SEO Audit: Step 1

How do I know if I’m doing SEO right? Sure, I know the rules, but am I really practicing what I preach?

After attending the Monday’s Raleigh SEO Meetup on How to Audit Your Site for SEO, I returned home with the motivation to finally kick the tires of JillianWarren.com’s SEO strategy and see how it’s working. I always update this site with SEO best practices in mind, but (as it’s a personal side project and not my actual work), I’m not always as diligent as I could be, usually in the interest of saving time.

With my SEO vigor renewed, I set out to accomplish Day 1 of Phil Buckley‘s SEO site audit workbook. (It also helps that I spent the rest of the week at home sick, so I had extra free time to devote to the project!)

Day 1

1. Test my domain at urianalysis.com to confirm that all instances of my domain name (http://www.jillianwarren.com, jillianwarren.com, etc.) all resolve one single canonical page. I added a few basic 301 redirects for different possible versions of my homepage URL that users might type into their browsers, just in case.
2. Spider my site (I used Screaming Frog) for an inventory of all links to check for 404s, missing meta data, and complicated strings of redirects. I realized I haven’t always been diligent about creating unique page titles and meta descriptions for every tiny piece of content, so I spent plenty of time adding those. Plus, I found and fixed an internal link spelling error and a few external links to pages that had since changed URLs.
3. Check Google Webmaster Tools, particularly the new Site Health feature, to confirm Google is able to properly access my site. No problems there!
4. Test my site at ReverseInternet.com. For a site like mine, this really didn’t come in handy, especially since I didn’t want to sign up for an account.

Day 1: complete! I’m always invigorated by attending industry events like the Raleigh SEO Meetup, but then other priorities compete for my energy and I fail to follow through on all the ideas and tips I accumulate. I hope to stick with this one and put all 7 days of the SEO Audit plan into practice.