What’s Involved in a Manual SEO Analysis
Many people struggle to improve search traffic on their websites. There are many reasons why some websites do not show up more often on Google. Manual SEO audit is the first thing to do in such cases. It could help solve all problems related to SEO on particular websites and get some traffic.
It is possible to perform audits without utilizing any tool. However, the analysis of different aspects of individual pages of websites is a lengthy process. It would be time-consuming. Therefore, it is recommended to use special tools to efficiently do it.
A simple manual SEO audit could:
- Check a website’s current traffic and stats through the use of Google Analytics. It also compares the current and past traffic to give insight into the causes of any changes.
- Find any errors in the website using Google Search Console. Some of the errors may include mobile usability errors, 404 errors, indexing issues, among others.
- Find out the website load speed and fix any related problems.
- Determine mobile friendliness.
- Improve a website’s structure.
- Analyze the current keywords and improve them.
- Check for plagiarism.
- Analyze bounce rate using Google Analytics.
- Find and fix broken links.
Free SEO Analysis Tools
Search Engine Optimization is expensive. Paying for SEO services and tools can break someone’s bank. Fortunately, a number of website owners have built free tools to target traffic, increase leads, and up their sales. Using these tools could save people thousands of dollars. Here are some of them:
- Google’s Webmaster Tools
Asking Google about how it views a particular website can give invaluable information. Google’s Webmaster Tools are user-friendly and they explain the basics about searches. For instance, PageSpeed Insights is a great feature that measures desktop and mobile website performance.
- SEMrush
This is a very elaborate dashboard that shows reports of whole domains’ and specific pages’ performance. The website provides several toolkits, SEO toolkit being one of the most important. Especially, it can give a lot of information about keyword ranking.
- Check My Links
Check My Links is a broken-link checker that determines whether internal or external links of a website actually work. It makes it easier for publishers and editors to correct errors before their pages are live. Check My Links works in seconds to detect the number of broken links.
- UpCity’s SEO Report Card
SEO Report Card analyzes a website and compares it with its competitors. Its report consists of rank analysis, link building, on-site analysis, current indexing, trust metrics, and website accessibility. However, users have to give some of their contact information before the release of the report.
Automated SEO Analysis – Are They Worth Anything
Quality is expensive. This applies to everything and SEO services in particular. Those who would do great SEO analysis should be prepared in terms of time, commitment, and money. To get real results, it demands so much from website owners. This process can be frustrating to newbies in SEO.
Automated SEO promises to save time and money. It is also less tedious as compared to the manual approach. Also, it gives up-to-date and accurate data on keyword rankings. Moreover, the analysis of competitors’ keyword densities, backlinks, and tags is easy. More importantly, it does not require hiring a huge SEO team.
However, the following disadvantages make automated SEO a bit unsavory:
- Often, automation creates links that can never draw traffic to sites.
- The majority of SEO software produce quantity and not quality results. In the long run, the site can have serious problems.
- Improper use of SEO software can lead to low-quality backlinks. This can result in penalization.
Website owners should choose between manual and automated SEO auditing after careful consideration. It is not about cheap and easy, but long-term and short-term implications of the choice. Depending on the current needs of a website owner, automated SEO could be worth it. Combining both strategies is even better.
Conclusion
Traffic is very important for websites. If it is high, a site shows up more frequently on Google searches. If it is low, the opposite happens. Those who are having problems with low traffic on their websites are supposed to carry out SEO audits. It could solve all issues and attract more visitors to their sites.
The manual analysis of SEO can help check a website’s current traffic, errors, load speed, mobile-friendliness, among other things. However, is not only time-consuming but also tedious. It also requires website owners to hire a big SEO team.
On the other hand, using tools such as SEMrush and Google’s Webmaster Tools could make the process easier and faster. However, it may result in low-quality results and reduce traffic. Depending on at-hand tasks, a mixture of both manual and automated services could do well.