Here is something we can both agree on: WordPress blogs are SEO friendly but there are things you can do to make it better.
Sometimes blogs become slow, have many broken links and does not optimize with search engines. What do you do?
Simple! You do an SEO audit.
What is an SEO audit?
SEO audit checks your website or blog for search engine friendliness. During the audit, you notice areas that need improvement and correct them. It is important to check the blog to diagnose the problems to fix.
An improper audit can lead to serious problems for the blog. You can find many online resources to help you get the audit done or hire an experienced SEO auditor to test your site.
Okay, so you know what SEO audit is about, but what do you find out in an audit that makes it important? Which leads us to another question:
Can Search Engine Access Your Blog?
A thorough SEO audit will check the following components of your WordPress blog for how search engine crawlers access your blog with ease.
- Robot.txt and Meta Tags Files
An SEO audit checks your robot.txt file to make sure it is not restricting access to your blog. This entails checking if robot Meta tags, an HTML code that tells search engine crawlers how to process pages on your blog, is not blocking the crawlers.
- 404 Errors
Whenever you delete certain pages on your blog, or change a wrong theme, you might create URL pages that link to nowhere. When this happens, you get 404 error pages that discourages search engine from crawling your site.
- XML Sitemap
An SEO audit reveals if you have submitted your sitemap to webmaster accounts on Google, Bing and Yandev. While search engines can find this sitemap, it is better to point them to your site. Sitemap issues make it difficult for search engine crawlers to find your site.
- Speed of Your Blog
When your blog is slow, people lose interest in visiting and your traffic dips. Just like humans, search engine crawlers prefer to crawl on faster sites than slower ones. You can use Google Speed Test to check the speed of your blog.
- Search Engine Index Count
If you search on Google using ‘site: your website’ (site: falconhive.com), it will estimate the numbers of pages indexed by Google.
When you get the number of pages indexed, you analyze alongside the actual number of posts on your blog to know how crawlers visit your blog.
If your index is more than the actual pages count, then you might have an issue with duplicate content. If it is lower, then the search engine is not indexing your pages, which means, access to your blog by Google search engine is poor.
What’s your Stand with Google?
You might wonder: Why the obsession with Google over SEO issues?
Look no further, of the search engines in the world, Google is king. A well-optimized blog is always in good standing with Google. This is why many bloggers do everything possible to rank high on Google. People use Google more than any other search engine.
If you are not in sync with Google, then I dare say you are not interested in growing your blog to full potential.
How is it possible to have issues with ‘King’ Google?
There are two ways to be on the negative side of Google: You’re not ranking well or you’re penalized.
If you are not ranking well, a good SEO audit will show your weakness, so you can find means to improve.
If it is a case of penalization, the steps to take increases:
- Know Your Sins
Google punishes blog for different reasons like content duplication, buying links to influence Page Rank, Black Hat SEO, etc.
- Fix the Issue
You may need to go through your site to note the different things that Google might have frowned at, or you may hire an SEO auditor who has experience with dealing with such issues to get you back on track with Google.
- Ask For Forgiveness
As easy as the above statement sounds, Google has certain requirements for you to fulfil before its search engine crawlers can return to your blog, check them out here.
How Valuable is Your Content?
Every internet marketer know content is king. If you want good SEO for your blog, good content is important. This is why top bloggers consider content audit as the core for growth of their blogs. You sure want to find answers to these questions:
- Do your contents resound with your audience? An SEO audit uses bounce rate and time spent on different parts of our blog to determine it.
- Do the length of your contents affect search engine optimization? A rule of the thumb followed by most SEO plugins is to write at least 300 words per post.
- Do your contents contain targeted keywords, and discourage keyword overstuffing?
- Does your blog contain Duplicate Content? Your blog has duplicate content when two or more pages share the same content.
- Are your headlines relevant to the posts? Do they attract more readerships? Your content headlines are as important as the body of your posts.
- How do search engines view your pictures? As beautiful as images are on blogs, search engines do not view them the way humans do. They see them through images alt-text and file names. If your pictures don’t have these qualities, sorry, Google is not seeing them.
That’s why you need an SEO audit for thorough check of your images to see if they provide enough metadata for search engines.
Do Outlinks and Backlinks Affect SEO?
Using links in a blog post may help search engine optimization of the blog if done well. If a site links to high quality sites, it can improve the SEO. But if the links are pathways to spam sites, the blog could lose its ranking and be penalized.
An SEO audit reveals the quality and relevance of outlinks. It looks at how many sites links to your site, which can give search engine a reason to believe your site has a reputation and popularity.
Auditing your site for SEO reasons provides many opportunities to improve your blog. It reduces the headache of losing visitors or search engine ranking and takes your blog to the next level in terms of overall performance.