Using tools like Google Search Console and SEO analytics platforms, I identified pages with declining rankings and pinpointed the causes. The focus was on relevance, accuracy, and adherence to current SEO best practices. I’ve dealt with an SEO penalty before, and reassessing keyword targeting was one of the key strategies that helped me recover my rankings. In my case, I realized I had been unknowingly over-optimizing some pages with the same keywords, causing them to compete with each other.
Keyword Research
- Metrics like engagement rates and time on page help you understand how users interact with your content.
- But Google is also continuously adapting how they assess your site’s speed.
- An audit makes sure they are properly optimized for relevance and length.
- For searchers to find your website, it must stand out among the masses in this index.
By following these steps, I successfully lifted the manual action within 6 months, and rankings began to recover steadily. These include the usuals like Google Analytics, Search Console, and Semrush. And if speed is your priority, the Smart Report option gives you a great baseline. AgencyAnalytics is a reporting platform built specifically for agencies managing SEO and digital marketing clients.
Best free SEO audit tools
There is a lot to consider when auditing your technical SEO, and it can get pretty complicated. Cyrus Shepard is the founder of Zyppy SEO, an SEO consulting and software company. He writes/tweets about Google ranking signals, SEO best practices, experiments, tactics, and industry updates. Dave Ramsey is a big name in the finance industry, so this is the kind of detailed analysis that you would expect when evaluating this kind of page for YMYL content. The tool will give you an edge if you’re in a competitive niche. I took three different types of content and ran them through the tool.
Below, we address some of the most frequently asked questions about SEO. Hiring a full-service SEO agency is typically a significant investment, but it also provides the most comprehensive support. Agencies offer a team of experts who manage all aspects of your SEO, from strategy and content creation to technical SEO and analytics. Costs can range from $1,500 to $10,000 per month or more, depending on the agency and the scope of work.
If you see affected pages, follow the recommendations on the right to improve your website performance. If duplicates are detected, you need to go through those pages and rewrite titles and descriptions. Plus, you can manually check if those pages provide valuable and unique content to users. Of course, it’s much easier to avoid creating duplicate content than to find and fix it later.
Once you‘ve addressed the three primary goals of a website audit, it’s time to loop in a developer or someone from your IT department for a technical evaluation. You could also hire an outside agency — just be sure to do your SEO Anomaly homework first. While high-quality, search-engine-optimized content is a great way to boost your traffic numbers, it’s what happens once those visitors are on your website that really counts.