Look for patterns in their backlinks, such as specific websites or types of content that frequently link back to them. A key strategy is to analyze your competitors’ keyword profiles. A keyword research tool can reveal what keywords your competitors are ranking for, but your site is not.

For example, it’s suggesting that we rewrite our list of the best keyword tools because it used to rank in the top three for its target keyword but now doesn’t even rank in the top 100. You can also double-check your organic search performance in Google Search Console. This is important to do because Ahrefs organic traffic numbers are estimations. Make sure your site uses HTTPS, which encrypts data and protects user information. If your site is still SEO Anomaly running on HTTP, install an SSL certificate and update all internal links accordingly.

This can uncover untapped niches or long-tail keywords that you might have overlooked. The next item on the list is benchmarking your SEO performance against competitors. This is necessary because the performance of your competitors impacts your chances of achieving higher rankings for related keywords. A search engine optimization audit (SEO Audit) will help you identify problematic areas that need improvement with an action plan to correct them. It’s also a great way to keep your website up-to-date with the latest developments in search marketing and on top of the competition. Next, I manually analyzed the search results for those keywords, carefully reviewing the content of top-ranking pages.

Semrush offers a suite of SEO tools that help you both identify opportunities and execute effectively. Then include these questions in your content as subheadings and provide direct, concise answers right below them. If you’ve been following Google’s search guidelines, your content already has the potential to be featured as a source in AI summaries. These AI-generated summaries now appear at the top of many search results, making it even more important to optimize your content to be included as a source.

SEO Initiatives Worth Investing In – 8 Key Strategies for 2025

As SEO professionals and site owners, we know first-hand where webmasters need to focus and spend their time. Many SEOs often overlook security issues, but Google takes it very seriously. Beyond implementing HTTPS, there are a couple of areas you want to check if your site experiences problems. The tool perfectly picked up the low-quality content and explained why it scored so badly. This is exactly the type of content that Google’s human quality raters (and algorithm) are designed to flag. What’s really interesting is how the marketing tone sometimes overshadowed the educational content – a big red flag for Google when it comes to financial advice.

WebFX’s Google Preview Tool

SEO audits are like a map that highlights where you are now and the best path to your SEO goals. They pinpoint what’s working, what’s not and where you can make the most impact. See, SEO can adapt to meet your specific business objectives, whether you’re looking to launch into new markets, boost revenue or something else. If you’re wondering exactly how much to allocate, a solid guideline is to dedicate 5% to 10% of your total revenue to marketing, with a good chunk going toward SEO. An SEO budget is more than a financial plan; it’s a blueprint for business growth.

• Screaming Frog is one of the most trusted names in this, but Sitebulb is another highly recommended one.
• So for WebFX, branded keywords would be something like “WebFX SEO services.” Once you have the results for your company, look at what pages are included in the results.
• In summary, SEO is all about optimizing content, building authority, and improving the overall user experience on your site.
• An enterprise SEO audit will determine what keywords are currently being targeted and how well your enterprise website is optimized for those keywords.
• It is a set of instructions to search engine crawlers detailing which subfolders and pages they are permitted to crawl and which they are not.

Step 1: Identify link building opportunities

“The right SEO audit tool is not just about highlighting what’s wrong with your site; it’s about understanding the holistic picture. From the technical intricacies of on-page elements, the depth of backlinks, to even the user experience. As you discovered, this free SEO audit template includes a list of the most important steps to perform when conducting a full-scale website audit. Crawl errors prevent search engines from accessing your site’s pages. Fixing them involves resolving server issues, correcting broken links, or updating robots.txt files to allow proper crawling. Google Search Console is an essential tool for monitoring how search engines interact with your website.