The 12-Step SEO Audit Checklist for 2023

Improvement Results:
 12th Step SEO Audit Checklist

Step #1: Check to See If Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly

Step #2: Make Sure Google Indexes ONE Version of Your Website
Step #3: Speed Up Your Site
Step #4: Find and Delete “Zombie Pages”
Step #5: Find and Fix Indexing Problems
Step #6: Check Your Organic Traffic
Step #7: Improve Your On-Page SEO
Step #8: Set Up Keyword Rank Tracking
Step #9: Fix Broken Links
Step #10: Flatten Your Website Architecture
Step #11: Get More from Your Internal Links
Step #12: Optimize for Featured Snippets

Step #1: Check To See If Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly

Mobile SEO is more important than ever.

Why?

First off, 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices.

Second, Google started using their Mobile-First Algorithm.
This means that Google now uses the mobile version of your site for mobile AND desktop searches.

The question is:

How do you know if your site is mobile-friendly?

Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool.

Just pop your site into the tool…
…and you’ll see whether or not Google considers your site optimized for mobile devices.
 Step #2: Make Sure Google Indexes ONE Version of Your Website

Did you know it’s possible to have different versions of your site indexed in Google?

It’s true.

For example, here are 4 different versions of the same site:

• http://yoursite.com
• https://yoursite.com
• http://www.yoursite.com
• https://www.yoursite.com

To you and me, those URLs are pretty much the same.

But not to Google.

And unless you redirect these versions properly, Google will consider them completely separate
websites.

(Not good.)

Fortunately, this is easy to check… and fix.

Just type each of the 4 different versions into your browser.

They should all end up on the same URL:

In my case, the “WWW” version of my site redirects to backlinko.com.

And when someone visits the HTTP version of my site, they get redirected to the HTTPS version.

All good.

If a version of your site isn’t redirecting properly, no worries.

Just 301 redirect it to the version you want to use.

Step #3: Speed Up Your Site

Years back Google confirmed that your site’s loading speed is a ranking factor.
And a while ago they rolled out a new update that makes speed even MORE important.

Here’s how to get your site to load REALLY fast:

First, clean up your site’s HTML code.

You can easily find problems with your code with PageSpeed Insights.
Pro Tip: Don’t just analyze your homepage. Make sure to also test popular pages from your site, like
blog posts, service pages, and category pages.

Second, run a speed test.

This type of test actually loads your page… and lets you know about bottlenecks that slow things
down.
I personally use Google Page Speed Test. But GTMetrix is really good too.

Pro Tip: Upgrade your hosting. If you spend $10 per month on hosting, don’t expect fast loading
times. A few years back I switched from a budget host to $200/month premium hosting. And the
speed difference was insane.

Step #4: Find and Delete “Zombie Pages”

Type site:yourwebsite.com into Google.

This will show you how many pages Google has indexed:

If this number is higher than you thought, you’re not alone.

In fact…

Many sites have 50-75% MORE indexed pages than they’d expect.

(I call these extra pages “Zombie Pages”.)

As it turns out, deleting Zombie Pages can get you A LOT more organic traffic.

For example, Sean from Proven deleted over 9k Zombie Pages from his site…

…which helped boost his Google traffic by nearly 48.70%:

Why does this work so well?

Well, Google has said that more content doesn’t make your site better.
And when you delete Zombie Pages, you give Google what it wants.

Pro Tip: Deleting Zombie Pages also makes the rest of this SEO audit MUCH easier. Fewer
pages=fewer problems

With that, here are the most common types of Zombie Pages:

• Archive pages
• Category and tag pages (WordPress)
• Search result pages
 • Old press releases
• Boilerplate content
• Thin content (<50 words)

Which leads us to our second step…

Step #5: Find and Fix Indexing Problems

Next, it’s time to find web pages that Google isn’t indexing.

To do that, fire up the good ol’ Google Search Console.

The “Index Coverage” report shows you a list of pages that they can’t index for some reason.

As you can see, Backlinko is pretty much error-free.

All good right?

Maybe.

To double check everything is A-OK, I recommend a free SEO tool called Screaming Frog.
Screaming Frog crawls your site the same way Google would. And it lets you know about pages that
it can’t access.
(For example, if you’re accidentally blocking a page with your robots.txt file… or the page has a
noindex tag.)

So if you find a page that’s blocked, double-check that it’s meant to be blocked.

For example, we used to paginate comments here at SEMrefs.

And I did’t want Google to index every single comment page. So we threw a noindex tag on those
pages.

In this case, the pages that are blocked are meant to be blocked.

And once you’ve confirmed that Google can access all of the pages you want them to access, it’s
time to…

Step #6: Check Your Organic Traffic

Now it’s time to see how much organic traffic you’re getting.
To do that, head over to Google Analytics.

Then, go to Acquisition >> All Traffic >> Channels.

Hit “Organic Search”.

And you’ll see how many people visited your site from search engines last month.
Next, set the dates to the last 6-8 months.

And you’ll see whether or not your organic traffic is trending in the right direction:

As you can see, my organic traffic has gradually increased over the last few months.

Now:

If your organic traffic is flat (or declining), no worries.

The goal in this step is just to establish benchmarks.

Things should start to improve once you finish this SEO audit.

Speaking of…

Step #7: Improve Your On-Page SEO

 • Include your keyword in your title tag
• Include your keyword in first 100 words
• Add 5+ external links
• Add 5+ internal links
• Use LSI keywords

Step #8: Set Up Keyword Rank Tracking

Now it’s time to start tracking your rankings in the SERPs.

There are a million rank tracking tools out there.

But to me, the best out there is probably SEMrush.

Why?

SEMrush is awesome because it doesn’t just track the keywords you give it.

(Although it does that too.)

What’s cool about SEMrush is that it automatically finds keywords that you rank for.
 Step #9: Fix Broken Links

A few years back Google stated that they don’t “lose sleep” over broken links.
That said:

Broken links are bad for user experience… which CAN hurt your SEO.

(More on that later.)

With that, here’s how to fix broken links on your site:

First, find broken pages on your site that Google can’t index.

You can find this info in the Google Search Console’s “Index Report”.
I stay on top of broken links, so I’m in the clear.

Here’s what you’ll see if your pages are giving Google 404 errors:

Sometimes you deleted pages for a reason (for example, you deleted a bunch of Zombie Pages).

If so, you don’t need to do anything. Google will eventually stop reporting these broken pages as
problems.

But if Google can’t access a page that you want to rank, you obviously want to get that page back up
ASAP.

Next, use a tool to find broken internal and external links.

You can use Semrush or a free tool like Broken Link Check. Both work.

Step #10: Flatten Your Website Architecture

Your site architecture is simple:

It’s how the pages on your site are organized.

As it turns out, your website architecture is REALLY important for SEO.

Why?

Two reasons:

First, site architecture helps search engines find and index all of your pages.

When your site’s architecture is a big ol’ mess, Google’s gonna have trouble finding all of your pages:

But when your site architecture links your pages together, Google can easily find and index your
entire site.
Second, architecture tells Google which pages on your site are most important.

In general, the closer a page is to your homepage, the more important it is.

The question is:

How should your site’s architecture look?

Well, I know I said that this SEO audit wasn’t going to be super technical.

So I’m going to keep this super duper simple…

You want to keep your site architecture flat.

In other words, not like this:

Instead, you want it to look like this:

(Super flat.)

Or put another way:

It shouldn’t take more than 3 clicks to go from your homepage to any page on your site.
In some cases, you’ll need a developer to completely overhaul your site’s navigation.

But you can also just add internal links to different pages…
…and add links to the sidebar:

As long as users can reach any of your pages in 3 clicks or less, you’re good.

Step #11: Get More From Your Internal Links

Internal linking is one of the most underrated SEO strategies on the planet.

The question is:

How do you internal link the right way?

It’s simple:

Make sure you link to high-priority pages as much as possible.

Pro Tip: You might find a handful of non-important pages in this report. For example, you might have
lots of links pointing to your privacy policy or contact page. That’s usually because you link to those
pages from your site’s navigation or footer. Don’t sweat it.

Step #12: Optimize for Featured Snippets

Featured Snippets can DRAMATICALLY increase your organic traffic.

For example, a while back I got this page to show up in the Featured Snippet spot.
And organic traffic to that page shot up like a rocketship:

How do you get your content in the Featured Snippet spot?

To show up in the Featured Snippet, you need to…

• Have your content optimized for mobile

• Have HTTPS installed
• Use lots of headers (H2 and H3 tags)
• Include short answer to questions (42 words)
• Link out to authority resources

That’s about it