Bill Hartzer, an SEO Consultant with Hartzer Consulting, talked about performing Technical SEO Audits. Bill presented to the Triangle Marketing Club in Raleigh, North Carolina.
2. Technical SEO Audits
About Me
• SEO Consultant, Hartzer Consulting
• Blogger/Writer BillHartzer.com
• Founder, DFWSEM Association (2004)
• US Brand Ambassador, Majestic.com
• Brand Ambassador, OnCrawl.com
• Practicing Organic/Natural SEO since 1996
• Formerly Senior VP, Advice Interactive (Advice Local)
• Senior SEO Strategist, Globe Runner
• Director of SEO, Standing Dog
3. Technical SEO Audits
SEO Audit Experience
• Started SEO auditing in 2008-ish
• SEO Audit Services, agency level
• SEO Audits as one-off projects
• SEO Audits at start of ongoing monthly SEO
• Full-time SEO Auditing started in 2016
• 100+ SEO Audits in past 4 years
Official New Words in 2008:
• Bitcoin
• burner phone
• dumpster fire
• mansplain
• photobomb
4. Technical SEO Audits
Overview – Technical SEO Audits
• Common SEO Mistakes I See
• Choosing Which Recommendations to Provide
• Overall SEO audit process
• Presenting Results and Recommendations
@bhartzer
5. Technical SEO Audits
What Isn’t an SEO Audit?
• Lots of SEO Tools out there. Over 90+ on my list.
• Audits are NOT just running some software or SaaS tool.
• It’s NOT an audit if you just run software or crawl a site.
@bhartzer
6. Technical SEO Audits
So What Is An SEO Audit?
It’s a process…
• It starts with crawling, gathering lots of data.
• It’s knowing which SEO software or SaaS tool to run, when.
• It’s Interpreting data and providing recommendations.
@bhartzer
7. Technical SEO Audits
SEO Audits are only as good as the experience
of the person doing the analysis.
@bhartzer
10. Technical SEO Audits
Common Mistake: Bad HTTP/HTTPs Migration
@bhartzer
Check and Fix:
• Internal links pointing to HTTP
• Images load via HTTP
• Ad networks loading via HTTP
• Redirects from HTTP to HTTPs
• Verify HTTPs version in GSC
• Update Analytics Settings
11. Technical SEO Audits
Common Mistake: Duplicate Content
@bhartzer
Check and Fix:
• Run the Siteliner.com Crawler
• Common content on pages
Is common content longer on pages?
• Check Canonical Tags
Improper or no canonical tags.
12. Technical SEO Audits
Common Mistake: Mega Menus
@bhartzer
Check and Fix:
• Review Internal Link Structure
• Review Use of Topic Silos
• Review Content clusters
• Off-topic pages link together.
13. Technical SEO Audits
Common Mistake: Site Structure Issues
@bhartzer
Fix: Run Sitebulb
• Internal Link Structure
• Review Topic Silos
• Review Content clusters
14. Technical SEO Audits
Common Mistake: Orphaned Content & Pages
@bhartzer
Analyze Log File Data
• Find pages not in site structure
• Combine in analysis:
- log files
- Google Search Console
- Analytics Data
OnCrawl.com
16. Technical SEO Audits
Common Mistake: Over Optimization
On-page and onsite over optimization
• Keyword stuffing
• Poorly written meta data
• Not using proper heading tags, lists, etc.
• Poorly implemented Schema markup
@bhartzer
17. Technical SEO Audits
Choosing Which Recommendations to Provide
• Run the SEO tools, gather the data.
• We get information & data overload!
• What do you recommend? What do you fix?
• Focus on what will make an impact for the site.
@bhartzer
18. Technical SEO Audits
What Will Make an Impact?
• SEO tools provide & show potential issues
(Sitebulb, SEMrush, Screaming Frog)
• Read and understand the issues.
@bhartzer
19. Technical SEO Audits
What Will Make an Impact?
• Make decisions based on the site.
• Size of site, type of site, content, current
rankings, other issues, can all play a role.
• It’s OK to ignore some issues!
• Some analysis just comes with experience.
@bhartzer
20. Technical SEO Audits
Overall SEO Audit Process
• Before You Begin
• Gather Data
• Analyze
• Present Results
@bhartzer
21. Before You Begin – Info to Gather
• Access to website (if possible) & Log file data
• Google Analytics, Search Console, Google My Business access
• Bing Webmaster Tools access
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
22. Before You Begin – Info to Gather
• Prior history: What SEO was done in past?
• Prior history: Domain Names used
• List of Domain Names owned, redirected
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
23. Before You Begin – Info to Gather
• List of Competitors
• Understand offline competitors vs. online competitors
• Use list for keyword research, content research, content ideas
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
24. Before You Begin – Info to Gather
Most important question to ask:
• Anything else we need to know?
Psychologically, this question causes site owners to reveal more information about
their site, marketing done in the past… oftentimes important details.
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
25. Content – Review Content on Site & Rankings
• Google Search Console – Performance Reports
• SEMrush.com keyword data
• Review Current Rankings
• SimilarWeb Traffic and Data
• SERPStat Data
• Google Analytics Data
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
27. Gathering Phase
• Gather the Data
• Save the Data (MS Excel, MS Word)
• Start making notes (Notepad)
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
28. Google Searches
• site:domain.com
• site:domain.com –site:www.domain.com
• Click last page of SERPs to get page count
• Review SERPs listings, look for issues
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
37. Audit Site Structure
• Internal Link Structure
• Manual Review of Site
• URL Hierarchy
• Grouping of Topics
• GA: In-Page Analytics
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
38. Run Sitebulb
• Internal Link Structure
• Review Silos
• Review Content clusters
• Other SEO audit issues
Sitebulb.com
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
39. Run Cora SEO Software
• Measures over 880 SEO factors
• Calculates which ones matter most
• Run on site’s main keywords
• See the most important factors for each keyword
• On-site, on-page, and offsite factors included
• Shows you what factors your site is missing based on
correlation data of top 100 results for that keyword
• https://www.hartzer.com/cora/
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
40. Sample Cora SEO Software Results
• Roadmap for keyword
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
41. Gather Off-Site Data
• It’s not all about on-site and on-page.
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
45. Majestic Trust Flow, Citation Flow
• Trust Flow = # of clicks from seed set of trusted sites to a URL or Domain
• Citation Flow = Number of citations to a given URL, or Domain
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
55. Robots.txt Issues
• Default CMS file?
• Disallowing wrong?
• Not specifying sitemap.xml URL
• Directives conflict
with other signals
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
56. Coverage and Sitemap Issues
• New pages not updated on sitemap
• Multiple sitemap issues
• No sitemap file?
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
57. Subdomain Issues
• Duplicate content?
• Using subdomain rather than directory
• Wildcard subdomains turned on?
• www versus non-www issues
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
58. Canonical Issues
• Review canonical tags
• Not using canonical correctly
• Conflicting signals with canonical, others
• Canonical tags to help with dupe content
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
59. Use of Structured Data
• Taking advantage of Schema.org
• Not just for local addresses
• Reviews and Events
• Person, Place, Organization
• Products and Offers
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
60. Analysis Phase
• Analyze the Data
• Make Assumptions
• Make Recommendations
• Analyze the road
• Analyze the conditions…
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
61. Analysis Phase
• Analyze gathered data
• Look for Obvious Issues
• Look for Odd Data Points
• More notes!
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer@bhartzer
62. Analyze Keyword Data, Rankings
• Look for keyword opportunities
Anything ranking on 2nd page?
• Review SEMRush Keyword Data
• Review GSC Performance
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
63. Analyze On-Site Data
• Title Tags
• Meta Descriptions
• Headings H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.
• Internal Anchor Text
• External Links (outgoing links)
• Canonical Tags
• Hreflang Issues
• Google Pages Indexed vs. Crawled
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
64. Analyze Off-Site Data
• Link Velocity Matters (getting new links)
• Review anchor text (over optimized?)
• Diversity of anchor text
• Look for Toxic, Low Quality Links
• Run Link Risk, Link Detox report
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
65. Presentation Phase
• Present the Data
• Show the Results
• Make it look great!
• Action Plan
• Implementation Plan
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer
66. Present The Results
• Use internal or formal doc needed?
• Who will implement?
• Implement changes in-house? Outsource?
• MS Word doc, spreadsheets with data
• PowerPoint needed for presentation?
Technical SEO Audits
@bhartzer