SEO Audit + Image Compression Update| How To Run A Website SEO Audit For Better SERP
Categorized as : Ecommerce and Shopify Apps
The importance of SEO can’t be underestimated. According to statistics, about 50% of website traffic comes from organic search. However, almost 90% of content on the internet doesn't get any traffic from search engines at all. It means that the chances to acquire new customers for websites with such dead content decrease greatly.
In any case, SEO is the long term strategy that is worth investing in. But how to improve your website’s SEO performance?
Well, you’ll need to identify content weaknesses in terms of search engine algorithms and redesign your website in accordance with the best SEO practices.
Although image compression and metadata optimization contribute to improving website ranking, store owners need more deep dive and multifactorial analysis of the website content. That’s why the fresh update of SEO Audit + Image compression is marked with new powerful features:
- Analytics Dashboard to display detailed analytics with all issues and optimization opportunities available for your current plan.
- SEO Audit to evaluate products, collections, blog posts and other pages in accordance with its performance in organic search.
- Site Health feature allows users to check general performance of the website, identify main issues and check overall SEO score.
The new functionality of the app creates a steady base for a well-performed and fully optimized website able to attract qualified traffic and convert visitors into buyers. Now let’s see how new features work!
Analytics dashboard to improve your website’s SEO performance
The analytics dashboard allows users to review the SEO performance of the website based on a number of metrics. SEO Audit + Image compression dashboard consists of the following sections:
- Site Health, where all critical website health issues are displayed:
- Site health score is the overall SEO score of the website (depends on the number of pages included in the pricing plan).
- Crawled pages section displays the number of healthy, broken, have issues, redirected, blocked pages.
- Errors graph shows the data about all the errors on the website for the last four weeks. Here you can check what kind of errors (e.g. 4xx errors, broken internal links, duplicate content, title or description, etc.) existed on the given date.
- Warnings graph also reflects the warnings analytics (e.g. images without alt, pages without description) related to the last four weeks.
All the metrics and indicators of site health depend on the number of pages included in your plan. So if you want to see a clear picture of website performance, we recommend upgrading to the plan which covers all the pages of your Shopify store.
2. Images displays image optimization results: the number of optimized images, alt tags and file names, as well as the general weight the images are reduced by.
3. Meta tags is based on the SEO Audit page, a new feature we’ll talk about in more detail later on. The block displays the number of products, collections and blog posts that have been optimized.
4. Top issues displays issues related to SEO or page speed. Here you can review the number of pages and the general percentage of issues with URLs, duplicate titles and duplicate content.
5. Broken Links: On the same line SEO Audit + Image compression users can check broken links and correct them to improve SEO.
6. Page Speed graph shows the general speed of pages on the website. The page speed score depends on your current plan, so if your plan includes 500 pages, then the graph will display the overall page speed score of 500 pages.
7. Metrics depends on the number of pages included in your pricing plan. Here you can check:
- Page Speed Index measures how quickly content is visually displayed on the web page.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how quickly the largest page element is displayed on the page.
- Total Blocking Time (TBT) measures the total amount of time that a page needs to get blocked responding to user input. If the total blocking time is optimized, load responsiveness will be better.
Also, on top you can see a static block with a request to activate Online Store 2.0. This is essential to enable some of the app's features. Activate the function once and use the app to its full potential.
Now, let’s return to other new features the app gained with the latest update. One of the most powerful functionalities the app received is SEO Audit. Let’s take a look at it.
What’s an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is an analysis of web page performance in accordance with search engine optimization practices. Technical SEO audit services give a clear picture of how to improve your content from an SEO perspective and drive more traffic to it.
A good SEO audit can reveal and fix the issues with:
- Search engine optimization (including target keywords, alt text and metadata optimization);
- Site speed (provides valuable insights about the concrete page speed);
- Content gaps (allows users to add missed content parts to improve ranking);
- User experience (checks responsiveness and overall page performance).
SEO Audit + Image compression app allows to run SEO audit for:
- Products;
- Collections;
- Blog posts;
- Other pages.
In this way, you can optimize any page or product on your store to attract more visitors and convert them into buyers.
How to run an SEO Audit?
To run SEO audit, select SEO Audit in the navigation menu in the app admin and choose a page you’re going to examine. Right in the list of pages you can find an SEO score for each page, so you can decide which one needs your attention more.
When you open the page, there are a few sections with important information related to SEO and page speed:
1.Target keyword phrase.
Here you can check and edit the target keyword for the page. Click Get suggestions and/or Get keyword trends buttons to ensure your target keyword is relevant and highly searchable.
2. Page speed insights.
Next to the target keyword, you can find page speed insights block, which is connected to Google Page Speed Insights to analyze if the page meets Google requirements and will rank higher in search results therefore.
3. Title tag and description tag
According to the best SEO practices, to bring more traffic and increase SERP metadata should contain keywords. Besides, it’s recommended not to exceed a certain number of characters for metadata - 20-70 for meta title, 50-160 for meta description - so users can easily understand from search results what is going to be discussed on the page. SEO Audit analyzes page metadata and displays useful recommendations in these sections.
4. Image alt text status
Alt text helps search engine bots to read and understand the images on web pages. SEO Audit analyzes page images, reveals those with missed alt text and gives suggestions on their optimization.
5. Meta fields
Here you can edit and customize page meta title and meta description and preview how they will look like in search results with preview mode.
6. Image alt text
The block helps to identify images without alt text or those with non-optimized alt text and make them more SEO friendly with an in-built editor.
7. Check mobile-friendly
Page responsiveness has a direct impact on ranking. So you may need some insights from search engines. One more useful integration of our SEO Audit with Google helps to identify if the page is mobile-friendly according to Google Mobile-Friendly Test.
8. Structured data test
Structured data markup makes page content more comprehensible for both search engines and internet users. Enable JSON-LD and examine your web page with structured data test to make sure your web page will drive qualified traffic.
9. Crawling options
The block allows you to enable a number of options to configure the web page behavior during crawl-based scans. The following options can be activated to transmit your preferences to search engines:
- Include the web page in the sitemap;
- Include the web page in search results;
- Allow search engines to follow links on the web page.
10. SEO Audit & Metrics
We’re already acquainted with website metrics such as speed index, largest contentful paint and total blocking time. Unlike dashboard, SEO audit gives metrics for each specific page, which are then taken into consideration during counting of overall metrics displayed on the dashboard.
SEO audit is the best way to improve organic SEO, surpass the competition and create better conditions for outstanding customer experience.
Final Thoughts
Current SEO Audit + Image compression users have a chance to examine new functionality on 10 pages. If it suits your needs, and you want to gain more valuable insights and suggestions for other website pages, you will need to upgrade your plan.
Find new pricing here.
