Search engines tend to get more credit for being knowledgeable and precise than they actually are. But, unfortunately, website owners embraced such poor practices that make them fall short of reaching their goals. And this is where SEO audit services come into the picture as the surest way to remove the glitches and help the sites climb up the ranks. And here are the five strategies that are crucial to such services.
1. Indexing the redirects and 404 errors
It is important to have neat structures for the redirect list. The aim is to easily find out the redirect applies to the URL when you try to update it in the future.
Also, SEO audit services use a web crawling tool for identifying every 404 error in your website and fix them using redirects. Finally, put Google Webmaster to use for finding external links that lead to pages that are not there on your website any longer.
2. Checking crawling issues and stats
You need to check your robots.txt files. You need to ensure that when parts of the URL get excluded, it only applies to those you don’t want to come upon the SERPs. Your crawling exclusion list might be long, but you will have to be thorough with your review.
Google Search Console will show you the crawling statistics. SEO audit services use the error details and crawl rates you get from here to fix things.
3. Remove duplicate content that hurts your ranking
SEO audit services use a good web crawling tool to identify every duplicate content present on your website. After you are done, check using redirects to know that those pages can only load in one way.
In some cases, two pages might be too alike and compete for similar keywords. For that, use canonical tags in the page codes to let the search engine know which one is the best so that your ranking does not hurt.
4. Consider the Core Web Vitals for user experience
Core Web Vitals is a ranking signal that helps evaluate the user experience of pages in terms of visual stability, responsiveness, and load time. These signals are:
- Largest contentful paths: Good LCP scores signify that the page’s loading time is around 2.5 seconds or less.
- First input delay: Ideally, a page should become interactive to visitors within one hundred milliseconds.
- Cumulative layout shift: The time for web pages to change their visual layout depending on the device and its settings. It is a measure of mobile friendliness.
5. Use no-index tags for poorly performing content
Factors like conversion engagement, links, organic traffic, and page views come into play in measuring content performance. Check to see which of your contents are performing well and the ones that aren’t. If the content is irrelevant or has a low word count, put a no-index tag over it. If you want your site to climb up the ranks on the SERPs, it’s important to get in touch with an experienced auditing service. So, go ahead and hire one now!