Semrush Site Audit Seo: 10 Most The Overlooked Features
Semrush Site Audit Seo: 10 Most The Overlooked Features
Seen Semrush Site Audit tool is a powerful technical SEO tool that can identify and resolve critical SEO issues on your site and help you rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). ).
If you want to stay on top of your SEO game, you should regular SEO audits conducton your site to make sure that SEO health is intact. And Semrush's Site Audit tool is theaudit tool ultimate SEO on the market.
Despite being one of the most loved tools in the SEO community, some of the features and reports within the Semrush Site Audit tool are underused.
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That's why I thought it would be good to showcase these features so that more Semrush users can height.
In this article, I will share the 10 most overlooked Semrush Site Audit features to help you get the most out of the tool.
Note: To get the most out of this guide, you must have an active Semrush account. If you don't have an account yet, click here to get 30 days free access to Semrush PRO.
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How to Setup the Semrush Site Audit Tool Before
we start, let me run you through a new site audit. This will help Semrushreviewing identify any new issues on your site since the last audit, and you can fix them whilethe features described in this post.
If you don't have a running project on Semrush yet, you can create a new project by clicking the "Projects" button next to Semrush's search bar. Enter your domain, project name and click 'Create'.
Once your project has been created, select the "Setup" button in the Site Audit block of your project dashboard. This will open the Site Audit installation wizard.
On the first page of the installation wizard, select the number of pages you want to crawl per audit and choose "Website" as the crawl source. Keep in mind that each level of Semrush subscription has a limit on the number of pages you can crawl. Semrush PRO users, for example, can crawl up to 100,000 pages per month and 20,000 pages per audit.
The rest of the settings are optional, but I recommend checking them out anyway.
Configure your crawler settings by selecting "SemrushBot-Desktop" as the user agent (or "SemrushBot-Mobile" device crawlif you are getting more traffic from mobile), and choose delay"Minimum delay between pages" as the option for. This option speeds up the site auditing process.
You can then crawl or block specific subfolders on your website in the "Allow / Deny URLs" section .
The fourth step of the configuration allows you to enter URL parameters on your website that SemrushBot should ignore when crawling. This helps Semrush avoid the same page from being crawled twice while checking your website.
If you want Semrush to crawl limited parts of your website, you can do that in the next step by providing your login details. This allows SemrushBot to check the restricted areas on your site with your credentials and report any issues.
The final step is to establish an audit schedule for the site. Here you can select how often you want Semrush to check your website automatically.
When you are satisfied with the configuration settings of your site audit, click the "Start Site Audit" button to kickstart the process.
10 Most Overlooked Semrush Site Monitoring Features
1. Optimize Your Internal
Links Internal links improve the navigation of your site and play a vital role in Google's ability to index your website. In other words, internal links can improve the crawlability and indexability of your website.
If a page does not have an internal link, also known as an orphan page, search engines cannot find it. For that reason, it's important to quickly identify orphaned pages on your site and point internal links to them.
A good SEO practice is to always link from the best pages on your site to pages that you want to rank for.
Before you start adding new internal links, check the existing internal links on your site to check for issues like broken internal links, orphaned pages, too many links on the page, links without anchor text, etc.
This is true you can use the Internal Linking Report within the Semrush Site Audit tool. This report gives you a complete picture of your site's link architecture and helps you identify and resolve critical internal link issues on your website.
To access this report, go to the Site Audit Overview report and navigate to "Internal Link" under Thematic Reports. Click on the "View Details" button.
Here you will find details about your site's link architecture (helpful charts on internal link distribution and crawl depth), along with a list of internal link issues on your site. Pay special attention to the errors and warnings in this report, as these issues negatively affect your site's performance in search results.
Click on the problem box next to each problem to see the exact pages causing the errors. You can also click the "Why and how to fix this" link to get useful recommendations on how to fix these issues.
Another thing to watch out for is the Internal LinkRank (ILR), which gives you an idea of how strong a page is in terms of internal links. You can find this section directly below the list of internal link problems.
These are the pages that pass the most internal LinkRank to other pages on your site. As such, you should post a link on these pages as they pass more link juice to other pages on your website. Make sure the links fit the context and content of the pages.
To get ILR data on all your pages, click "Show more pages" at the bottom of the button.
2. Check your Robots.txt file for problems
Robots.txt is a text file that instructs search engines on how to crawl pages on your site. A misconfigured robots.txt can quickly derail all your SEO efforts.
Robots.txt errors can go unnoticed so it is good practice to check the file regularly for problems.
The "Robots.txt Updates" widget in the Site Audit Overview report shows whether SemrushBot has accessed your robots.txt file and the number of changes made to this file, if any, since the last crawl.
The widget also flags issues with the file that could affect the crawlability of your site.
If Semrush detects problems with your robots.txt file, you can click the blue link to open a filtered problem report to see the exact formatting errors causing the problem. Click on the "Why and how to fix this"next to linkthe errors to get recommendations on how to fix them.
Related: Robots.txt and SEO: The Ultimate Guide
3. Optimize Your Website Speed
According to Google, the chance of a bounce increases by 32% when the page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds. If your site takes 10 seconds to load, the chance of a bounce increases to 123%.
Long story short, you need to optimize your page speed. You need to make your website content load faster by fixing all performance issues on your site as soon as they appear.
The Semrush Site Audit tool can also help you identify and fix site performance issues.
To do this, go to:
Project> Site Audit> Site Performance
Here you will find details about your page loading speed, as well as a list of performance issues to fix to improve your page speed and provide a smoother experience for your visitors.
Click the problem box next to each check mark to see the pages that have performance issues and click the "Why and how to fix it" link for more information about the problem and actionable recommendations for resolving it.
Prioritize resolving the issues in the "Errors" section before proceeding to "Warnings" and "Notices".
Related: Semrush vs Moz: What's the Best SEO Tool?
4. Apply Canonical Tags Correctly
A canonical tag informs search engines that similar URLs on your site are the same. With this HTML code you can indicate the major version for similar pages on your site.
Canonical tags, when properly implemented, can help you avoid content duplication issues.
The Semrush Site Audit tool allows you to verify that your canonical tags are properly implemented.
To identify canonicalization issues, go to:
Project> Site Audit> Issuesclick
From here, "Category" to see if any of the following canonicalization checks are activated for your site:
Broken Canonical Link
Multiple Canonical URLs
Let's examine each issue in detail .
Broken Canonical Link
This error is triggered when a canonical tag link is broken and leads to a 404 page. A broken link makes it more difficult for search engines to crawl and index your website. Therefore, you should fix this problem as soon as it is identified in the report.
Click on the error to get a list of pages with a broken canonical link. Click on the "Why and how to fix this" link to learn how to fix this problem.
Multiple canonical URLs
This error occurs if you have multiple rel = canonical links for one page. When search engines encounter multiple canonical URLs, they cannot determine which URL is the actual canonical page. This can lead to search engines choosing the wrong canonical page or completely ignoring all canonical elements.
Click on the error to get a list of pages with multiple canonical links. If you need help fixing these errors, click the "Why and how to fix it" link for detailed instructions.
5. Crawls and progress crawls and progress The
Compare Reports in the Semrush Site Audit tool allow you to see which errors, warnings and notices have been fixed on your site and whether new issues have been found over time.
The Crawls Compare Site Audits report allows you to view your previous ones side by side.
To access this report, navigate to:
Project> Site Audit> Compare Crawls compare
Here you can the results of two different site audits. Just choose two different site audit dates to compare from the date drop-down menus above the table. For example, you can compare the results between your most recent site audit and a site audit you ran a month ago.
After selecting the dates, you will see the number of issues that have been resolved and the number of issues that are new between the two selected dates.
Likewise, the Site Audit Progress Report includes an interactive line chart that shows you how the number of issues has changed over time with your site audits.
Just select two different dates above the chart and choose the specific errors, warnings and notices you want to analyze.
The Site Audit Progress Report is especially useful for tracking the top issues on your site.
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6. Fix HTTPS Implementation
Google uses HTTPS as a ranking. It started out as a lightweight signal, but has grown in importance over time. With the Chrome 68 update, Chrome started marking sites that are not encrypted with HTTPS as 'not secure'.
As such, it is extremely important that you fix HTTPS implementation errors on your site as and when they appear.
The HTTPS implementation report in the Site Audit tool Semrush detects any errors related to the SSL certificate on your site.
To access this report, go to your Site Audit Overview report and navigate to "HTTPS" under Thematic Reports. Click on the "View Details" button.
This report shows you all HTTPS implementation errors on your site.
Here are some of the most important HTTPS issues you may need to solve to get a perfect score:
HTTPS pages with internal links to HTTP pages
Mixed content issues
Certificate expired Unsecured
pages
Incorrect certificate name issues
For detailed instructions To resolve these issues, click on the "Why and how to fix it" link below each issue.
After taking the necessary steps to resolve these errors, run a new site audit to make sure that these errors are not triggered again in the HTTPS deployment report.
7. Get more statistics with Google Analytics integration
Semrush allows you to integrate the Site Audit tool with Google Analytics. This integration will potentially unlock a wealth of traffic data that you can analyze from one central hub: the Semrush interface.
By integrating Google Analytics with the Site Audit tool, you can get 3 additional insights for your site:
Page Views
Pages that take longer than a second to become interactive
orphan pages.
To connect Google Analytics to SEMrush, go to:
Project> Site Audit> Select "Google Analytics" from the menu.
Next, you need to select the account, profile, property, and view for the Google Analytics account associated with your site.
Once you have entered this information, click the "Save" button.
That is it! You have now successfully integrated Google Analytics with the Semrush Site Audit tool. Wait 15 minutes and run another site audit for your Google Analytics data to appear below your crawled pages.
8. Optimize your meta tags
Meta tags are pieces of text that describe the content of a page. The two main meta tags are page title and meta description.
With the Semrush Site Audit tool search visibility,you can optimize your titles and meta descriptions to improve them.
To optimize your meta tags, go to:
Project> Site Audit> Issues.
Look for issues such as missing titles, duplicate titles, and duplicate meta descriptions.
Rewrite the titles and meta descriptions of problem pages.
Keep in mind that the Site Audit tool analyzes your meta tags purely from a technical SEO standpoint. You can further analyze your meta tags from a content point of view by using Semrush's Content Audit tool.
9. Check your AMP pages
If you are using AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) on your site, it is important to check them periodically to make sure they are error-free.
That said, checking your AMP pages and correcting implementation errors manuallycan be stressful, especially if you have a large website.
You can use the Semrush Site Audit tool to check the SEO status of your AMP pages. The Site Audit tool tests the health of your AMP pages for 33 technical issues and provides actionable recommendations for resolving any implementation error.
To check your AMP pages, navigate to the 'Issues' tabs and click on 'Category' to see if any AMP issues have been triggered.
The AMP problems are grouped into 4 categories:
AMP HTML problems
AMP style and layout AMP
template problems
AMP Canonicalization problems
You can click on one of the problems to see all pages with AMP problems and click on 'Why and how' fix it ” Link next to each error for a detailed description of the error and instructions on how to fix it.
10. Hide irrelevant issues from your site
's audit report When you evaluate the site's audit report for your website, you can probably see which issues merit your immediate attention and which are irrelevant. For example, a web page that is working properly can cause a 404 error if it blocks Semrush crawlers. Now you can choose to ignore this problem knowing it is imprecise.
But it can get complicated if you own an agency and you need to share a similar report for your client's website.
In such cases, you can use individual audit filters to manually rule out specific issues from the Site Audit report and get an accurate picture of the overall SEO status of the website.
To do this, go to:
Project> Site Audit> Problems.
Click on one of the issues to see the exact URLs causing the error. From here, you can exclude minor issues from your audit report by clicking the "Hide Results" button on the right side of the interface.
Hiding these issues will not only exclude them from the site's audit report, but also positively impact your overall SEO health score.
Final Thoughts
The 10 features described above are incredibly useful, but you can easily overlook them. Using these features will significantly improve your site's SEO status and eliminate any bottlenecks that prevent your site from ranking higher on Google.
Let me know in the comments section if you were able to improve your site's health score by using any of the features above.
And if you've never used Semrush before, sign up for a 1-month free trial of Semrush PRO by clicking here.
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