Seo Site Audit

Increase organic traffic and Google rankings, by finding and fixing all your SEO issues.

Last updated 2022-01-10 | 4.5

- Find all SEO (search engine optimization) issues with a website so they can be fixed.
- Uncover opportunities to improve SEO and increase organic traffic.

What you'll learn

Find all SEO (search engine optimization) issues with a website so they can be fixed.

Uncover opportunities to improve SEO and increase organic traffic.

* Requirements

* Setup of Google Analytics and Google Search Console will be required. I give tips on the setup for both in the Getting Started lecture.

Description

Calling all digital marketers, web developers and website owners! Learn how to correctly evaluate your (or your client's) website for SEO (search engine optimization). SEO is more than just placing keywords on your site, you could have overlooked major problems that are hurting your SEO performance.

Overview

In this course you will learn to do a step by step SEO audit of a website to uncover those problems as well as find opportunities to grow your organic traffic. I go beyond just teaching the concepts of SEO that you can read about, this is a hands on course that walks through an audit of a real eCommerce site. If you don't know much about SEO, don't worry, I tell you WHY I'm doing the check and then show you HOW to do the check, using only FREE tools.

In the 75 plus lectures in this course, we'll check the accessibility, on page factors such as meta tags, engagement metrics and authority of the site. You'll get a good grounding in Technical SEO, and you will also learn and apply concepts like domain authority and content quality.

At end of the course you will have a completed checklist of your site's SEO issues and a greater understanding of SEO.

You will be able to download a checklist and a list of tools needed for the SEO audit.

Students have said:

"Out of 8 courses I have done on Udemy on this subject matter, this course is by far the best on all scores"

"... very informative course."

"This course is excellent. All the information is explained in such a way that I don't need any clarification."

New lectures added! 3 new lectures on Page Speed and Core Web Vitals.

Who this course is for:

Website owners with a do-it-yourself attitude that are comfortable with technology and who are serious about their online businesses.
Service providers such as a website developer or a digital marketer that want to add SEO services to their offerings.
Some SEO knowledge is helpful but not absolutely required.

Course content

9 sections • 85 lectures

Let's get started! 6 lectures

Course Introduction Preview 02:17

Welcome to "How to do a SEO Site Audit"!

Course Overview Preview 02:30

Overview of the Course Agenda

Goals of a SEO Site Audit Preview 04:34

While it's important to keep an open mind while you go through a SEO Site Audit, understanding why you are doing the audit is key.

Getting Started Preview 03:36

What you need to get started. Make sure to download the checklist and the list of tools from the Resources.

Setting up Google Search Console Preview 06:09

We set up Google Search Console to be used later in the course.

Setting up Google Analytics and Google Search Console Preview 01:29

Tips on how to set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console

Indexation Checks, HTTP Status Codes and Redirects 8 lectures

Search Engine Basics Preview 02:54

We cover search engine basics so we can continue our initial technical checks.

Indexation Preview 06:47

How many pages of your web site has Google indexed? We get an answer in this lecture.

HTTP Status Codes and Redirects Preview 06:29

The HTTP status code that a web server sends back to your browser is hidden to you, but very important for SEO.

How to check the HTTP status of a URL Preview 01:51

I demo how to check the HTTP status code that requesting a URL returns.

List of HTTP Status Codes Preview 00:21

Some of the more common HTTP status codes.

Implementing Redirects: Canonical Redirect Preview 13:53

A canonical redirect is when you redirect a site's URLs so they either resolve all as "www" URLs or as "non-www" URLs.

Implementing Redirects: 301 Redirect from One Domain to Another Preview 06:28

In this video I cover two ways to implement a redirect from one domain to another. And I share why GoDaddy redirects are not my preference.

Canonical Redirects using .htaccess Preview 00:30

Examples of Canonical Redirects using mod_rewrite code in .htaccess

Technical Checks - Robots.txt and Mobile Friendliness 6 lectures

Robots.txt Preview 03:41

A misconfigured robots.txt file can play havoc with your site's SEO.

Mobile Friendly Preview 05:49

Mobile friendliness is a ranking factor. We review the three ways a site can be made mobile friendly.

UPDATE: Mobile Interstitial Penalty and Mobile First Indexing Preview 03:35

On January 10, 2017 Google implemented a new penalty for sites that show annoying popovers on mobile devices. We also have learned that Google plans to transition to mobile first indexing.

Mobile Friendly - Resources Preview 01:01

List of resources mentioned in the previous lecture.

Mobile Friendly Testing Preview 05:21

How to test whether your site is mobile friendly

Technical Checks - Recap Preview 00:43

Recap of the problems we found with our initial technical checkjs for our example site.

What Search Engines See 15 lectures

Why We Need Tools Preview 01:46

We learn more about search spiders and why we need tools to see the website from a search spider's perspective.

Broken Links and Redirects Preview 04:45

We find broken links and 302 redirects on our example site.

Follow up on the 302 redirects Preview 01:09

What I recommended for the 302 redirects I found.

Meta Data and Anatomy of a Search Snippet Preview 05:41

How does Google and the other search engines put together the snippets that show in the search engine results pages? We learn about the important metadata on your site for SEO.

Page Title Review Preview 04:44

We review the site's page titles (also called title tags).

Meta Descriptions Preview 04:28

Meta descriptions are all about getting the click. This newer video also gives us a peek at Screaming Frog Release 10

H1 and H2 tags Preview 04:30

We use Screaming Frog to take a look at the H1 and H2 tags of our site.

Bonus: Screaming Frog's Internal Tab Preview 06:01

Screaming Frog's internal tab shows all the fields collected, including fields found on the other tabs, such as page title and canonical link. We take a closer look at this tab to answer questions like "How do I find the pages with a low word count?" or "How do I see the link depth for a URL?" Bonus lecture created to answer some student's questions.

Crawl and Review Your Site with Screaming Frog Preview 03:47

Now, it's your turn. Here's a recap of what to review when you crawl your site with Screaming Frog

Individual Page Review: What to Check Preview 05:17

Crawlers gather information about a site, but to do a comprehensive audit it's necessary to look at individual pages as a search bot would.

How to browse a page like a search engine spider Preview 06:08

I show how to use a free tool to browse a site like a search spider would

We check that the site's HTML is valid Preview 03:35

Here's how to check that the site's HTML is valid. Doing this check led me to uncover a problem with the site's OpenGraph tags.

SEO META in 1 Click Preview 04:01

An alternative tool to check your pages tags.

What Search Engines See - Recap Preview 01:20

A recap of the results of the checks for this section.

Traffic and Site Speed 13 lectures

Introduction Preview 01:56

In this section we cover traffic, using Google Analytics to review a site, and how to check the performance of a site.

The Different Types of Traffic Preview 05:07

Traffic to your website comes from different channels, we cover an explanation of each.

Google Analytics Review Preview 08:57

How to use an organic traffic segment and set up a year over year comparison. We also take a look at the top landing pages and engagement metrics.

Google Analytics Review - Recap Preview 00:57

Recap of our review of Google Analytics: Traffic, Top Landing Pages, and Engagement Metrics

Checking Site Speed Preview 07:34

Site speed is a ranking factor so we need to review the Page Speed Insights section in Google Analytics to see if the site needs to be optimized to be faster.

Google Page Speed Insights Preview 11:41

Especially when it comes to the new Core Web Metrics, Google Page Speed Insights is a great tool to evaluate speed and page experience metrics for an individual page.

Core Web Vitals Preview 11:26

Starting in June 2021, Core Web Vitals will be part of the new Page Experience ranking factor.

Core Web Vitals Report and Chrome Dev Tools Preview 11:55

We review the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console and do a quick demo of the Performance tab in Chrome Dev Tools

Chrome Dev Tools - Web Vitals Lane Preview 00:25

The Web Vitals Lane in Chrome Dev Tools shows you the timing of the FCP, LCP and the layout shifts (CLS) for the page that is rendering.

GTMetrix and WebPageTest Preview 08:46

A review of two third party tools that can help evaluate a page's speed.

Site Speed - Recap Preview 00:20

Recap of how our site performs.

Site Speed Optimization - Where to start Preview 12:07

Site speed is a very technical topic and can be overwhelming! This lecture helps get you started.

Site Speed for WordPress Preview 16:15

In this lecture we cover improving page speed for WordPress sites.

Structured Data and Google Search Console Review 12 lectures

Introduction to GSC and Structured Data Preview 06:12

Google Search Console is Google's SEO communication channel to site owners and has a wealth of information on Google's perspective of your site.

Introduction to Structured Data Preview 04:07

Structured Data is additional markup that helps Google and other search engines understand the context of your site.

Structured Data Testing Tool Preview 04:19

An example of testing for Structured Data

Google Search Console Enhancements Preview 10:19

We look at the "Enhancements" section of Google Search Console, where we can find feedback about our Structured Data from Google.

Schema.org tools Preview 00:21

In this article I provide a link to a free tool that you can use to generate some common types of JSON-LD Schema.

URL Inspection Tool Preview 05:56

In the new Google Search Console you can find an URL inspector tool.

New GSC Performance Report Preview 11:38

Google's new Performance Report delivers similar data as the old Search Analytics report, but with a new User Interface and access to much more data. The Performance Report gives you insight into the keywords your site is ranking for and how your top pages are performing.

Performance Report: Compare Feature Preview 12:04

You can use the Compare feature in the Google Search Console Performance Report to compare device types, timeframes and more.

Other Google Search Console Reports Preview 11:10

We review Additional Google Search Console Reports: External Links & Links to Your Site, Manual Actions, International Targeting and Mobile Usability.

New GSC Index Coverage Report Preview 05:57

The new Index Coverage Report gives us an expanded look at what Google thinks is good enough to index.

More Google Search Console Reports Preview 10:05

In this section we can find Google's crawl report and whether a XML sitemap has been submitted.

Google Search Console Review - Recap Preview 00:55

Recap of the Google Search Console Review for our site.

Power Tags and Advanced Technical SEO 8 lectures

Using tags to control indexation Preview 03:26

You want your best and only unique pages to be in the Google index. We have three tags: rel canonical, meta robots noindex and rel prev/rel next that help us control what gets indexed of our site.

Rel Canonical Preview 04:58

The rel canonical tag helps manage duplicate content.

Meta Robots Noindex Preview 08:53

The meta robots noindex tag tells Google to not index the page. We look at reasons why we might want this and a comparison of the noindex tag with robots.txt.

Site Hierarchy and Pagination Preview 06:24

Pagination is important to get right when it comes to your site hierarchy.

Advanced Technical - Recap Preview 00:58

Recap of the opportunities we found in our example site to control indexation

Screaming Frog 10 - Indexability Preview 03:51

New in Screaming Frog release 10, new columns that gives us the indexability status of a page.

Screaming Frog 10 - Visualizations and Link Score Preview 04:07

An additional two new features in Screaming Frog release 10.

1) Visualizations - a visual way to see the levels of your site.

2) Link Score - a measure of a page's page rank based on internal linking

JavaScript and SEO Preview 06:41

More and more sites are using JavaScript to dynamically generate the site's web pages. We talk about what this means for SEO, and how you can check that Google understands the JavaScript on the page.

Authority Checks 11 lectures

Authority Checks - Introduction Preview 01:08

Let's look beyond the accessibility and on page factors of a site and evaluate its authority and engagement

Domain Authority Preview 03:04

We define Domain Authority.

How to check Domain Authority Preview 02:26

We use a browser plugin to check the Domain Authority so that we can do a competitive review for the sites that rank for two completely different queries.

Keywords Preview 03:06

We take a look at the top keywords for the site.

Backlinks Preview 02:53

Why backlinks are important for SEO.

Using tools to look at Backlinks. Preview 07:29

I demo two tools you can use to look at a site's backlinks.

Content Quality and User Experience Preview 05:02

Evaluating Content Quality and User Experience.

QDF and Scrape Checks Preview 04:26

We check for freshness of content, and whether the content has been scraped (and find something surprising)

We check for plagiarism Preview 02:30

Another way to check for scraping and plagiarism

Social Media Preview 03:09

Social Media is an amplification channel that can supercharge marketing and SEO campaigns. Learn the 3 things I check when reviewing the social media presence of a site.

Authority Checks - Recap Preview 01:06

Recap of the results of our Authority Checks

Bonus Section and Wrapup 6 lectures

Local SEO Preview 06:25

Local SEO is SEO plus some special considerations. If your site targets a local audience, here's the additional checks you need to do.

WordPress SEO Preview 03:32

Considerations for a SEO audit of a WordPress site

Basic SEO Optimization Preview 07:22

We cover the 5 elements you need to optimize on a page, plus additional factors you need to consider in today's SEO landscape when optimizing your page for SEO.

Keeping up to date on Google algorithm and SEO changes Preview 00:40

Google makes hundreds of changes to its algorithms every year, most are small changes and not noticeable. But there are a couple of Google updates per year that ARE noticeable and can change your site's SEO performance.

The question is, how do you keep abreast of Google updates and other changes in the SEO landscape?

Extra! New features in Screaming Frog release 8 Preview 05:24

Aside from a color change, the basic functionality of Screaming Frog didn't change much between release 7 and release 8. However release 8 does have some cool new features that we explore in this video.