In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, mastering technical SEO is essential for ensuring your website remains accessible and optimized for search engines. An effective SEO audit helps identify and rectify issues that could hinder your site’s performance. This guide, based on insights from an informative video by Sam Oh of Ahrefs, will walk you through the essential steps to conducting a technical SEO audit using Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool.
Understanding Technical SEO Audits
A technical SEO audit is a comprehensive review of your website’s technical aspects to identify issues that could impact performance, usability, and search engine rankings. This process is critical for enhancing user experience and optimizing your website for organic traffic.
Step 1: Setting Up Your Site Audit
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Access the Site Audit Tool: If you’re a new user, start by creating a project in Ahrefs. Enter your domain and select the scope for the audit, which could include subdomains, subfolders, or a specific URL.
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Choosing Your Seeds: Define the starting point for your crawl. This could be your homepage or other significant URLs, ensuring they fit within the scope of your audit.
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Verifying Your Website: Although optional, verifying your website allows for faster crawling and access to advanced features. However, you can proceed without this step if you’re looking for a quick audit.
Step 2: Configuring Crawl Settings
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Execute JavaScript: Enable this option for thorough analysis of pages utilizing JavaScript frameworks like Angular or React.
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Max Pages and Duration: Set the maximum number of internal pages to crawl and the crawl duration, ensuring these settings align with your website’s size and complexity.
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Schedule Crawls: Decide whether you want to run a one-time audit or set up a recurring schedule to keep tabs on your site’s health over time.
Step 3: Analyzing Your Audit Results
Upon completing the crawl, you’ll receive a dashboard displaying your website’s health score and a visual representation of critical issues.
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Evaluating Health Score: This score reflects the percentage of URLs with critical issues. A healthier score indicates fewer problems; aim for continuous improvement.
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Dive into Data Explorer: This section provides detailed insights into specific issues like 404 errors, duplicate content, and HTML tags. Clickable links allow you to explore deeper into each issue.
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Prioritizing Errors: Focus on critical issues first. Use the built-in filters to categorize problems by severity, addressing ‘errors’ prior to ‘warnings’ or ‘notices’.
Step 4: Fixing Technical Issues
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Resolving 404 Errors: If you uncover broken pages, determine which ones are wasting link equity. Utilize the ‘dofollow’ backlinks metric in Ahrefs to prioritize which errors to fix first.
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Addressing Duplicate Content: Identify and rectify duplicate pages by implementing canonical tags or updating internal links. Fixing these issues can significantly improve your site’s authority and search ranking.
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Improving Meta Descriptions: Craft compelling and unique meta descriptions to attract clicks and enhance user engagement. Use insights from your audit to eliminate duplicates and fill in missing descriptions.
Step 5: Ongoing Maintenance
As you implement fixes, monitor the health score and set up recurring audits to stay ahead of potential issues. Ongoing maintenance will not only improve your website’s SEO performance but also enhance the overall user experience.
Conclusion
Conducting a thorough technical SEO audit using a structured approach can significantly elevate your website’s performance. By implementing the steps outlined in this guide, you can improve your site’s search engine visibility and create a better experience for your users. Regular audits and maintenance are essential components of successful SEO strategy—so embark on this process to ensure your website stands out in the digital landscape.
