If you want to improve the search engine ranking of your website, you will have to perform a WordPress SEO audit. No doubt, this audit is tricky. Before doing this audit, you should know what is working for a WordPress website and what is not. After that, you will have to start a WordPress SEO audit. Before performing this audit, you should analyze your website. During this analysis, you should find opportunities for improvement. You should also try to find and resolve critical issues on your website. It is necessary to attract more visitors to your website. You can also use it to grow the audience of your website. Here, we will discuss the WordPress SEO audit checklist on which you must focus.
Start by Checking the Search Engine Visibility of your Website
Checking the search engine visibility of your website is the first step to conducting a WordPress SEO audit. In WordPress, there is a built-in option to prevent your website from search engine crawling. If you enable this option on your website, Google and other search engines will never consider your website for search results. You can easily disable this option by using the dashboard of WordPress. For this reason, you will have to click on the ‘Reading’ option in ‘Settings’ of WordPress.
Use HTTPS
SSL certificate is also an essential point of your WordPress SEO audit. By using HTTPS on your website, you can easily encrypt the connection between your website’s server and the user’s browser. Google and other famous search engines are also giving priority to HTTPS-enabled websites in search results. You can easily check it by looking at the padlock sign of the search bar of your browser. If it is not showing a secured connection, you should get a free SSL certificate for your website.
Check Different Versions of the URL of Your Website
The four different versions of a website are www, non-www, HTTP, and HTTPS. While conducting a WordPress SEO audit, you should ensure that they are redirecting to the same website. If these are not redirecting to the same website, Google will consider them the URLs of different websites. To check it, you will have to click on Setting > General > WordPress Address (URL) > Site Address (URL) fields. Here, you should ensure that different versions of the same website redirect to the same website.
Check the XML Sitemap of Your Website
Now, you will have to check the XML sitemap of your website. An XML sitemap helps search engines to index the web pages of your website. It can also provide useful information about the most important pages of your website. Anyhow, it will not provide help to enhance the ranking of your website instantly. It can make the crawling of your website better. While conducting a WordPress SEO audit, you can easily create an XML sitemap by using the All in One SEO plugin. Here, you will have to go to the ‘General Sitemap’ of this plugin.
Fix Broken Links
The broken links will occur when the specific links refer to pages that do not exist on those URLs. When we click on these links, we will get a message of 404 errors. There are various reasons for broken or dead links on websites. If your website has lots of broken links, these links can last a bad impact on the SEO of your website. While conducting a WordPress SEO audit, you should find and fix these links. MonsterInsights is the best tool to find broken links to your WordPress website.
Check Meta Tags
Google and other search engines have to rank the different pages of your website against specific keywords. To get this ranking, you will have to use snippets of HTML code in the form of Meta tags. Title tag and description are the two most important Meta tags. While performing a WordPress SEO audit, you should make sure that you are using Meta tags in your website’s blog posts or product pages.
Get Internal and External Links
Internal and external links have enough importance for getting a high ranking of the web pages. No doubt, these links are crucial for the SEO of your website. Anyhow, some businessmen are ignoring these links. When you use these links on the web pages, search engines can easily find the content on your website. This thing will boost the ranking of your website. These links are also helpful for easy navigation of your website.
Check the Speed of Your Website
To provide a better experience to users, Google has started to use the loading speed as a ranking factor. While performing a WordPress SEO audit, you should check the loading speed of your website. Google Page Speed Insights is the best tool to check the speed of a website. Here, you will also get recommendations for enhancing the speed of your website. You can also use various tools to optimize the speed of your website. For example, you can make use of the Cache plugin and a CDN.
Check the Mobile-Responsiveness of Your Website
It is also one of the most important ranking factors for a website. You will have to check the mobile responsiveness of a website. It’s because Google has started to use the mobile version of your website as a ranking factor rather than the desktop version. If your website is not mobile-ready, you can’t boost the ranking of your website just by focusing on other elements. To enhance the mobile responsiveness of a website, you will have to use a responsive WordPress theme.
Scan for Malware
You should also scan your website for security risks while performing a WordPress SEO audit. If your website is not secured, Google’s Safe Browser will show a warning to the users. This thing will hurt the SEO of your website. Moreover, visitors will not visit these websites. To remove these security risks from your website, you can use a WordPress security scanner. You can also use Sucuri as the best firewall and security service.
Conclusion
If you want to enhance the ranking of your website in search engines, you will have to perform a WordPress SEO audit. It is the best way to get an idea of what is working and what is not working for your website. To perform an SEO audit for your website, you will have to follow various steps. For example, you will have to check the visibility of your website in search engines. Your website should also use HTTPS instead of HTTP. Similarly, you will have to check the speed and mobile responsiveness of your website. At last, you should also scan your website for malware.
Author Bio:
Jonathan Naylor is the author of this article. He is a digital marketing specialist at The Academic Papers UK, known for its best dissertation writing services.
