Bill Hartzer of Hartzer Consulting, an SEO Consultant and SEO audit expert, presented to the SearchHOU group. Have you ever performed a technical SEO audit of a website? And advanced technical SEO audit isn’t just running an SEO tool and thinking that you’re done–it’s a lot more than that. Bill Hartzer of Hartzer Consulting will go through all the steps required to perform an advanced technical SEO audit of any website. Whether you’ve never performed an SEO audit or you’re an Advanced SEO auditor, you’ll learn a lot from a real pro, who has performed hundreds of SEO audits in the past 10 years.

1. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
SEO Audits: From Beginning
to Advanced Auditing

2. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
About Me
• SEO Consultant, Hartzer Consulting
• Blogger/Writer BillHartzer.com
• Founder, DFWSEM Association (2004)
• US Brand Ambassador, Majestic.com
• Brand Ambassador, OnCrawl.com
• Practicing Organic/Natural SEO since 1996
• Formerly Senior VP, Advice Interactive (Advice Local)
• Senior SEO Strategist, Globe Runner
• Director of SEO, Standing Dog

3. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
SEO Audit Experience
• Started SEO auditing in 2008-ish
• SEO Audit Services, agency level
• SEO Audits as one-off projects
• SEO Audits at start of ongoing monthly SEO
• Full-time SEO Auditing started in 2016
• 100+ SEO Audits in past 2 years
Official New Words in 2008:
• Bitcoin
• burner phone
• dumpster fire
• mainsplain
• photobomb

4. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Overview – SEO Audits
• Common SEO Mistakes I See
• Choosing Which Recommendations to Provide
• Overall SEO audit process
• Presenting Results and Recommendations
@bhartzer

5. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
What Isn’t an SEO Audit?
• Lots of SEO Tools out there. Over 90+ on my list.
• Audits are NOT just running some software or SaaS tool.
• It’s NOT an audit if you just run software or crawl a site.
@bhartzer

6. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
So What Is An SEO Audit?
It’s a process…
• It starts with crawling, gathering lots of data.
• It’s knowing which SEO software or SaaS tool to run, when.
• It’s Interpreting data and providing recommendations.
@bhartzer

7. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
SEO Audits are only as good as the experience
of the person doing the analysis.
@bhartzer

8. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Recommendations must be implemented in
order for you to get value from an SEO Audit.
@bhartzer

9. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Common Mistakes Most Sites Make
@bhartzer

10. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Common Mistake: Bad HTTP/HTTPs Migration
@bhartzer

11. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Common Mistake: Duplicate Content Issues
@bhartzer

12. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Common Mistake: Mega Menus
@bhartzer
Fix:
• Internal Link Structure
• Review Silos
• Review Content clusters

13. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Common Mistake: Site Structure Issues
@bhartzer
Run Sitebulb
• Internal Link Structure
• Review Silos
• Review Content clusters
• Other SEO audit issues
Award-Winning Sitebulb.com

14. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Common Mistake: Orphaned Content & Pages
@bhartzer
Analyze Log File Data
• Find pages not in site structure
• Combine log files, Google
Search Console & Analytics
Data in analysis
OnCrawl.com

15. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Common Mistake: Link Issues, Bad & Low
Quality Links
@bhartzer

16. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Common Mistake: Over Optimization
On-page and onsite over optimization
• Keyword stuffing
• Poorly written meta data
• Not using proper heading tags, lists, etc.
@bhartzer

17. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Common Mistake: Incorrect Usage of Code or
Directives
• Too much, or incorrect Schema markup (or not using it at all)
• Incorrect implementation of code or conflicting directives
- incorrect rel next/prev usage
- incorrect canonical tag directives
- incorrect robots.txt directives
@bhartzer

18. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Choosing Which Recommendations to Provide
• We run the SEO tools, gather the data.
• We get information & data overload!
• What do you recommend? What do you fix?
• Focus on what will make an impact for the site, based on KPIs.
@bhartzer

19. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
What Will Make an Impact?
• Tools provide and show potential issues
(Sitebulb, SEMrush, Screaming Frog)
• Read and understand the issues.
• Make decisions based on the site.
• Size of site, type of site, content, current
rankings, other issues, can all play a role.
• It’s OK to ignore some issues!
• Some analysis just comes with experience.
@bhartzer

20. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
Overall SEO Audit Process
• Before You Begin
• Gather Data
• Analyze
• Present Results
@bhartzer

21. Before You Begin – Info to Gather
• Access to website (if possible), log file data
• Google Analytics, Search Console access
• Bing Webmaster Tools access
• Prior history: What SEO was done in past?
• Prior history: Domain Names used
• List of Domain Names owned, redirected
• List of Competitors
• Ask: anything else we need to know?
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

22. Content – Review Content on Site &
Rankings
• Google Search Console - Search Analytics
• SEMrush.com Keyword Research
• Review Current Rankings
• SimilarWeb Traffic and Data
• SERPStat Data
• Google Analytics Data
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

23. Google
Search Console
> Search Analytics
> Pages Analysis
What does
Google think?
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

24. Gathering Phase
• Gather the Data
• Save the Data (MS Excel, MS Word)
• Start making notes (Notepad)
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

25. Google Searches
• site:domain.com
• site:domain.com –site:www.domain.com
• Click last page of SERPs to get page count
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

26. Crawlers
• OnCrawl
• Screaming Frog
• Sitebulb
• Deep Crawl
• Siteliner
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

27. Screaming Frog
SEO Spider
Adjust to crawl
large site over
100k pages
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

28. Compare:
Pages Crawled
vs
Pages Indexed
SERPS Redux
bookmarklet,
compare lists of
URLs in MS Excel
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

29. Integrity (aka Scrutiny)
What it does:
• Crawls site, reports redirects, 404 errors
• Mac only, can find more site errors
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

30. Siteliner.com
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

31. Bing Webmaster Tools
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

32. Bing Webmaster Tools
• Spot issues to fix
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

33. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer
Google Search Console
• Search Analytics
• Structured Data
• HTML Improvements
• Search Traffic
• Crawl Data

34. SEMRush Site Audit
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

35. Website Log Files
• Weblog Storming, AwStats
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

36. Website Log Files, Crawl & Analytics
• OnCrawl combines all three
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

37. Website Log Files, Crawl & Analytics
• Deep Crawl combines all three, as well
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

38. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer
Search Engine Tools
• Google Search Console
• Bing Webmaster Tools
• Other Google Tools

39. Audit Site Structure
• Internal Link Structure
• Manual Review of Site
• URL Hierarchy
• Grouping of Topics
• GA: In-Page Analytics
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

40. Run Sitebulb
• Internal Link Structure
• Review Silos
• Review Content clusters
• Other SEO audit issues
Sitebulb.com
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

41. Run Cora SEO Software
• Measures over 300 factors
• Calculates which ones matter most
• Run on site’s main keywords
• See the most important factors for each keyword
• On-site, on-page, and offsite factors included
• Shows you what factors your site is missing based on
correlation data of top 100 results for that keyword
• https://www.hartzer.com/cora/
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

42. Sample Cora SEO Software Results
• Roadmap for keyword
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

43. Gather Off-Site Data
• It’s not all about on-site and on-page.
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

44. searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer
Link Data
• Google Search Console Links
• Majestic
• Ahrefs
• Link Research Tools

45. Google Search Console Links
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

46. Ahrefs Links
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

47. Majestic.com Links
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

48. Majestic.com Topic Review
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

49. Majestic Trust Flow, Citation Flow
• Trust Flow = # of clicks from seed set of trusted sites to a URL or Domain
• Citation Flow = Number of citations to a given URL, or Domain
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

50. Majestic Anchor Text Review
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

51. Local Listings – Audit the listings
• Google My Business
• Bing Places for Business
• Yahoo! Local
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

52. Local Citations – Separate Audit
• Are citations correct?
• Same address, suite #, phone number?
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

53. Miscellaneous Data to Review
• All sorts of extras
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

54. Site Speed, DNS Health
• Tools.Pingdom.com
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

55. Site Speed Review – Google Analytics
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

56. Robots.txt Issues
• Default CMS file?
• Disallowing wrong?
• Using “allow”?
• Not specifying sitemap.xml URL
• Directives conflict with other signals
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

57. Sitemap Issues
• New pages not updated on sitemap
• Multiple sitemap issues
• No sitemap file?
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

58. Subdomain Issues
• Duplicate content?
• Using subdomain rather than directory
• Wildcard subdomains turned on?
• www versus non-www issues
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

59. Canonical Issues
• Review canonical tags
• Not using canonical correctly
• Conflicting signals with canonical, others
• Canonical tags to help with dupe content
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

60. Use of Structured Data
• Taking advantage of Schema.org
• Not just for local addresses
• Reviews and Events
• Person, Place, Organization
• Products and Offers
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

61. Analysis Phase
• Analyze the Data
• Make Assumptions
• Make Recommendations
• Analyze the road
• Analyze the conditions…
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

62. Analysis Phase
• Analyze gathered data
• Look for Obvious Issues
• Look for Odd Data Points
• More notes!
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer@bhartzer

63. Analyze Google Analytics
• Changes over time, year over year data
• Conversion Data
• Bounce Rates
• Pages Per Session
• Drops in Traffic:
Panda or Penguin
in past few years?
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

64. Panda, Penguin, Search Engine Traffic Issues
From Past?
• Verify with SEMRush, Google Analytics, SimilarWeb
• Moz Google Algorithm Change History
moz.com/google-algorithm-change
• Marie Haynes Google Algo Update History
mariehaynes.com/algo-changes-and-more/
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

65. Analyze Keyword Data, Rankings
• Look for keyword opportunities
Anything ranking on 2nd page?
• Review SEMRush Keyword Data
• Review GSC Search Analytics
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

66. Analyze On-Site Data
• Title Tags
• Meta Descriptions
• Headings H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.
• Internal Anchor Text
• External Links (outgoing links)
• Canonical Tags
• Hreflang Issues
• Google Pages Indexed vs. Crawled
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

67. Analyze On-Site Data
• Conflicting signals? Overall Topic focus
• Conflicting signals?
Robots.txt vs. Canonical vs. Meta Robots vs. Nofollow
• Internal Duplicate Content
• Not Enough Unique Content
• Internal links within content present?
• Review Navigation
• Review Footer, footer links, copyright
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

68. Analyze Off-Site Data
• Link Velocity Matters (getting new links)
• Review anchor text (over optimized?)
• Diversity of anchor text
• Look for Toxic, Low Quality Links
• Run Link Risk, Link Detox report
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

69. Presentation Phase
• Present the Data
• Show the Results
• Make it look great!
• Action Plan
• Implementation Plan
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

70. Present The Results
• Use internal or formal doc needed?
• Who will implement?
• Implement changes in-house? Outsource?
• MS Word doc, spreadsheets with data
• PowerPoint needed for presentation?
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

71. Present The Results - Document
• Cover Page
• Table of Contents
• Overview (summary, positives, negatives)
• Website Crawlability (404s, 301s, One-Page issues)
• Content Optimization (site arch., keyword issues)
• Linking (Internal links, externals links, link profile)
• Overall Recommendations
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

72. Finally – Additional Lists
• List of Priority Issues
• Present Action Plan for Implementing
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

73. SEO Audit Toolset
• Google Page Speed Test
• Mobile Friendly Test
• Google Search Console - time downloading a page (if slower
than 2 seconds to get the code, they'll abandon the crawl)
• Webpagetest.org (diversity of testing environments is
helpful... browser types, locations, connection speeds)
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

74. SEO Audit Toolset
• WebPageTest
• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• GPSi page speed insights
• G Structured Data Test
• GSC Disavow
• GSC Fetch & Render
• Marie Haynes' Disavow Blacklist
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

75. SEO Audit Toolset
• Google Mobile Test
• Google AMP Test
• Bing Mobile Test
• W3c mobileOK Checker
• Deep Crawl
• Google AW Keyword Planner
• Moz Keyword Explorer
• What is my IP
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

76. SEO Audit Toolset
• Builtwith
• Server Software Detection
• SEO Server Header Checker Tool
• SSL Server Test powered by Qualsys SSL Labs
• Redirect Checker
• Serpstat
• semrush
• GA Code Checker
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

77. SEO Audit Toolset
• W3c CSS Validator
• W3c Markup Validator
• hreflang testing tool
• tracker map
• OSE, Majestic, Ahrefs, Link Research Tools, Kerboo
• Bing Webmaster Tools
• Panguin tool
• OnCrawl
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer

78. Contact
Bill Hartzer
Hartzer Consulting
Email: Bill@BillHartzer.com
Phone: (214) 236-4378
Web: https://www.hartzer.com
Twitter: @bhartzer
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bhartzer
searchHOU 2019: Beginning to Advanced Auditing
@bhartzer