(If you found this informative, Please Like and Share): An audit of Qantas website (https://www.qantas.com.au/) conducted in 2016 using third party tools for the purpose of SEO and web marketing. This audit was conducted independently using publicly available tools, so the information in this audit is not confidential. The purpose of this audit is give an idea and help people looking to conduct audits for websites of big brands and conceive SEO strategies as there are not many resources available on the web giving real examples of big site audits. If you need help with any site audit, contact me on my LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sushrutpadhye/

1. QANTAS.com.au
SEO & Content Strategy

2. Caveat
• Lack of full version tools and information from key tools: Google
Analytics and Google Search Console
• Lack of knowledge of exact goals and revenue structure of the
subsidiary businesses
• Only considered the airlines aspect of their business for the analysis
• Target pages of the website and external links to competitors sites
were out of scope
• Sampled data used where detailed information not available
• Analysis by no means completely accurate because of lack of native
data
• Jetstar not considered as a competitor to avoid cannibalisation

3. Landscape Analysis
• Qantas Group (includes Jetstar) - 62% market share in
Australia & 14.9% internationally in the airline industry
• International competition primarily from Singapore Airlines,
Virgin Australia and Air New Zealand
• Domestic competition from low-cost carriers like Tiger Airways
and Virgin Airlines
• Qantas dominant in the premium airline segment
• Serves low-cost airline segment via its subsidiary Jetstar
Airways
• Strong tie-ups with Emirates Airlines and American Airlines
allowing it to better serve the Middle East and North America

4. Continued…
• Domestic search market brimming with
comparison sites (e.g. Webjet) and travel
companies (e.g. Last Minute, STA Travel)
• Strong demand for comparison sites and travel
agents/companies

5. Keyword research
• Conducted using Google Keyword Planner
• Found terms related to Qantas
• Selected commercial keywords with high search
volume to leverage the brand authority
• Excluded informational keywords and keywords
with brand name
• Conducted analysis for select few with high
potential and belonging to different categories

6. Selected keywords

7. Keyword: “business class
flights”

8. Trend in Australia

9. Target page

10. Keyword: “cheap flights”

11. Keyword: “domestic flights australia”

12. Keyword: “flight ticket”

13. Keyword: “sydney to singapore”

14. Trend in Australia

15. Keyword: “flight deals”

16. Trend in Australia

17. Target page

18. Big gap

19. Issues
• Inconsistency across keywords usage on target
pages – URL, title and H1
• Use of informational keywords or low search
volume keywords
• URLs not optimised to include keywords or
remove redundant keywords
• Lack of target pages – homepage ranks for most
keywords

20. Recommendations
• Create separate pages to target a new keyword
category. E.g. a page for ‘flight deals’ in Australia
• Optimise the target page URL by including
keywords and getting the pagename as close to
the root as possible
• Use same keywords in URL, title and headings
• Follow the keywords with the brand name in title
e.g ‘Business flights | Business class tickets |
Qantas’ over ‘Qantas business class tickets |
Qantas’

21. Competitor Analysis
Metrics

22. Main competitors
(organic search)
• Flight comparison site: Webjet
http://www.webjet.com.au/
• Airline carrier: Virgin Australia
http://www.virginaustralia.com/au/en/

23. Content comparison

24. Webjet Content – Diversity
and Topics

25. Virgin Australia Content -
Diversity and Topics

26. Temporary redirect (302)
Site Audit

27. Permanent redirect (301)

28. Not responsive

29. Menu bar and text cuts off

30. Looks alright on all tablets..

31. Mobile Site (in sub-directory)

32. Recommendations
• Make the website responsive
• Add content to the mobile site (implement
hide/show)

33. Indexing issues – Case-
sensitive URLs

34. Recommendation
• Permanent redirect all case-sensitive URLs to
their respective URL with all characters in lower-
case

35. Desktop site speed

36. .com.au and .com URLs
indexed

37. SSL set up

38. http & https URLs indexed

39. 2 versions of homepage

40. https://qantas.com does not
resolve

41. Expired contest pages
indexed

42. Other issues
• Alt tags missing
• Page errors
• Common content duplication
• Irrelevant meta descriptions for pages e.g. “##LOC[OK]##.
{1}. ##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##. {1}. ##LOC[OK]##
##LOC[Cancel]##. Skip Navigation Links. qantas.com. |.
Skip Navigation Links. Home ...”
• Poor URL optimisation e.g
https://www.qantas.com/fflyer/dyn/program/welcome should
be changed to
https://www.qantas.com/frequentflyer/program

43. Recommendations
• All versions of a URL, be it - http, https, www, or non-www -
should resolve to a single URL. Enable permanent redirects
for this.
• Implement only permanent redirect on all pages
• Consistency in the usage of www or non-www across all
URLs on the site
• Permanent redirect expired content pages and Not Found
(404) pages to the most relevant pages
• Move in-line Javascript and CSS to external files
• Improve site speed by using browser caching

44. Link Audit

45. Anchor-text distribution

46. Backlinks relevancy &
diversity

47. Backlinks sorted by Trust
Flow

48. Link auditing process
• Profile backlinks from low trust flow and domain
authority sites first
• Disavow links from not-resolving, deindexed and poor
directory sites
• Disavow keyword-rich anchor-text links from low
authority sites
• Use URL Profiler to profile the other sites on metrics
such as text-to-HTML ratio, titles, keywords etc.
• Manually check all suspicious websites and disavow
as required

49. Findings
• Hundreds of links from websites with low-authority
(e.g. domain authority [DA] <20)
• Websites with high authority (e.g DA>40) not
passing enough trust due to industry irrelevance
• Websites belonging to aviation industry but only
containing links and no content e.g.
http://www.italy-ex.com/info/link
• Most backlinks have brand related anchor-text

50. Recommendations
• Ensure linkage to the correct version of a page e.g. http, https,
www or non-www
• Update anchor text from “quantas” to ‘Qantas’ or any brand related
term like ‘qantas airline’ that fits in with the context
• Preference for backlinks from text over images in the future
• Update image backlinks to text backlinks where possible
• Update the backlinks to destination URLs for redirected pages
• Update the backlinks to 404 pages
• Use keywords in anchor-text only when using brand name e.g.
flight tickets from Qantas airlines
• Leverage brand to get more links from brand related anchor texts
viz. Qantas, Qantas Australia etc.

51. Most shared articles with backlinks
Content Strategy

52. Article on AWOL

53. Article on Business
Insider

54. Article on Architecture &
Design

55. Majority of fresh
content…posted on another
domain

56. No engaging content on the
site…for e.g.

57. and…

58. Formula for content success

59. When and where to share

60. Recommendations
• Continue with current PR and outreach strategies
• Get editorial backlinks through brand mentions and
long phrases with keywords like “Book your air tickets
with Qantas” today
• Focus on news sites with large circulation, popular
travel forums and social sites; shares from influencers
in the travel and aviation industry
• Create engaging articles in-line with the brand identity
with viral-potential
• Add/update content on high authority/ranking pages

61. Other suggestions
• Remarketing through Facebook and Google
Display Network to website visitors
• Instagram Ads promoting

62. Thank you

63. Any questions?