A high bounce rate or a generally poor experience causes your site to lose relevance for Google. It is very important that user experience complies with standards and aligns with search intent. Before joining Yoast, he worked for a top-tier web design magazine, where he developed a keen understanding of how to create great content.

SEO Audit: How To Analyze Your Site And Boost Your Rankings (Step-By-Step)

From here, the tool will create a list of key recommendations based on these sections. It then gives you a grade and explains how well your content demonstrates the expertise required to write YMYL content. Any piece of content that is classified as YMYL has to prove to Google that it’s accurate and authoritative.

• We’ll also share key metrics to their link portfolio and organic search terms they’re outranking you for.
• As you might imagine, doing vertical-specific keyword research is a great way to generate blog topics.
• To underscore the importance of performance, Google launched the Core Web Vitals.
• In the next two steps, we’ll take a look at how to get the most out of your competitors’ keywords and backlink data.
• While best for agencies (Semrush offers a portfolio of digital marketing tools), the company still provides free SEO audits that businesses of all sizes can use — for up to 100 URLs.

This helps you recognize errors on your site and fix them to improve your site’s performance. If dozens of competitors already rank for a certain keyword, you may want to rethink your targeting strategy to focus on keywords that will deliver higher value results. When you conduct your SEO audit 2025, you must make sure your site is secure.

Upgrading database

Page loading speed is a major ranking factor, it also significantly affects user experience, especially on mobile. Before dealing with any other issues, make sure that your website is accessible by search engines. Site Audit will let you know if GoogleBot can crawl and index your site. SEO is a powerful tool that can define your online presence, organic traffic, and business trajectory. Whether you’re just getting started with SEO or looking to refine your existing strategy, having the proper support can make all the difference.

Olga Zarr is an SEO consultant at SEOSLY, a technical SEO specialist and an SEO auditor with 13+ years of … Every audit must be personalized and consider the site’s specific context, audience, goals, and limitations. SEO tools are still incredibly useful because they handle large-scale checks that humans can’t easily perform, like analyzing millions of URLs at once. Often, website owners come to me alarmed by “fatal” errors flagged by their SEO tools.

High organic traffic indicates you’re bringing in and engaging users with targeted interests, which grows your site’s credibility. Google often modifies its search algorithm through routine updates, which usually focus on limiting spam, vetting content quality, and addressing other SEO concerns. Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool that works in tandem with the Chrome User Experience Report.

Step 6: Make sure meta tags are optimized

For example, a page providing instructions for how to tie a friendship bracelet that’s missing instructional images and essential keywords will rank poorly. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool includes a page experience factor that considers both page load speeds and UX. If your site has long loading times, visitors may become frustrated and navigate away from your page to seek a better experience from competitors. SEO and online presence are deeply interconnected, so improving site performance is a bit of a circular challenge. More engagement leads to better SEO and a higher search engine results page (SERP) placement, but higher SEO leads to more visibility and SEO Anomaly higher user interaction. Website audits are necessary to ensure your site is getting traffic.

See Bruce’s author page for links to connect on social media. This approach keeps your strategy sharp and ensures you’re always spending where you need it most. Set aside a portion of your SEO budget for unexpected challenges. This financial cushion ensures you can pivot without putting the rest of your strategy at risk. Every site is different, but one example of a quick win could be resolving crawl errors.