Everyone on the internet who has a website or a channel wants to grow its audience, and the way to do it is through search engine optimization. There are many factors involved when it comes to making your website rank higher on the search engines. For example, relevance is one of the most important things to check because if your website is proving to be relevant according to the keywords that users are searching for, your website will rank lower in search results.
SEMrush provides you with many SEO tools that help you analyze, strategize, and customize your websites for better engagement. SEMrush is like a one-stop-shop place for people who want to attract more traffic online. SEMrush provides more than 40 SEO tools like site audit, position tracking, On-Page SEO Checker, Domain Overview, Organic Research, Backlink Analytics, Link Building Tool, Backlink Audit, and more.
SEMRush comes with three types of subscription plans.
- PRO- 99$/month
- Guru- 199$/month
- Business- 399$/month
With three different plans with different specifications, you can choose the one that suits your goals better.
Even though SEMrush provides excellent help in growing your audience, it is just a platform that gives you suggestions based on the data it fetches. It will be you who will implement the strategies and cause traffic growth. SEMrush may not work like a magic potion for your online business, but it will save you time and boost work efficiency by 10X.
Table of Contents
What is the SEMrush Audit tool?
SEMrush site audit is one of the most admirable tools available on SEMRush. It provides you with the ability to monitor the health of your website. The audit tool detects your website’s issues related to crawling ability, content, links, and coding.
When you create a new project on SEMrush, the audit tool is the first to appear on the list of tools as it provides you with all the necessary information about the areas to improve. The results of the audit on your dashboard makes it easier for you to make better decisions.
Once the audit is completed, SEMrushgives your site a total score out of 100, which shows how healthy your website is. You can also conduct audits of other websites and learn more about your competitors.
- User interface
- SEMrush overall has a very sophisticated yet easy to handle user interface. Their minimalist UI design makes the user experience even smoother.
- As SEMrush has many features, it gives you several options for customization. You can use your knowledge and experience and multiply its impact with the help of SEMrush so that the ball will always remain in your court.
- Sometimes, it can get a little tricky with too many options, but it gets more accessible and more comfortable as you start using it.
Step by step process to use of SEMrush Auditing Tool
Conducting an audit is one of the easiest yet value-adding tasks on the SEMRush platform.
Here is a step by step process to make it happen.
- Go to SEMRush.com and log-in for free.
- The window will open with several options on the left of your screen.
- Click on the project and select a new project.
- A new window will pop up. Submit the domain URL and give your project a name.
- Press on create the project, and it takes you to a dashboard.
- The dashboard has more than 40 tools listed from which the first tool is site audit.
- Click on it, and you will get options for customizations.
- Configure your basic settings by adjusting the crawl scope and limit on checked pages. You can always go with the default/suggested options.
- You can also customize the crawler settings according to the search engines according to which your domain is optimized.
- You can then allow or disallow any URL if you want. In this way, you can stop crawlers from crawling onto specific pages that you want to ignore in this audit.
- Finally, you can schedule the repeat process, which is an excellent option as optimizing a site is gradual, and you will need to conduct audits again and again. This option makes it easier for you.
- Once you submit, SEMRush will start auditing your domain.
- It will take a few minutes, depending on the number of pages it has to go through.
- As a result, it will give an overview of the audit that you have conducted more sections like issues, crawled pages, statistics, compare crawls, and progress.
Overview
- On the overview page, there will be a total score out of 100, which is a score of the website’s general health.
- There will be a count of errors, warnings, and notices one after another to its right.
- You can get detailed information by clicking on them. For example, if there is an error of duplicate meta descriptions, it will be mentioned in the list of mistakes, and you can fix it through the same flow.
- It detects errors like duplicate meta description, pages that could not be crawled, pages with the identical title tag, pages that don’t have title tags, same content issues, etcetera. Two or more errors can have a single solution, so the number of errors does not directly indicate the website’s overall health.
- Other parameters that come into play when we talk about your domain’s health care on the right bottom side of the overview page; you will find the section of thematic reports. It includes Crawlability, HTTP encryption, site performance, internal linking, and international SEO, etcetera.
- Many sites do not have HTTPS encryption. It provides safety and increases the relevance of your website, boosting it up in the search results.
Issues
- On this Issues tab, you can see all the significant errors which impact your website SEO, along with warnings and notices.
- This list considers all the best practices to craft your website for search engines for better visibility.
- Each item contains “Why and how to fix” this helps you give more information about the type of issue and steps to fix it.
- Issues are the main tab that web developers and webmasters need to focus more on.
- This list of issues helps you to improve the structure of your site along with SEO score.
Crawled Pages
- On the next section mentioned in the paragraphs above is of crawled pages. In this section, you will have reports of the site page by page. You can select and make changes selectively.
- On the window of the crawled pages section, you will find a table of page URLs with unique page views, crawl depth, and issues mentioned in front of them.
- You will find it a great help to have the crawl depth of individual pages in front of you while prioritizing the tasks.
- As every page had its issue mentioned in front of its URL, you can start with the once with lesser depth and make changes accordingly.
- There are also HTTP codes of individual pages mentioned in front of them.
Statistics
- The next section is the statistics. It will give you statistical information on specific parameters like makeup, crawl depth, HTTP status code, canonicalization, amp links, site map vs. crawled pages, incoming internal links, and reflag usage.
- You can take action based on the statistical data displayed on the statistics section window.
Compare Crawls
- After statistics, you have a separate section of the caparison to compare your previous audits with the new once. It helps you with a broader perspective and a better understanding of the improvements.
- As you can schedule and redo the same domain audits, it’s great to compare the audits.
- You can see your overall progress in the last section available. It will give you an idea of how well your changes are being implemented.
With this step-by-step guide, you can audit any of the websites and get informed about the improvement scope.
Follow these steps to quickly improve SEO and your SEMrush Site Health Score:
STEP #1 Remove Broken Links
How to Find and Remove Broken Links
Select the Crawled Pages tab, and apply filter with Issue Status as Broken and then you can see the list of broken links.
Or
From the Overview tab, under Thematic Reports click on the Internal Linking View details button and then look for Warnings > Broken internal links.
From the Overview tab, under Thematic Reports click on the Internal Linking View details button and then look for Warnings > Broken external links.
Check and remove all these links immediately, they’ll harm your SEO.
STEP #2 Clear all Erros
Go to the Issues tab and look for Errors and then clear all the issues with lower numbers first and schedule the higher number of issues as they take time to remove, but target these errors before you earn the warnings or notices.
The most common errors are:
- Invalid Data Items
- Pages without Titles
- Pages with Duplicate content
- AMP-related issues
- Broken internal links
- Broken images
- Images without alt and captions
- HTTP Status Code Erros (5XX, 4XX, etc.)
- Robots.txt, sitemap.xml issues
- and more…
STEP #3 The Warning list contain
Many will take this as common issues, but they also impact your site’s SEO. Once you have cleared the Errors, plan and remove all the errors. Again target the errors with low count and arrange a fix for the errors with higher numbers.
The most common warnings are:
- Pages without Meta Descriptions
- Text-HTML ratio
- Pages without structured data
- JavaScript and CSS errors
- Pages with low word count
- HTTPS encryption issues
- and more
STEP #4 Notices
Once you cleared the Errors and Warnings, plan to check the notices too as they may not harm but useful to consider and remove them accordingly.
- Internal and external links with nofollow and dofollow attributes
- Links without anchor text
- Number of incoming links
- List of orphaned pages
- URLs with permanent redirects
- and more
As per the metrics from SEMrush Site Audit overview, Top-10% websites have a 92% Site Health Score. So target to reach at least 80+ site health score for good visibility in search engines.
Our team at WittySparks has worked hard, and now the sites Health score is moved from 70% to 80% within seven days; we have edited almost 2000+ articles and targeting to reach 90%; just wish us good luck :)
Ways to learn more and faster
- If you’re new into this digital world, and you want to experiment with the tools, a site audit can prove to be a great teacher for you.
- You can study other websites and learn from their ways of optimizing the sites.
- You can also select any random low ranking website from google and study what makes it rank so low. You can quickly get the necessary data through the site audit tool.
- Many of the low ranking sites do not have Http encryption or international SEO; you can check it using site audit and include them while building your web presence.
- It is always great to have a relaxed look for opportunities and knowledge, and with a site audit, you can do the same.
What’s unique about the SEMrush Audit tool?
Ease
- As discussed earlier, one of the great things about SEMRush’s site audit tool is the ease that it provides to the user.
- With a few clicks and minimum effort, you can get the work done.
- As SEMRush has a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate, its audit tool also follows the same ease in user experience.
- You can quickly implement the changes that we have discussed in the reports. Most of the time, you can customize the required changes just by clicking on the issue displayed on the tool.
Flexibility
- Flexibility is another unique thing about SEMRush. As a user, you get to customize at almost every place possible.
- For example, before starting an adult, a site audit gives you the option of selecting the limit for pages to be crawled. It enables you to decide the precision of the reports.
- Such a level of flexibility helps to save the time of the user.
- You can include-exclude any pages you want, and you can even choose the crawlers you wish to use.
- Such flexibility and power of customization at a precise level make it an excellent option for those who are willing to experiment and innovate in the ways of growing their audience.
Precision
- SEMRush keeps the balance between ease and precision.
- With high customization power to users, you can get detailed reports with precise information.
- With such accurate information, you can make better decisions with more certainty of success.
The Brand
- As mentioned before, SEMRush has more than 40 SEO related tools. It is a brand that has earned its place in the market.
- With the established position in the market and high tech solutions, SEMRush has designed its tools to stand up to user’s expectations.
- Even though many things make SEMRush’s site audit tool special, its brand name is undoubtedly one thing that makes it more likable and more reliable.
Common complaints
Confusions
- Some of the common complaints that people have been with the number of places at which SEMRush provides customization. For those who have not used it before, it can become confusing.
- There is also a need for better explanations of the options that are being made available. It is best to know the terms involved in the process before starting a real project.
Complex
- SEMRush can get very complex at some times. With its 40+ tools, it provides almost every functionality required for you to get better at SEO, making it very tricky at some places.
- Many people complain about it, and throughout time, this issue seems to be getting solved.
Pricing
- Another one of the most common issues that people mention having with SEMRush is its pricing.
- While SEMRush provides three different plans with different rates and specifications, the pro plan, which costs 99$/month, is the cheapest one.
- Its free trial is also available for a limited number of days, after which you have to pay for continuing the ongoing projects. The free trial is available for only ten days.
Conclusion
- Being a part of an agile platform SEMRush, SEMRush’s site audit tool is one of the best options out there.
- With its easy to use interface and ability to let the user customize at many places, SEMRush’s site audit proves to be a tough competitor for other site auditing tools.
To get this tool’s experience, you can always go to SEMrush.com and take a free trial of your own. You can pay later for the plan that suits your needs accordingly.