LEANNE WONG

SEO AUDIT CHECKLIST

Hey you! Great job on downloading this SEO Audit checklist. I know that Search Engine
Optimization can be intimidating so I just wanna say, don't worry, I gotchu.

This checklist is everything you need to know and implement to improve your website's
technical site hygiene and optimize your content for search performance.

The recommendations here are prioritized based on the highest impact to improve organic
rankings and quality of traffic.

How to use this SEO Audit Checklist: There are 2 parts to this audit: Content SEO and
Technical SEO. I recommend going through the pages chronologically as they are meant to be
tutorial-oriented and actionable, so you can take steps to implement the recommendations here
to your own site as you go through this checklist. If you would like to jump to a particular
section, start from either the 'Content SEO' section or 'Technical SEO' part, but start from the
beginning. Cheers, buddy.

Here's to improved rankings and search performance, and growing your Blog+Biz.

If you have any questions during / after this audit, drop me a message here at
info@leannewong.co

Best,
Leanne

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 What is an SEO Audit?
An SEO Audit is a health check of your website. Its purpose is to identify areas on your site
that to improve your ranking on Google's search results. The goal is to make your website
SEO-friendly and increase organic search traffic to your site.

This 27-page SEO Audit Checklist is broken down into 2 parts: Content SEO and Technical
SEO.

Technical SEO is about getting search engine crawlers (Googlebot) ability to crawl and
index your web pages on its index effectively.

Content SEO is about making optimizations and changes to the content on your page, with
the goal of improving your rankings on search results and drive more traffic to your site.

CONTENT SEO
Title Tag Optimization
Meta Description Optimization
Heading Tags
SEO-Rich Content
Keyword Density
Long-Form Content
Internal Linking Strategy
Image Optimization
Search Intent
Keyword-to-Content Mapping

TECHNICAL SEO
Google Search Console
XML Sitemap
Page Speed Optimization
Broken Links (404 status code)

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CONTENT SEO
1. TITLE TAG OPTIMIZATION
Every page and blog post on your site should have an SEO-optimized title.
Your <title> tag appears on Google search results and is the most prominent part of your page on the
search result.

Title tag

5 Tips to create an SEO-optimized Title Tag

Title should accurately summarize your page's content.
Avoid using default titles like "Untitled" or "New title 1".
Each page on your site should have a unique page title. So, no two pages or blog posts on your site
should have the same title. This helps Google know which pages are different from each other.
Keep your titles short and descriptive, under 70 characters in length.
Overly long titles will get truncated in search results and might affect your click-through-rate.
Use 1 primary keyword in the title.
Do not overstuff your title with many keywords. Instead, focus on creating helpful titles that target
your audience's needs. The goal is to get clicks and encourage users to click through to your site.

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2. META DESCRIPTION OPTIMIZATION

The <description> meta tag tells Google what your page's content is about. On Google Search Results
(SERPs), the meta description is displayed, along with the title and URL of the ranking pages as you
seen here:

Meta
description

Purpose of a meta description tag

The meta description serves 2 purporses: (i) For users to grasp a page's content before deciding to
click through from Google SERPs, (ii) For search engine crawlers like Googlebot to display it on the
search result. 

If there is no meta description written, meaning it is empty, then Google will extract whatever content
from your page it thinks is relevant to a user's query and display it on the search result. So it is better
to have a well-crafted meta description optimized with keywords and call-to-action words already,
to maximize the full benefit of the meta description tag for SEO.

On Wordpress, you can very easily write a unique meta description with the Yoast SEO Plugin:

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How to Write a good Meta Description

Accurately summarizes the page's content.
Uses a primary keyword and 2-3 related secondary or long-tail keywords. This helps add
relevance to your content.
Create a unique meta description for each page and blog post. Do not use (copy and paste) the
same meta description over multiple pages on your site. That is a no no. It is considered duplicate
content and Google does not like that.

3. USE HEADING TAGS IN YOUR PAGE CONTENT

Heading tags help to break up text to improve readability, but it also provides a structure for your
content. Heading tags are: H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 used in a page/blog post content.

Heading tags help users navigate your content

Heading tags provide a hierarchical structure for your content. Multiple heading tags (H1, H2, H3, H4,
H5, H6) help emphasize important parts of your content and breaks up large chunks of text too,
improving ease of readability.

Think of heading tags like an outline for your content. Each heading is used to convey main points and
sub-points of your topic.

How to create good heading tags

Add 1-2 primary or secondary keywords in the H1 or H2.
Use heading tags in a way that makes sense - too many heading tags in a page might make it
difficult for users to read the content.
Avoid writing very long headings. A heading is not a sentence, it could be a phrase to illustrate the
next main point.
Use heading tags as an opportunity to leverage long-tail keywords to boost SEO relevance in your
content.

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4. WRITE SEO-RICH CONTENT

SEO-rich content is optimized for both search engines and users. Content that is well built in terms of
technical structure to rank well on search results, and what readers also love.

Here are the elements to make your content SEO-rich:

Keyword Density
Long-form content
Internal Linking
Image Optimization
Search Intent

4.1 Keyword Density

Keyword density is the number of keywords in relation to the number of text in a piece of content.

Imagine your article is 1,000 words long, how much of that contains your target keywords? Target
keywords are keywords you want to rank for.

According to Yoast, the recommended keyword density is about 2.5 - 3%. So if your article has 1,000
words, 30 of those words should contain your target keyword. That would hit the 3% density mark.

In other words, your target keyword should appear 30 times in your entire article.

But I recommend to mix it up - have a primary keyword target and long-tail keywords. Then, increase
that keyword density to 5%. 
1 primary keyword for main topic (use 10 times in your article)
15 long-tail keywords (use twice each)
1 primary keyword for sub-topic (use 10 times in your article)

So now, you have a keyword cluster of different keywords that are related to each other, appearing
50 times in your article.

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4.2 Long-form content

According to Wordstream, long-form content is 1,200 - 1,800 words.

I do highly recommend writing long-form content because it provides more value. There's just no
denying that more content provides more information, is more educational and engaging. Also,
there's more room to include keywords too.

SEO is all about content, folks. 

So take the time and beef up your articles. As a content writer, I know the aches of coming up with
ideas. So what i usually do is come up with a skeleton of the article first then finish writing slowly and
steadily.

How to beef up your article with sub-topics

Use Google Auto-suggest
'People also ask' boxes
Related searches at the bottom of search results

How to complete a 1,000 word article without giving up mid-way

Write 200 words before you go to bed everyday.
Come up with a routine and stick with it for your first 3 articles. Begin your writing routine first thing
in the morning after breakfast, or first thing after you are back from work.
Think of accomplishing small tasks bit by bit, in a habitual manner and by the end of the week, you
would have hit a big milestone. :)

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4.3 Internal Linking

An internal link is a hyperlink from one webpage of your site to another page on the same site.

https://www.leannewong.co/great-content-
marketing-tips/

How does internal linking help SEO?

Internal links provide site architecture and helps to spread link juice across your web pages.

Googlebot use internal links to find the pathway of a website. They literally go from one page to
another, trying to find all the pages on your site. So linking your pages (internal linking) provides that
crawlable site architecture for Google to find your content.

So imagine you have a large site with hundreds of articles, without proper internal linking, some pages
or older blog articles that deep inside your site will be difficult to find. These buried pages would not
be easily accessible by search engine crawlers (Googlebot).

Internal linking also helps readers to navigate your website content too.

Internal Linking Strategy

As a general rule of thumb, make sure you hyperlink to 2-3 related internal pages for every new
page / blog post you create.
Anchor text: use keywords in your anchor text 
Use internal links appropriately. Only link out to relevant pages on your site, which helps with the
navigation of your content.

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4.4 Image Optimization

Use the "alt" attribute on your images. The "alt" attribute means alternative text for the image. It helps
Google know what your images are about.

This can be a short, descriptive phrase about what your image. Like "blogging-strategy-guide",
"cheese-raspberry-pie".

So avoid using the generic, default file name like "DSc101.png", "pic1". Because they don't provide much
information about your images.

On Wordpress, you can edit the alt text of your image directly. Quick and easy.

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4.5 Search Intent

Search intent is the motivation behind a searcher's query.
What is the goal of his/her search?
What problem is this searcher trying to solve by typing these words into Google?

Types of Search Intent

Informational: I want to know
Keywords that cover a broad topic
Financial tips
Bali travel
Navigational: I want to find a particular brand / website
Branded keywords
"Nike shoes"
"Finnair flights"
Commercial: I want to buy
Keyword queries that indicate an intent to complete a transaction / make a purchase
"buy ticket to finland"
"cheap train tickets to tokyo"

By categorizing these different queries into specific intent, we have a better understand of what
people's motivations are when searching for something.

Different search intents need to be matched with different content types. A person visiting your site for
generic information might be looking for a resource article or tutorial post (Informational Intent),
whereas someone searching for a solution is more ready to make a purchase (Commercial Intent).

Read: 13 Actionable Tips to Create a Killer Content Strategy

Read: How to Squeeze Maximum SEO Traffic From a Single Article

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4.6 Create content that targets a specific intent

SEO is all about content. And creating the right type of content that matches your audience's search
intent is key. This is also known as, Keyword-to-Content Mapping.

In SEO Demystified, I teach about SEO Copywriting and Searcher Intent and keyword-to-content
mapping is something we discuss at length. Here's a quick snippet:

From the top, we have search queries that people type into Google. Such as "what is book keeping" or
"buy book keeping software". These indicate different search intents.

The type of content to match an informational intent would be list posts, roundup articles, tutorials
and in-depth educational guides.

Whereas Navigational and Commercial intents would be best mapped with content types geared
toward conversions, to help people take action. Such as testimonials, free trials and webinars.

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Conclusion
Creating the right type of content that matches search intent is the foundation of SEO Copywriting. It
is a mix of technical understanding of how semantic search works and the flair of good writing that
keeps readers engaged, and coming back to your blog for more.

To learn more about SEO Copywriting, Semantic Search and nailing your first keyword ranking in 90
days, check out my flagship course, SEO Demystified. You can join for $39!

CLICK TO ENROLL

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TECHNICAL SEO
Core areas covered have the highest impact on SEO and ranking performance on Google.
Google Search Console set up and indexation checks.
Technical SEO priority issues: Broken links, Page Speed and Mobile Usability.

1. CREATE A GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE ACCOUNT

Create a Google Search Console account for your website. Click on 'Add a property' and enter
your domain name. Include the "http" or "https" and www or non-www version of your site. To be
safe, just copy the entire domain name address of your site and paste it in the 'property box'.

Verify your Google Search Account ownership. There are 4 ways you can do this. I usually just
upload it as a meta tag on my website. Alternatively, if you already have a Google Analytics or
Google Tag Manager account, you can verify it from either of those.

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What is Google Search Console?

Google search console is a tool by Google for website owners to submit and monitor their
website content. It's the primary way (straight from the source itself) to understand how
Google sees your website, and how well your site is performing in terms of SEO.

What you can do with Google Search Console:

In the left sidebar > Overview / Security & Manual Actions / Index > Coverage
Discover critical errors on your site based on search console's diagnostics tools. 
Broken links (404 pages)
Server errors (5xx errors)
Crawl Errors

In the left sidebar > Performance

Understand the SEO ranking performance of your website content, including:
click data
impressions
average ranking position
average click-through rate

In the left sidebar > Links

Discover backlinks (external links) your site has. Find out which are your top linked to pages
and who is linking to you. This information is also known as off-page SEO.

In the left sidebar > Index > Sitemaps

Submit your XML Sitemap
***Submitting your sitemap to Google is very important. This helps Google find your content
and is a crucial part of technical SEO and improving how Google crawls and indexes your
content. (Next Page)

Further Reading:

Google Webmaster Academy (For Website Creators)

Introduction to Google Search Console

Migrating from old Search Console to New Console

New Search Console Guide

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2. SUBMIT A SITEMAP
If there is anything you can do today to improve your site's technical SEO, just do this. Submit a
sitemap to Google search console. A sitemap helps Google find your content. A sitemap is actually an
XML file, short for "extensible markup language". Which is a method to display information on a site.

How to build and submit a sitemap

There are 2 ways you can build a sitemap: Manual or use a plugin (Wordpress).
The first option is to build your own sitemap using ScreamingFrog, it's easy and does not require any
coding at all. So no matter what CMS your site is built on (Wordpress, SquareSpace, etc), this method
will work for you. Option 2 is to use a plugin.

Option 1: Build your own sitemap using Screaming (No need coding)
Time needed: 5 minutes

2.1: ScreamingFrog Tutorial (6-Step Process)

Step 1: Build your own XML sitemap using ScreamingFrog

ScreamingFrog is a free tool (up to 500 URLs) used for SEO technical audits and is trusted by
agencies around the world. Here's the link to download.

Step 2: After installing ScreamingFrog, enter your URL address (homepage) into the start bar. Then
press enter.

ScreamingFrog will now crawl all the URLs in your website domain. This should take no more than 2
minutes. On the free version, you can crawl up to 500 URLs only. So if you have a huge website with
more than 500 URLs, then you might want to consider buying the paid version instead.

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Step 3: After the crawl is complete, you should see the bar say '100%' in green.

Step 4: Navigate to the menu and click on Sitemaps > Create XML Sitemap

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Step 5: The default option should only tick to 2xx status code pages, as seen below. Just double
check that it is indeed such.

Make sure you don't have any URLs with status code 301 or 404 or anything else. We only want status
code 200 URLs. These are the live, active pages we want Google to index.

Step 6: Then, click on next and save your sitemap. Click save. DONE!!!

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2.2: Upload your sitemap and submit to Google

Step 1: After manual coding your XML sitemap, make sure you use an XML Validator Tool.

Step 2: Upload your sitemap file to the root folder of your site.

Step 3: Submit your sitemap to search engines. To do so, you need to submit it to Google search
console. Make sure there are no errors after you submit and a "success" status is shown.

Pat yourself on the back, you have just created your own XML sitemap, uploaded it to
your website's root folder and submitted to Google. GOOD JOB BABY.

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Option 2: Use a plugin

For Wordpress users, install the Yoast SEO plugin. This will help you create an XML sitemap with a
push of a button. Easy peasy.

For Squarespace users, it appears that your site comes with a sitemap automatically based on this
article. So you don't have to create one manually at all. Wow. Awesome!! Now all you have to do is
submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.
To submit your sitemap to Google, here is an article to guide you through.

For Joomla users, check out this article by Joomla Developers. Apparently there are sitemap
extensions available in the Joomla Extensions Directory.

For Blogger/Blogspot users, check out this article by MasterBlogging.com. It walks you through how
to submit your blogspot blog posts sitemap to Google.

Why do you need a sitemap?

Because search engines want to display the most relevant and updated results for people. When you
have a sitemap and submit it to Google, it helps them read, organize and index your website content
in its own index.

It is a file on your site that tells search engine crawlers (Googlebot) about your website content:
What is the relationship between pages and information (e.g videos) on your site
Which pages are important
When these pages were last updated

In other words, an XML sitemap actually makes it easier for Googlebot to access your website content
and index your pages and blog articles better. This at the end, increases your chances of ranking on
Google's search results, aka boosting SEO rankings.

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3. Site Speed
MY FAVOURITE PART OF TECHNICAL SEO.

Site Speed is how much time it takes for your site to load. A fast loading site is crucial for user
experience and search engine optimization.

Google does not want to serve up webpages on its search results that has bad user experience. And
guess what? PageSpeed is an official ranking factor on according to Google Developers.

Improving your site load time can drastically boost your SEO. No matter how well-optimized your
content, a slow loading site will hurt your chances to get that content ranked and read by visitors.

Two reasons - First, Googlebot would have a hard time crawling your site (timeout) if the site load
speed is takes too long. Second, users will bounce off your site, and a poor landing page experience
would negatively affect SEO.

Alright! Let's get down to actionable steps you can take to improve your site speed immediately.

What is a good site load speed?

A good site speed is under 2 seconds.

A study by Pingdom found that as soon as a webpage loads for more than 3 seconds, more than 30%
of users will bounce off the site.

Causes of slow site speed

The main causes of slow site speed usually originate from:
Poor web hosting
Server response time is slow.
Large images, videos or files on your site
Images above 150KB are considered large. If possible, try to host videos on another platform (e.g,
YouTube, Vimeo) and then embed the link in your site. This will reduce the load on your site.
Caching issues
By caching (by storing your files locally in a user's browser) helps reduce load time, because the
brower doesn't have to load all your web files again when the user refreshes or revisits your site.

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How to check your site speed

Use Google PageSpeed Developer Tools to check your site speed. Head over to this link and enter your
site URL.

Next, you'll get some initial diagnosis of your website speed performance:

Don't be too concerned

about the score. It is the
diagnosis after that
matters.

This is the time at

which your first text or
image is painted.

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Other tools to check your site speed

For those who are more advanced, use these tools to further understand your site speed performance.
These tools usually come with recommendations on how to reduce your load time:
GTMetrix
PingDom

https://gtmetrix.com/

https://tools.pingdom.com/

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Recommendations: How to Improve Your Site Speed

3.1 Read Google Developer's Lighthouse Resource
The first place to start to improve your site speed is Google Developers Lighthouse reading. It is the
site speed audit tool by Google.

I truly wish I had beefed up my technical knowledge first before making any changes on my site, and
spending hundreds of dollars on "premium" SEO tools.

There is no magic tool to make your site lightning fast overnight. Do take it from me, who's been there
and got my fingers burnt. Don't waste money on expensive SEO tools before understanding why you
are investing in those.

https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/

Start from the Lighthouse tab > Audit References > Performance
Everything you need to learn about site speed and website performance is there.
The contents will be very intimidating, but spend a good 1-2 weeks just digesting that content. Make
notes, dive deep into each element under performance. It will help you understand site speed and
what really comprises of site speed optimization.

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3.2 Basic Site Speed Optimizations

1. Shrink your image sizes
Use WP Smush or Imagify plugin for WordPress to compress any picture you upload automatically.
If you want to compress your images beforehand, check out TinyPNG or Optimizilla.
Another tip is to use JPEG files as they are smaller but not as high quality as PNG.
The best option is to use SVG files which can scale image sizes without loss of quality.

2. Use a plugin for browser caching

A popular free caching plugin is W3 Total Cache.
If you have some budget, investing in a premium caching plugin is worth it – I highly
recommended WP Rocket.

3. Minify CSS and JavaScript

Minification removes unnecessary white spaces and characters from your CSS and JavaScript files.
To fix this, install Gulpjs on your server and you could also refer this Google guide to your developer.
If you’re using WordPress, Autoptimize is a free plugin that works really well too.

4. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN delivers cached version of your website’s static content on its own servers based on the
geographic location of the user.
So when somebody visits your web page, the static content is loaded from the sever closest to their
location.
Static versions of your site are like images, CSS and Javascript files.
For example, if your website is hosted in USA and when a visitor from Finland visits your site,
without a CDN, that user will have to wait for the server to load all the way from USA.
With a CDN, your website will be loaded from the server closest to the user.Engage a developer to
move static files from your website to a CDN and keep only the HTML file on your main server.
If you’re using WordPress, simply install a plugin like MaxCDN (Premium) or set up Cloudflare (Free
CDN) on your WordPress site.

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Tools to Improve Site Speed:

WP Smush

Imagify

TinyPNG

Optimizilla

W3 Total Cache

WP Rocket

Gulpjs

Autoptimize

4. Broken Links (404 errors)

Broken links are dead pages on your site with the status code 404.

This happens when somebody tries to find a URL on your page that no longer exists. It looks something
like this. 

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What causes broken links?

Nobody creates broken links intentionally. Links become broken when these things happen:

URL typo: when you or somebody makes a mistake typing your URL into the browser. This is out of
your control, so no worries.
Changing the URL name. This is when you change/update the URL of your blog post or page (also
known as “permalink”).
Website migrations: When you undergo a website revamp or migration, such as migrating from
HTTP to HTTPS or changing your domain name – if your old pages did not redirect to the new ones,
that would result in broken endpoints.

The Solution
Prevention is better than cure!

Make sure to 301 redirect every URL you changed to the new one. This will prevent a ton of headache in
the future.

On WordPress, use a handy 301 redirect plugin. There are a few you can try out:
1. Simple 301 Redirects
2. Redirection Plugin
3. Yoast SEO Plugin (premium)

On the server level, you can set up 301 redirect in your .htaccess file. This is the cleanest and fastest
way to perform redirects. 

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OMGOSH! We have covered a LOT today. If you don't

know me yet, I'm Leanne, a digital marketer based in
Singapore. If you have enjoyed this resource, join us on
any or all ;) of the channels below:

Facebook SEO Mastermind

See what I'm pinning on Pinterest

Get to know me on Instagram

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