How to Rank Higher in Google by Running a Site Audit

We all want to rank higher in the search results, but not all of us are willing to put in the time, work or effort to make things happens. This can both be a pro and a con… pro if you are willing to put the work in, and con if you aren’t. A good rule of thumb here is that there are over a billion active websites on the internet today. With most site owners neglecting simple SEO tips and best practices, it means that anyone who is willing to invest some time and money into their site structure and SEO efforts could see big improvements in the search results.

I previously wrote about how important it is to have a fast loading website — both for on-site experience, conversions and also for SEO and rankings. However, another extremely effective way to rank higher in the search results is to simply run an audit on your site and let Google and other search tools simply tell what quick improvements can be made to your site.

Not only does Google want to see fast web sites with great content, they also want to rank healthy websites in the process.

There are plenty of tools and services out there for running an SEO audit, but in this example, we will be using Mondovo.com — an all-in-one solution for everything relating to site management and improving your rankings in the search results. The reason why I like this site and wanted to use them as an example is because they are extremely cost effective and you will only need to pay for the tools or reports you run through their site.

Using Mondovo to Run a Quick Site Audit

Before running an audit on your site, you are first going to need to create a free account with Mondovo. Don’t worry, it’s fast, free and easy to get started. Once you are logged in, you will see a wide range of options to choose from on the left side menu. In this example, we are going to select the SEO Website Audit Tool.

Once you’ve clicked on the “Website Audit” menu box, you will then be sent over to a few form fields to register your site within your account, then also run a full site audit. These fields include:

• Domain – The site you want to run an audit on.
• Pages to Crawl – How many pages you want the report to analyze.
• Optional Add-ons – Social Metrics, Google Page Speed and Broken Link checks.

Depending on the size of your site and how many posts/pages you have, a full site audit can take a lot of time, resources, and investment. Mondovo offers the option to audit all content within your site or just a small test sample.

For this example, I went with 100 pages to be crawled. Other reports include social metrics, Google Page Speed and the checking of HTTP Status and Broken Links… which are all very important to the overall health of your site.

Below you will see a screenshot of everything mentioned, and that it only cost well under a dollar to actually run and create this report. Even if you had thousands of pages to crawl, it will still just be a few dollars for such valuable information.

With all of your site details filled out, you can then proceed by clicking the “Crawl” button. As mentioned earlier, depending on the size of your site and how many pages you are going to crawl, this report can be generated within just a few minutes, or in the 30-45 minute range for much larger reports.

Once completed, you will be given a full report like the one below. All report data can be accessed from right within your account and is easily accessible through tabs, which break the report down into the following categories: meta issues, linking details, content, HTML optimization, internal links, external links and social metrics. Clicking on any of these tabs will provide a detailed report of issues, which need to be fixed and how to fix them.

Crawl reports can also be downloaded or exported, and will also remain within your account. This is great as you will then have the ability to make updates to your site, then run new reports and can see how the updated improved the overall score and performance of your site.

You can also dive deeper into each of these reports by clicking any of the menu tabs. Below you can see an example of the ‘Content’ section and how it shows where your content might not be up to par — thus lacking in having a target keyword, a poor optimization score, link to text ratio, duplicate content and more.

To get more detailed information on each area of your site audit, simply click on any of these gray boxes and you will see the specific site URLs for each report/notification. Make note of which changes you’ve made to your site, then run a new report to get your new score.

Don’t Forget to Run a SEO On-Page Analysis Report

Full site audits are great, but they can also be quite overwhelming if you have a large website. If you already have a few pages on your site that you know are ranking well, or were built specifically to rank to certain terms, Mondovo also has tools for this as well.

The On-Page SEO Tool allows you to easily analyze individual pages within your site. This tool is perfect for improving your ranking when going after individual keywords and trying to move past the competition when every Page Score number counts.

Just like the site audit tool, you will find the on-page SEO tool in the Mondovo sidebar menu as well. Fill in your site details and requested report types, and you will then be provided with a detailed report like the one below.

Quick notes to highlight for this report are:

• Page Speed – You definitely want this to be 70+ range
• Word Count – Anything over 800-1000 is usually great
• SEO Factors – Try to fix any failed issues

Once you’ve run your report, be sure to make any necessary changes to your site, then run the report again. Keep doing this until you’ve met the highest page score possible.

Individual Site Reports are Perfect for Site Owners

Running a website and creating quality content is hard enough. You shouldn’t have to go crazy and spend a lot of money to keep your site optimized as well. Creating and running reports through Mondovo is not only very simple and fast — it’s also very competitively priced.

Through their pay-as-you-go platform, customers can pick and choose the services, reports and tracking they want to use with their sites. This model in itself can save site owners hundreds of dollars per year, as there is no wasted money on high monthly fees for unused reports and features.

You can see a preview of some Mondovo reports, tracking tools and features below, along with their estimated prices per report.

With no monthly billing in place or long term contracts to sign, there is simply no reason for anyone to not be properly managing, tracking and improving your site optimization at all times. Even just one big site audit every month will only set you back a few dollars, but could mean a huge difference in the overall ranking and success of your sites.

Implement Today. Rank Higher Tomorrow.

We all know the power of SEO and ranking higher in the search results, yet so many of us continue to focus our efforts elsewhere. Just because we can’t physically see site speed, scores or failed issues within our sites, it doesn’t mean they should be ignored.

Put in the time and effort to continually fix and improve your site, and you might just be surprised with how well it starts to rank in the coming weeks and month. Get started right now by running a quick site audit of your own.