website audit Archives

Now we’ve established that, if you want your website to succeed, you need to understand WordPress SEO and implement best practices. If you’re a WordPress admin, you might think SEO has all been taken care of. But while WordPress does cater for SEO to an extent, there’s still more you can do to improve your website’s performance.

To keep up, you’ll need tools that’ll help you audit your website, and monitor its performance continuously. For this, we recommend the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin and Plesk SEO Toolkit. So let’s dive into how to use these tools so they can get your SEO started right.

Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin

With more than five million installations and counting, Yoast SEO rightly claims to be the #1 WordPress SEO plugin. Since 2010, Yoast SEO has been helping WordPress site masters improve their search engine rankings. Yoast SEO is among the top four downloaded WordPress plugins, and is likely to be already installed on your WordPress.

Plesk SEO Toolkit

SEO Toolkit is a Plesk extension which uses the power of XOVI SEO engine. This tool helps website owners improve their website’s SEO, and track their performance. Plesk SEO Toolkit offers insights into website rankings in search engines, as well as social media reach. You can also compare your websites to main competitors, plus receive advice on how to best optimize your website to attract more visitors.

Take off with Plesk SEO Toolkit

If you’ve got an existing Plesk installation, you can just login and go to Server Management > Extension. Then Find SEO Toolkit and click Install Now. You’re now ready to start with the free version of the extension. Alternatively, you can buy a license and install it through Server Management > Tools & Settings > License Management > Additional Licenses.

You can now access the extension at any time through the SEO Toolkit link in the main menu.

If you’re new to Plesk – no problem! If you like, you can Download Plesk free from here. Then install it on your internet host where your WordPress site is located. However, you can also ask your internet hosting provider to install it for you.

The cool thing about the Plesk SEO Toolkit is that it can take care of all your websites hosted on the server where it’s installed. You just need to tell it which website to connect to when you start:

Navigate to SEO Toolkit
Click Wizard
Select the domain of your WordPress website

Click Next. The tool will do a first audit of your website and present the results. You can now follow through the next steps. But, for now, we’ll quit by clicking Skip wizard instead.

Now whenever you open SEO Toolkit, you’ll have direct access to your website(s) with an overview of all important SEO statistics and messages.

Installation for Yoast SEO

In WordPress – navigate to Plugins > Install new, find Yoast SEO, click Install Now, then Activate. You’ll see a new menu called SEO.

Now start the Configuration Wizard found on the Dashboard of the General page. It’ll show you all the relevant basic SEO settings step by step:

Activate site for indexing through search engine spiders
Select the type of site
Enter information about the company represented for use in Google’s Knowledge graph
Select whether pages should be shown in the search results. This controls which content will be included in the sitemaps (see discussion below in the section ‘Creating XML sitemaps’
Select if there will be single or multiple authors
Set up the template for page titles

Your basic settings are now complete. But you can return to the configuration wizard anytime if you need to change any settings.

Using technical WordPress tuning tools

Once installed, you’re finally ready to get down to the exciting business of SEO.

Connecting to Google Search Console

After adding your website to the search console, Google needs to verify your website belongs to you. Yoast SEO makes this easy:

Choose the verification method HTML tag
Copy the meta tag in the box
In WordPress – open SEO > General > Webmaster tools
Paste the code in the Google field and click Save Changes.
Go back to Google Search Console and click Verify.

Google can run into problems with your site when indexing it. But the Google Search Console tracks and displays these errors, and alerts you whenever something critical happens. It can also guide you through possible solutions.

Creating xml sitemaps

It’s best practice to let Google know about the pages and posts you want indexed by submitting a sitemap.

Yoast SEO takes care of this automatically. You can verify this by:

Navigating to SEO > General > Features
Finding the toggle XML sitemaps and expanding the box
Clicking on See the XML sitemap to view the file that was generated.

Yoast SEO will update your sitemap automatically when you add or remove a page, post or category.

Creating Canonical URLs

Yoast SEO renders the correct canonical URL for almost any page type in a WordPress install automatically.

If you ever need to change it for a specific piece of content – be it a post or a page – you can do so in the content settings.

SEO Auditing with Plesk SEO Toolkit

Plesk SEO Toolkit enables you to keep tabs on everything SEO-related on your website.

The Site Audit feature lets you do a quick SEO check as a first step.

To start the site audit:

Click Wizard on the main page of SEO Toolkit, then select the domain you want to check and click Next.

The Site Audit will show you immediately if all of your important settings are correct.

To do a complete scan:

Open up the domain tab on the main page and click Site Audit. Then click Rescan <domain>.

The scan can take some time to complete, depending on the number of pages your site contains. The results show as a summary of your site’s health.Below that you’ll find a detailed listing divided into Content, SEO and Technology. For each item, the tool displays the state (ok or error), the number of occurrences, and its importance.

The power of Site Audit is in the large number of details it checks automatically. On everything from blocked elements through to problems with indexation, server errors, issues with canonicals, loading time, and content audit. Noone could ever keep all of these in mind, let alone check them manually.

You can drill down into every issue to find the exact place, setting or page where the issue was found, together with recommendations for solving the problem.

But there’s more! To help you keep track of all fixes, Site Audit creates tasks and task reminders for you.

Site Audit rescans your site automatically every 20 minutes. All you have to do is come back regularly to see if any issues need your attention.

SEO Auditing for Yoast SEO

It’s important to make sure that while your site changes and grows over time, you preserve its optimal state. Both Yoast SEO and Plesk SEO Toolkit can help you do this well.

If the Yoast plugin finds any issues with SEO on your site, it’ll show you a message on the dashboard. However, if everything is fine it’ll look like this:

Otherwise, you’ll see a warning message along with information on how you can resolve the issue:

Getting your content right

Are you happy with the results so far? Now that we’ve covered the technical side of things, it’s time to use the power of these two SEO tools to create and optimize content.

1. Audit your Content with Plesk SEO Toolkit

SEO Toolkit’s Site Audit component runs periodic checks on your site, and your content. You’ll find all issues related to content on the Content tab in Site Audit. The Tasks component also helps you work on content issues by creating a list of recommended tasks to help you improve your site’s SEO. Actionable insights cover issues with duplicated content, defective links, missing H1/H2/H3, title tags, and more.

To quickly check on recent issues and stats – simply visit the start page of SEO Toolkit where you’ll see the overall health score, as well as the number of open and already completed tasks at a glance.

2. Optimize your content

Yoast SEO supports you with content creation right where you type it. So at the bottom of the page or post editor, you’ll see the Yoast Meta Box. From here, it’ll help you by analyzing your text and document settings on the fly and presenting you with any issues and recommendations it finds.

In the box, you’ll see an instant overall rating of how you’re doing in terms of SEO and Readability – indicated by the red, orange or green icons.

3. Understanding Yoast’s SEO Analysis

In the section SEO analysis, you’ll find a list of all details checked and issues found, together with clear recommendations on how to fix them. This gives you an idea of which problems to tackle first.

The features in the Yoast meta box can also help you optimize the meta-information for a page or post.

Open the section Snippet Preview to check how your search result will look in Google SERPs. You can also edit and optimize the title and description.

Don’t forget to create a highly-focused meta description – since this is the text Google uses to display a summary of your page in the SERP. Both the title and description have a recommended length, as indicated by the green or red line below the editor box. The SEO analysis tool also automatically checks the readability of your text, taking into account sentence length, use of active vs. passive voice, and the Flesch reading score.

DIY SEO

Hopefully this guide proves that you can confidently tackle SEO yourself – with the help of two SEO tools: Yoast SEO and Plesk SEO Toolkit. Not only do these tools remove the burden of tweaking the technical aspects of SEO, but they also actively support you in creating fully-optimized content.

Next up: How to analyze your on-page SEO success for WordPress.

Gain traction with Google by checking keyword rankings, comparing your site with competitors and ensuring crawlers can do their job properly.

We’d love to hear your experience of working with Plesk SEO Toolkit or Yoast SEO. So let us know how they’ve helped you optimize your WordPress website in the comments below.

You should consider your company website the essential bridge connecting your clients to your business. It’s the go-to platform where potential customers can find all the relevant company info, your products and services, and a way to get them. And while many businesses have now grasped the fundamental importance of investing in a proper website, there are still 10 common pitfalls that can hinder your website’s performance and success.

1. Missing vital security measures

Online security has become a key factor users look out for when accessing new websites. Think of features like SSL, providing a safe, encrypted link between browser and server, or a CAPTCHA, stopping unwanted bots. Not investing in them can mean unknown sources interfering with your business website performance. In turn, poor performance will very likely result in scaring away potential clients.

2. Forgetting WordPress plugin updates

As with any system, the different features that make up WordPress require regular maintenance. Failing to do so can slow your website way down and even make certain functions not work properly for their users. So it’s vital for your business to find a tool to update these plugins regularly, such as the popular WordPress Toolkit. Because this lets you mass-manage instances, plugins and themes instantly and from one place. Among many WordPress Toolkit benefits, you also get a staging environment to test new features before they go live.

3. Not planning for scalability

Any online business aims to get the biggest customer base possible. So naturally, it’s important for your website to be built in such a way that you can later scale. For example, having enough server power to handle a surge in traffic. And having efficient data backup to manage mass information flow. Note that it’s always better to account for this from the start because it will become very difficult to upgrade a website at the last minute.

Plesk’s control panel works as a scaling tool, allowing businesses to grow over time. Hosting providers can manage their clients and servers across different infrastructure setups, even tailoring it to their business needs.

4. Failing to account for accessibility

In an age where users can access a website from any OS, browser, or device – we all need to make sure we’re available everywhere and to everyone. It would be quite damaging if a business website is designed in such a way that it loses compatibility with, say, iOS devices. Because this essentially eliminates an entire section of potential customers interested in your services. So make sure any device, OS and browser can access your website.

5. Forgetting to undertake a website audit

Website audits are a full analysis of all the different issues that may impact your website’s visibility in a search engine. This is especially important when considering marketing campaigns, because a website audit can help your business uncover weak factors that impact performance.

6. Skipping SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process where one optimizes their websites so as to receive higher natural rankings in search engine results. And with the online market becoming increasingly more competitive, SEO is a key tool for business to stand out.

Not implementing SEO on a website relegates it to lower position on a search results page, meaning that business can miss out on a considerable number of potential customers. Since SEO can be quite extensive, we recommend that beginners install the SEO Toolkit on Plesk to get started and get found online.

7. Ditching the sitemap

A site map is essentially a list of pages that make up a website and is considered a tool for search engine bots to crawl your website and index it. When a page gets indexed, it makes it more easily searchable in a search engine, thereby increasing its visibility. Therefore, if you don’t submit a sitemap to a search engine, you’re effectively limiting your website’s visibility.

8. Not having a marketing strategy

Choose your content carefully as it sets the tone for your brand, but make sure it ties in well with your marketing strategy. No marketing strategy makes sales attempts messy. If your mission doesn’t make sense to your potential customers, they’ll find it difficult to engage with your brand. Meaning that ultimately, they won’t convert.

9. Ignoring Analytics

Website analytics give businesses valuable insights about their audience, like age, location, and preferences. They can also reveal visitor behaviour, like each website session’s duration, which pages are the most popular and how a visitor arrives at your site. Use this to build a complete profile of your target customer so you can cater to their needs better with your product, service and content.

10. Forgetting your social proof

When it comes to online businesses, everyone looks for proof of its legitimacy before engaging further. These include client testimonials, means of contact, including physical addresses and actual phone numbers, and most importantly active social profiles. Businesses who focus so hard on the actual product that they forget their social community, end up losing customers to competitors. Perhaps competitors who were more engaged.

As you can see, launching a business website isn’t as simple as plugging in and hitting the ‘on’ switch. You need to plan for all of the above and more well in advance. Since they all have the potential to increase customer traffic and your overall business success.

Do you agree with all the points we mentioned above? Have we missed anything? Your opinion counts. Let us know in the comments below!