New comment by junedkhatri31 in "Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2023)"

SEEKING WORK | India | REMOTE | React, Node, Angular, Dotnet, Python, Django

I have 6 years of experience building softwares. I am a backend focused full-stack developer experienced in React, Angular, Typescript, Node.js, Django, Dotnet Core. I have a side project Receevi (https://receevi.com) which is open source at https://github.com/receevi/receevi.

My Skillset:

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Technologies I use:

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email: juned.khatri31@gmail.com

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Generally Intelligent (YC S17) Is Hiring a Chief of Staff

Chief of Staff: https://jobs.lever.co/generallyintelligent/f5d04435-cfb5-4e3…

Generally Intelligent is an AI research company working directly on building human-level general machine intelligence that can learn naturally in the way humans do. Our mission is to understand the fundamentals of learning and build safe, humane machine intelligence.

We are looking for a stellar Chief of Staff who will work closely with our CEO, Kanjun Qiu, and CTO, Josh Albrecht, as we scale the company. Kanjun herself started her career as the Chief of Staff at Dropbox, scaling the company from 200 to 1300 people.

This is a high-trust role with enormous growth potential. Your job is to do whatever it takes to make Generally Intelligent successful. Your work will cut across strategic initiatives and tactical execution with both internal and external folks.

You are
• A fast learner
• Gets stuff done
• Can take on big projects and move them forward with little oversight
• Deep belief that AI today is a historical moment, like the Industrial Revolution or early Internet
• Strong writing skills • Enjoy talking to people / working through others
• Interest in building an AI community around Generally Intelligent

Some backgrounds that could be a fit
• Experience as a founder
• Experience in BizOps (business operations) at a startup
• Experience in strategy consulting (e.g. McKinsey, BCG), in addition to at a startup
• Experience as an engineer or product manager with a desire to move to the business side
• Studied quantitative fields like math, computer science, physics, or computational biology


Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36366062

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Georgia murder suspect accidentally released from jail months ago turns self in

A murder suspect is back behind bars in Georgia Tuesday night after an accidental release from jail in November left him on the run for months. Kaiser Suggs, who is facing an array of charges in Fulton County, was booked at the Clayton County Jail on aggravated assault charges, the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office reported.  … Continue reading Georgia murder suspect accidentally released from jail months ago turns self in

Overtime – Episode #493: Adam Schiff, Bob Costas, John Avlon, Zerlina Maxwell, Grover Norquist

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 4/26/19)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The post Overtime – Episode #493: Adam Schiff, Bob Costas, John Avlon, Zerlina Maxwell, Grover Norquist appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.

Using Ubersuggest for E-Commerce: Everything You Need to Create a Killer Online Store

Despite the growth of social selling for e-commerce, SEO keyword optimization is still crucial to long-term business success. Why? Because that’s how most customers find you.

Search traffic is responsible for 65 percent of e-commerce sessions. If you’re not optimizing for keywords, buyers won’t find you among your competitors.

SEO offers many other advantages. SEO offers many other advantages. For instance, it has a fantastic ROI when done correctly. 

If you want further proof of SEO’s advantages, case study after case study shows how a few tweaks can potentially get your site to the front page of Google. 

ubersuggest for ecommerce - search results

A few words of warning before I move on: 

  • Don’t expect results overnight. SEO can take time to yield results, but it’s a valuable investment that pays off long-term. 
  • Don’t let SEO overwhelm you. There are numerous areas of SEO I could discuss here, but let’s just focus on keywords for now.

Why Should E-Commerce Companies Care About SEO Keywords?

With an estimated 4.2 million e-commerce businesses in North America, there’s a ton of competition. 

To stay ahead of the curve, you need to do everything possible to optimize your site, rank higher in SERPs, and increase visibility. You’ve probably guessed by now, but one of the best ways to do this is with strategically chosen keywords.

For guidance, your chosen keywords should be:

  • Relevant to your product and target audience. 
  • Attainable in search results.
  • Lucrative in terms of driving targeted, profitable traffic to your online store.

When it comes to finding keywords, you need resources to help you along the way. This is where Ubersuggest comes in. 

Ubersuggest is a free tool that makes it easy to research keywords and identify which ones to target. 

But, you don’t have to take my word for it. Let’s talk about how Ubersuggest helped our e-commerce customer, Portrait Flip, improve traffic and drive ROI. 

Portrait Flip is an online store that creates real portraits by real artists from customer photos around the world. Using Ubersuggest for its keyword research, the company increased its organic traffic by 70% in just two years and increased revenue by 32.33 percent over their goal. 

Perhaps you think that’s unattainable. However, there’s a simple reason behind the enhanced results: you drive more relevant, organic traffic to your website by optimizing your pages by targeting the right keywords.

How to Use Ubersuggest to Create a Killer Online Store

From SEO audits and competitive analysis to monitoring results and adapting your approach, plenty goes into running a successful online store. However, there’s no need to get overwhelmed. With the right tools, creating a killer e-commerce store isn’t complicated. 

Below are five steps to creating a killer online store using Ubersuggest. (link to each section)

  1. Create a project from your dashboard in Ubersuggest,
  2. Perform an SEO Audit.
  3. Find the right keywords to target. 
  4. Conduct Competitive Analysis
  5. Create a Backlinks Plan
  6. Track Your Progress

I’ll walk you through each step of the way. 

Step #1 Create a project in Ubersuggest

If you’re new to Ubersuggest, you need to start with the basics.

Begin by registering for a free account.

Once you do that, go to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.” Next, add your website URL and name.

create your project using ubersuggest for e-commerce

It’s also essential to connect your project to your Google Account to see how your keyword strategy is affecting your Google presence. Here’s how to do that:

  • Go to the dashboard.
  • Select the project you want to connect to Google Search Console. 
  • Click ‘connect with Google.’
  • Connect the account or select the ‘Use another account’ option.

Remember, SEO takes time, and there might be some trial and error along the way. Therefore, once you’ve set it all up, I recommend you use Ubersuggest at least once a week to: 

  • Check-in on your SEO progress (you can use the different weekly alerts to help you understand where to focus your efforts).
  • Work through the suggestions in your dashboard.
  • See what your competitors are up to and take small steps each week to compete against them.
  • Find new keywords to target on your product pages (try A/B testing product pages with different keywords to see which one ranks higher).

Portrait Flip did this and achieved significant success and savings:

“We were able to create and implement a clear SEO strategy with Ubersuggest starting in January of 2020 that helped our organic traffic take off. We’ve saved thousands of dollars on paid advertising by keeping Ubersuggest at the heart of our SEO, and we’ve watched our SEO and our revenue grow exponentially, too.”

Step #2 Perform an SEO Audit.

The Ubersuggest Site Audit is the best place to start with your Keyword Strategy. When you perform this analysis, you get a general overview of your website’s SEO standing. 

From here, you can understand where your website ranks in terms of industry-standard for optimal SEO health.

site audit using ubersuggest for e-commerce

To perform a site audit:

  • Go to the project dashboard.
  • Find SEO explorer on the left side menu and select ‘SEO Analyzer.’
  • Wait for the analyzer to create a report; your report sorts errors by difficulty and how fixing them impacts your SEO.
  • Review your report. Pay careful attention to the ‘See All SEO Errors,’ on the associated tab.
  • Click ‘What is this, and how do I fix it?’ on the associated tab. 
  • Once you’ve reviewed the major issues, select the ‘SEO Analyzer Overview’ option. This takes you back to the site audit main page.
  • Now, you’re ready to review the second part of your audit report, which details your desktop and mobile web speed. Use the orange circular toggle, to switch between Desktop and Mobile reports.
  • Fix the issues, return to the ‘SEO Analyzer’ overview, and choose the ‘recrawl’ button at the top of the page.
  • Finally, review the report to see if you’ve fixed the errors or if there are any fresh ones. 

Here’s how Portrait Flip used the site audit feature.

First, Portrait Flip optimized its results by focusing on the ‘Broken Link’ finder.

This helped the business understand where it was losing potential customers due to broken product links. 

At first glance, this might not seem like an important issue, but broken links negatively impact your SEO and the customer experience.

Portrait Flip also found the ‘Page Load Time’ report invaluable, as the company was keen to see if any added website code was inadvertently increasing its load times.

Again, this may not seem like a significant issue. However, speed is crucial for online shopping. Ideally, you want your e-commerce store to load within two seconds. Anything above that adds to your bounce rate and customer dissatisfaction and leads to lost sales. 

After fixing simple issues on the Portrait Flipw website, 98 percent of the revenue generated from its SEO and PPC efforts in 2021 came from organic search. 

Step #3 Research Keywords to Target

Now, this is where the fun starts. 

You can use the Ubersuggest Keyword Reports to understand which keywords to include in your content to drive relevant and lucrative traffic.

ubersuggest keyword ideas for ecommerce

There are two main features to focus on here. 

1. Keyword Overview 

The keyword overview allows you to see how competitive a keyword is and its search volume trend over time. To narrow down your keyword choices, think of the general search terms your target audience might use when searching for a product you sell.

2. Keyword Ideas  

The keyword research feature shows you how people search for keywords related to your business and your products. It enables you to uncover valuable keywords that other competitors aren’t targeting.

How Portrait Flip uses these tools:

Content marketing is at the heart of Portrait Flip’s efforts to attract traffic to its site. For example, the business used blogging and posted regularly on its social media channels. However, these efforts weren’t driving traffic the way the company hoped. 

This is where Ubersuggest proved its worth.

  • The Keyword Overview report enabled Portrait Flip to find relevant keywords to focus on and that prospects use in their searches. 
  • Next, Portrait Flip optimized its blog posts and e-commerce product pages with new keywords. 
  • Finally, Portrait Flip used the Keyword Idea and Content Idea reports to help them plan out their next blog topics. 

The results were exceptional.

Portrait Flip exceeded their traffic expectations in one quarter by over 27 percent—and that’s without any paid advertising. If you’re planning on using these reports, here are a couple of tips to get the most out of it them: 

Find The Most Competitive Keywords

Use the ‘SEO Difficulty’ filter to help determine which keywords are more competitive than others. Be intentional in comparing this with the ‘Paid Difficulty’ feature to help decide if you should pay for Google Ads against the keywords. 

NOTE: Keywords with high Paid Difficulty are usually lucrative. However, they are almost always more expensive.

find competitive keywords using ubersuggest for ecommerce

Search by Location

If you want to attract a worldwide audience, search for global keywords on the ‘location’ tab. You can target your geographical search towards specific local traffic or by country. This can help you find unique keywords in different regions to target.

using ubersuggest for keywords by location for e-commerce

Step #4 Conduct a Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis is an essential part of any effective SEO strategy. By understanding your competitors, you can learn what techniques and keywords they’re using to rank well in search engines and replicate their successes.

Ubersuggest makes this task more manageable than ever. Just use the following tools: 

  • Keywords by Traffic: Go to Ubersuggest, enter the competitor domain URL, and hit “Search” to find the top keywords that the website ranks for. Note any organic keywords and monthly traffic, the domain score, and backlinks. You can also add your competitor’s URL as a project in your Ubersuggest dashboard for regular tracking. 
  • Backlinks Opportunities: Discover what websites are linking to your competitors and get a detailed overview of who to reach out to request links back to your site. Here’s how: 

1. Enter your domain name or URL from your site into the Backlinks Opportunity tool. (Linked above).

2. Enter a competitor domain or a URL from their site. 

3. Click ‘search.’

You can also use the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension for keyword analysis directly in Google search results, YouTube, AND Amazon pages for further insights.

ubersuggest chrome extension

Here’s how you’ll see the data in your SERPs: 

You can also remove competitors or add them.

You’ll also see monthly search and CPC: 

ubersuggest chrome results for ecommerce

Here’s how to use this feature: 

Create a Project for each Competitor: On the Dashboard, click “add a project” and add a few of your competitors to get a complete overview and consistent updates on your competitor’s ranking. You can easily remove competitors or add them. Here’s some more information on using Ubersuggest to spy on your competitors.  

How Portrait Flip used Ubersuggest’s competitive analysis tool: 

Portrait Flip monitored how its competitors were performing and what keywords they were ranking for. Specifically, the company used the Keywords by Traffic and Top Pages by Traffic reports together to get an idea of keywords they were losing out on. Using the information, Portrait Flip secured Page #1 on Google above competitors for primary keywords that drove converting traffic to their site.

Step #5 Start Tracking Your Progress

As you work on your SEO Keywords, it’s critical to be patient and track your progress over the long term. 

Although you might see results with your plan in the next few weeks, as I’ve repeatedly stressed, SEO is an ongoing process and it takes time to get results. Typically, you can expect to wait a few months, so if you’re not seeing immediate progress, don’t get discouraged. 

When you track your keywords, you can see which ones aren’t working and use some fresh ones to optimize your content. 

Then rinse and repeat! 

Keep testing and learning. A/B test different targeted keywords on product pages over time and track to see which performs best. 

You can use Ubersuggest to monitor keyword performance. Here’s how:

In your Dashboard, you can view SEO progress over a specific time. Plus, you can see your progress in keyword ranking and estimated traffic value.

dashboard view of seo ovetime in ubersuggest for ecommerce

How Portrait Flip did this:

As they tracked their progress, they found that most of their year-to-year growth came from organic traffic, which steadily grew once they started using Ubersuggest. 

Conclusion: Using Ubersuggest to Improve Your E-Commerce Store

One of the toughest tasks for e-commerce business owners is standing out from the competition. Gaining visibility, discovering the right keywords, identifying backlinking opportunities, and conducting competitive analysis are some of the most challenging tasks every online store owner faces.  

Fortunately, Ubersuggest offers a solution to these common problems, allowing you to enhance your e-commerce store in key areas. This allows you to increase visibility, attract targeted prospects, and enhance conversions. 

New comment by anuhyareddy_123 in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2022)"

  Location:Hyderabad, India
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  Email: anuhyagangireddy@gmail.com

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The 15-Step SEO Audit That Is Guaranteed to Improve Rankings

You’ve set up your website and it’s looking good, but it’s not engaging visitors, and your traffic is falling.

You’re not alone. According to Ahrefs, 90.63 percent of content gets no organic traffic from Google.

How do you solve the problem? The answer might be discovered by running a website audit.

A website audit can increase your rankings along with visitor numbers and conversions.

If you’re not sure where to start, this guide talks you through it step-by-step.

However, before we get into it, let’s explain what an SEO audit is and why it’s necessary.

What Is an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is a comprehensive analysis of a website and its search engine ranking (SERPs), including where improvements can be made.

When you conduct an SEO audit, you’re assessing your on-site optimization, identifying areas of opportunity for improvement, and gaining recommendations to improve your site’s search position.

An SEO audit can also uncover opportunities for improvement, including:

  • site speed
  • content gaps
  • technical SEO issues that reduce traffic
  • where competitors are outranking you
  • ways to improve UX

The average user spends 54 seconds on a website, and they make assumptions about your business even faster. According to one study, your site has less than two-tenths of a second to make a great first impression. That study was performed in 2011, so you may have even less time these days.

Making a great first impression is just one reason SEO audits are crucial—let’s look at a few more.

Why Are SEO Audits Necessary?

SEO audits provide a clear understanding of where your SEO strategy stands — and it can drastically increase your ranking. Need proof? After performing a simple content-focused SEO audit, Smash VC increased its organic traffic by 76 percent.

Although they can be time-consuming, an SEO audit is invaluable when it comes to improving online visibility and finding issues that need updating or addressing. For instance, audits help you:

  • find mistakes in your website’s code, content, and structure
  • stay competitive by providing actionable insights
  • identify whether you’re ranking for your chosen keywords and where you’re showing on the SERPs
  • update your content to align with algorithm and webmaster guideline changes
  • make decisions about which content to refresh
  • optimize your titles, headlines, and meta descriptions
  • do competitor analysis
  • measure the quality of backlinks, text length, and URL keyword opportunities, which are among the most important factors in SEO ranking
  • check loading times and mobile accessibility for the optimal customer experience

As you can see, an SEO audit is expansive and can affect all major areas of your website.

How to Know It’s Time for an SEO Audit

According to 45 percent of Search Engine Journal’s State of SEO respondents, personal or company websites are one of their top three sources driving the most business. It’s massively important that your customers can find you online, and to ensure they can, you need to perform regular SEO audits.

How often? It’s pretty much always a good time for an SEO audit. However, there are strong indicators that mean your site needs an SEO audit soon. These include:

  • your website’s organic traffic and conversions are falling
  • your site has a high bounce rate
  • your keyword rankings are falling and you don’t know why
  • customer satisfaction is declining. Research indicates SEO can increase ranking quality, thus boosting visitor satisfaction

You’ll also want to perform an SEO audit when you’ve built a new website or after a website migration. This will help you spot SEO challenges early so you can take the appropriate action.

However, rather than being a one-off event, it’s good practice to run an SEO audit at quarterly intervals to ensure your site is working at its best.

What to Do Before You Start Your SEO Audit

Regular SEO site audits were cited as the second most impactful tactic for increasing website traffic in a survey taken by professional SEOs.

The average SEO audit can take just a few hours—or up to six months. Getting prepared before you start the audit helps ensure you address the right issues, saves you time, reduces stress, and keeps you organized.

Before launching an SEO audit, make sure to:

  • Outline your goals: What do you want to achieve? Focus on any specific problems you might be having. For instance, perhaps your website isn’t showing for your chosen keywords, or your bounce rate is increasing. Just for clarity, a bounce rate between 26 and 40 percent is excellent, while the average is 45 percent.
  • Identify stakeholders and resources: Who is in charge of the project? What resources do they need? Will you have access to the people, tools, and data you need to perform the audit? Does anyone need to sign off?
  • Determine the metrics to measure
  • Decide on a date range: Do you want to look at your site’s performance for the last year, quarter, or month?
  • Choose your tools: There are plenty of multi-purpose tools, like Ubersuggest and Screaming Frog. For specific issues, there’s Copyscape for duplicate content, DeepCrawl for website crawling, Google Structured Data Tool, and Small SEO Tools’ keyword density checker.
  • Make a plan for your data: How will you analyze your data after your audit? Will you use a data visualization tool like Google Data Studio to report your findings? Get permissions and accounts created now so you can finish reports quickly while the data is still fresh in your mind.

The 15-Step SEO Audit Guide

Google has more than 200 different ranking factors—figuring out where you’re going wrong can be tough. However, a comprehensive SEO audit can uncover the cause and enable you to create an action plan to fix them.

This 15-step SEO checklist doesn’t cover the main issues that I see plaguing sites and reducing their ranking

1. Review (and Optimize) Meta Descriptions and Meta Titles

Here’s what you might not know: If your meta descriptions aren’t done well, Google will rewrite them. In fact, Google rewrites meta descriptions 62.78 percent of the time – which means you could be missing out on sharing your keyword or main selling point if you neglect your metas.

A meta description is a searcher’s invitation to your website. You’re looking to hook a reader in and get them to your website. A short, sweet, yet detailed meta description attracts more people to your site from search engine pages.

You can audit and optimize meta descriptions and page titles with Semrush in three simple steps:

  1. Start a new project and run a site audit.
  2. Complete a content audit to see a list of all pages, titles, and descriptions. Then, review the spreadsheet, remove unnecessary columns, and optimize your SEO.
  3. Select the on-page SEO checker to gather ideas for optimizing your website’s pages.
SEO audit - SEMrush dashboard

2. Improve User Experience (UX)

Search engines are getting smarter and smarter, and whether you realize it or not, UX is a significant ranking factor—and 73 percent of customers say experience impacts purchasing decisions.

Therefore, if your UX is bad, your SEO and rankings are likely to suffer. The good news is there are countless ways to improve UX.

Many different factors affect how a user perceives your site, such as the design, usability, load time, and more, but there’s no need to overcomplicate things.

Look for the low-hanging fruit first. What are some obvious improvements that can make your site easier to navigate and view?

Concentrate on things like:

  • Your color scheme: Does it match your branding?
  • Headings: Ensure they stand out and make clickable links obvious.
  • Images and video: Images and video help to set a mood, present a product or service, or send visitors to certain areas of your pages. Make sure to add enough images and video where it’s necessary, but maintain a nice balance between text and photos.
  • Path to key pages: Can users easily find pages that matter most, like service pages, product pages, etc.?
  • Forms: Do forms work and are they easy to navigate?

Consider using a heatmap to evaluate UX and gain ideas for further UX optimization. Note that you may need to spend more time on this if you have significant UX issues.

3. Check for Keyword Cannibalization

Cannibalization happens when you have multiple pages on your site that are similar or with identical keywords. Essentially, they are competing with each other for the same search traffic.

When cannibalization occurs, it potentially damages your visibility by lowering rankings for the competing pages and causing visitor confusion. Fixing it can actually improve your traffic by three times.

To find keyword cannibalization, use a tool like Ahrefs to:

  • perform a site audit
  • view your historical rankings
  • complete a site search under your topic and look out for identical URLs
SEO Audit - keyword cannibalization chart Ahrefs

If you find pages are cannibalizing from other pages, consider redirecting weaker pages or combining the content into a single large page full of valuable information.

4. Fix Indexing Issues

Wondering why traffic to your website is flatlining? You might have common indexing errors like:

  • 404 and server errors
  • missing pages
  • crawl issues and duplicate content

Other things, like too many permanent redirects, can cause indexing issues. It’s critical to know if you have too many re-directs since 74.9 percent of websites have them, according to a Semrush study.

There’s a variety of reasons Google might ignore your website, such as slow loading times, low-quality content, or lack of mobile-friendliness. However, you also need to remember that Google doesn’t index every page.

Beyond that, the potential answer to your indexing issues lies in Google’s Search Console.

SEO Audit Google console

You can use the tool to get valuable information about site-specific problems, such as security, duplicate content, and crawl issues.

To do this:

  1. Click on the Start button, which takes you to the URL inspection tool.
  2. Add your URL and wait for the results.
  3. Learn how to analyze the results and troubleshoot errors.

Another option is to use a Google Index Checker that allows you to enter multiple URLs at a time.

If you’re still stuck, Google has a full list of indexing issues, along with their solutions. Alternatively, work with an SEO agency for further direction.

5. Optimize Content With Keywords

Did you know the top Google result gets ten times more click-throughs than the page in the number ten spot? How do you make sure your site is on top? It starts with keywords. Get these wrong, and you won’t see traffic or sales. With higher rankings come more conversions, leads, clicks, and backlinks.

Content optimization doesn’t have to be complicated. Just follow these simple steps:

  1. Conduct competitor research using a tool like Ubersuggest.
  2. Analyze keyword opportunities and look for gaps—these are topics your competitors are covering that you aren’t.
  3. Create content targeting those keywords (or update older content to include the new keyword targets).
  4. Enhance your content, including meta descriptions, with keywords.
  5. Optimize your content for snippets and readability.
  6. Implement a better internal linking strategy. Make sure to use optimized anchor text in your links.

There are plenty of tools available to partially automate the task, like Topic, which can make a significant difference to your website position.

6. Check for Duplicate Content

Duplicate content isn’t a negative ranking factor. And actually, an estimated 29 percent of websites have some duplicate content.

Even though duplicate content isn’t a negative ranking factor, it can impact SEO as it may stop Google from indexing and ranking web content and negatively impact link equity.

This problem can occur when you have multiple domains, or if you’re publishing content in different formats. You can check for duplicates by using a tool like Copyscape or the Duplicate Content Checker Chrome extension.

Should you find duplicates, Google has some easy fixes, such as:

  • using 301 redirects or top-level domains
  • watching how you syndicate content, as Google prioritizes the most appropriate page
  • limiting similar content, like identical copyright notices
  • not using placeholder pages
  • adding canonicalization to tell Google your preferred URL

7. Check Loading Times

The average site takes 1.286 seconds to load on desktop and 2.594 seconds on mobile. If your site takes longer, you could be falling behind.

Slow loading sites can lead to increased bounce rate, lower conversions, and reduced visibility.

Most crucially, for some time now, your site’s loading time is a Google ranking factor. If your site takes too long to load, chances are visitors are going to choose a competitor instead of waiting around.

How do you fix slow loading times?

Run a performance analysis with Google PageSpeed Insights to get your page speed score and to highlight any errors, along with suggestions for improvement.

If your loading times are lagging, you can also try:

  • optimizing images
  • using a Content Delivery Network
  • reducing the number of plugins and scripts
  • minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
  • enabling GZIP compression on your server

If you still can’t figure out what’s causing your issues, feel free to reach out. My team is happy to help.

8. Analyze Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is the number of visitors that come to a website without you paying for search ads. You get organic traffic through links, mentions, and other types of online promotional efforts such as social media posts.

This kind of traffic is a valuable indicator of how popular your site is while helping measure the relevance and quality of your content and the effectiveness of your SEO strategy. It’s also valuable to your bottom line, with 94 percent of marketers saying organic traffic drives the highest ROI.

Now you understand its benefits, what’s the best way to boost organic traffic?

Begin by drawing up an SEO strategy. Use Ubersuggest for keyword and competitor research and add your chosen keywords throughout your pages, including in titles, URLs, and meta descriptions.

Next, conduct a technical SEO review of your site to ensure everything works as it should.

9. Analyze Mobile Friendliness

The more mobile-friendly your website is, the higher it shows in Google search results. Google introduced a mobile-first policy a while back, and with more than half of website traffic coming from mobile, it’s imperative you cater to these users.

You can assess mobile-friendliness by entering your URL into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to get your score.

SEO audit Google mobile friendly test

Use Google’s mobile usability report to assess the fixes you need to make. Depending on the score, consider performing a mobile makeover to improve UX or work with an agency on this.

10. Fix Broken Links

Broken links are one of the most common issues with websites—and most sites have at least a few. One study found the average site has 5.92 broken links per 100 pages. Broken links happen due to website updates, content changes, or deleted pages.

While it may not seem a major issue, most of us know how frustrating it is when links don’t work, and it negatively affects the overall customer experience.

In addition, broken links affect your rankings because Google relies on them for PageRank and anchor text. If these links are broken, Google can’t find them.

Fixing the problem is easy, though. Use a tool like Screaming Frog’s broken link checker to find any problems. You can then fix, delete, or redirect any links.

11. Improve Search Rankings With a Secure HTTPS URL

Google pushes for HTTPS for websites, and the search engine now labels sites without SSL as “unsafe” in its Chrome browser.

As well as being a measure of trustability, Google’s research shows there’s a significant move to SSL, with 98 percent of Chrome users loading pages using a secure URL.

However, as previous research indicates HTTPS has a moderate impact on ranking at best, it’s not a great idea to add SSL purely for SEO purposes.

If you do decide to make the move to HTTPS, Google has a list of best practices to guide you.

12. Complete a Content Audit

According to a study by Content Marketing Institute, 75 percent of successful content marketing teams plan to increase their content budget in 2022. Without a content audit, however, they might not know what efforts will drive ROI.

A content audit helps uncover what is working well and content that could be doing better.

Once you’ve finished the audit, you can optimize content and prioritize the most essential tasks.

Here are some of the key steps in a content audit:

  1. Draw up a list of content assets. CoSchedule has a free template available. You can also download all your pages from Google Analytics.
  2. Define your goals and create a list of any sticking points.
  3. Select your tools, such as Ubersuggest, Google Analytics, or Blaze for creating inventory links, and a broken link checker like Screaming Frog.
  4. Carry out research and analysis.
  5. Identify recommendations.
  6. Finally, create an action plan.

13. Complete a Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis helps you to understand your competition and spot opportunities that you can exploit to rank higher than them on Google.

It also enables you to see how your competitors are doing and what their strengths and weaknesses are while giving you an idea of how to better position your product or service to gain more traction.

Consider the following factors during competitive analysis:

  • keywords that your competitor ranks for
  • number of backlinks each website has
  • quality of backlinks
  • social media engagement (such as Facebook likes, Twitter followers, etc.)
  • website speed
  • mobile responsiveness

Plenty of tools can simplify this task, like Ubersuggest or SproutSocial for measuring social media campaigns.

With Ubersuggest, you just:

  1. enter the competitor’s URL and select Search
  2. choose the Keyword option from the left sidebar
  3. analyze the keyword list
  4. click Backlinks
  5. select Top Pages from the left sidebar

14. Use a Website Crawl Tool

A website crawler, a.k.a. A web spider or web robot crawls the web “looking” at content. Google uses these bots to help rank content, but several SEO tools also use them to help identify SEO issues with your website.

A website crawler or internet bot finds problems such as:

  • crawlability and indexability issues
  • broken links
  • duplicate content

Semrush has an SEO audit tool that you can use to complete a website crawl in minutes:

SEO Audit - SEMrush crawler tool

Here’s how to use the crawling tool to find SEO issues:

  • launch a new project
  • configure the basic settings
  • determine crawling settings and the type of crawler you want to use
  • allow and disallow URLs based on what you want the bot to look at
  • analyze your data and view your site’s health score

Make sure to set a schedule so you can choose the frequency of website crawling

15. Identify Content Gaps

Content gap refers to topics users are looking for information about that your site doesn’t cover. Filling content gaps provides a better user experience and helps increase organic traffic.

You can discover content gaps by:

  • Looking at content rankings: Perhaps your keywords are ranking, but not as high as you’d like. Begin with the basics by checking that SEO fundamentals are in place and enhancing content where you can.
  • Using keyword research: Your first step is seeing what’s working, so check for high-performing keywords. Pay special attention to long-tail keywords as these often have lower competition, and look out for related keywords, too.
  • Competitive analysis: Which keywords are your competitors ranking for? Use these as inspiration for new topic ideas.

To speed things up, you can automate the process using a tool like Ahrefs.

SEO audit - Ahrefs content gap tool

Enter your URL, and the tool shows you which keywords your site isn’t ranking for. Ahrefs also lets you find subtopics.

SEO Audit Frequently Asked Questions

What is an SEO audit tool?

SEO audit tools help identify the SEO mistakes that can ruin your website’s rankings. SEMrush and Ahrefs are just two of the tools available. If you’re looking for free options, try our SEO Analyzer for a free report or SEOptimer for an analysis.

What are the best SEO audit tools?

It depends on what you’re looking for. Ahrefs’ site audit tool, SEMrush Site Audit, Ubersuggest, and Screaming Frog are excellent starting places for a comprehensive technical audit.

What should I do after an SEO audit?

Your SEO audit will tell you what’s wrong with your site. After it is complete, start prioritizing recommendations and implementing them. Start with the most manageable tasks first and then move on to more difficult ones. Finally, create a timeline and stick to it.

Why is an SEO audit important?

SEO audits are important because they uncover opportunities for improvement. Once you’ve fixed SEO issues, you’ll see more visibility, higher traffic, and more leads or sales. You can also connect with an SEO specialist to develop and execute a strategy.

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Conclusion: 15-Step SEO Audit Guide

It doesn’t matter how great your website looks—if it’s not working at its optimal level, it won’t attract the visitors, leads, and conversions rates you need to thrive.

A detailed SEO audit allows you to find and fix any potential issues, and it equips you with the information needed to boost performance, increase rankings, and enhance visibility.

Although SEO may seem complex, it has a powerful effect on your traffic. Many tools like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, and Screaming Frog can help you get your website back on track.

Do you carry out regular SEO audits for your site? What are your favorite tools and strategies?