Full Web Site Audit and Health Check – FREE
The first step in planning your journey to the top of the Search Listings is to make sure your web site is in the right shape to make the trip. A web site that is full of issues will take vastly more work to increase authority and visibility, and may well be actually working to undermine your efforts and investment. You wouldn’t set off on a cross-country journey without making sure your car was fit for the trip. You wouldn’t climb a mountain without a physical and equipment check. Don’t spend another penny on marketing and Search Engine Optimization until you are sure your site measures up to the current standards that Google expects.
Our team can perform a full web site audit and health check from top to bottom, tell you every issue that might impact your Search Engine rankings, and tell you in every case what to do to solve the problem. We will audit every page and element of your site, give you a health rating, and a detailed report on everything we find. Here are the factors we look at and why they matter:
Content
Links
Mobile Optimization
Crawlability and Indexing
Titles
Meta Descriptions
Images
H1 Heading
Sitemap
Robots.txt
Page Speed
Security
Flash Content & Frame Tags
AMPs
Doc Type
Backlinks
Google Penalty Check
Content
Your content is at the heart of your Search Engine Rankings. To outrank your competitors you’ll need pages that provide information people are searching for in a clear and useful way. A winning web site must have content that is detailed, unique, relevant and well-written. We will highlight:
- Duplicate content
- Low text-HTML ratio
- Low page word count
Links
Links are vitally important to Search Engine Optimization. They are how search engines measure the value of a web site and judge which content is important to which key word. Your link structure should be strong and follow best practices. We will check for:
- Broken external links
- Broken internal links
- Too many links on a page
- Internal links with “nofollow” attributes
- External links with “nofollow” attributes
Mobile Optimization
Every web site MUST be optimized for mobile usage. Google has made it absolutely clear that sites not developed for mobile use will be heavily penalized in Search results. Your pages should automatically size and scale to respond to the device being used to view them. If they do not, every other effort you put into your online marketing will be weakened or rendered useless. We check directly with Google for:
- Complete Mobile Friendly Pages
Crawlability and Indexing
We check each page for any issues which might prevent Search Engines from crawling and indexing the content. Small technical factors, invisible to the user, may block the Search bots as they try to access your page. You have worked hard to create the content, and you want the Search Engines to be able to find and read it as much as your visitors. Our software can scan every page for all these technical issues and highlight them for correction. We look for:
- 5XX errors
- 4XX errors
- WWW resolve issues
- Pages with redirection or HTTP flood protection
- Pages with DNS resolutions issues
- Pages with incorrect URL formats
Titles
The TITLE is what appears on the tab of your browser when viewing a page, and on the top of your listing in any Search Engine Results. It is the large blue text you see first, and it is one of the most important factors in Search Indexing, as well as attracting clicks to your page. Clear and informative titles are critical to the success of your Search Engine Optimization efforts, but something many sites score poorly on. We check for:
- Missing or empty title tags
- Duplicate title tags
- Too short title tags
- Too long title tags
- Duplicate Title and H1 tags
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are the short text that follows the title when you are listed in Search Engine results. This is defined via a tag in your HTML code that Search Engines place strong emphasis on. Your description should be clear, readable, and contain your keyword. Description tags should be written in good grammatical structure as far as possible, and should be between 150 to 160 characters to make best use of the space. We check every page on your web site for:
- Duplicate meta descriptions
- Missing meta descriptions
Images
Images are important to the user experience of your site. They are also critical to your SEO efforts. Search engines look at the descriptions and labels you give your images. They also pay attention to the ALT tag for every visual element, as well as the file names you have chosen. These are all critical places to optimize for important keywords. In our audit we check for:
- Broken internal images
- Broken external images
- Missing ALT attributes
H1 Heading
H1 are the main, highest level headings that visitors see on a web page. They help define the topic and content. Each page should have only one H1 heading, though it may have multiple H2, H3, H4, H5, or H6 headings, which define subtopics within the content. As we audit your web site we check each page for:
- Missing H1 heading
- Multiple H1 heading
Sitemap
A Sitemap is an XML file that indexes all the pages, posts, and other elements of your site. This helps Search Engines ensure they are locating all the content you have available. It is vital that your sitemap is properly formatted and complete. In our audit, we check for:
- Missing sitemap
- Sitemap not indexed in robots.txt
- Wrong pages in sitemap
- Format errors in sitemap
Robots.txt
A robots.txt file gives instructions to Search Engines on how to navigate your site. It can be used to avoid Search robots indexing unwanted areas of your site. A well constructed robots.txt file can speed up the pace Search Engines crawl your site, and ensure it is indexed exactly as you desire. We check for:
- Robots.txt missing
- Format errors in robots.txt
Page Speed
The speed your pages load is important to both your Search Engine rankings and your user experience. There are many factors that can cause a page to load slowly, and we run a comprehensive check for these, with advice on how to improve your page load score on all devices. Although we often go into more detail in this section, we begin by checking for:
- Slow page load speed
- Too large HTML
Security
Web site security is important to your visitors, and now also plays an important role in the value Search Engines place on your site. If you do not have HTTPS encryption in place, we will highlight this. We can also provide you will SSL encryption installation at very inexpensive and competitive rates that are a fraction of those you frequently see quoted online. All our SEO package clients receive three year encryption certificate installation as standard with every package if they do not have an existing solution in place. We check for:
- Missing HTTPS encryption
- Incorrectly configured HTTPS encryption
Flash Content & Frame Tags
Obsolete code or functions on a web page can be a barrier to proper Search Engine Indexing. Flash content, notorious for slowing the user experience and crashing web browsers, is also invisible to Search Engines. Many mobile devices refuse to support the protocol, and it is rapidly becoming a dead technology. Frames, though useful to embed certain media elements, can hurt web site indexes if improperly used. In our audit we check for:
- Use of Flash
- Use of Frames
AMPs
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) area design of page specifically built for very fast load times on mobile devices. The technology is new and needs to be used with care, but is going to become vitally important as time progresses. Each AMP page should contain a rel=canonical tag pointing back to the original content in order to avoid penalties for duplication. We check for:
- Missing AMP Implementation
- AMP pages with no canonical tag
Doc Type
The Doc type declaration instructs web browsers which version of HTML is being used. If this is incorrectly configured, pages may display badly or load more slowly. In our audit, we check for:
- Doctype not declared
Backlinks
These are the links from other web sites to content on your site. Not all backlinks are created equal, and some may even have a toxic effect on your Search Engine ranking. Our SEO audit will produce a link of all your backlinks with ratings on their value to your site. We list:
- All backlinks to your site
- Backlink ratings by value and toxicity score
Google Penalty Check
There are a number of reasons why a web site may incur Google Penalties. When these occur you may find your pages penalized in the rankings, or even removed from the Google index completely. Worse, you may have no idea this has happened or why. In our Search Engine Audit we check to see if your site has any penalties listed, as well as the reason they have been created. You will then know how to correct the situation. We:
- Check web site for Google Penalties