Leveling up your SEO strategies can help you a lot, either for competing with others or gaining higher rankings in the SERPs.
Improving the SEO will never negatively affect your blog.
No doubt you have to keep updating it according to the latest updates, but maintaining a sustainable SEO flow is important too.
The majority of the bloggers prefer SEO audits over other methods for a complete checkup of their site. And it’s quite useful if done properly.
You can do the same and adjust the blog accordingly. Stay with us to find out what is an SEO audit and how you can perform one in 2021!
How to perform an accurate SEO audit in 2021 updated!
What is an SEO Audit?
If you have never performed an SEO audit before, you may not be familiar with the process.
In simple words, an SEO audit is “The process of analyzing the current state of your site and its performance for eliminating any foundational problem”.
And using this information as a base for further a do of your SEO improvement plans.
Latest SEO audit checklist for 2021!
Now without wasting any more time, let’s jump to the latest SEO audit checklist for your blog. Make sure to follow all the steps for generating an accurate SEO audit!
1. Analyze the organic traffic
First of all, if you have already published a few blog posts regularly yet not receiving enough organic traffic we highly recommend you analyze it first.
Because if you don’t have accurate information regarding the unique visitors of your blog, you probably can not expect to improve your visitors in less time.
So it’s better to use SEO tools like SemRush or Mangools to completely analyze the latest data of your organic visitors.
It will allow you to decide whether you should start posting a specific type of article or not that can attract more organic visitors.
Analyzing your source of organic traffic will also help you to understand your audience even better, so the first step of any successful SEO audit analyzing your organic search traffic is mandatory.
2. UX improvements
The next step you should consider as important is to work on your UX ( user experience ).
Because if you are looking forward to growing your blog in 2021 then upgrading your UX can turn the tables for sure!
No doubt it will take some time to get your hands on the perfect theme/template that can improve the UX to its highest potential.
With a decent UX on your blog, the number of returning visitors will keep growing. Along with a lower bounce rate that can help boost up your rankings in the SERPs.
You can go through this simple guide to make the most out of your blog’s UX!
3. Analyze your backlinks
How can we forget about the backlinks when you are performing a complete SEO audit. Backlinks play the role of backbone for improving your blog’s authority and trust score.
The higher authority sites refer to your blog, the more attention and organic traffic you may get.
Yet quality link building is not easy, so it’s better to go through all of the backlinks you have made until now.
Analyzing your backlinks can help you reflect on any links that are not related or useless to your blog. Backlink analyzer from SemRush provides a wide range of statistical data regarding your link profile.
Such tools can help you get the work done easily compared to the old methods. Later you can alter or delete the backlinks you don’t require to keep your link profile up to date.
4. Fix broken links
Broken links can ruin your SEO performance if ignored for too long.
In case you don’t know about broken links, the backlinks which are not working anymore yet pointing to your blog’s URL are known as broken links.
Fixing these broken links is very important as you can save yourself from getting penalized by Google.
Maintaining a decent link profile is one of the essential parts of a perfect SEO for any blog. With the help of the right tool finding broken links is very easy instead of performing it manually.
You can use the link profiler from Mangools or backlink analyzer from Raven Tools to get rid of broken links.
5. Work on page loading speed
Time is money! and people searching for content related to your niche may find it quite frustrating if your blog takes forever to load.
Basically improving the page loading speed and performance can help your SEO glow up like never before! as the new visitors will get their information more quickly.
Chances of converting those visitors into potential buyers are highly increased! Because if you are already promoting a particular product/service, page loading speed matters a lot!
Don’t worry if you are not familiar with it, using a few plugins and a responsive theme should work for you.
6. Improve your content
Content is the main supporting pillar of any blog, as the search engine crawlers evaluate your blog based on content and SEO performance.
Improving your content quality and extending your articles a little bit can produce a positive outcome in less time.
Because even after publishing refreshing content daily on your blog, you are not getting enough organic traffic it’s time to work on your content.
Normally content quality is not measured by the word count. But according to a recent survey, the articles with a minimum of 2000 words perform better compared to others.
So we suggest you go through your published articles to see whether you can update anything for better results or not.
7. Make it mobile-friendly
Mobile-First index! a major and surprising update from Google changing the traditional SEO methods.
After this update, Google made it mandatory to keep your blog mobile-friendly otherwise it won’t get indexed.
To make your blog mobile-friendly and avoid getting penalized by the mobile-first index algorithm, you have to convert your blog into a highly mobile-friendly site.
But if you are wondering what is a mobile-first index and how you should respond to it, we suggest you go through this step-by-step guide first.
Where you will find detailed information regarding how this new algorithm works, and what changes are necessary for your blog to get compatible with it.
Returning to making your blog mobile-friendly, it’s not limited to mobile-first index only. Obviously, it’s important but there are other important factors too.
8. Perform competitor analysis
While performing an SEO audit in 2021, if you are neglecting the fact that you don’t have to analyze your competitors then you are wrong!
Outranking them is not possible overnight, so gradually you have to learn from their loss and gains. In simple words, keep analyzing your top competitors to find out what strategies work and what doesn’t work for them.
And the best way to track your competitors is using an SEO suite like Sem Rush or Raven tools. Both of these are industry-level SEO suite platforms providing the best possible competitor tracking service in the market.
Allowing you to keep a close eye on their recent activity and plan your content strategy accordingly.
You can also extract useful information such as long-tail keywords with low competition, link-building opportunities, etc.
9. Usage of branded keywords
Growing your blog as a respected brand in the market is another level of achievement. And the majority of bloggers who want to be successful in 2021 are trying their best to do so.
But how can you represent your blog as a brand? the most effective way would be to use branded keywords and produce some of your own branded keywords too.
Because using branded keywords helps in attracting niche related audience who are your potential customers for the future.
So it’s futile to use normal keywords if you are an affiliate marketer, or wish to create a more powerful brand presence.
10. Keyword rank tracking & analysis
One of the most important factors while performing a complete SEO audit is to keep a close eye on how your articles are performing on the SERPs.
The focus keywords you have used, and for which keywords your articles are currently ranking.
All of this information is essential for creating a perfect SEO audit report and dive into useful conclusions easily.
Unfortunately, it’s not easy to process such huge amounts of accurate data for research and improvement of your blog.
But using SEO tools like Sem Rush and Mangools can help you pinpoint your exact rankings and performance report in an instant!
So make sure to analyze your rankings properly and see what you can do to improve them.
Need Expert Help?
Follow this wishlist while performing the latest SEO audit for your blog. And it will help you point out any mistakes or problems that might be possibly holding back the true potential of your blog.
Take your time and use the SEO audit to eliminate any elements hurting the overall SEO and performance of your blog. If you think performing accurate SEO audits is too difficult for you, don’t worry we have got your back!
Simply contact us for the guided assistance or complete service package, also don’t forget to mention any queries or suggestions you have in the comments section below.
