An On Page SEO audit is a check up as to whether your website is following the basic principles of On Page SEO. Here are five steps to conducting a very quick “On Page” SEO audit for your website.
First, make sure you’ve identified your keywords. These should be your “core keywords” which, to use the example of a personal injury lawyer, are usually a big “umbrella” keyword like “personal injury lawyer” and then usually the derivative keywords like “automobile accident lawyer” or “dog bit lawyer.” Also note your “helper” words which would be synonyms like lawyer vs. attorney, city names like San Jose or Milpitas, and common helpers like best, top, top-rated. You need a “structural map” to your keywords as indicated in my “keyword worksheet” tutorial.
Second, start with a vision of your website structure. A good way to think of an SEO-friendly website is:
Home Page
- Landing Page #1 (Core Keyword #1)
- Landing Page #2 (Core Keyword #2)
- Etc.
- Blog
- Blog Post #1 or e-commerce product page #1
- Blog Post #2 or e-commece product page #1
Also create a KEYWORD FOOTER at the bottom of each page that has the target keywords and cross-links to it. If you are a geo-focused local business, you may need a few “local city” landing pages, and if you are an e-commerce website or blogging website you may be “all blog” or “all long tail” content and not have the common anchor keyword structure. It varies, but the above is the “basic structure” common to all SEO-friendly websites.
Third, audit each landing page for SEO-friendly on page HTML tag issues, such as: a) TITLE tag (does it contain the target “core keyword” and relevant helpers?”), b) META DESCRIPTION TAG, c) HEADER TAGS, d) IMG ALT TAG, e) A HREF TAG / ANCHOR TAG with cross links “up” to the home page and “across” to other keyword landing pages. Also check the VISIBLE CONTENT and make sure it has good keyword density AND that it’s written in grammatically correct English and sounds like it’s a NATIVE SPEAKER talking. Aim for 6th grade level English.
Extra credit. Does the page have nice graphics and a defined action? If you landed on this page, would it PERSUADE you to take the next step, why or why not?
Audit the HOME PAGE for SEO-friendly on page issues, such as: a) TITLE tag (does it contain the target “core keyword” and relevant helpers?”), b) META DESCRIPTION TAG, c) HEADER TAGS, d) IMG ALT TAG, e) A HREF TAG / ANCHOR TAG with cross links “up” to the home page and “across” to other keyword landing pages. Also check the VISIBLE CONTENT and make sure it has good keyword density AND that it’s written in grammatically correct English and sounds like it’s a NATIVE SPEAKER talking. Aim for 6th grade level English.
The HOME PAGE should be a GATEWAY to the 5-7 key landing pages and have ONE CLICK links down to them and, if possible, have prominent keyword-heavy text. Again, do not OVERDO THIS but don’t UNDER DO IT EITHER. Be sure to pay attention to the LINK SCULPTING from the home page DOWN to the landing pages and from the landing pages UP to the home page and from the landing pages ACROSS to each other, where possible.
Extra credit. Does the page have nice graphics and a defined action? If you landed on this page, would it PERSUADE you to take the next step, why or why not?
Finally, take a look at the FOOTER / navigation and make sure it links to the key landing pages and, if possible, has some natural English about the Business Value Proposition. This will help increase the keyword density in a Google-friendly way. Take a look as well at the BLOG and make sure that the SEO-oriented blog posts contain target keywords. Generally the blog posts should focus on “long tail” or “micro” keywords and have keyword-heavy links to click “UP” to the core landing pages. Make sure that there are three current blog posts linked TO from the Home Page as this freshens the home page.
Extra credit. Make sure that the website has both an HTML and an XML sitemap and has been submitted to Google Search Console / Bing Webmaster Tools and that it has Google Analytics running on it.
