In this article, you\u2019ll learn a beginner-friendly way how to approach an an SEO diagnostic and find high-impact insights\u00a0\u2013 <\/span>by yourself and without breaking the bank. We\u2019ll take a look at:<\/p>\n Disclaimer:<\/strong> it\u2019s possible to go much deeper on any of these analyses. The goal of this article is to help you quickly find the most impactful areas to analyze and work on, in a way that is easy to understand.<\/em><\/p>\n Get My Free Marketing Plan<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/strong><\/p>\n An SEO analysis<\/strong> is the process of reviewing the organic search performance for your website’s content. The goal is to find out how well or poorly optimized your site is, and discover any opportunities to grow further.<\/p>\n This can also go beyond just looking at your own website. Analysis of the broader search landscape in general, and of your competitors, can yield useful insights for your SEO strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n When done properly, an SEO evaluation is a critical first step<\/strong> for any SEO endeavors that will set you on the right track.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Having said that, SEO analysis is a broad term. In order to conduct this type of analysis, it\u2019s necessary to break it down into different areas. We’ll examine four of the most common types of SEO assessments.<\/p>\n Make data-driven decisions to improve your ranking with:<\/strong> Let\u2019s look at four of the most common types of SEO analysis, how you can conduct each one, and tools that will help you do the job.<\/p>\n Note:<\/strong> An SEO score shows you the health of your website by category, such as technical SEO or backlinks, which we discuss in #2 and #3 below.<\/p>\n Want more info on SEO scores? Check out:<\/strong> SEO content analysis<\/strong> is the process of reviewing your content\u2019s organic search performance.<\/p>\n During the process, you can dive into issues like:<\/p>\n Onpage SEO analysis is a big topic, and there are several different angles from which you could approach this. Here are a few things to think about when analyzing your website SEO performance.<\/p>\n Writing perfectly optimized content can be tricky. To improve your SEO ranking, there\u2019s a lot to consider, like:<\/p>\n If your website has lots of content already, reviewing your existing articles is a great place to start your content analysis. It\u2019s likely there are some quick wins to be found by simply updating or optimizing pages.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what you can do. Start by identifying prospective pages to review.<\/p>\n Your pages that get the most organic traffic<\/strong> are likely to be some of the highest impact pages you can work on optimizing and updating.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You can find those in your website analysis<\/a> report. In Google Search Console, it\u2019s under: Google Search Console in the: Performance report > Pages tab > sort by clicks<\/strong>.<\/p>\n When it comes to better keyword rankings, look for \u2018striking distance\u2019 keywords. These are search terms where your average position is around 11-20. With some extra effort, you can bump these up onto page one, and start generating some clicks. Once again, you can find those in the Search Console: Queries report > sort by position<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Next, you\u2019ll need a content optimization<\/a>\u00a0tool.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve updated your content, track your Google keyword rankings<\/a> using Search Console positions and clicks or a dedicated rank tracking tool to measure the impact.<\/p>\n Looking for info on enterprise SEO metrics?<\/strong> Even if your content is written amazingly, expertly researched and easy to read, that\u2019s not enough on it\u2019s own. It also needs to generate revenue and a return on investment. That means getting conversions from your organic search traffic.<\/p>\n A \u2018conversion\u2019 here could mean several different things depending on your goals and business model. It could be:<\/p>\n If you haven\u2019t already, you can set up Goals<\/a> in Google Analytics to track SEO metrics<\/a> like these. Then, in the Landing Pages report, you\u2019ll find out how many people are taking your desired action per page that they entered through:<\/p>\n Look for pages that have high traffic but low conversions. What could you do differently to get more conversions from that page?<\/p>\n Like in the first step, it\u2019s important to consider search intent<\/a>. If someone is searching for \u2018what is market research\u2019 and landing on an informative article, it\u2019s unlikely they\u2019re ready to inquire about services with a market research agency, or sign up for a SaaS tool.<\/p>\n Instead, try to find a logical \u2018next step\u2019 for that user. It could be a downloadable guide or a webinar where they can start learning to do market research for themselves, for example. It\u2019s a more logical next step that encourages the user further down the funnel<\/a> and, thus, closer to buying.<\/p>\n Think about what the user is trying to achieve by reading your content, and push them towards it with calls-to-action (CTAs)<\/a> in your writing.<\/p>\n Want to improve search ranking opportunities for your website?:<\/strong> As you produce more content over time, it\u2019s likely that your organic traffic growth won\u2019t be exactly linear. While you’re producing and ranking new articles, older ones can become outdated and start to slip.<\/p>\n This is known as content decay<\/a>, and with a little effort in the right place, you can prevent it from holding back your website\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n You can manage this either manually by reviewing Google Analytics\/Search Console data, or with a software tool that\u2019ll speed up the process.<\/p>\n It will connect with your Search Console data and automatically detect which of your posts have been declining in traffic over the past one, three, six or twelve months. You\u2019ll also learn exactly how much traffic has been lost, so that you can prioritize your efforts to update old content.<\/p>\n Get inspired by this case study:<\/strong> SEO content analysis can be as much about the content you don\u2019t <\/em>have, as the content you do have.<\/p>\n Keyword research can help you find new search terms that people in your target market are typing into Google, but your site doesn\u2019t yet rank for. It\u2019s an important aspect of any SEO report<\/a> and content strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Keyword research is a big topic which is beyond the scope of this article to get into the nitty gritty. If you want help on how to analyze keywords for SEO, start with<\/span>\u00a0tools like Ahrefs or KWFinder, digging into your Search Console impressions, your PPC data, and more.<\/p>\n You can also learn a lot by analyzing which keywords drive traffic for your competitors, which we\u2019ll touch on later in the competitor analysis section<\/a>\u00a0of this article.<\/p>\n Need a refresher on keywords? Check out:<\/strong> Tools for Analyzing SEO Content<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n For content analysis, consider these SEO tools:<\/p>\n Tools like Ahrefs and KWFinder will help with finding new opportunities, analyzing keyword difficulties and search volumes, and prioritizing topics.<\/p>\n A free tool like Hemingway App can be a great addition for making your writing easier to read and error-free.<\/p>\n The Search Console is a great free way to learn which search queries drive traffic to your pages currently.<\/p>\n Get My Free Marketing Plan<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/strong><\/p>\n Technical SEO<\/strong> covers all the necessary aspects of making sure your website meets the technical requirements of search engines.<\/p>\n The objective of a technical SEO analysis is to ensure that there\u2019s nothing preventing crawlers from crawling, indexing and navigating your website. It doesn\u2019t stop there though, either. A good technical SEO<\/a> checker should also consider ranking factors like page experience, that reflects how easy it is for a human to get around your site, too.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s cover five key steps in a technical SEO analysis. For some of these steps, you\u2019ll need a search engine optimization site analysis tool<\/span>. I\u2019ll demonstrate with Ahrefs, and suggest a few other technical SEO tools at the end as well.<\/p>\n The very first step is to make sure your website allows search engines to crawl your pages. After all, there\u2019s no point in creating great content if a search engine will never find it, right?<\/p>\n Every SEO site has a file called robots.txt that helps to manage access for web crawlers. This is how a typical robots.txt file might look:<\/p>\n User-agent:<\/strong> *<\/p>\n Allow:<\/strong> \/<\/p>\n Disallow:<\/strong> \/wp-admin<\/p>\n Sitemap:<\/strong> https:\/\/yourwebsite.com\/sitemap.xml<\/p>\n This effectively means that we\u2019re allowing all bots to crawl the site, other than URLs in the \/wp-admin subfolder. This area is accessed via logging in, so we don\u2019t want to have those pages present in the SERPs.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re using WordPress, common plugins like Yoast can easily manage this for you in a few clicks.<\/p>\n Google has a robots.txt testing tool<\/a> that you can use to verify whether or not your site is currently accessible:<\/p>\n Next up, you should check for indexing issues. Getting your pages crawled is the first step, but that doesn\u2019t guarantee they\u2019ll be indexed.<\/p>\n You can get an overview of this using the Search Console, in the Coverage report:<\/p>\n Clicking into the \u2018Excluded\u2019 tab will give you information on each of the pages that Google is aware of, but hasn\u2019t indexed for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n Some should be intentional (e.g. because of a noindex or canonical tag), but some might be less obvious, and not intentional.<\/p>\n If you identify any such pages, it could be because of issues like:<\/p>\n You can read their documentation<\/a>\u00a0on this issue to learn more and work through any problems you find.<\/p>\n Need a refresher on technical SEO? Check out:<\/strong> Core Web Vitals<\/a> (CWV) is a relatively new ranking factor for Google that reflects how good the user experience is on your web pages. There are three metrics:<\/p>\n You can check your CWV using the Search Console, where you\u2019ll find an overview of your current scores:<\/p>\n If there are any pages that require improvement, you\u2019ll be able to see which of the CWV metrics it relates to:<\/p>\n To dig deeper and find where you can improve, use Google\u2019s PageSpeed Insights<\/a> report, which identifies specific issues that are hurting your scores:<\/p>\n Need a quick overview of CWV? Check out:<\/strong> If you have any pages with duplicate content, they will be flagged by your SEO checker tool, like Ahrefs Site Audit.<\/p>\n Duplicate content is unlikely to cause a penalty, but it can sometimes cause indexing issues. Why would Google want two pages with the exact same content in their index, after all?<\/p>\n This can sometimes occur with things like:<\/p>\n You might also find duplicate meta descriptions and meta titles across your site. Ahrefs will help you identify the URLs, and you can work through them (find Site Audit on the top menu of Ahrefs):<\/p>\n Every time you visit a web page, your browser requests a response from the server. The server responds in the form of a status code: 301 (a redirect), 404 (error, not found), or 200 (success), for example.<\/p>\n These are important for technical SEO and user experience<\/a>, and as websites get older and larger, status codes are more likely to be an issue. That’s why it’s crucial to perform regular SEO assessments.<\/p>\n If you haven\u2019t already, it\u2019s worth looking for any broken pages on your website, and deciding what to do with them. Your Site Audit report in Ahrefs will flag any such pages, including 404s:<\/p>\n You can click to view the effect URLs, and figure out the best course of action, for example 301 redirecting the page elsewhere. This is especially useful if the page has broken links, as it helps you retain the SEO value of those links.<\/p>\n Tools for Analyzing Technical SEO<\/strong><\/p>\n For technical SEO analysis, check out these tools:<\/p>\n If you have an all-in-one SEO platform<\/a> like Ahrefs<\/strong> or Semrush<\/strong>, technical SEO audit tools are included in the feature set, and some offer a free AI-powered SEO audit.<\/p>\n Screaming Frog<\/strong> is a well-known technical SEO tool that has a great free version which you may want to check out. It doesn\u2019t have the user-friendly prompts and helpful tooltips though, which makes it trickier to use for beginners.<\/p>\n Sitebulb<\/strong> is similar to Screaming Frog in that it is a standalone desktop application for technical SEO, with a couple of main differences. One, it has no free plan, and two, it has a big focus on helping you understand & prioritize issues \u2013 making it a good beginner tool.<\/span><\/p>\n Google Search Console<\/strong> is another important (free) tool that you\u2019ll want to have in your arsenal for technical SEO analysis.<\/p>\n Hubspot’s AI Search Grader uses AI to scan all aspects of your site’s content and seeks areas to optimize that will carry the most significant positive impact on your SEO results.<\/p>\n Get My Free Marketing Plan<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/strong><\/p>\n A backlink analysis<\/strong> is used to review all the backlinks that point towards your website. <\/p>\n The objective is to understand:<\/p>\n Once again, you\u2019ll need software for this (a backlink monitoring\/analysis tool). Most all-in-one SEO software<\/a> tools include a backlink monitoring feature, but there are purpose-built backlink analysis tools, too.<\/p>\n To get started, you\u2019ll need to use a tool to find your website\u2019s backlinks. You can find these in Ahrefs Site Explorer. Simply enter your URL, then click on \u2018Backlinks\u2019 in the left sidebar:<\/p>\n Now that you know how to check your backlink profile<\/a>, here are four things to analyze and think about during a backlink analysis.<\/p>\n New to internal link building? Check out:<\/strong> In any link building strategy, one of the objectives is to ensure that links appear as natural as possible. Anchor text plays a significant role in external links.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re targeting the main keyword \u2018plumber in Chicago\u2019, and every single one of your backlink anchors is \u2018plumber in Chicago\u2019, that\u2019s going to raise a red flag and risk incurring a penalty.<\/p>\n Take a look at your top pages, their top links, and the anchor texts, and consider whether they need to be more varied. In addition to exact match and partial match anchors, consider using:<\/p>\n The more relevant a backlink, the more value you\u2019ll get from it.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s John Mueller<\/a> has confirmed that relevance of backlinks is superior to volume of backlinks.<\/p>\n One powerful and highly relevant link<\/strong> could outweigh 100 irrelevant ones in the algorithm\u2019s weighting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Measuring \u2018relevance\u2019 is tricky, but one way I like to do it is by checking what kind of keywords the domain is ranking for. If you\u2019re building links to a page about SEO tools, and the referring domain ranks for a ton of related keywords like \u2018backlink monitoring\u2019, \u2018on-page SEO\u2019, and on on, that\u2019s a great sign.<\/p>\n If it doesn\u2019t, that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean you should be worried. Just that the link may carry less value. You can quickly check this by putting a URL into Ahrefs Site Explorer, and looking at their Organic Keywords report:<\/p>\n Authority and traffic also impact the strength of a backlink.<\/p>\n Ahrefs Backlinks report gives an overview of the Domain Rating (DR) and organic traffic from each of your referring pages, which helps to understand at a glance how strong your links are:<\/p>\n Your own website\u2019s Domain Rating will also reflect the overall strength of your backlink profile (where 0 is the weakest, and 100 is the strongest).<\/p>\n Like relevance, though, lower authority and traffic doesn\u2019t mean the link is harmful. You can simply use this step to discover which are the most authoritative sites that link to you, and why. Are they linking to your resource pages? Your free tools? Your \u2018how to\u2019 articles? Considering this can help inform your link building strategy.<\/p>\n And if you don\u2019t have many links at all yet, well, that\u2019s good to know, too. Spend some time learning about link building techniques<\/a>, and research how your competitors are building links (more on this later).<\/p>\n A disavow file is a .txt file you can submit to Google to request that they ignore those links. It is used to recover from penalties, like if a site received a manual action<\/a> for bad or paid links.<\/p>\n In my SEO career, using a disavow file hasn\u2019t been necessary very often. Google is pretty good at figuring out which links it should pay attention to and which are spammy rubbish that it (and webmasters) can safely ignore.<\/p>\n That being said, it\u2019s worth being aware of in case you get a manual action or you believe that one is likely due to toxic backlinks. That could be, for example, due to a negative SEO attack or your own black hat<\/a> link building.<\/p>\n You can export URLs that link to you from Ahrefs (some, or all of them), and edit it down to just those you deem toxic. Applying a filter can speed up this process. Some ideas include:<\/p>\n\n
What Is SEO Analysis?<\/h2>\n
\n100 SEO Statistics That\u2019ll Help You Dominate Search Rankings in 2023<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n4 Types of SEO Analysis<\/h2>\n
\nSEO Score: How to Grade Your Website (in 5 Minutes)<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n1) SEO Content Analysis<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n
How SEO-Friendly Is Your Writing?<\/span><\/h3>\n
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![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screenshot-2021-10-22-080538.jpg-mh.jpg\")
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\nEnterprise SEO Metrics: The Key Metrics to Track for Success<\/a>
\n<\/p>\nHow Well Does Your Content Convert Traffic?<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screenshot-2021-10-21-154049.jpg-mh.jpg\")
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\nHow to Optimize Your Site for Search Ranking with Your Web Analytics Data<\/a>
\n<\/p>\nCheck if Any of Your Older Content Is Losing Traffic<\/span><\/h3>\n
\nWhy You Should Update Content \u2013 Or Risk Losing The Traffic You Have<\/a>
\n<\/p>\nWhich Keywords Does Your Site Not Yet Rank for in Google?<\/span><\/h3>\n
\nSEO Keyword Research Made Easy in 2023<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n\n
2) Technical SEO Analysis<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Ensure That Your Website Can Be Crawled<\/span><\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/pasted-image-0-55.png\")
<\/figure>\nMake Sure Your Pages Are Indexed<\/span><\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/pasted-image-0-56.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n
\nHow to Fix 15 Common On-Site Technical SEO Issues<\/a>
\n<\/p>\nCore Web Vitals<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Untitled-21.png\")
<\/figure>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Untitled-22.png\")
<\/figure>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Untitled-23.png\")
<\/figure>\n
\nCWV Update: Why Google Keeps Changing How It Measures Your Site\u2019s UX<\/a>
\n<\/p>\nLook for Duplicate Content<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/pasted-image-0-57.png\")
<\/figure>\nManage Redirects and Status Codes<\/span><\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/pasted-image-0-58.png\")
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![\"what](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/AI-SEO-Quiz-graphic-10032024-3-e1727968361326.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n3) Backlink Profile Analysis<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screenshot-2021-10-21-112940.jpg-mh.jpg\")
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\nHow to Implement Internal Linking for SEO (Step-by-Step)<\/a>
\n<\/p>\nAnchor Texts<\/span><\/h3>\n
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Relevance<\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"Ahrefs](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Ahrefs-organic-keywords.png\")
<\/p>\nAuthority and Traffic<\/span><\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/pasted-image-0-60.png\")
<\/figure>\nConsider Using a Disavow File<\/span><\/h3>\n
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