Learn to understand and SEO Audit

You must know where you stand with your cur­rent Search En­gine Op­ti­miza­tion be­fore you can hope to get started with Search En­gine Op­ti­miza­tion.

Sound con­fus­ing?

It is.

See, even if you haven’t done any­thing for search en­gine op­ti­miza­tion, chances are that some of your pages are listed in search di­rec­to­ries and have some sort of rank­ing.

Also, you may have some links and you may, un­know­ingly, be using some key­words.

Our point is, you need to know from where you’re start­ing.

And an SEO Audit tells you ex­actly that.

A point of clar­i­fi­ca­tion: If you have had search en­gine op­ti­miza­tion strate­gies in the past, chances are you have an­a­lyt­i­cal data that you should share with an SEO spe­cial­ist who can use that data to sup­ple­ment the audit. How­ever, what we are going to ex­plain in this post is how to di­gest an audit for a site that is start­ing from scratch in SEO terms.

Why you need an SEO Audit

If we haven’t con­vinced you that an SEO Audit is a perquisite for start­ing an SEO cam­paign, take this ex­am­ple.

“I want you to get me listed first in Google,” our client told us.

“That’s a lofty goal, con­sid­er­ing the key­words you’re after,” we replied. “Where do you stand now?”

Blank stare.

Our client wanted us to rush out and get his land­ing pages rank­ing first with­out even know­ing how he stacks up against the com­pe­ti­tion cur­rently.

Maybe this com­pany al­ready ranked first among its com­pe­ti­tion. In that case, our work would be done.

While we’re cer­tain you find this ob­vi­ous, you need to know where you are in order to know what you need to do to get to where you want to be.

What is an SEO Audit

An SEO pro­vides ex­actly that: An overview of where you stand against your com­pe­ti­tion and how well, or poorly, op­ti­mized your cur­rent site cur­rently is.

To give you an ex­am­ple, we’ve pro­vided an SEO audit that we pro­vided for a client to serve as an ex­am­ple.

• Part 1 [PDF]
• Part 2 [PDF]

SEO Audit: Part 1

Part 1 of the SEO Audit is an ex­am­i­na­tion of your URL against your com­pe­ti­tion and in a vac­uum, mean­ing that it ex­am­ines how your URL is cur­rently op­ti­mized and how it stacks up against your com­pe­ti­tion.

Page 1

Page one shows you the page (usu­ally the do­main for a first-run audit) and the key­word that the page will be au­dited for.

In this case, the url is “http://​thedisrag.​com” and the key­word is “celebrity news”.

And let’s pause for a sec­ond to ex­plain that.

An SEO Audit ex­am­ines one key­word against one URL and ad­di­tion­ally, the over­all do­main.

Tak­ing the above ex­am­ple, if our client was tar­get­ing “celebrity in­for­ma­tion” at the URL http://​thedisrag.​com/​celebrity-information/​ that would be an en­tirely sep­a­rate SEO Audit.

So, yes, as a client, you will need an SEO Audit for each of your key­words.

That’s not to say that an SEO Audit is only good for one key­word at a time. The audit will also rec­om­mend sev­eral best prac­tices that apply across all URLs and key­words.

At the bot­tom of page, you’ll see your top com­pe­ti­tion (in URLs) for the key­word se­lected.

Page 2: Com­pe­ti­tion Sum­mary

This is where we often see a lot of long faces.

This is a no punches pulled tale of the tape mea­sure­ment of you and your com­pe­ti­tion.

Most of our clients start­ing out aren’t far­ing so well.

There is a table with five rows, start­ing with PageR­ank.

PageR­ank is a num­ber from 1-10 that, for sum­mary’s sake, Google uses to rank your page in search re­sults.

Yahoo Linkdo­main is how many links (from other sites) Yahoo says are link­ing to your do­main.

Yahoo Links is how many links (from other sites) Yahoo says are link­ing to your URL or page.

Alexa Rank is a rank, de­ter­mined by traf­fic, of where your site ranks against all oth­ers.

Fi­nally, do­main age is how long your do­main has been in­dexed in Google.

The sec­ond col­umn is your com­pe­ti­tion. The third col­umn is you.

Below this table is a list of gen­eral sug­ges­tions or guide­lines that will help you get started op­ti­miz­ing your URL.

The rea­son that it is not a spe­cific, ex­haus­tive list of sug­ges­tions to over­take your com­pe­ti­tion is that much fur­ther re­search and plan­ning is needed be­fore such steps and rec­om­men­da­tions can be laid out.

Page 3-4: Doc­u­ment Title

The title of your URL is one of the most im­por­tant fac­tors Google uses in de­ter­min­ing what your URL is about, so it stands to rea­son that this would be one of the first places to op­ti­mize.

These pages com­pare your URLs title with you com­pe­ti­tion.

KW Quan­tity is how many times your key­word ap­pears in the title. This should be one

KW Po­si­tion is where in your title your key­word ap­pears. The closer to one the bet­ter, mean­ing, you should try to start your URL’s title with your key­word.

Words in title are how many words are in your title. Duh. Gen­er­ally, there is no right num­ber for this.

Title length is how many char­ac­ters, in­clud­ing spaces are in your title. There is no right num­ber for this, ei­ther, but Google cuts off at 60, so keep your ti­tles under 60 char­ac­ters!

Page 5-6: Head­ings

Just as your title is im­por­tant, so are the head­ings used on your URL. Al­though not as pow­er­ful as a sig­nal as the title, head­ings help Google fig­ure out what your URL is about (hope­fully, it thinks it’s about the key­word you’ve picked).

These pages show you how you and your com­peti­tors use head­ing tags along with some gen­eral guide­lines and best prac­tice on using head­ings.

Page 7: Body text

Ob­vi­ously, it’s going to be pretty hard for Google to tell what your URL is about if there isn’t some text to go with it.

Just like head­ings and ti­tles, this sec­tion com­pares your body text to your com­peti­tors.

The most im­por­tant sec­tions of this page are the word count and KW den­sity (or key­word den­sity).

You should have at least 500 words as your body text (this doesn’t apply to URLs for im­ages and video). Gen­er­ally, there isn’t a max­i­mum word count, but if you go over 2,000, stop. No one will ac­tu­ally read it.

Key­word den­sity is the per­cent of words in your word count that are your key­word. For ex­am­ple, if your key­word is “shoes” and it’s men­tioned once in your body text with 500 words, your key­word den­sity is 1/500 or 0.02 per­cent.

Ide­ally, this num­ber will be two per­cent.

Page 8-9: URL

Your URL will be bro­ken into two parts.

The first is your do­main name, and it what comes after http:// and be­fore the next “/”

So http://​espn.​go.​com/​ would have a do­main name espn.​go.​com.

And http://​cnn.​com/​obama-wins-presidency/​ would have a do­main name cnn.​com.

The sec­ond part is the path and is every­thing after the third “/” in­clud­ing the third “/”.

In the first ex­am­ple, the path would be “/” and the sec­ond ex­am­ple would be /obama-wins-pres­i­dency/.

To­gether these form the URL, which may even be more im­por­tant than the title in sig­nal­ing to Google what the URL is about.

For ex­am­ple, Google would prob­a­bly know that http://​cnn.​com/​obama-wins-presidency/​ is about Barack Obama win­ning the pres­i­dency.

At this point, you prob­a­bly don’t have much con­trol over your do­main name, but you can con­trol the path.

These pages look at both and com­pare yours with your com­peti­tors with some tips on page 9.

Page 10-11: Sitemap and Robots.​txt

These pages are pretty self ex­plana­tory.

Page 12-13: Meta De­scrip­tion

These pages con­tain a sim­i­lar analy­sis as the pages on your doc­u­ment title.

The only dif­fer­ence here re­ally is that while your doc­u­ment title should be lim­ited to 60 char­ac­ters, your meta de­scrip­tion can have up to 160 char­ac­ters.

Page 14-29: Links

Even though they are not as im­por­tant as ex­ter­nal links (links on other sites that link to your site), in­ter­nal links (links on your site that link to other areas of your site) are in­cred­i­bly im­por­tant for Search En­gine Op­ti­miza­tion.

These pages shows you all the links on the URL and where they point, fol­lowed on the last page by best prac­tices and guide­lines when in­ter­nally link­ing on your site.

Page 30-31: HTML Code and page load time

These pages com­pare your URL’s code and load time to your com­peti­tors.

HTML Code is the code that gen­er­ates the struc­ture and lay­out of your site but is not vis­i­ble.

Poorly writ­ten code can cause trou­ble for search en­gines like Google when they are try­ing to de­ter­mine what your URL is about.

Ad­di­tion­ally, Google will give more weight to a URL that loads quickly, mean­ing the time it takes from the re­quest for your URL until the con­tent at that URL ap­pears on your com­puter.

These pages will give you an idea of how you stack up against your com­pe­ti­tion in nine dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories. In each of these cat­e­gories, the smaller the num­ber, the bet­ter.

Page 32-38: Im­ages

When Google looks at your URL, it will ex­am­ine all the im­ages on it as well. The prob­lem with im­ages is that Google can’t tell by look­ing at the image that it’s about “celebrity news.”

But, you can help it by putting that in the name of the file and the image’s alt at­tribute.

When you name the image, if you name it “celebrity-news-johnny-depp-on-the-set.​jpg”, Google will know that it’s an image that in­volves some­thing about “celebrity news.”

Ad­di­tion­ally, you can add in­for­ma­tion via the alt at­tribute that ac­com­pa­nies every image.

This alt at­tribute is used by screen read­ers for blind peo­ple. Since blind peo­ple can’t see the image, the screen reader will read what­ever is writ­ten in­side this at­tribute.

Google and other search en­gines also use this at­tribute to de­ter­mine what the image is about.

These pages list all the im­ages found at your URL with the ac­com­pa­ny­ing alt at­trib­utes for each.

Page 39-40: Meta key­words

Meta key­words are key­words that are hid­den in your URL. They’re used to tell search en­gines what your con­tent is about.

Un­for­tu­nately, since peo­ple abused these for so long, search en­gines don’t give much weight to what’s in them,

These pages tell you what your com­peti­tors are using as meta key­words and how to use this in­for­ma­tion.

SEO Audit: Part 2

Part 2 of the SEO Audit is much more con­cise and is, largely, self-ex­plana­tory.

It gives you a ton of in­for­ma­tion about your cho­sen key­word, in­clud­ing how dif­fi­cult it will be to get rank­ing for.

For ex­am­ple, if your key­word is very dif­fi­cult, you can ex­pect to spend a lot more re­sources try­ing to rank for it.

Also, it will tell you how much traf­fic you can ex­pect if you rank num­ber one for the key­word.

For ex­am­ple, if your URL ap­pears first when some­one searches for “celebrity news,” this re­port will tell you how many page views that will be worth to you.

Fi­nally, the re­port ends with some key­words that might be worth pur­su­ing and should be con­sid­ered for fur­ther re­sources.

Sum­mary

Wow. That was a lot of in­for­ma­tion to take away, and if you have an SEO on staff or on re­tainer, he or she will shield you from all the messy de­tails.

The im­por­tant take­away for you to know that is an SEO is es­sen­tial be­fore op­ti­miza­tion can even begin.

There are two steps to take after get­ting your SEO au­dits.

1. Start fol­low­ing the best prac­tices and guide­lines
2. Deep dive into Key­word re­search to de­ter­mine what key­words you will be pur­su­ing

In up­com­ing posts, we’ll take a look at num­ber two and how an SEO audit is the start­ing point for ex­ten­sive key­word re­search.

If you would like an SEO Audit from Gun­ner Tech­nol­ogy, please email us at seoaudit@​gunnertech.​com and in­clude the URLs and ac­com­pa­ny­ing key­words for each URL.

So some­thing like this:

URL: http://​mydomain.​com/​celebrity-clothing-for-sale/​

Key­word: celebrity cloth­ing

URL: http://​mydomain.​com/​celebrity-fashion-trends/​

Key­word: celebrity fash­ion trends

Each audit is $300 and will be ready in one week. Right now, we’re tak­ing $100 dol­lars off each audit if you go to our Face­book Page and click the “Like” but­ton and $50 off if you sub­scribe to our newslet­ter.