Want to do a website audit with Semrush? Well, read till the end because, in this guide, I will explain the steps you need to perform a website audit via Semrush the right way.
The success of your SEO efforts depends upon how correctly you interpret data you can glean from top SEO tools like Semrush. Incidentally, you can utilize the Semrush website audit tool to uncover a treasure trove of invaluable data about your site’s SEO. Furthermore, you can use the data to seal the holes in your SEO strategy and push through SERP for the top position.
Sounds appealing? Then, let’s explore how to do a website audit with the Semrush site audit tool.
Inside this guide, you will find;
- What Can a Semrush Website Audit Reveal?
- How to perform a website audit with Semrush?
- Interpret data and apply the knowledge to improve the website’s SEO.
What Can a Semrush Website Audit Reveal?
Over time, your website might accumulate an abundance of SEO errors that can slow down its performance and prove detrimental to its ranking, traffic, visibility, and conversion. Analyzing your domain via Semrush website audit helps you identify the loopholes in your SEO strategy and uncover the error that might be preventing your site from achieving better search ranking.
Besides, by working on the suggestions provided by the Semrush website audit tool, you can optimize your site to align perfectly with Google’s latest webmaster guidelines and achieve a top ranking. Semrush bot crawls your site, analyzes key SEO matrices, and then creates a comprehensive report mentioning the vulnerabilities on your website that you need to rectify immediately.
Moreover, the Semrush website audit tool creates a detailed performance report covering several aspects, including Core Web vitals, speed, crawlability, and more.
Bonus: If you want to know what other tools Semrush offer and how they work, then take a look at our detailed review of Semrush and its tools here.
How To Perform A Website Audit With Semrush?
I have compiled a step-by-step guide to analyze your site using the Semrush website audit tool perfectly. Follow the steps to quickly uncover the potential gaps in your SEO strategies, prioritize the task that needs immediate attention and take steps to rectify the SEO errors.
Step 1: Initiate Website Audit In Semrush
You can do it in two ways. You can either create a new project or directly use the site audit tool to launch the audit. However, if you use Semrush regularly, it will be beneficial to create a project. This way, you will always be aware of the latest development in your site’s SEO.
This is how you can create a website audit project in Semrush;
- On the Semrush dashboard, go to the project section and click on “Create project.”
- Next, enter the URL of your website and create a project.
Alternatively,
Just select the site audit tool from the Semrush dashboard, enter the website’s URL in the box and launch the website.
Now you have access to all the data of your site.
Step 2: Tweak The Parameters To Suit Your Requirements
You can either choose the website audit to run with default settings or tweak it according to your taste. You can also select the number of pages you want the site audit tool to crawl. By default, it’s 100. You can increase it depending on your plan.
Pro Tip: Semrush has a free trial plan tool that allows you temporary access to all the features of either the Pro or Guru plan.
Here are the additional settings you can apply for the Semrush website audit;
1. You can audit subdomains or subfolders of your website
By default, the website audit tool only analyzes the root domain. However, you can also extend its functionality by choosing to analyze the subdomain. In the site audit setting, you can also enter your subdomains to analyze them.
2. You can audit your website’s mobile version.
By default, Semrush crawls the website the same way as Google Mobile crawling bot. However, you can tweak this setting to either a mobile or a desktop audit. For this, you can shift between Semrush desktop and mobile crawler.
Once you have all the settings per your need, just run the tool and wait till it analyzes your site and shows you the findings.
Step 3: Interpret Data And Apply The Knowledge To Improve The Website’s SEO
Now that you have data from the Semrush website audit tool, the essential task begins – analyzing and implementing the insights to boost your website’s SEO. The best way to do that is to segment the results into different categories and analyze them separately.
Here are the points you should consider;
- Crawlability and indexing issues
- Internal linking and link quality
- Performance issues
Know that, depending on the website, you might find some categories more populated with data compared to others.
But before that, there are other important things you should do;
Semrush lets you prioritize the job at hand.
Once finished, the tool offers insight into your site’s health and marks the issues as Errors, Warnings, and Notices.
Errors need to be addressed immediately, as these are the most critical issues that need quick fixing. Therefore, always start with errors, fix them first, and then move on to warnings and notices.
Pro tip: Use the Site Audit tooltips to learn more about the particular SEO issue at hand and the necessary action needed to fix it.
Let’s analyze the results to gain meaningful insights about the amendment needed to improve the website’s SEO;
a) Check for Crawlability and indexing issues
Good navigation is imperative for your website to gain a higher SERP ranking. Therefore you must check all the crawlability and indexing issues on your website. Check if there are too many redirects, duplicate content, 404 errors, and slow-loading pages. Fix these issues first before moving on to the next ones.
b) Analyze internal linking and link quality
Internal linking is vital in SEO strategy and greatly improves website navigation. Additionally, bad internal linking often leads to poor link juice flow and prevents your site from gaining authority. Therefore you should never overlook internal linking issues.
Semrush lists all the linking issues in a tabular form. Semrush uses an internal tool called LinkRank and prepares results based on link distribution on the pages they point to – high ILR, medium ILR, and low ILR. Based on link analysis, you can identify pages with incorrect interlinking and, by extensions, identify strong pages of your website that can distribute better throughout your website.
c) Examine Performance Issues
The next thing you should consider is the performance issues. Analyze how fast your site loads, discrepancies with HTML or javascript, etc. These issues are vital to address for better positioning and search ranking. Thankfully, the Semrush website audit tool has a dedicated section that offers detailed insight into your website’s performance.
The tool deeply analyzes the performance issues and lists them in a table explaining their implication on your website and the possible remedies to fix the problems.
Dive Deeper: Discover the cost of an SEO audit through our post on how much an SEO audit costs.
Step 4: Keep A Tab On Changes Via the Progress Tab
You have done a site audit, analyzed the results, and performed the action needed to rectify the technical errors. You can run the test again to analyze how the changes impact your website’s SEO. For this, Semrush includes a progress tab.
The progress tab offers you a detailed report that lists the errors the site audit found, the changes you applied, and the impact of these changes over time.
Related Read:
Conclusion: Semrush Website Audit
A clear and insightful site audit with Semrush helps you have a clear overview of various SEO issues preventing your website from gaining better ranking and visibility. Beyond that, a detailed site audit also informs you of the impact of these issues on your Website’s SEO. Understand that technical errors are the most common reasons your ranking plummets; therefore, performing a periodic site audit to gauge performance and uncover errors is essential. Thankfully, with the help of Semrush site audit, you can timely analyze your SEO strategy and draw up a plan to fix issues before they pose any significant risk to your overall positioning.
FAQs
A site audit in SEO is an in-depth analysis and review of a website to identify issues and opportunities for improving SEO and overall site health. It examines both on-page and off-page factors that impact search engine rankings and traffic.
No, Semrush’s Site Audit tool is not free. It is included as part of Semrush’s paid plans. They offer a free trial, but ongoing use requires a paid subscription.
Semrush’s Site Audit tool identifies a wide range of technical and performance issues, such as broken links, duplicate content, accessibility problems, page speed, security vulnerabilities, and more. It also provides actionable recommendations on how to fix identified issues.
Semrush offers different plans based on the features needed. Their Pro plan starts at $108.33 per month, billed annually. The Guru plan is $208.33 per month, billed annually. The business plan is $416.33 per month, billed annually.
It’s recommended to audit your website at least once per month. Auditing more frequently, such as weekly or bi-weekly, can help detect and fix issues faster. The frequency may also depend on how often content is updated, and changes are made to the site. Auditing regularly is important for maintaining site health.
