8 Regular SEO Checks You Should Be Conducting

Search engine optimisation is a long-term job. It can take months to start seeing results, whether you’re aiming to increase revenue, conversions, or sessions, or you’re keeping an eye on those Google rankings. At times, you may find yourself wondering what you can do next to keep up the momentum and continue to optimise your website. We’ve put together a list of eight regular SEO checks you can make to ensure your website is running smoothly and that you’re also coming up with new ideas for SEO keywords, content and strategies.

1. Check Google Analytics for traffic and conversion drops and spikes

This first task is very quick and easy – simply take a look at Google Analytics and make sure everything looks as it should for organic traffic. This means looking at audience sessions, revenue and conversions to see if there are any drops or spikes. You could also check on the bounce rate to see if there is anything of concern. You may find that the majority of the time there is nothing of note to report. But if there is any unusual or concerning activity, you will be able to look into it quickly if you are checking in once a week – rather than being blindsided by numbers that don’t look right when it comes to creating your monthly reports.

If you find traffic or conversions have changed, for example, if a particular product is getting more attention than it used to, this could ultimately inform your SEO strategy, as well as other aspects of your marketing.

2. Check Google Search Console for site errors and fixes

Another way you can make sure everything is ticking along nicely is by looking in Google Search Console. This could be a monthly or fortnightly activity, and if there is anything wrong in Google Search Console, you may well receive an email notifying you anyway. Search Console shows performance in terms of clicks, impressions, CTR and positions. It also reports on any coverage issues such as server errors, 404 pages or redirects. This is also where you can keep an eye on Core Web Vitals performance, so it’s worth checking in every so often just to make sure everything still looks good.

2. Check Ahrefs Site Audit for errors and fixes

Another tool I find very useful is Ahrefs. I use the “Site Audit” section to see where I can further optimise my clients’ websites. This section of the tool is a treasure trove of useful data to help me improve SEO. Here I can see instances of problems and potential improvements such as:

• HTTPS pages linking to HTTP
• Page has links to redirect
• Page has nofollow incoming internal links only
• Meta description tag missing or empty
• Page title too long
• Meta description too long or too short
• Multiple H1 tags
• Missing image alt text
• Image size too large
• Duplicate pages without canonical

…and many more. The great thing about this is that it’s available on the free version of Ahrefs, and it gives you plenty to be getting on with. Ahrefs crawls your website once per week, so you can see the number of errors going down as you improve things, and stay on top of any new issues.

4. Check lost and gained links in Moz as part of your link building strategy

Moz features a “Discovered and Lost” tool within its “Links” section. When looking at your website’s campaign in Moz, you can visit this section to see new external links to the website, as well as links that you used to have but have recently lost. This can be helpful for your link building strategy, as you can see any useful links to your website, and if you’ve lost any you can try to get them back. You could also identify any spam links you may want to disavow.

5. Review Google Search Console for featured snippet query opportunities

Back to Google Search Console, another great use for this tool is to discover new opportunities for keywords. Not only is this great for keywords in general, but it’s also helpful for seeing those question-based queries that lead people to your website. This enables you to optimise your website for featured snippets, by creating new content or optimising existing content around those queries. Putting queries in headings, answering the question in one summary paragraph at the top of the page, and using bullet points, tables or images can all help you get into those featured snippets. Not only can you find ideas for these search queries in Google Search Console, but once you’ve optimised the pages, you can see how your positions have improved. You can also use Moz to easily see which of your search terms are appearing in featured snippets and report on this every month.

6. Review and optimize recently uploaded content

It may be that multiple people are regularly uploading content to your website, and perhaps not everyone creating and publishing content is in an SEO role. But just because someone else is writing the content, doesn’t mean that you as an SEO professional shouldn’t take a look at it, too. If people in other roles within the business are creating content, they may not be doing so with SEO in mind, so it’s useful for you to take a look at this content and ensure the right keywords appear in the content, page title, headings, meta descriptions and image alt tags, and that it reads well overall. Checking the website for new content and optimising it as appropriate could be something you do on a monthly basis, depending on the frequency in which content is uploaded.

7. Find ways to repurpose old content

Repurposing old content is a great way to step up your link building strategy and easily create new, shareable content. For example, you may have an old blog post that lends itself well to an infographic. You have all the information already – you just need to turn it into a useful and attractive image that can then be shared on social media or submitted to another website as a guest article or press release.

8. Find ways to update and reshare old content

Still looking at old content, there may also be ways for you to update this content and breathe new life into it. Perhaps you have a blog post about an online tool or piece of software, but the tool has since been updated with new features or a different interface. You could update the existing article with the new information and note in the article that it has recently been updated. This is an easier way to create content because rather than starting from scratch, you’re working with something that already exists. You also get the benefit of the page already being older and well-established, which helps with the page’s SEO. You can then also reshare the pages on your social media or in email marketing. This may be something you work through in batches – for example, you might identify several blog posts that could be updated and work through them, updating a couple each month. When you’re done, you might put this activity on hold for a few months, and then reassess your existing blog posts to see if any new opportunities have arisen.

SEO takes a lot of work, and especially if you have a large website, there is always more you can do. Staying on top of these checks helps you to understand how your website is performing, as well as find new ways to improve. If you would like any help with your SEO, get in touch with SilverDisc.