To explain Search Engine Optimisation or SEO in its simplest terms, it is a set of practices and techniques that can be used to make changes in your website so that it ranks well in the search engines results pages and gains quality organic traffic.
But you can’t just jump into the techniques right away and up your SEO game. You need to have a strategy in mind before you could start making your website more visible to search engines and bots and improve your rank. But do you know what’s the first step you need to take to develop your SEO strategy? It’s SEO analysis. Let’s take a look at what SEO analysis is and how you can do it.
So, what does SEO analysis mean?
SEO analysis is the process of closely observing a website to determine how well the site is optimized. It helps you to gain deeper insights into the opportunities you can use to skyrocket your site’s ranking potential in the SERPs. It also involves making site audits and identifying the areas that can be optimized for search engine bots or crawlers.
With SEO analysis, you can have a clear view of which aspects of your SEO strategy are performing well and which ones are facing obstacles or keeping your website from getting higher ranks. Once you know where you are lacking, you can direct your efforts towards improving your site’s content and technical aspects. This will help search engines to establish the context and relationship of your site’s content with the search queries that users are using.
To sum up everything, if you want your website to find a place among the top ranks, expand your reach, bring a huge influx of traffic, and achieve your business goals, SEO analysis is a must. With SEO analysis, you are making strategic decisions instead of taking a shot in the dark, thereby enabling the adequate usage of time and resources.
Easy and Quick Steps to Perform an SEO Analysis of Your Site
Below mentioned are a few of the key steps that you can implement to perform a good SEO analysis.
1. Check your website’s level of visibility on Google
Before you start, you need to know where your website ranks on Google and how many of your web pages are doing well in the search results. Try to get a clear idea of the overall status of your website’s visibility on Google.
2. Check URLs and Meta Descriptions
If your page URLs are too long, it’s time to cut them short to around 4-5 words that concisely describe what the content on the page is all about. Optimize and edit the URLs so that search engine bots find them relevant and make sense of what’s exactly on your page. Note that this could affect the link juice of the previous URL. Besides, you can edit the meta descriptions of the page as much as you want. While editing the meta descriptions, remember to include the primary and secondary keywords, and you will have precisely described what the page is about.
3. Analyze Titles and Headings
Write titles that grab the attention of your target audience and tempt them to click on them. You need to mention the keywords in your titles and headings as well.
Note that targeting keywords that have high search volume can be difficult to rank for. Instead, you can look for a less competitive long-tail keyword, which will improve your chances of securing the first few results of the SERP.
4. Evaluate Incoming Links
Incoming links are also known as backlinks or inbound links. They are nothing but links to your site that are hyperlinked on the content of some other site. Incoming links indicate search engines that your website is trustworthy and this can put a positive impact on your website ranking. By evaluating the incoming links to your site, you can find out who is linking to your business and get a better understanding of what else you can do to make it to the top of search rankings.
5. Be Aware of your spam score
Be very careful of your incoming links. If you have a lot of incoming links from low-authority websites, it can increase your spam score. Therefore, keep an eye out for any bad inbound links and eliminate them as soon as possible. To remove bad inbound links, you can contact the owner of the page and ask them to remove the link from their content. On the other hand, you can disavow the link.
6. Take care of internal linking
To help users navigate to other pages on your website, you need to add links of other pages on your content. This is called internal linking. It is an amazing SEO tactic that can not only rank you well in the search engines but also improve the user experience as well. Go through new and old pages on your website and add internal links to pages that you feel are informative and relevant to a particular piece of content. Also, follow the best practices of keyword and anchor text placement.
7. Scan through for broken links
Broken links can bring down the user experience and have a negative impact on your SEO strategy. So, make sure to identify them and eliminate them. You can also complete a 301 redirect to a different and relevant URL to fix the broken link.
8. Analyze the content of your web pages
There’s a good reason why content is called the King. Content is probably the most important factor that can get you to the top of search results. If you happen to come across any duplicate content on your site, de-index it. If necessary, remove it. Having duplicate content is a huge red flag for SEO, avoid it at all costs. While analyzing your website content, start with the pages that are ranking well and then gradually move to other pages and posts with a comparatively lower rank.
9. Optimize and audit your images
Search engine bots can crawl through your texts but not images. Therefore, you need to add alt texts to your images that describe the purpose and appearance of that image. As page load speed is an important factor that determines the likeability and quality of your website, compress the images to reduce their size. This will make your pages load faster.
10. Page speed is essential
Speaking of page speed, always pay attention to your load speed to ensure that your website is running smoothly and quickly.
Now, you must have got an idea about why SEO analysis is important to take your website rankings to the next level. But performing SEO analysis is a time-intensive task. You can’t just invest all of your time analyzing websites. Especially if you are a growing company, you don’t have a lot of time to sit in front of your system and manually implement every tactic you have set in place.
Fortunately, there are some SEO analysis tools that you can try out. They will do the tedious task for you so that you can dedicate your time to other result-crushing efforts. We have compiled a list of some of the best SEO analysis tools in the market. Have a look.
Best SEO Analysis Tools
1. Moz Pro
Moz Pro is quite popular and probably the most recommended SEO tool. It offers a single platform for all your needs to measure, monitor or enhance the keyword performance. Although it’s a paid service, you can try out some of its features for free. You can sign up for a 30-day trial before you make up your mind to buy the premium version for overseeing all your marketing campaigns.
Moz offers different pricing plans based on location. The basic plan starts at $129, but you can also opt for the ‘plus’ and ‘complete’ plan at $199 and $299 a year.
2. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is among the best SEO analysis tools that you can have for your website. It was formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools. As Google dominates a significant portion of every search made in the world these days, it is probably better to take the help of Google Search Console to improve your website’s performance.
A major advantage that this tool offer is it lets you see your website the way Google sees it. This makes it easy to monitor the performance of the site right from clicks and impressions to toggle based on a query, devices, pages, search appearance, etc.
Google Search Console is free.
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs can be your go-to site for every SEO analysis need. It offers a myriad of tools that you can use to find out the top-performing keywords or identify the content gaps you need to rectify as well as spot critical errors, such as broken links and images, 4XX redirects.
It offers different pricing plans to suit your needs and budget. The lite plan starts at $99. It also has a standard and advanced plan for $179 and $399 respectively. You can also go for the agency plan for $999.
4. HubSpot's Website Grader
Want to find out how strong your website is?
Try out Hubspot’s Website Grader. Visit the site, enter your email and you will have your answer.
Although it doesn’t offer many elaborate features, one of the major benefits of checking this site out is the price. It’s free of cost, and you will find a lot of articles answering your questions on SEO analysis under the score and description.
5. SEMrush
If it is detailed and elaborate domain reports that you are after, SEMrush must be on your list of SEO analysis tools. Its dashboard shows the positive and negative changes in organic keywords, traffic as well as earlier traffic and paid ads keywords. Its plans start at $99.95 for the Pro version. You can buy the Guru version for $199.95 and a Business version for $399.95.
6. Check My Links
Check My Links is a great tool to ensure that the internal and external links on your webpage actually work. Its broken link checker helps editors and publishers to correct any errors on the page before making it live. With Check My Links, it’s a matter of a few seconds before you have a list of the broken links. If a link is good, it is highlighted in green, and the broken ones are highlighted in red to help you spot the links that are inactive or no more work.
Check My Links is a free tool.
7. Majestic SEO
Majestic offers a myriad of both free and paid tools. You can use the tools to measure search volumes and get accurate backlinks reports. Backlinks are a huge factor to rank your page among the top results. Majestic can help you take care of the backlinks so that your page earns more popularity and relevance.
The Lite version is available for $49.99. Other versions are ‘Pro’ and ‘API’ charged at $99.99 and $399.99 respectively.
8. Found SEO Audit Tool
This is yet another amazing SEO audit tool that you can add to your list. It is super easy to use as well. All you need to do is visit the site, type in your domain and just wait until Found SEO Audit Tool presents a breakdown of our entire website regarding the problems, warnings, and performance. It analyses everything that you use for your business – canonicalization, link analysis, keywords, load time, images and many more.
The Found SEO Audit Tool is free.
9. BuzzStream
If you are looking for an inexpensive way to manage your outreach processes, BuzzStream is the tool you want to go for. It helps you to reach out to people who can offer quality inbound links to your website.
Many times, the outreach activity can feel like cold calling your prospects. However, with BuzzStream, it is easier to frame the right emails and reach the right people. You can also check if your link request has been accepted or not.
It offers a starter pack for only $24. Other plans include – Group plan for $99, Professional for $299 and Custom for $999.
10. Varvy SEO Tool
Varvy SEO Tool can provide you with a comprehensive report of your site’s domain strength, images, links, social counts and mentions, technical SEO, speed, and many more. All these reports take less than a minute to prepare for Varvy SEO Tool. To help you understand the severity of an issue, it uses green, yellow, and red checks.
This is a free tool.
Over to You
Every website or business is in it for the long-term success, and so are you. Therefore, you need to have a proper SEO analysis strategy in place to make that happen. With the right tools and techniques, you will be doing pretty amazing to improve your rankings.
Author Bio
Pramendra singh is an SEO analyst and a learner with a curious mind to learn about a wide range of SEO topics. His experience in SEO and writing and reviewing content gives him a solid base to approach several subjects that are valuable for businesses and websites looking to build a strong presence in the market.
When he is not writing, you can find him enjoying and playing music. Reach him at digirock17@gmail.com.
When he is not writing, you can find him enjoying and playing music. Reach him at digirock17@gmail.com.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.