Open the SEO toolbox to find valuable programs like Entity and Header Detectors, Payload and SEO Log Analyzers, and a useful Chrome extension. In fact, Semrush is so sure they’ll satisfy your SEO needs, the CEO has offered to eat his hat if you find another service offering the same list of uniquely helpful features! Our organic traffic was very volatile as a result of some of those experiments.

• It can show you how to improve your website and make it better than your opponents.
• You should be looking for keywords in the title tag and meta description during your SEO audit, as well.
• Review your files for unused CSS or JavaScript that could inflate load times and unnecessarily increase file sizes.
• These are HTTP status codes used to correct indexed duplicate content.
• Personally, I like Screaming Frog for technical SEO and Surfer or GrowthBar for content SEO.
• A “crawl” is where software scans your website to find SEO issues.

Marketing Against the Grain

This lets you pull all your SEO, PPC, and marketing data into one clean, interactive dashboard. Google Looker Studio is a free tool that helps you create SEO dashboards that are visually appealing and customizable. You can waste hours each month collecting data from various platforms.

Keyword Cannibalization

Add the domain link and a set of specific URLs you want to crawl. If your site has been penalized, you will see a corresponding notice in Google Search Console. Make sure to address the warning before you proceed further with an SEO audit checklist.

From there, you can download the latest links and create a link audit spreadsheet. Afterward, you manually evaluate your links by paying attention to factors like anchor text, IP address, and page content. Google Structured Data Testing Tool is a free online tool provided by Google that validates and troubleshoots structured data markup implemented on websites. In today’s competitive digital landscape, on-page SEO audits are a must-have, so don’t hesitate to walk through our SEO checklist.

This keyword cannibalization confused Google about which page to rank, SEO Anomaly diluting their visibility. I helped a SaaS project recover from an SEO penalty in 8 months—without using the disavow tool (which I don’t recommend anymore). Instead, I focused on building high-quality backlinks to create a healthy link profile. The domain had a legacy penalty because of its past use in the adult industry, but the owner was determined to keep it since it was a perfect match for their brand. I’ve worked with a bunch of clients dealing with SEO penalties, but one case really stuck with me.

XML sitemaps are files that allow search engines to find and understand your website, making it possible to index and show your site to searchers. Every page you want to show up on Google or Yahoo must be in your sitemap, which means creating a map can become tedious if your site has a lot of pages. XML Sitemaps Generator simplifies this process by creating a customized map for you.