Quick 5 Minute SEO Audit

SEO audit is an important first-step to a successful SEO marketing campaign. Whenever you analyze a new site, or working on an existing web project. auditing a website should always be your first step.  

For a successful SEO auditing there are a number of factors you will need to check both for on-page and off-page optimization. These factors determinate your future positioning in search engines and so the quantity of the organic quality traffic. 

In a professional environment you may find yourself in need to analyze quickly a huge amount of websites, all with different needs and issues. Here are some of the most important things you can quickly look at to understand the need of a client. It can all be done within 5 minutes.  

Important Steps for a successful 5 minute SEO audit

Tools installed prior to SEO audit

  1. SEO Toolbar | SEO Quake Toolbar
  2. Web Developer Toolbar
  3. Screaming Frog

Websites opened prior to SEO audit

  1. Reverse IP Checker
  2. Copyscape
  3. Google Safe Browsing Diagnostic Tool
  4. Google Maps
  5. Google Keyword Tool

Ready, Set, Go!

0:00 – 1:00 (Domain History)

  • Check Alexa ranking
  • Check # of inbound links
  • Check Domain Age
  • Check # of Pages Indexed

1:00 – 2:00 (Technical Issues)

  • Check canonical issues: www vs non www vs index.html
  • Check robots.txt: Is the site blocked from search engines? (domain.com/robots.txt)
  • Check for XML sitemap (usually domain.com/sitemap.xml)
  • Check URLs: Look for potential crawling issues – Parameters
  • Check backend code: (analytics script, tables vs css, on-page vs include file javascript/css)

2:00 – 3:00 (On-Page Issues)

  • Check Title and Meta Description Tags: Keyword Rich
  • Check Navigation: Any crawling issues (flash/javascript), well thoughout navigation structure
  • Check Content: (keyword rich anchor text, internal linking, consistent layout)
  • Check for Plagerism:  Take 1 url and put it in Copyscape.
  • Check page speed and performance: pingdom | gtmetrix

3:00 – 4:00 (Off-Page Issues)

  • Reverse IP Check: any bad domains on the same hosting?
  • Check Competition:  Put main keyword/phrase in Google (look at“Results 1 – 10 of about 328,000,000 for keyword“)
  • Check for Malware: Put url through Google safebrowsing dianostic tool (http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=mysite.com)
  • Check for Local Business Listing: Use Google Maps – Correct listing in Google?

4:00 – 5:00 (Rankings)