What is a technical SEO audit?

In order to keep a website competitive and potentially improve performance, a Technical SEO audit examines factors that have an impact on a search engine's ability to crawl and index a website.

Technical SEO components consist of:

• Website speed optimization
• Redirect link optimization
• Internal link optimization
• Mobile-friendliness
• URL structure optimization
• Broken links
• Indexing
• Crawlability

Users can find solutions to their problems quickly and have a positive experience by optimizing these elements.

How to perform technical SEO audits?

We are sure you know a technical SEO audit and its components. Let's now get to the tips included in performing a technical SEO audit. Here are seven points that are the backbone of performing technical SEO audits. Let us have a close look at each one of them.

1. Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to secure your website.
2. Check whether your website resolves to the correct URL or not.
3. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly.
4. Optimize your website for speed.

5. Check for duplicate and thin content.

6. It is always a plus for your website to have an XML map.

7. Validate the schema markup.

8. Fix broken links.
9. Check your website architecture.

Let's discuss each of these points individually.

1. Use a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to secure your website:

• Secure Sockets Layer is commonly referred to as SSL. It is a security protocol that establishes a safe connection between two devices, like a browser and a server. 
• Google declared that the HTTPS protocol would be a ranking factor in 2023. 
• HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) will be found at the start of your website URL. This is only possible when an SSL certificate protects your website. 
• When interacting on the web, a URL secured by an SSL certificate will keep your connection secure. 
• With the help of this system, private information can be exchanged without running the risk of being accessed by criminals, such as login information and credit card numbers. 

2. Check whether your website resolves to the correct URL or not:

There should be four different URLs for your website when you use SSL:

1. http://kitoinfocom.com
2. https://kitoinfocom.com
3. http://www.kitoinfocom.com
4. https://www.kitoinfocom.com

Even though all four of the versions mentioned above of the website are the same in theory, they are distinct from search engines. To ensure that your URL is indexed, you need to take all necessary precautions.

3. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly:

• Google began testing mobile-first indexing in 2016, and by 2018, they declared it would be applied to the entire web.
• What does "mobile-first" refer to? It denotes that mobile and desktop search engines crawl, index, and use a website's mobile version for ranking purposes. 
• Using their Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool, Google has made it simple to test your site for mobile friendliness. To see if Google considers your page to be optimized for mobile, first, enter the website you want to try and click "TEST URL."

4. Optimize your website for speed:

• Google announced that site speed would be a ranking factor in mobile search results in 2020, right around the time they launched mobile-first. This made sense because it was thought that users should not have to wait for a website to load. 
• An excellent resource for measuring the loading speed of your website is PageSpeed Insights.

5. Check for duplicate and thin content:

• Some content management systems (CMS) create new pages on their own.
• These pages may have little information on them or even duplicate information. 
• This content provides little to no value and falls short of adequately answering a user's query. 
• This is because Google either doesn't value it or sees it as a manipulation, thin content, and duplicate content can hurt your SEO. 
• Here are some instances of pages that may contain sparse or redundant content:
  • Category 
  • Tag 
  • Archive 
  • Search result 

6. It is always a plus point for your website to have an XML map:

A file containing details about websites is known as an XML (extensible markup language) sitemap. Search engines crawl this data to better understand the connections between a website's pages, images, and other files. 

7. Validate the schema markup:

• Search engines can better understand a website's content. All thanks to schema markup. 

• A page must contain schema markup to be eligible for some rich snippets in SERPs, such as reviews, FAQs, and recipes.

• Schema markup mistakes must be avoided to be eligible for the special features.

8. Fix Broken Links:

• Broken links are clickable URLs that result in a 404 error (page not found) and are frequently brought on by content removal, page deletion, or incorrectly spelled URLs. 
• Links—internal or external—generally point to appropriate resources. Users may become angry and decide to leave your site if you try to use broken links. This poor user experience may be detrimental to SEO. 
• It's not challenging to find broken links on your website. 
• Alternatively, you can use free online tools like Broken Link Checker or paid tools like Ahrefs or Screaming Frog.
• A tool called Broken Link Checker scans internal and external URLs and flags any that might be dangerous.

9. Check Your Website Architecture:

The architecture of a website demonstrates how your content is set up and connected. Site architectures are built in two different ways:

• Flat Architecture: A website with flat architecture has pages only accessible by clicking on the home page. 
• Deep Architecture: A website with deep architecture has pages that are hard to reach. They are generally more than four clicks away from the homepage. 

Using a flat site architecture, crawlers can easily find all your pages. 

Some additional benefits of a site architecture that is optimized are listed here:

1. It makes it easier for web crawlers to find and index every page on a website.
2. It improves the user experience, too.

Conclusion:

This was our blog on how to perform technical SEO audits. We tried our best to include all the points to make this blog a complete guide for you. For any technical SEO-related questions or services, feel free to contact Kito Infocom. We can assure you that our team at Kito Infocom undoubtedly makes us the best digital marketing agency in Delhi. We provide various services related to website development, including complete digital marketing services.