How to Conduct an SEO Audit for Your Blog

I learned so much about SEO in the online course SEO on Tap. I knew that I needed to make some updates to my own blog. I performed an SEO audit and found areas I could improve on. I know SEO can sound scary, but I think this blog will help you see that there are small changes you can make that will greatly impact your search rankings. And no, you don’t always need to understand the technical aspects of SEO! You just need to know your audience.

Check Your Website’s Technical Health

This part of the SEO audit looks at your website as a whole because it impacts how well your blog performs. The three biggest areas are making sure your website is mobile-friendly, loads quickly, and has no broken links.

I don’t have a tool to share to test how mobile-friendly your website is. Luckily, you can just peruse it on your mobile device to find out! Are buttons easy to click on? Is the text big enough to read? Are images sized properly? Explore your website like a new user would to see their experience.

PageSpeed Insights will tell you how quickly your website loads on mobile and desktop (and yes, they usually have different scores!) It will give you areas that are slowing down your load times. As we know, users expect pages to load in less than 2.5 seconds. Any longer than that, and they’re more likely to go back to Google to find a website that loads more quickly. Use PageSpeed Insights to find out what’s causing delays and fix them.

Broken links happen when a URL changes or is removed from your website, resulting in a 404 error. 404-error pages impact the user experience, which can impact your SEO. Use the tool Broken Link Check to edit or remove broken links on your website. This is a quick win that can improve your website rankings.

Evaluate On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is what you do on the backend of your website to optimize a page for SEO. This includes:

• SEO title
• Meta description
• Header tags
• Optimized URLs
• Proper keyword usage
• Internal linking

If all that goes right over your head, install the Yoast plug-in on WordPress to help walk you through it. Each page on your blog needs all of these elements to be properly optimized for search engines, and there’s a strategy behind each one (maybe a future blog series? Stay tuned 😉)

Analyze Your Content

Now, let’s deep dive into your blog content. Look at the analytics and how old the blog is. These metrics will tell you which blogs could use a refresh.

Use Google Analytics, Ubersuggest, or Google Search Console to see how well each blog is performing. I would look at blog posts that are performing really well and see if you can add additional value, resources, or internal links. Then, look into why some blogs haven’t gotten much traffic. Does the content not match the search intent? Did you not pick the right keyword to optimize the post for? Is the post not indexed? These could all be reasons why a blog isn’t getting traffic.

Next, take a look at your older blog posts. My guess is that at least a few of these could use refresh! Here are a few ways you can update an old blog post:

• Update old content, tips, best practices, stats, etc.
• Use new images
• Target a new keyword (if it isn’t working well)
• Add new internal and affiliate links
• Change the formatting (bullet points, heading tags, etc.)
• Add some personality and tone of voice

Assess Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is everything you do outside of your website to improve your search rankings. Most often, this will be a backlink strategy. You’re trying to earn traffic to your website and blog from outside sources.

In your SEO audit, use Ubersuggest to see how many backlinks you have and their quality. You’ll sometimes get spammy backlinks since you can’t directly control who links to your website. You don’t have to worry too much about them unless that’s most of your backlinks. In that case, it could negatively affect your rankings. A few spammy links won’t hurt you, though. It’s more important to know who is linking to you and try to earn high-quality backlinks.

Here are a few ways you can develop a link-building strategy:

• Guest blogging
• Guest podcasting
• Partnerships
• Collaborations
• Newsletter swaps
• Speaking opportunities

Pick one or two to focus on to earn new backlinks from reputable sources. My current backlink strategy involves guest podcasting, and it’s been so much fun!

Review User Experience

User experience plays a role in your search rankings and whether or not someone decides to work with you. If they can’t easily find resources or information on your website, they’ll find someone else who makes the process easy for them. 

The user experience on your blog is something to pay attention to! Make sure your blogs have these elements to improve user experience:

• Easy navigation
• Clear calls-to-action (CTA)
• Simple readability (proper spacing, headings, fonts, images, etc.)
• Optional: Include relatable stories to improve engagement

The goal is to make things easy for your audience! Think about the customer journey and what they might want to learn more about as they read a blog post.

Making Blog Updates

Whew! Is your head spinning? An SEO audit is no joke, but it will help you get a clear picture of where your blog currently stands and how you can improve it for your audience and search engines.

I recommend prioritizing fixes and updates based on impact and effort. Knock out some easy ones, like fixing broken links and installing the Yoast plug-in. Take it one step at a time. Spend an hour reviewing your blog analytics, prioritize blogs that need to be updated, and update one a week. Small changes make a big difference!

An SEO audit should be done quarterly. Measure how your efforts pay off in traffic, rankings, and conversions. Continue to work on updating your blog, and you’ll start to see improvements in your search rankings.

If you want help with this process, feel free to contact me! I’d be happy to give your blog an SEO audit so you can make meaningful improvements.