Introduction:
SEO Consultant in India are on the growth now that digital
marketing in India is opening to find its stability. The good object about this
is that many small businesses that have been looking for ways to increase the prominence
of their products and services now have
SEO consultant in india that can provide
to them. The Indian economic environment presence the way it is, always
requires using minimum resources to get awesome results and this post is knocking
that into consideration. Individuals often make up an SEO team so this post has
been written in a modified form so that even freelancers and business heads can
see themselves performing SEO audits. Every company should see itself as an SEO
Consultant regardless of what its core competence is. SEO Consultant in India
in this context, therefore, refers to any company in any industry in India that
wants to be found in the most suitable position on search engines. Sit tight
and secure your seat belt, it’s going to be a long ride
First effects first, if we are going to perform an SEO
audit, we need to know what that is at least.
What is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit can be basically put as a way of conclusion out
where your website stands in relation to how it can be found on search engines.
This is usually done by appraising a website, recording findings, segmenting
findings as either good or bad, recommending fixes and then realizing the
recommended fixes. The optional fixes are usually from SEO guidelines that have
been made through in depth study of websites that perform well on search
engines.
When Should SEO Consultant in India Perform an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is generally done for the first time after a
website is up and running. Following audits are then done when expected results
from the first audit are not met or when a general upgrading in the SEO status
of a website is needed. Bottom line: SEO audits can be done anytime.
Why Does Your Website Need an SEO Audit?
Formerly responding the above question, another question
needs to be answered first. Solopreneurs conduct SEO for their websites can
directly answer this question and actual SEO Consultant in India should ask
each client to answer this question from a reflective point of view.
What are the goals
for my business and does SEO fit effortlessly as a means to help attain part or
all of the goals?
If your answer to the additional part of the question is
yes, then you most possibly know what SEO can do for your business but if
you’re still grappling for an answer, my quick information may help you out.
How to Conduct an SEO Audit for SEO Consultant in India
Leading an SEO Audit isn’t a static act because the world of
search engine optimization is ever increasing and search engines currently twist
their algorithm to bring more value to searchers. This “how-to” information is
definitely subject to change as search engines get better at sifting between
high quality and low-quality content. I
have decided to divide this segment into two:
- Technical SEO Audit
- Non-Technical SEO Audit
Technical SEO Audit for SEO Consultant in India
This refers to the areas of the audit that require devotion
to strict search engine rules and a deep knowledge of how to use and understand
some SEO tools to better optimize a website or web page.
Without further ado, let’s get to business!
Index Status of Website:
The first thing to do is find out how well your website is
doing on search engines. Our focus search engine will be Google since it is the
most widely used search engine.
Here’s how to know how well your site is doing:
- Site: Command
- Site: Command helps you:
Tell the number of pages on your website that have been
indexed by Google
Find out if the number of indexed pages agrees to the actual
number of web pages your website has.
See if you have duplicate content that has been indexed by
search engines.
This is how to use Site: Command.
Type “site: yourwebsite.com” into the search bar and click
the search icon. An example is when we type site:vipin-kumar.com into Google’s
search bar then click the search icon. We discover as at the time of this
writing that vipin-kumar.com has 95,10,000
results searches by Google.
If you do not see a message similar to the one in the twin
above then your web pages are doing fairly well but if you do have a very
similar message to the one shown above, then you have duplicate content being
indexed by the search engine and this is very bad for SEO.
Next thing on the agenda is to filter out and remove
duplicate content. Let’s go!
Wait, just before we dive into duplicate content. We still
need to do a couple of things
Put the url to the website or web page you want to see get showed
on the search engine in the search box and hit enter on your keyboard or keypad
to see if it actually gets displayed in a top position. If this happens then
all things are well, if not, your website may be facing some penalties. We will
talk about this later
Search for the name of your website or the description specified
to some of its pages. If pages with these branding grow put out as top results,
you are on the right path but if no correct result seems or results are too far
behind on search engines, then your website needs more optimization.
Now we can transfer on to duplicate content.
Duplicate Content:
Duplicate content can be instigated by a variability of
things:
Different URL versions of the same web page.
This majorly occurs when you have put some sort of following
code on your web page. Tracking codes usually attach extra limits to original
URLs to have different links that make it easy for tracking but search engines
see both original URLs and tracking codes generated URLs as the same because
they primarily consist of the same content.
Http/Https and www/non-www versions of webpages.
It’s probable to have a website that has two versions of
same content. It could be that your website has an http:// version and an
https:// version. For example (http://yourwebsite.com ) and
(https://yourwebsite.com). Same thing applies for www and non-www versions of a
website. When this different links community the same content, there’s a case
for duplicate content.
Copied posts and e-commerce product pages with the same
description on same and or different websites.
But why are we so serious of duplicate content?
Duplicate content clouds search engines. They don’t know
which page to rank above the other.
The value that a web page is destined to get through other
websites linking to it will be revalued because the links will be shared among
duplicated content.
Website visitors wouldn’t want to be shelled with terminated
content.
How do we know the exact pages that are duplicates without
manual search?
Google Search Console
Login to your Google webmaster tool dashboard (Google
webmaster tool is now considered under Google Search Console). If you don’t
have a Google Search Console account, you can learn how to do so here.
When you’re signed in, click on “search appearance” tab then
click on “HTML Improvements”. Information letting you know if you have
duplicate content or any other site description error on your website will be
made known to you. URLs of duplicate content would be listed here if they
exist.
Removing duplicate content from search engines
Duplicate content can be removed by:
Using a 301 redirect to send duplicate pages to the original
page.
A 301 redirect is desirable to other redirects because it
also redirects the value from the inbound links in the duplicate content to the
original content or page.
Using a canonical tag.
A canonical tag helps search engines see duplicates as a echo
of the main web page that holds original content. This way, search engines
don’t get confused.
Attaining this requires putting a canonical tag in the head
tag of a duplicate web page.
Here is how to do so: For example, let’s say you have two
versions of the same page. One has this url: http://example.com/bio
and the other has this url: http://example.com/me/bio
You choose the canonical version (the page you consider as
original) of the two pages. Next is to put a canonical tag within the head tag
of the page you consider as a duplicate. In our case, let’s take http://example.com/bio
as the canonical web page. We then put the canonical tag in the head tag of our
duplicate page, in this case: http://example.com/me/bio.
The Image below shows the canonical tag in use.
Requiring your preferred or canonical domain in Google
search console.
To do this, log in to your Google search console account.
Click on “All messages” by the left side of the page. Find the message that
says “improve the search presence of {insert your website url here}.” Open the
message and click on the “favored version” button. You will then see an option
to choose the version of your domain you want Google to take as your canonical
page.
Previously you do this, note that you need to have
registered your website as a property in your search console.
Moving on from duplicate content, it’s time to talk about
those penalties mentioned earlier.
Search Engine Penalties
Search engine penalties are usually caused by:
Cloaking:
This is when you pelt some things in your code so that
search engines can see something totally different from what your website users
see.
Keyword Stuffing:
Choking your content with keywords that you want your page
to rank for is keyword stuffing. Search engines don’t like conditions like
this.
Ads Overshadowing Content:
Some websites are set up in such a way that you fight to
differentiate content from ads. Don’t let that be your site.
Spam:
Of course, spam can’t be prowling around your website and
search engines like Google would leave you alone. Stay away from spammy links,
content, and codes in every way possible.
What you notice when a website has been penalized by search
engines:
The website and all its pages rank low on search engines.
The website may have the “This site may be hacked” tag on
its search engine results. This is common if there is so much spam on a
website.
How to apply for reevaluation if your website has been
penalized
Make sure you’re signed in to Google search console.
Visit this link.
Click on the “check manual actions” button.
Fill out the form and apply for reconsideration.
Next…
Sitemap and Robots.txt:
A sitemap is a listing of all the pages on your website. All
the URLs on your website are put in your sitemap and saved in .xml extension.
Sitemaps are usually referred to as XML Sitemaps and they help search engines
know the pages you want to be indexed. Websites that have Sitemaps usually get
indexed faster than those that don’t. You can use this free tool to generate a
sitemap, upload it to the home directory of your website and then submit it to
Google. Good practice requires having an updated sitemap as one’s website grow
bigger.
Here’s how to submit your Sitemap to Google:
Sign in to your Google search console account
Click on the “manage property” button of the website you
wish to add its sitemap
By the left panel, click on “Crawl” then select “Sitemaps”
from the drop-down.
Click on the “Add/Test Sitemap button at the top right side
of your dashboard.
Moving on to robots.txt.
Robots.txt specifies what page shouldn’t be crawled by
search engines. This way, pages you don’t want to appear in search results are
taken care of. This free tool can be used to generate a robots.txt file. A robots.txt file is usually in this format.
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml
The above means that any robot can access all the content on
the website and that the sitemap is located at
http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml. Disallow: is used to indicate the files or
folders that are not allowed to be crawled by robots. It is left bank if access
is granted for all content. The (*) symbol after user agent is there to
indicate that all robots can crawl the website. Replacing * with robot names
limits the robots that can crawl the website to the ones specified. After
generating a robots.txt file, it should be upload in the home directory of the
website’s domain. Robots.txt tester can be used to test the validity of one’s
robots.txt file by following the steps described earlier in regards to
submitting a sitemap but choosing the robots tester option under the “Crawl”
drop-down.
This extensive read on robots.txt is highly recommended.
Website Performance
What website performance entails:
Web page loading speed optimization
Web visitors are used to very fast loading web pages. Having
a slow website reduces your website’s visitor retention rate and you surely
don’t want that. There are many tools you can use to check your website’s
performance as it relates to speed and other similar factors.
Make sure you optimize your website as recommended after you
take tests using these tools.
Google Page Speed Insights
GTmetrix
Pingdom
User interface/User experience
Having a good-looking website that both humans and search
engines can understand and easily navigate can help boost the relevance of your
website. Let’s briefly dive into navigation and website architecture.
Website architecture has to do with the way information is
arranged on your website. Information in this context refers to the content of
the website while navigation refers to resources that help you move from one
web page to another. Information architecture should be done in such a way that
end users get the most value from content in the best way possible. Check out
this comprehensive read on website architecture to know more. One thing not to forget about navigation is
to use flash and JavaScript navigation sparingly as they are not very good for
boosting SEO.
HTML Markup
This has to do with the appropriate use of HTML tags to
boost SEO. Let’s go!
Title:
This is what is displayed first in your search engine result
page. Here are significant factors in a page’s title that helps SEO:
Having a Keyword in your page Title. More on keywords later.
Having the keyword look early on in the title.
Having the fonts in the title not beyond 56 characters.
Meta description:
Meta descriptions may not disturb your website’s ranking but
contain what you consider as a introduction to what your website or page is
about. This can help in your click-through rate and eventually help you get
customers.
A good meta description is usually between 120-150
characters.
Head Tag:
The head tag contains fundamental data about an HTML page.
Data such as title, meta descriptions, styling, external linking and so on.
Optimizing data contained in the head tag for better search engine readability
is paramount to having a page that ranks well.
Body Tag:
This is where the main content of a web page resides. Here
are some ways to optimize the body of a web page
Have more actual content than ads in your web page body.
Use H1, H2 and H3 tags and include keywords in them.
Avoid the use of iframes.
Images:
Images should:
Have alternate text that contains keywords relevant to a
page.
Be compressed in such a way that they can load faster and
still be beautiful to behold
Have a filename that contains relevant keywords too.
Internal Links:
The links that point to other pages, images or any other
media from within your website shouldn’t be scanty or in excess.
Outbound Links:
These are links that point from your website to other
websites. It is good to have a fair number of links on your website and it is
great if the links are transmitted using an anchor text.
Analytics
After having Google analytics set up for your website, there
are 2 very basic metrics you should pay attention to.
Click-through rate :
This is simply the number of clicks a page receives compared
to the number of impressions. Impressions refer to the number of times an ad is
served or viewed. Pages that have low
click-through rates should be investigated and optimized. Quality page titles
and content promotion is a good way to increase click-through rates.
Bounce rate:
This is simply the percentage of visitors that leave a
website after viewing just one page rather than viewing other pages. The lower
the bounce rate, the better for a website.
Mobile Optimization
The number of smartphone users in Africa has been on the
rise so more people access web pages on mobile. Optimizing your website for
mobile is a must if you want to attract more website users.
Semantic Search Optimization
Semantics has to do with understanding the intent for
something. In the SEO world, that would mean understanding the context in which
searchers use words to search. Semantic search optimization usually involves:
Creating quality content that aims to answer questions
searchers usually ask.
Link to pages that address topics similar to the one you’re
linking from
Using conversational keywords used in voice search such as
“restaurants near me”
How glad are you to know that we’re moving over to the
non-technical SEO section of this article
Non-Technical SEO Audit for SEO Consultant in India
These SEO activities while involving a few technicalities,
do not require total or strict rules to follow. Let’s dive in.
Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the most important factors in SEO. The
more relevant backlinks pointing to a website, the more Google increases the
visibility of a page because Google as a search engine sees these backlinks as
a form of certification or recommendation that a website is valuable. While
backlinks play a vital role in a web page’s ranking, the quality and relevance
of backlinks beat the quantity of backlinks. Having a reputable domain link to
your content is more valuable than having a spammy directory listing your web
page. Other than that, being linked from a page that is highly relevant to your
page’s topic is also of the essence. There’s so much to say about backlinks but
let’s save that for another post. These few tips should do for now:
