Site audit for effective seo strategy

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial aspect of digital marketing, helping websites rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract more organic traffic. While many SEOs focus on optimizing titles, meta descriptions, headings, and images when auditing a website, some SEOs only make changes that are recommended by the Semrush site audit report. Semrush site audit report provides great recommendations, suggestions and these changes are also important to improve website performance but to get to the root of the problem and understand where exactly the website is lacking needs a more comprehensive website audit which should include, identifying issues that affect the website's performance and providing actionable insights to create a more effective SEO strategy.

Looking at a broader picture

Setting the filter to the last 16 months in Google Search Console is essential for analyzing data over an extended period. This timeframe provides a clearer picture of the website's performance, allowing you to identify long-term trends and fluctuations in clicks, impressions, position and CTR of the website. By examining the clicks and impressions data over 16 months, you can get the general trajectory of the website and determine whether it is improving, declining, or remaining stable. This information is crucial for making informed decisions about your SEO strategy and prioritizing areas that need attention.

Segmenting paths/ urls of the website

Segmenting the paths of the website is another important step in the auditing process. This involves identifying common URL paths for different types of content, such as blog posts, service pages, product pages, or categories. By understanding the overall structure of the website, you can analyze the performance of specific sections more effectively. For example, in an e-commerce website, product pages may have a URL path like "/products/" while blog posts may have a path like "/blog/". Segmenting these paths allows you to assess the performance of each content type separately and identify areas that require optimization. To identify different segments of a website you can use screaming frog visualization feature.

Filtering out the domain name and blog pages

Filtering out the domain name and blog pages is necessary to focus on the actual position and performance of the website's main service or product pages. While blog content is important for attracting organic traffic, it does not increase the revenue for your clients. Clients are primarily interested in the performance of their main service pages, as these are the ones that directly contribute to their business and increase the revenue they get from their website. By excluding the domain name and blog pages from your analysis, you can concentrate on the pages that matter most to your clients and provide them with valuable insights into their website's performance.

Number of pages published

Analyzing the number of pages a website has is crucial for assessing the performance of main service pages and identifying the number of queries assigned to each page. Large websites, particularly e-commerce platforms, can have hundreds or even thousands of pages. By determining the total number of pages, you can understand the size and complexity of the website. Additionally, by examining the number of queries assigned to each page, you can identify which pages are attracting the most search traffic and which ones may require additional optimization. This information helps in prioritizing your SEO efforts and allocating resources effectively.

Lead query of important pages

Examining the lead query of each page is essential to determine whether it matches the targeted keyword for that specific service or product page. The lead query is the main keyword that a page ranks for in search results. Ideally, the lead query should closely match the targeted keyword for the page, indicating that the content is relevant and optimized for that particular search term. However, if Google doesn't understand the content on the page due to issues like poor keyword targeting, lack of relevance, or low-quality content, it may assign random or irrelevant queries to that page. By analyzing the lead query, you can identify pages that need content optimization to better align with the targeted keywords.

Trajectory analysis

Trajectory analysis involves examining the trend of clicks and impressions for each page over time. This helps in determining whether the page's performance is improving, declining, or remaining stable. By looking at the trajectory of clicks and impressions, you can identify pages that may require changes or link-building strategies to boost their visibility and attract more organic traffic.

Age of the page

Checking the age of each page is important to allow sufficient time for search engines to crawl, index, and evaluate its performance. Newly published pages may take several weeks based on website authority, performance, to establish their position in search results and start attracting organic traffic. I would recommended to allow at least 1 month before assessing the performance of a new page. Search Console provides information on the age of each page, allowing you to track its performance over time and make informed decisions about optimization strategies.

Internal and external links

Assessing the internal and external links pointing to important pages is crucial for understanding its link profile and identifying opportunities for improvement. Links play a significant role in determining a page's authority and relevance, which directly impact its position in search results. By analyzing the number and quality of internal links pointing to a page, you can identify pages that may need additional internal linking to boost their visibility and authority. Similarly, examining the external links pointing to a page can help you assess its backlink profile which you can include in your link-building strategy to improve its search engine rankings.

Low-click pages and SERP noise

Analyzing low-click pages with good position and impression is important to understand the impact of SERP noise on click-through rates (CTR). SERP noise refers to the presence of additional elements in search results, such as featured snippets, images, videos, or related products, that may divert users' attention away from the organic listings. Even if a page ranks well in search results, it may experience low CTR due to SERP noise. For example, if a page ranks in position 5 for a highly competitive keyword but the search results page features ads, videos, and product listings above it, users may be less likely to click on the organic listing.

As you can see here for the keyword “beds“ the user has SERP page provides options like
Explore brands
People also ask
Some companies might even run ads for different times of the day
Here google is even showing chair images to the user along with products
Even if you were to rank at position 5 or 6 for keywords like “beds “ and “chairs“ you might be getting very low clicks but that is because of SERP noise

Excel sheet

Creating an Excel sheet for analysis is a valuable tool for organizing and segmenting data based on performance metrics.By creating a sheet you can analyze the data in a more organized way helping you to make SEO strategies accordingly. Segmenting pages based on metrics like clicks, impressions, position, CTR, allows you to identify patterns, trends, and opportunities for optimization. You can also use the Excel sheet to track the progress of your SEO efforts over time and measure the impact of your optimization strategies. This structured approach to website auditing and data analysis facilitates better decision-making and helps you prioritize your SEO tasks effectively.