Do you need help finding out the ridiculous reason behind low SERP rankings?
An enterprise SEO audit is all you need.
Your complex enterprise website with thousands of web pages may have hundreds of reasons why your website is not ranking. And to identify the why, you need a thorough enterprise SEO audit.
This blog will tell you about enterprise SEO audit – what it is, why to do it, and how to do it.
So, keep reading and bookmark the post right away!
What is an Enterprise SEO audit?
An enterprise SEO audit involves an in-depth evaluation of the factors that impact the search positions of a website in the SERPs. It is performed to identify the elements of a large website that affect its search rankings and assess an SEO strategy.
The insights obtained from an enterprise SEO audit can guide you toward improving required areas and identifying the SEO tactics that work well.
Why do SEO Audits?
Conducting an enterprise SEO audit is the first step toward improving your SEO strategy.
The process helps you determine your website's strengths and loopholes, allowing you to build your SEO campaigns more appropriately.
Further, by running an SEO audit, you can efficiently utilize your time, budget, and resources toward optimizations that will result in the most significant impacts.
Here are a few reasons why you must perform enterprise SEO audits on a regular basis.
Fix website errors
As mentioned already, enterprise SEO audits point out the problem areas. It helps you ensure that your website does not have broken links or error messages. Running an SEO audit will reveal the underlying errors, enabling you to fix them and recover the lost site traffic.
Upgrade your content quality
Enterprise SEO audits check on the content in your archives that you’ve forgotten about. It helps you identify outdated content and refresh it with the latest information and keywords. Therefore, the updated content can bounce back in the SERPs and attract organic traffic to your website.
Improve titles and metadata
Title and meta descriptions are little things often missed. But they are the first things your visitors read about when your website appears in the search results. Hence, titles and meta descriptions must be relevant to the content on your site. Conducting an SEO audit helps you improve your title and meta tags, maintaining consistency and relevance.
How to do an Enterprise SEO Audit?
Enterprise SEO audits are typically for exceptionally large websites with over 1000 URLs and web pages.
Though enterprise SEO audit templates can help you perform an SEO audit successfully, expert skills are necessary for the process. There are 200+ factors in the Google algorithm that affect your search results ranking. So, without expert SEO professionals, victory seems far-fetched in enterprise SEO audits.
According to research, 57% of enterprises say that limited in-house SEO skills are the biggest roadblock to achieving important SEO goals. Hence, collaborating with an efficient enterprise SEO agency is the best option.
An in-depth and extensive enterprise SEO audit comprises five parts – content, backlink, technical SEO, page experience, and industry standards. Using the perfect SEO software tools, here’s how we do it.
1. Content
Content is the core of enterprise SEO. Hence, performing a content audit is a task in itself. Here are the things you must check when performing a content audit.
Targeting the Right Keywords
What exactly are the ‘right keywords’?
They are the ones that site visitors consistently use to find web pages similar to the topic of your webpage.
Once you know the topics to create content about, you must begin with keyword research. Target keywords that are not too generic but more specific and relevant to your website, products, and services.
Also, your target keywords must be practical goals for your website. That is, if they are too competitive with a huge search volume, your website may fail to rank for it. So, choose keywords that are more topic-related rather than competitive.
SEMrush is an excellent tool for performing your keyword research, and Google Search Console is the best to discover search terms that a website already ranks for. Hence, with both tools, you can compile a keyword list that fits a website better.
Maintaining User-friendly URLs
URLs are the first visible thing in search results, and they hold the power to influence the user’s clicks to a page.
Inserting keywords in URLs is good practice because it tells users what the page is about and helps increase clicks from the SERPs. Hence, keep your URLs short and descriptive. Use the most significant words to convey to users that this is the page they are searching for.
Further, use hyphens between words to keep your URL paths readable and understandable. Eliminate unnecessary characters or numbers.
Optimization of Meta Tags
Title tags tell Google what your web content is about, and meta descriptions help your potential visitors understand what to expect from the web page content.
Like URLs, the tags also show up in search results. Therefore, checking them is a vital part of your enterprise SEO audit.
Following the best SEO practices, ensure to check for
- Originality and uniqueness of titles and meta-descriptions;
- Character length of the title (50-6 characters) and meta description (150-160 characters); and
- What the title tag includes (title tags must include the vital keywords and a brief description of what the page is about. However, ensure that the title tag is concise and descriptive)
Content Quality and Depth of Research
Google links content full of valuable and original insights, in-depth research, and comprehensive explanation on the topic.
Though there’s no standard length for content, according to Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, web pages should have a ‘satisfying’ amount of content depending on the topic and page purpose.
The best way to rank in the SERPs is to use the top-ranking content as a starting point. Explore those contents and identify the content gaps (what the content lacks). Then, use these insights to create better content for your web page.
Internal Linking of Landing Pages
The purpose of internal links is to help Google find and index your pages. They also convey information about website hierarchy, topical breadth, relevance signals, and more.
Leverage internal linking strategy for your landing pages. Also, check the anchor texts that link one landing page to another.
Without internal linking, you will have orphan pages that Google won’t be able to find and index because of missing linking pathways.
External linking of Content with Relevant Sources
Does your content have external links to pages from which you source facts and statistics?
Google often uses external links to get a better idea of what a page is about. So, ensure that you have appropriate links to other quality web pages that may be useful to your readers.
Embedding Rich Media and Interactive Elements
Videos, GIFs, images, and interactive elements like jump links make the content more engaging for your readers. Also, Google judges such content pages to be useful.
However, be careful of the page load time after you have inserted media and interactive elements. If it slows down your website speed, it may have an adverse impact on your SEO performance.
Inserting Keyword-rich Alt Text in Images
This step is specifically significant for enterprise websites with thousands of images, like eCommerce websites.
As Google cannot see images, it relies on alt text to understand how the image relates to the web page content. Also, alt text is useful to people with visual impairment.
While conducting your enterprise SEO audit, you must identify opportunities to use image alt text to help Google and users with visual impairment understand what the images are about.
Perfect Alt Text Examples for Images
Elimination of Obsolete Web Pages
When webpages are too short or contain repetitive content, they become useless. These low-quality pages with little to no information or outdated information must be highlighted during an enterprise SEO audit.
Once you have identified these pages, consider consolidating them with other relevant pages, rewriting their content, or removing them if the content is obsolete.
2. Backlinks
Links from other trusted websites to your website are a significant factor in ranking SERPs. Here are a few backlink-related things you must review during an enterprise SEO audit.
Number of Backlinks
Use backlink tools like Ahrefs to find your competitors’ total backlinks and other unique referring domains.
If you identify a gap in the backlinks or referring domains, it may be a source for low-ranking positions or fewer keyword rankings. Make sure to focus on building backlinks as a part of your SEO campaign and digital PR to outrun your competitors.
Toxic Backlinks
Backlinks significantly improve website authority, but toxic backlinks are detrimental to your SEO performance.
Toxic backlinks from low-quality, spammy websites make Google suspicious of your website. As a result, Google may judge your website as guilty of backlink manipulation.
You should be concerned about the spammy backlinks that you have obtained. For instance, you must disavow paid links if you cannot remove them.
Using certain SEO tools, you can identify and disavow toxic backlinks. However, disavowing the wrong links may affect your SEO results. So, take the help of an expert if you aren’t sure about using a tool.
Anchor texts
Highly optimized anchor texts can be troublesome. They indicate that an enterprise is involved in guest posting for links or buying links. So, keep your link-building tactics clean, and you don’t have to worry about anchor texts.
3. Technical SEO
Though content is the heart of enterprise SEO audit, technical SEO is one of the most important aspects that can impact your SEO performance.
Let’s see what you must consider in technical SEO.
XML Sitemap
Since enterprise websites have thousands of landing pages, one of the most common issues identified in enterprise SEO audits is search engine indexing.
To avoid this issue, you must generate and submit an XML sitemap that communicates a website’s hierarchy to the search engine crawlers. Additionally, it conveys the most vital pages to crawl daily and index.
Schema Markup Setup
Checking whether your schema markup is properly set up is vital. Schema markup is a very strong optimization that an enterprise can use for SEO.
If a few of your enterprise website pages already include schema, ensure that your schema is eligible and validated for rich results.
Use Google’s rich results to validate schema or a site crawler to test all your pages for more efficient evaluation.
Broken links and Redirects
Enterprise SEO audits should highlight the broken links and redirects in your website.
Over time, links break naturally as website content gets updated. So, it is important to check that all internal and external links direct the traffic to live pages.
Otherwise, Google will judge the website as poorly-maintained and less likely to promote the pages.
Canonical Tags
Why are canonical tags important? Because they help Google identify the best webpage version among similar pages.
Most eCommerce enterprises may have duplicate content targeting different territories or regions. If these pages do not have canonical tags, Google will consider the content duplicate.
However, if you use a self-referential canonical tag, it confirms that the page is the most in-depth and the best version. In short, canonical tags make a page the master version of all other similar pages.
Hreflang Tags
Is your enterprise website a multilingual one? If yes, hreflang tags are important for you.
Hreflang tags help you display the right language content to the right set of audiences. This massively improves your relevance signals and greatly impacts your conversion rates.
However, remember to add only hreflang tags to web pages with self-referencing canonical tags, not duplicate page versions.
4. Page Experience
This aspect has a direct impact on user experience as well as hampers your search results ranking. Here’s what you must check during an enterprise SEO audit.
High-performance and mobile-friendliness
An enterprise website must be mobile-responsive. That means users browsing from mobile devices must have a seamless page experience.
Since the majority of users search from mobile devices, mobile-first indexing should be your priority. Also, since Google mostly uses mobile pages in its index, it is more likely to use your mobile pages when determining search rankings.
Here are a few common mobile errors you must avoid.
- Unwanted pop-ups
- Missing or unplayable content
- Unresponsive design
- Deficient UX elements
Compliance with Core Web Vitals (CWV) Standards
The web pages need to comply with CWV standards to rank in the SERPs. CWV is a Google ranking factor that helps enterprises achieve their SEO goals.
You can use Google Search Console to check your CVW metrics like page speed, performance, size, etc.
HTTP or HTTPS Protocols
Providing security to your website users is a must. If your web pages do not use HTTPS protocols, you aren’t providing users with a secure website browsing experience.
Google Chrome blocks insecure HTTP web pages. Users are required to take an additional step to reach these web pages. However, browsing remains insecure for users.
Though HTTPS is not a major ranking factor, it must be a priority for enterprises to offer users a secure page experience to avoid reducing page traffic.
5. Industry Standards
Coming to industry standards, you must know a few things about Google’s algorithms. Take a look.
Your-Money-Your-Life (YMYL) Website
If your enterprise website is considered a YMYL (legal, health, or financial), Google sets very high standards for your content.
Though this point isn’t applicable to all enterprise websites, if you come under the YMYL banner, consider meeting this industry standard.
E-A-T Levels
Google likes websites that have content relevant to users’ keywords. Also, it wants an enterprise website to display industry expertise.
E-A-T stands for expertise, authority, and trust. But there are a few more factors included.
- Well-researched and in-depth content (long-form blogs, eBooks, guides, etc.)
- A clear focus and page purpose
- Expert sourcing and authorship (author bylines showing expertise)
- Off-site reputation indications (for instance, an online post on a reputable website that links to the enterprise website)
When creating content, ensure to maintain E-A-T levels. If you aren’t sure about the factors, check your competitors' websites.
The task may seem daunting as we come to the end of how to do an enterprise SEO audit. But this extensive SEO audit is worth investing your time and resources into.
So, collaborate with an SEO agency with reasonable enterprise SEO pricing and expertise to perform a comprehensive enterprise SEO audit.
How to create an enterprise SEO audit checklist?
Checklists make life much easier. Be it grocery shopping or your to-do list at work, it’s a different satisfaction to put a checkmark or cross off an item from the long list.
It is the same with an enterprise SEO audit. But before we tell you about creating an enterprise SEO audit checklist, here’s something you must know.
Though checklists help you conduct an enterprise SEO audit, it takes curiosity and investigation to make the audit successful. This is especially true when the website belongs to a big brand with a complex structure.
So, the point here is that enterprise SEO audits require an ultra-careful eye that can,
- find the factors affecting the SEO performance adversely and their resolutions; and
- optimize opportunities hidden in plain sight.
Now that you’ve learned about our initial approach to enterprise SEO audits let’s get into the steps.
Step 1 – Define the website's purpose, audience, and goals.
Though the first step may sound obvious, it is the most important one.
Several enterprises heavily spend on ad budgets, yet their organic search performance could be better. Even though they think that they’re already doing everything right, Google’s search results say otherwise.
We’ve seen that, in such cases, the main reason behind such lackluster search performance is the absence of well-defined goals and clarity on the audience.
Therefore, to avoid a mismatch of content strategy, target keywords, meta-descriptions, and failed conversions, we get a clear picture of why the enterprise SEO audit is being performed. Then, we do the following:
- Create a roadmap defining each phase of the SEO audit process, including timelines and performance benchmarks.
- Get confirmation on a full process buy-in from our content and technical teams.
Step 2: Technical Audit
Here are a few technical checklist recommendations for enterprises.
Site search on Google - Performing site searches on Google helps you eliminate the URL types that need not be indexed. For instance, search site:www.mywebsite.com/inurl: “?” to identify the URLs that use parameters.
Website crawl – Tools like Screaming Frog can be used to crawl your entire website. This crawl data can help you track all website URLs, understand URL structures, check response codes, metadata, inbound links, and more. The tool can also provide reports showing your site's technical health, including broken links, redirect issues, and hreflang errors.
Monitor Google Search Console – Google search console can show how Google views and crawls your website. Inspect the following on Google Console:
- Have you submitted a sitemap to Google? Are there any errors on the sitemap?
- Are there any security issues or manual actions that need resolving?
- Is the website usable on mobile devices?
- Are the URLs failing Core Web Vitals?
- Does Google detect website schema markup? Are there any errors that need fixing?
- Check the pages being indexed and not indexed. Identify pages (if any) that have no value but are using up the crawl budget. Identify pages excluded from search results that must be included. Look out for 404s that should be 301 redirects elsewhere.
Create one data source – When fixing technical errors, we maintain a single spreadsheet as the single data source. Recording everything– from crawl data and Screaming Frog reports to Google Search Console data in a single space makes the process seamless.
Step 3: Content Audit
What should you check when conducting a content audit?
- Whether or not the right keywords are being targeted;
- Optimization of the web pages; and
- Whether or not the content on the website meets the user’s intent and answers their queries.
Here’s what we do to conduct a content audit.
- Conduct thorough keyword research and compile a list of keywords to target.
- Analyze the keyword data in Google Search Console to identify cannibalization issues and optimization opportunities.
- Prioritize topics and keywords that core web pages must target.
- Check on-page optimization
Step 4: Backlink Audit
A quality backlink profile certifies a website as trustworthy. So, review the backlinks, remove spammy ones, identify new backlink opportunities from competitor profiles, and create a strategy for building new links.
How often should you conduct enterprise SEO audits?
Frequent enterprise SEO audits are necessary to keep up with the latest insights about your website and SEO strategy performance. Hence, most companies conduct in-depth SEO audits periodically.
Several enterprises perform quarterly SEO audits to check the performance of the newly generated content. However, since it takes time to conduct in-depth enterprise SEO audits, most companies audit their websites twice a year, that is, every six months.
A Pro Tip - Conduct an additional SEO audit if you make significant changes to your website based on your enterprise website SEO audit reports.
Enterprise SEO Services from TripleDart
At TripleDart, our expert SEO team with ‘Sherlock Holmes’ vibes prioritizes attention to detail. We do not consider enterprise SEO audits projects that must be rushed off. Instead, we take ample time to check the vitals, find the problem areas, and fix them based on the enterprise website SEO audit reports.
Looking forward to exponential growth in web traffic and revenue? Here’s what you can expect from TripleDart’s enterprise SEO services.
Competitor Analysis
Keep a tab on what your competitors are up to with an in-depth competitor analysis. Also, our data-driven analysis can help you make informed decisions and more effective strategies.
In-depth SEO audit
Performing periodic SEO audits is our priority. We scan your website and the SEO strategy to find and fix structural issues, content gaps and issues, technical issues, and keyword optimization.
Keyword Research
Without a robust keyword research strategy, you cannot go ahead with enterprise SEO. We ensure preparing a list of well-researched keywords for your brand that can make your website more relevant to the audience and bring in more traffic.
Content Creation and Management
Our thorough keyword research and competitor analysis help us create the perfect content plan for your business. Thus, you get the best quality content optimized with relevant keywords for your website.
On-page and Technical SEO
Webpage optimization is one of the most vital aspects of enterprise SEO. We continually optimize your webpages – from meta-titles, descriptions, URLs, and sitemaps to images, building internal links, and everything else.
Further, technical SEO audit optimizes aspects that aren’t included in webpages. We perform technical SEO audits to keep a check on the technical aspects like site load time, keyword cannibalization, duplicate metadata, mobile-friendliness, HTTPS status codes, and much more.
Final Note
Though enterprise SEO audit is a herculean task, creating the best custom SEO campaign strategy is a must.
So, do what you must to conduct a sitewide SEO audit for our website to ensure the most accurate evaluation. Once you’re done with the evaluation, you can prioritize optimizations that greatly impact your SEO strategy.
Leverage the best SEO tools and get the best team to work on your enterprise SEO audit. To get assistance with SEO audits, contact the TripleDart team and learn more about Enterprise SEO.
Book a call now!
