SEO Analysis: Definition, Procedure, Contents & Tools Overview
Here you will receive an overview of the most important points and best practices for SEO analysis.
- What is an SEO analysis?
- Why should you carry out an SEO check?
- What is important in an SEO analysis?
- How is an SEO check of the website carried out?
- Technical SEO check: The basic requirements must be right
- Content-SEO-Check: Your opportunity to stand out
- Backlink SEO Analysis: Does your website provide added value for the target group?
- What mistakes should be avoided during the SEO analysis?
- Bonus: Checklist for your successful SEO analysis
An SEO analysis is the starting point of a website optimization. It helps you to improve the contents, the technical requirements and the performance of the page. Therefore, our guest author Lisa Karasch gives you an overview of the most important points and best practices for SEO analysis.
What is an SEO analysis?
An SEO analysis or SEO check is a task from the area of search engine optimization, with which the visibility and performance of the website can be analyzed. The analysis includes both the content of a website - i.e. texts, images, videos, etc. - as well as the technical structure, performance and backlinks. In particular, it is important to identify technical errors in order to make the website more efficient and to improve the User Experience (UX).
Why should you carry out an SEO check?
The main goal of the SEO check is to improve the relevant parameters of a website (content and performance) so that more leads are generated. Because more leads ideally also mean increased sales.
An SEO analysis can be used as the cornerstone of the SEO strategy. This allows you to first check how your site is performing technically and in terms of content and where there are still opportunities for improvement. Anyone who works blindly risks that the work will ultimately lead to no result.
With a clear analysis, you can be sure that you are using your energy in the right place and that you are offering interesting content. In addition, you check through keyword and ranking analyzes whether the users' questions are best answered and whether your site is technically flawless.
What is important in an SEO analysis?
It is important that you approach search engine optimization holistically and consider all details. Therefore, you should analyze various points in order to carry out a very thorough SEO website analysis. Focus on the three main areas: Content, technology and backlinks. Depending on what skills you can cover in the team or as an individual, the tasks can be divided up well among each other or divided into projects.
For the content topic, it is important that you are familiar with the target group and have the necessary information about the product or service. Only in this way can you best respond to the questions, worries and desires of the users. On the subject of technology, technical know-how is sometimes necessary and in most cases also programming skills. If you don't have this, you need to turn to the responsible developers within the company or rely on external service providers. When it comes to backlinks, it is helpful if you bring PR and networking experience: there is a clear analysis part, but the establishment of new qualitative backlinks should also be promoted.
How is an SEO check of the website carried out?
An SEO analysis can only be carried out using a variety of tools. There are free and paid tools that you can and should use. They provide you with a comprehensive SEO website analysis of the various areas with clear action recommendations. Many providers also create automated reports. Here it is important not to just work through these from top to bottom, but also to question and understand the meaning of these action recommendations.
Technical SEO check: The basic requirements must be right
The technical requirements on your page must be flawless so that the Google crawlers can read and index the page. But also page loading time, responsiveness and other points play into the technical structure of a page and can have a big impact on the user experience on the page. The following points play an important role.
- Crawling and indexing: Only if the content is crawlable and indexable can the search engine display it on the search result pages. Therefore, you should make sure from the beginning that important pages are discoverable by the crawlers. If pages are not to be crawled, they can be blocked in the robots.txt. Then the crawlers cannot read the corresponding pages or directories. The crawlers first specifically look for this file in order to adhere to the instructions in it. However, you can also allow the page to be crawled and only the indexing. This works by embedding a no-index tag in the head area of a page. This allows you to prevent Google from listing a certain page in the search results - such as a page with a download that should only be accessible to certain users. An SEO check alerts you to non-crawlable and non-indexed pages.
- Submit sitemap: Submitting the sitemap is also important for the indexing of a website. Technically, it is not absolutely necessary, as search engines can index the pages even without such a sitemap. However, this process is simplified by adding a sitemap and is especially important if the website has been extensively revised or a lot of new content has been and will be added.
- Optimization for mobile devices: Each individual page should be optimized for mobile devices. This means, for example, that responsive content adapts to the screen size and content is easy to read. Google already offers its own tools for this, so you can use the Mobile-Friendly Test Tool to check if there are possible improvements.
- Fast loading time: The page speed is a ranking factor and should definitely be part of the SEO check. Nobody wants to wait long for the fully loaded page after clicking on a search result. Google also provides the tool PageSpeed Insights to get insights into the page speed. However, you can only check one page at a time with it, so a more comprehensive solution is more target-oriented here. If you want to deal with Google Looker Studio (formerly Google Datastudio), you can find a free CrUX report (Chrome User Experience) that can be read off for your own website.
- Repair broken links: You click on a link and a mistake is displayed? Frustrating! This is exactly what you should avoid. Therefore, you should regularly track down and repair, redirect or remove defective links with the help of the SEO analysis. 404 Status Code you can find with such an analysis. If the page was accidentally deleted, you can usually restore it from the content management system used. If it should really disappear and has important backlinks, you can redirect the page to a relevant page. If there are no backlinks, you can remove the link or place another internal link in its place.
Google offers a wide range of important tools with its own tools that are suitable for the SEO check of a website. In the Google Search Console you can check which pages are indexed and you will also be alerted to errors under “Coverage” - e.g. when clickable elements are too close to each other. You can also submit your sitemaps under “Sitemaps” and check various criteria of user experience in the “User friendliness” area. This includes, for example, the mobile-friendly check or information on page speed.
The Google Search Console provides an overview of indexed pages, among other things.
Various providers of comprehensive SEO tools offer the ability to read technical data and scan your site completely. One provider is XOVI. With the on-page check integrated in the XOVI Suite, you have the option of checking various technical questions. These include temporary redirects, 404 pages, canonical tags and much more. It also shows you whether certain pages have been blocked via robots.txt.
In addition to these technical analyzes, the tool offers many other options that help with the other phases of the SEO website check. With XOVI you can also export the data as an Excel file and then process it further. This way you can generate a list of all pages that have a long loading time. You also have the option of reading out and repairing the 404 error pages or analyzing your meta robots tags and instructions.
With the XOVI On-Page Check you can read out technical errors on the entire website.
Content-SEO-Check: Your opportunity to stand out
For the content of a page, it is important that you stand out from the competition and answer your users' questions as best as possible. Highlight how various challenges can be solved with your product. Keywords play an important role in aligning and narrowing down your content. Go into detail on various topics to meet the ranking factors of the search engine.
In order for your page to assert itself against your competitors, you should pay attention to some things when it comes to content and carry out your on-page optimization when conducting the SEO analysis. This includes the following aspects, among others.
- Ranking Analysis: With which URL do you stand with which keyword on which position? You can easily check and monitor this with a ranking check. Add important terms to your keyword monitoring. This way you always have them in view and can see whether your ranking has improved or worsened. You also have the option of watching these terms for your competitors as well.
- Keyword Research Analysis: A keyword research is an important building block of your SEO check, because with it you determine the orientation of the individual subpages. With an analysis, you can be sure that the content is also being searched and that you are fulfilling the user search intention. You can logically cluster thematically related subpages and texts and thus put your knowledge for the search engine in a context. Whether category page, blog article or product page: Each subpage has a different goal, should answer different questions and be optimized for specific keywords. This prevents you from cannibalizing other subpages and possibly covering content twice.
- Content audit: Check your content for timeliness and high quality. Some content may have been important at a certain point in time, but is no longer up to date. Content maintenance and consolidation is just as much a part of a website as the creation of new SEO texts. With the help of the SEO check, you can check whether backlinks to this page exist. If not, you can take the page offline and focus on more important pages.
- Maintenance of meta data: Although Google can adapt the meta titles and descriptions on its own, you should make sure that you have maintained the data and that it is optimized for the respective content of the subpage. Then it is possible that the search engine will display your titles and descriptions - another option for addressing your target group.
- Image SEO: You should also make sure that alt tags and image title tags are maintained for the images. This allows you to describe the image in more detail and gives you another option to place important keywords. Additionally, it is important to keep the file size low so you don't unnecessarily worsen the loading time. Common image editing programs help to save the images in smaller file size without losing quality.
If you want to evaluate the traffic or the impressions for the individual keywords, you have to rely on the data from the Google Search Console and a website tracking tool like Google Analytics. With the latter, you also have the option of measuring the traffic from the other channels. This way you can read what role search engine optimization plays in your marketing mix. For a comprehensive SEO check of your content, however, SEO suites like XOVI or Sistrix are suitable.
With Sistrix you can, for example, analyze the performance of individual directories or the entire domain. This quickly shows which directories generate the best rankings and therefore the most organic traffic. With the ranking analysis, you can check for threshold keywords - i.e. keywords that are on the threshold of page 1. With this form of ranking check, you get a selection of your subpages, which can make the leap to page 1 with a little optimization and updating.
In Sistrix you can filter for rankings on page 2 and optimize these pages.
Furthermore, you have the possibility to display the ranking changes for a certain period of time. If you have changed or optimized pages, you can quickly understand whether your work has been successful.
With Sistrix you can keep an eye on your ranking changes.
Sistrix also allows you to analyze certain keywords in detail. You can analyze the monthly searches and clicks and the search intention is categorized for you. You will also be shown possible questions from users that your content should answer. This is important, among other things, for the Voice Search feature, as the search engine checks which websites answer the asked question. The voice assistant then possibly reads your paragraph of text as a possible answer.
A detailed analysis of your keyword helps you to better assess the potential of the search queries.
Backlink SEO Analysis: Does your website provide added value for the target group?
Last but not least, you should also check the external factors of your website in order to advance your off-page optimization. Backlinks - i.e. referring links from other websites - can crown your website. Because they express that your content is trustworthy and of such high quality that other pages refer to it. However, it is sometimes difficult to assess which links are of high quality and which are not. Therefore, you should take a close look at the referring domains with a backlink audit and check whether they can help you and your ranking. In particularly competitive areas, qualitative backlinks can often be decisive for a ranking ahead of the competition. You can pay attention to the following points when checking your backlinks as part of your SEO check:
- Link gain: Regularly check whether you have gained links or whether your backlinks are stagnating or decreasing. This way, you can easily identify new links and find answers to why the page is linking to you. This also gives you added value for your content strategy, as you can go even more precisely into this topic area in the future.
- Link quality: Much more important than the number of backlinks, however, is the quality. The common SEO suites sort your backlinks by quality. So you can check potentially critical links and remove them from your backlink profile so that they do not harm your website.
- Anchor texts: If an anchor text contains your brand, this can support your marketing strategy. Ideally, the anchor texts are so meaningful that users know directly where they will land with a click on the link. If anchor texts seem unnatural or contain special characters, however, this may indicate spam.
- Top-level domains: You should recognize harmful influences on your backlink profile in good time. An important indicator is the overview of the referring domains. Here you can sort by top-level domains. For example, if you operate a German page, but receive many links from India or Russia, without maintaining business relationships there, this can also be an indicator of spam.
You can read out link targets, anchor texts and many other information via XOVI.
When analyzing your backlinks, various SEO suites help with your SEO check, which you can find at OMR in the SEO tool category. However, the assessment of these tools cannot reflect absolute accuracy, which is why you should always check exactly whether the respective backlink is important for you and your backlink profile. XOVI and other SEO suites can only give you an assessment of the quality of your links. You also see what is most referred to which subpages. The anchor texts used are also clearly listed.
What mistakes should be avoided during the SEO analysis?
One mistake you should definitely avoid: not dealing enough with the target group. Those who run a website should make sure that the right content for their own target group is offered there. If users do not find the content they are looking for, they leave again and inform themselves about the competition. With a ranking analysis, you can ensure that your content is found. A previous keyword analysis ensures that the search terms are the right ones for you.
Another common mistake: only relying on the automatic evaluations of the SEO tools. It is always important to bring the corresponding know-how for the analysis and interpretation of your SEO check. Because only in this way can you classify the results and prioritize and implement the improvement options accordingly.
Also the missing regularity of the SEO analysis is a common mistake. Set a reminder - e.g. monthly or bi-weekly - for analysis. A website is a running project: this means it is never finished, but needs to be constantly optimized. The same applies to your SEO checks. If there has recently been a Google update that could affect your site, it may be useful to run a Google SEO check and check your clicks and impressions using the Google Search Console shortly after the update. But even in all other cases, it is recommended to schedule a routine and thus a regular schedule for your website checks.
Bonus: Checklist for your successful SEO analysis
You are ready for your SEO check. Choose the necessary tools from OMR Reviews and start right away. Many tools can be used for free or offer a free trial. This is particularly the case with SEO analysis tools as you can test which one you like best. The following checklist for your SEO analysis gives you a final overview:
- Always keep the technology of your site up to date and pay attention to a fast loading time as well as optimization for mobile devices.
- The sites should be accessible and indexable for the crawlers if you want to rank in the search engine.
- The navigation is sensibly structured and the content is clustered. Thematically similar pages are located in the same directory.
- The content of your site is current, relevant, and well researched.
- Populate each important subpage with unique content. Avoid double occupancy of pages with the same keywords.
- Your content brings value to users, so they stay on your site for a longer period of time and ideally backlinks are generated.
- Your backlink profile fits your industry and geographical orientation and does not contain spam links.
Empfehlenswerte SEO Tools
Weitere empfehlenswerte SEO-Tools kannst du auf OMR Reviews finden und vergleichen. Insgesamt haben wir dort über 150 SEO-Tools (Stand: Dezember 2023) gelistet, die dir dabei helfen können, deinen organischen Traffic langfristig zu steigern. Also schau vorbei und vergleiche die Softwares mithilfe der verifizierten Nutzerbewertungen:
Lisa Kadah ist Marketing-Managerin mit Schwerpunkt SEO. Nach ihrem Linguistik-Studium konnte sie in einer Marketing-Agentur ihr sprachliches Feingefühl weiter schärfen. Jetzt liegt ihr Fokus auf organischen Wachstumsstrategien in der Tech-Branche. An der Disziplin SEO begeistert sie besonders der stetige Wandel und die Herausforderung, sich täglich neues Wissen aneignen zu müssen.
