Do you want to optimize your website for search engines?
Then the first thing you’ll need to do is to run an SEO (search engine optimization) audit of your website.
By auditing your website, you can find critical SEO errors and fix them. It also helps you make informed decisions on growing your organic traffic without hiring an SEO expert.
Why Use SEO Analyzer for Auditing Your Site
Most websites fail in SEO because they don’t know what keeps their website from getting high rankings and organic traffic. While there are several advanced SEO analysis tools available on the market, most of them cost a fortune. This is why we decided to build a FREE SEO analyzer at WPBeginner.
WPBeginner’s SEO Analyzer performs an SEO audit of your website, finds critical errors, and generates a FREE SEO report to fix them. Backed by data, our free tool monitors your SEO and provides suggestions to help you drive more organic traffic to your site.
Here are a few benefits of our title analyzer…
- Get an analysis of the good, bad, and the ugly part of your website’s SEO
- Get instant recommendations and download the complete WordPress SEO analysis report
- No signup or installation is required for SEO analysis. It’s absolutely FREE!
How WPBeginner SEO Analyzer Works
WPBeginner’s SEO Analyzer makes it easy to evaluate your website’s SEO on a scale of 1 to 100. All it takes is 3 easy steps.
- Enter your website URL in the tool
- Read and download SEO recommendations
- Improve your SEO and analyze your site again
Let’s take a detailed look at each step.
Step 1: Enter Your Website URL in the Tool
To audit your website for SEO, the first thing you’ll need to do is to enter your website URL in the tool and then click Analyze.
Our Free SEO Analyzer tool generates a detailed report on what works on your site and what doesn’t. Based on the report, you’ll also get customized recommendations on how to make the right changes to boost your SEO score.
Step 2: Read and Download SEO Recommendations
Our SEO Analyzer grades your website’s SEO on a scale of 1-100, where 1 is the least, and 100 is the perfect score.
For best results, it’s recommended to aim for a score of 70 or above.
The SEO Analyzer gives you suggestions based on 4 primary factors as follows:
- basic SEO
- advanced SEO
- site performance
- site security
1. Basic SEO
The easiest way to make sure you’re following all basic SEO recommendations is to use a WordPress SEO plugin, like All in One SEO.
With an SEO plugin, you can easily configure all recommended SEO details like SEO title, meta description, keywords, alt tags for images, and more…
2. Advanced SEO
Following advanced SEO best practices requires some degree of expert knowledge. Fortunately, with our free SEO analysis tool, you’ll get custom-tailored advanced SEO tips for your site. That means even if you’re an absolute beginner, you can make sure your site follows advanced SEO practices.
3. Website Performance
Fast loading pages improve user experience, increase your pageviews, and help with your WordPress SEO. It’s no wonder why page speed is considered a ranking factor by most search engines.
WPBeginner’s SEO Analyzer helps you figure out page loading time and even provides suggestions to improve it.
4. Website Security
Google blacklists around 10,000+ websites every day for malware and around 50,000 for phishing every week. Unless your website is secure, your website will be seen as a suspicious one, resulting in receiving a Google penalty.
Step 3: Improve Your SEO and Analyze Your Site Again
Once you detect critical SEO errors on your site, it’s time to fix them by following our SEO Analyzer’s recommendations.
For more details on how to optimize your site, check out our ultimate WordPress SEO guide for beginners.
After making the suggested SEO changes, you can re-run the SEO analysis to see if it has improved your SEO score.
Auditing Your Website for Critical SEO Errors
SEO auditing is the process of finding out if your website is properly optimized to rank better in search results.
Let’s take a detailed look at each of the 4 factors that our SEO Analyzer considers to audit your site.
Factor #1: Basic SEO
- SEO title and meta description: One of the ways search engines and users find whether your website is relevant to their search query is with meta tags, which include your SEO title and meta description.
- Keywords used and heading tags: Use keywords naturally and ensure proper heading tags are used on your site, like H1 and H2
- Image SEO: Make sure every image has an alt tag, and add useful descriptions to each image.
- Internal and external link count: Links are the biggest ranking factor for Google, so make sure you’re using it the right way when it comes to internal and external linking.
Factor #2: Advanced SEO
- Canonical link tag: Every page on your site should have a \ tag with a ‘rel=”canonical”‘ attribute. The link tag should go inside the page’s head tag, and it should contain the page’s “correct” URL.
- Noindex header: Using noindex header keeps your pages out of the reach of search engines.
- www redirection: Ensure both www and non-www URLs are directed to the same site.
- robots.txt file: Make sure your site has a robots.txt file. It contains a set of instructions that request the bot to ignore specific files or directories.
- Open graph meta tags: Open Graph metadata helps Facebook and other social media websites get information about your WordPress posts and pages.
- Schema.org data: Schema.org markup is necessary for every website. It has a simple graphical interface, so you don’t have to get your hands dirty with complex HTML markup.
Factor #3: Website Performance
- Response time: Our tool monitors server response time and helps you figure out what contributes to the loading time and how to minimize it.
- File sizes: Our SEO Analyzer also monitors if CSS files and JavaScript files need to be minified to boost performance.
Factor #4: Website Security
- Google Safe Browsing Status: Google Safe browsing shows warnings and alerts to users if they visit a suspicious website.
- SSL certificate: Google recommends adding an SSL certificate to your website.
Perform SEO Audit in WordPress
To perform an SEO audit of your WordPress website, we recommend using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) WordPress plugin.
AIOSEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress and enables you to optimize your site for search engines quickly and easily.
The plugin offers an SEO Analysis Tool that allows you to perform a complete website SEO audit in your WordPress dashboard. It monitors your site and highlights critical issues, and then offers actionable insights to help you boost your organic traffic and keyword rankings.
You can get the SEO Analysis Tool in the AIOSEO free version. There is also a premium version of AIOSEO that offers advanced features like a redirection manager, schema markup, powerful sitemap tools, and more.
Start Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines
Doing an SEO audit is not rocket science. With the free SEO Analyzer, you can easily perform an audit, find critical errors, and resolve them.
You can start by implementing one SEO recommendation at a time to improve your SEO, and you’ll be on your way to improving your search rankings and growing your organic traffic.
To optimize your site, here are some helpful guides to follow:
- Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide for Beginners
- 14 Best WordPress SEO Plugins and Tools That You Should Use
- 13-Point WordPress SEO Checklist for Beginners
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