You probably already know that just one line of bad code can destroy your (SEO) efforts, underscoring the fact that there are many hidden dangers that can kill an SEO campaign. However, a thorough audit can reveal these issues and get your site back on track.
A good website audit should always include a test crawl.
Website owners can learn a lot by crawling their site and should be aware of at least three hidden dangers that can be uncovered.
1. Server Errors
Most website owners would be surprised to find that a simple test crawl can uncover hundreds, or even thousands, of server errors. If Google’s spiders are encountering these errors, you can bet that it isn’t a good thing.
2. 404s
If you’re not familiar with header response codes, a 404 is a “Page Not Found” error. When it comes to SEO, you need to track down your 404s because for every page not found, your business is losing search equity and your visitors are losing out on your message.
3. Troublesome Outbound Links
Hackers are continually trying to infiltrate web sites, CMS packages, and more, in an effort to benefit their own web sites. Believe it or not, a test crawl of your website might very well find links on your site that you didn’t even know about.
Running a test a crawl on a regular basis is a good idea. There are several actionable findings that audit tools can uncover. Finding these simple, yet destructive problems can help improve the SEO health of your web site – and that’s the ultimate goal of an SEO Audit.
