Bill Hartzer of Hartzer Consulting shares tips and techniques for performing an SEO audit of your website. Presented at the Pubcon Austin 2018 conference in Austin, Texas on February 21, 2018.

1. Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
Tips and Techniques
for an SEO Site Audit

2. Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
About Me
• SEO Consultant, Hartzer Consulting
• Blogger/Writer BillHartzer.com
• Founder, DFWSEM Association (2004)
• US Brand Ambassador, Majestic.com
• The 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. Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
Overview – SEO Audits
• Before You Begin
• Gather Data
• Analyze
• Present Results
@bhartzer

4. Before You Begin – Info to Gather
• Access to website (if possible), log file data
• Google Analytics, Search Console access
• Bing Webmaster Tools access
• Prior history: What SEO was done in past?
• Prior history: Domain Names used
• List of Domain Names owned, redirected
• List of Competitors
• Ask: anything else we need to know?
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

5. Content – Review Content on Site &
Rankings
• Google Search Console - Search Analytics
• SEMrush.com Keyword Research
• Review Current Rankings
• SimilarWeb Traffic and Data
• SERPStat Data
• Google Analytics Data
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

6. Google
Search Console
> Search Analytics
> Pages Analysis
What does
Google think?
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

7. Current rankings, Focus on Pages Ranking 5th to
20th
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

8. Gathering Phase
• Gather the Data
• Save the Data (MS Excel, MS Word)
• Start making notes (Notepad)
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

9. Google Searches
• site:domain.com
• site:domain.com –site:www.domain.com
• Click last page of SERPs to get page count
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

10. Screaming Frog
SEO Spider
Adjust memory to
crawl large site
over 100k pages
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

11. Compare:
Pages Crawled
vs
Pages Indexed
SERPS Redux
bookmarklet,
compare lists of
URLs in MS Excel
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

12. Integrity (aka Scrutiny)
What it does:
• Crawls site, reports redirects, 404 errors
• Mac only, can find more site errors
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

13. Siteliner.com
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

14. Bing Webmaster Tools
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

15. Bing Webmaster Tools
• Spot issues to fix
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

16. Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer
Google Search Console
• Search Analytics
• Structured Data
• HTML Improvements
• Search Traffic
• Crawl Data

17. SEMRush Site Audit
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

18. Website Log Files
• Weblog Storming, AwStats
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

19. Website Log Files, Crawl & Analytics
• OnCrawl combines all three
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

20. Website Log Files, Crawl & Analytics
• Deep Crawl combines all three, as well
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

21. Audit Site Structure
• Internal Link Structure
• Manual Review of Site
• URL Hierarchy
• Grouping of Topics
• GA: In-Page Analytics
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

22. Run Sitebulb
• Internal Link Structure
• Review Silos
• Review Content clusters
• Other SEO audit issues
Sitebulb.com
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

23. Run Cora SEO Software
• Measures over 300 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/
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

24. Sample Cora SEO Software Results
• Roadmap for keyword
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

25. Gather Off-Site Data
• It’s not all about on-site and on-page.
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

26. Google Search Console Links
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

27. Ahrefs Links
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

28. Majestic.com Links
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

29. Majestic.com Topic Review
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

30. 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
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

31. Majestic Anchor Text Review
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

32. WebPageTest.org
• Page Performance
Check:
• Time to first byte
• Compress images
• Caching
• Use of CDN
• Waterfall
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

33. Miscellaneous Data to Review
• All sorts of extras
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

34. Site Speed, DNS Health
• Tools.Pingdom.com
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

35. Site Speed Review – Google Analytics
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

36. Robots.txt Issues
• Default CMS file?
• Disallowing wrong?
• Using “allow”?
• Not specifying sitemap.xml URL
• Directives conflict with other signals
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

37. Sitemap Issues
• New pages not updated on sitemap
• Multiple sitemap issues
• No sitemap file?
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

38. Subdomain Issues
• Duplicate content?
• Using subdomain rather than directory
• Wildcard subdomains turned on?
• www versus non-www issues
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

39. Canonical Issues
• Review canonical tags
• Not using canonical correctly
• Conflicting signals with canonical, others
• Canonical tags to help with dupe content
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

40. Use of Structured Data
• Taking advantage of Schema.org
• Not just for local addresses
• Reviews and Events
• Person, Place, Organization
• Products and Offers
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

41. Local Listings – Audit the listings
• Google My Business
• Bing Places for Business
• Yahoo! Local
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

42. Local Citations – Separate Audit
• Are citations correct?
• Same address, suite #, phone number?
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

43. Analysis Phase
• Analyze the Data
• Make Assumptions
• Make Recommendations
• Analyze the road
• Analyze the conditions…
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

44. Analysis Phase
• Analyze gathered data
• Look for Obvious Issues
• Look for Odd Data Points
• More notes!
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer@bhartzer

45. Analyze Google Analytics
• Changes over time, year over year data
• Conversion Data
• Bounce Rates
• Pages Per Session
• Drops in Traffic:
Panda or Penguin
in past few years?
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

46. Panda, Penguin, Search Engine Traffic Issues
From Past?
• Verify with SEMRush, Google Analytics, SimilarWeb
• Moz Google Algorithm Change History
moz.com/google-algorithm-change
• Marie Haynes Google Algo Update History
mariehaynes.com/algo-changes-and-more/
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

47. Analyze Keyword Data, Rankings
• Look for keyword opportunities
Anything ranking on 2nd page?
• Review SEMRush Keyword Data
• Review GSC Search Analytics
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

48. 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
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

49. Analyze On-Site Data
• Conflicting signals? Overall Topic focus
• Conflicting signals?
Robots.txt vs. Canonical vs. Meta Robots vs. Nofollow
• Internal Duplicate Content
• Not Enough Unique Content
• Internal links within content present?
• Review Navigation
• Review Footer, footer links, copyright
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

50. 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
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

51. Presentation Phase
• Present the Data
• Show the Results
• Make it look great!
• Action Plan
• Implementation Plan
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

52. 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?
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

53. Present The Results - Document
• Cover Page
• Table of Contents
• Overview (summary, positives, negatives)
• Website Crawlability (404s, 301s, One-Page issues)
• Content Optimization (site arch., keyword issues)
• Linking (Internal links, externals links, link profile)
• Overall Recommendations
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

54. Finally – Additional Lists
• List of Priority Issues
• Present Action Plan for Implementing
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

55. SEO Audit Toolset
• Google Page Speed Test
• Mobile Friendly Test
• Google Search Console - time downloading a page (if slower
than 2 seconds to get the code, they'll abandon the crawl)
• Webpagetest.org (diversity of testing environments is
helpful... browser types, locations, connection speeds)
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

56. SEO Audit Toolset
• WebPageTest
• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• GPSi page speed insights
• G Structured Data Test
• GSC Disavow
• GSC Fetch & Render
• Marie Haynes' Disavow Blacklist
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

57. SEO Audit Toolset
• Google Mobile Test
• Google AMP Test
• Bing Mobile Test
• W3c mobileOK Checker
• Deep Crawl
• Google AW Keyword Planner
• Moz Keyword Explorer
• What is my IP
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

58. SEO Audit Toolset
• Builtwith
• Server Software Detection
• SEO Server Header Checker Tool
• SSL Server Test powered by Qualsys SSL Labs
• Redirect Checker
• Serpstat
• semrush
• GA Code Checker
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

59. SEO Audit Toolset
• W3c CSS Validator
• W3c Markup Validator
• hreflang testing tool
• tracker map
• OSE, Majestic, Ahrefs, Link Research Tools, Kerboo
• Bing Webmaster Tools
• Panguin tool
• OnCrawl
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer

60. Contact
Bill Hartzer
SEO Consultant
Email: Bill@BillHartzer.com
Phone: (214) 236-4378
Web: https://www.hartzer.com
Twitter: @bhartzer
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bhartzer
Pubcon Austin 2018: SEO Audits
@bhartzer