DIY SEO Audit

Everyone should be checking their Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on a regular basis, and as our sites mature we need to be developing our knowledge of how our sites perform and keep improving our SEO.


Google Webmaster tools provide everything you need for a quick DIY audit, which should show you any major issues and give you the impetuous to have a full survey done.


Check you navigation - Think about your main user groups and think about what they want to find about on your site. Starting from your homepage is it easy to get there, easy to find.. and is everything they want in the same place or at least signposted?


Ask a friend to try the site out and find a major piece of content – ask your Mum, then think about how easy it is again


How many pages are indexed - Using Google webmaster tools you can check and record the number of pages Google is indexing from your site. If the numbers are widely different there is a problem because Google isn’t indexing your site correctly – but don’t panic if they aren’t exact, they rarely match


Not enough pages indexed? - Try putting your site in www.seo-browser.com to see how search engines view your site. Can it see everything, is it crawlable? Can it see the main content? If not you have a problem that need fixing.


Too many pages Indexed? - Do your pages have multiple URLs? For example your homepage might be www.mycharity,org,uk and www.mycharity.org.uk/index.html.


If you have lots of pages that have multiple URLs Google will report them as separate pages. Similarly if your site works with and without the www (ie as http://www.mycharity and http://mycharity..) Google may double count


Perform a Quick Redirect Check  - You can use a tool such as http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/ to check that the way your site redirects from http://mycharity.org.uk to http://www.charity.org.uk – which should be through the 301 redirect rather than anything else


Check the XML Sitemap File - When checking the site indexing check for signs that major sections are missing. If there are whole sections not being indexed then there may be issues with the XML sitemap.


Also make sure the sitemap is using the correct version of a URL. The links you use and the ones in the site map are different it will dilute your listings


Check the Robots.txt File - In Google Webmaster Tools you can use the built-in robots.txt checker (Site Configuration/ Crawler Access). This shows you pages that Google cant access because they are blocked off by the robots.txt file.


Write content for every page - Pages with images and no html content are seen as low quality to search engines, so keep them to a minimum, and may even class as duplicates. Unless you are running a large shop try to minimize the number of pages without individual content so the site is seen a high quality


Avoid pages with "Template Content" - If you have duplicate pages or listings with standard copy and just a change of header the search engines assume they are duplicates and discount them. That is why Amazon tries to add reviews and “content” to every book page


Use H1 Tags - Always use H1/H2 and TITLE tags for your content. Search engines use these as the “title” of the page and give them extra weight. It also helps to put the most important keywords at the beginning of the title


You can use Google Webmaster Tools to check on duplicate title tags, missing title tags and meta data. (Go to Diagnostics, and then HTML Suggestions.)


If you use the same tag on lots of pages they are actually competing with each other for page ranking


Quick Check


This quick check won’t replace a full audit, or even solve the problems, but it will show you any major problems which you can start working on.


If you need help to improve your SEO then we can now offer a full SEO Audit and SEO optimization service – contact me at sue@suefidler.com