is listed if related and that your profile is properly filled out.

Social Media – Keep your social media profiles up-to-date with a link in your profile. You can also use your own social channels to share your good content. Others might pick it up to post on their own website, thus creating a natural link!

Here are the Top Benefits of Link Building

Build relationships – the very act of sourcing out related links to your website could help you build business relationships.

Get your content indexed faster – When you create good content, it’s important that the search engines can find it. Having your own website and others link to it will help ensure search engines will find it, spider it and index it faster.

Build your website authority – A well-placed link on a related, good website is a signal of trust and authority.

Receive traffic from other websites – Great links are for more than just SEO; they actually provide website traffic and leads for your business.

Improve your seo – Links are used as a ranking factor for SEO. If you’re looking to increase your ranking for a specific keyword phrase, ensure you have good content related to this keyword and then begin sourcing links to this content.

Improve your brand visibility – The more times a person can see your brand, the more your brand will make an impression on them.

Link Building Tactics

Have good content including video, infographics, images and articles – content is king, queen and everything in-between, especially when it comes to links. Having content that is shareable and digestible is always a good idea when it comes to link building.

Guest blogging – Find related websites and ask to have your content featured. Be sure the content you provide is unique and answers a question or solves a problem in a way that is conducive to both that website and your brand.

Build links from broken links – the Internet is filled with links that no longer work. If you have content that could fit, you could ask the webmaster to link to your content instead. This involves a lot of research and work but can be invaluable to your success in the long run.

Research who links to your competition and request links – This is usually stage one of link building. Research the competition and find similar link building opportunities.

Whether you are new to SEO and link building or have been doing it for years, if you’re reading this article, you know link building is important. How to build links and where to get them from is always changing; however, the idea behind links has always been the same. It’s when you try and find quick wins that you begin to steer yourself in the wrong direction.

Gaining high quality links for your quality content hasn’t changed. It’s the cornerstone of any link-building campaign, and always has been. It’s just become harder (or more clear) to find what constitutes as a high quality link.

White hat link building strategies are good for any website. But, this opportunity takes research, effort and time. The benefit will pay off. Good link building is building for tomorrow, not this instant. Isn’t that the case with content, too?

While the landscape for link building is always changing, one thing remains unchanging. The benefits for producing quality content will never go away. The benefits of quality links will never go away.

There has always been a benefit for having quality links to your website. So, if you’re looking to improve your website’s visibility, seo and traffic it’s important to start creating shareable, unique content that is worthy of a link.

If you still have questions about Link Building, please call our SEO experts here at 1st on the List at 1-888-262-6687.

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Purpose & Importance of an SEO Technical Audit

Why is an SEO Technical Audit Important?

An SEO technical audit is akin to doing a regular check-up on your website. It helps you determine what’s working, what needs improvement, and where any critical fixes might be necessary. To be successful online, your website needs to function properly and be accessible for both the search engines and your website visitors. 

Websites are complicated. They are designed and created to engage the visitor but they must first rank well on search engines for common user-queries. Inevitably, the Internet will continue to evolve much faster than your website. Google’s algorithms are now AI influenced and seem to change daily. It often feels impossible to keep up with what Google wants.

SEO has become more and more complex but remains one of the most crucial elements necessary for online success. It’s important to remember that SEO is not a “set-and-forget methodology.” In fact, there isn’t one way to ensure your website will rocket to the top of Google and stay there.

Google, the Internet, and even your competitors’ websites keep evolving. This means that anything can change and change can happen quickly. Whether done externally or internally, an SEO technical Audit is a valuable tool to ensure your website evolves along with them.

How Often Should You Do an SEO Technical Audit?

Comprehensive SEO Audits should be conducted regularly, at least once per year; however, every six months is highly recommended. Some professionals like to run audits quarterly and may even conduct mini-audits monthly.

Here are some indications that an SEO technical audit may be necessary:

When Rankings, Traffic, and/or Conversions Decrease

If you notice a sudden decrease, or a gradual change in rankings, site traffic, or conversions, that’s a good indicator it may be time to conduct an SEO Technical Audit.

So many elements can affect your website performance and rankings can drop suddenly or gradually over time. As soon as you notice a consistent decrease, it’s time to look into why. It could be on-page or off-page elements that are affecting your results. Conducting a thorough SEO audit is a great way to determine why there has been a change and point out any fixes that might need to be made.

Before/After Making a Big Change to Functionality or Hosting Environments

Conducting an SEO Technical Audit before you make a major change to your website can help determine if any other changes need to be made in tandem. You can think of this as preemptive discovery. In addition, it is a good practice to conduct a full SEO/Website audit after you’ve made a big change. A big change can be a new feature, a change in plugins, a change in the hosting environment, etc.

When You Notice Poor Page Load Speed

Page Speed seems to be a common theme on the tongues of SEO professionals. This is because website visitors are impatient. Remember back in the early days, back when Netscape Navigator was the browser of choice and we all connected via dial-up connections? Back then, people expected to wait minutes for a website to load. Now, you’re hard-pressed to make a visitor wait seconds.

  • Nearly 50% of users will leave a website (and won’t return) if it takes more than 3 seconds to load

If your site is not performing at optimal speed, it’s time for an SEO audit.

Regularly Scheduled Audits

Ideally, you’re running SEO audits on a regular basis so that you can preemptively strike before a major problem arises. SEO and search engines are in a constant state of flux, which means things can change at any given time. Knowing your numbers and your stats inside out can help you determine when there’s a potential problem on the horizon.

Who Should Conduct a Website/SEO Audit?

Check your spam folder and you’re likely to have multiple emails advertising SEO audits. Generally, these are used as a sales pitch to earn your business or get you to sign up for something you likely don’t need. But, there’s something to be said for having an outside set of eyes looking in.

We recommend having your SEO technical audit completed by one of the following:

Internal SEO Professional

Your hired SEO professional should be running and sharing their regular SEO audit results. Good and experienced SEO professionals want to run regular audits (yearly, quarterly or even monthly) so they can have a good handle on what is working, what needs improvement and flag items that require an immediate fix.

You shouldn’t be concerned that your hired SEO professional will skew results to make their work look good. An experienced SEO professional knows that nothing in the realm of SEO is a constant and there is always room for more improvement. Running their own internal SEO audit helps them to do their job more proficiently.

External SEO Professionals

Having an external organization take a look at your website and SEO is also an option. In fact, even some SEO professionals will outsource the SEO technical audit every-so-often, as a second set of eyes with a different focus just might be able to uncover other issues.

An external SEO technical audit is also often a part of the quoting process when you shop around for SEO services.

What Elements Should Be Included in an SEO Audit?

SEO Audits are more complex and comprehensive than regular reporting. An audit is meant to uncover vulnerabilities, successes, errors, and areas for improvement, whereas your regular marketing reports are generally performed to showcase key performance indicators.

15 Elements To Be Included in an SEO Technical Audit

1. Crawl Errors
A crawl report is a quick way to determine how your website is functioning from a technical standpoint. It shows you if there are places where a search engine is getting stuck or if there are page errors or crawl errors. You can automate this process with a number of SEO tools such as Screaming Frog or SEMRush. You can then begin to fix any of the errors or warnings in an effort to ensure your website is free of errors and as optimized as possible.

2. URL Status Code Errors
Let’s face it, it is difficult to check up on every page of a website regularly. Sometimes you don’t know a page is broken, or how long it has been broken. A regular SEO technical audit can help you assess broken pages and links. You can get a list of status code errors from your crawl report or right within Google Search Console. Any URL errors such as 404s will show up here. It is important you fix these errors as soon as they arise.

3. XML Sitemap Review
The XML Sitemap acts as a map to show Google and other search engines what pages are on your site. It should include all pages within your website. Make sure every page within your sitemap returns 200 status codes and proper canonicals. This helps to ensure you are not wasting your crawl budget on broken links and removed pages.

4. Site Load & Speed Testing
It is important to regularly check how fast your website loads. According to SEMRush, over 23% of websites have slow page load times. Poor site speed can affect SEO and other key metrics. You can check your site speed by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool.

5. Mobile-Friendly Test
It’s likely your website is mobile-friendly, and if it isn’t yet, it ought to be. It’s still important to run your website through a mobile test such as Google’s Mobile Friendly test.

6. Keyword Cannibalization
If pages within your website are all competing for the same keyword, this can cause confusion for the search engines and also reduce your opportunity for top results. Sometimes, Google and other search engines will even decide which page is best, which may not be the page you want your visitors to land on. By using Google Search Console’s performance report, you can identify pages that are competing for the same keywords. You should then determine canonical issues or consolidate pages.

7. Review of Robots.txt
A regular review of Robots.txt allows you to see the instructions you are providing to the search engine bots. For instance, if there are pages you do not want the search engines to spider and display, they will show up on this report. This is why it is essential to regularly review the robots.txt file. You can ensure you are only disallowing the pages you actually do not want Google to see. Sometimes developers block a page they are working on and forget to unblock that page or even the website. If you notice pages are not ranking, this is the first place you should check.

8. Google Site Search
Performing a Google search of your website will help you determine how Google displays your indexed pages. Go to google and search for “site:yourwebsite.com”

9. Duplicate Meta Data
Unfortunately, it is common for large websites and e-commerce sites to have duplicate meta Titles and Descriptions, or to be missing meta data. This can occur when you allow an SEO system to create meta data for you based on parameters, or you’ve copied descriptions from one page to the next. A detailed crawl report can alert you to issues with metadata. It’s a time-consuming process to fix, but worth it.

10. Meta Length Review
Ensuring your pages’ meta descriptions are the proper length may not help your SEO but it can help your click-through rate. The meta description character length has increased to 320 characters, which now gives you plenty of space for your keywords, specs, and a call to action.

11. Check for Broken Links
Any broken link, whether internal or external, can be bad for SEO and user experience, which can lead to lower rankings. Use your crawl report to identify any links that are broken and fix them as soon as possible.

12. Perform a Backlink Audit
Use a tool such as the popular Ahrefs to identify websites that are linking to your content. By assessing your link profile you can identify areas you can focus on with your link building and you can even assess your competitors’ backlinks and work to outperform them.

13. Duplicate Content Review
Over half of all websites have duplicate content issues, either internally or with external websites. Use a service such as Copyscape to run regular duplicate content checks. Duplicate content can cause confusion for the search engines and negatively impact your SEO.

14. Review H1s
Every page of your website should have one H1 header. Your crawl report can alert you to pages that have multiple H1s. An H1 is read by the search engines as the main point of the page. Your heading hierarchy should include one H1 and then can include multiple H2 subheaders and even H3 subheaders.

15. Determine Underperforming Pages/Content
The above metrics can help you determine underperforming or error-ridden pages and content on your website. From there, an improvement plan should immediately be put into place.

Summary

Ensuring you are regularly auditing technical SEO elements and content both on-page and off-page is an essential part of any SEO strategy. While SEO professionals may have their favorite tools to get the job done, they all agree that it is essential to perform an SEO technical audit regularly.

Consistency is key. If you are consistent with evaluating your technical SEO and website, and making fixes, your site will continue to gain strength in the search engines. Taking an hour or two to perform a regular SEO technical audit is well worth the effort. It will provide a road map for improvements to be made while ensuring your website is up-to-date.

Best practices, market trends, competition, and search engine algorithms are always in flux. Make sure your website is keeping up. 

If you still have questions about an SEO technical audit or you would like more information, please call our SEO experts here at 1st on the List at 1-888-262-6687.

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