The importance of a SEO health check

Are you already doing this? Super! Perhaps performing the checks below will reveal little new. But does figuring out where to start make you screaming mad? Then read on quickly!

Checking your SEO value annually

Looking at your technical SEO points and their status should really be done every six months, but at least once a year. In this blog we share a handy step-by-step plan that you can take every (half) year. This will keep you up to date and work on your SEO health.

The more often you repeat this process, the easier it becomes. You can more quickly address or even prevent major issues, such as the drop in your rankings due to technical things you forget to check. Also, checking the SEO value of your website is important for (better) findability and relevance.

An SEO health check starts by checking for crawl errors

Step 1.

Google Search Console is essential when you want to view a status report. This displays various crawl errors of your website.

A common message is “submitted URL is a soft 404” or “submitted URL was not found (404). Sometimes you deleted pages for a reason, such as because you want to eliminate zombie pages. In this case, you don't have to do anything; Google eventually stops reporting these broken pages itself.

If there are pages among them that you do want Google to index, it's time to take action!

Another possible report is “server error 5xx. These errors lead to availability warnings and should be fixed if possible.

First check if the problems are temporary or if they have been going on for some time. Always ask your web builder if the error indicated is actually important.

Relevant content is part of an SEO health check

Step 2

Your website should contain top and supporting content. Top content is also called cornerstone content. From your cornerstone you link to supporting content.

Top content can be a well-performing blog, but also, for example, a successful product page. As time passes and a whole range of things change, your top content can become obsolete. This is a problem when it comes to SEO value.

Supporting content creates added value during the buying phase. This type of content can be other blogs, buying guides, FAQs and more. This is often already there, only your visitor has to look for it. By linking supporting content to top content, you make finding the answer to your target audience's problem easier and ensure you lose fewer customers.

Why is outdated SEO problematic?

Suppose you have written THE ultimate guide on a certain topic. And that this post has garnered tons of relevant backlinks with high authority, which in turn boosts your SEO profile. That's great, of course.

But a year or two after you wrote the guide, the information is no longer current, sometimes even incorrect. This page will slowly attract fewer visitors and negatively impact your SEO score.

You can avoid this by regularly taking a critical look at these types of pages. Important points to update are:

• Factual information (aka a fact check)
• Adding new relevant keywords
• Updating meta information
• Updating SEO (top and supporting) content

When doing this, focus on pages that rank high in Google and/or contain many backlinks.

An additional tip!

It's worth looking at your duplicate content score once every six months. When two or more identical pages exist, it becomes more difficult for search engines to determine what to display.

A guideline for duplicate content is that about 12-20% of your Web site should consist of identical pages. Are you going over this percentage? Then dive into your content to determine where this can be avoided.

Keywords and matching content deliver SEO value

Step 3

While performing an SEO health check, doing an analysis of how your pages are scoring using focus keywords is something you shouldn't forget. Each keyword or group of keywords has its own page. If a page ranks lower than before, figuring out where the problem is is the logical course of action.

Be aware that the ranking of your keywords can be seasonal. Therefore, always compare the same periods each year. This way you avoid unnecessary stress!

If you track your ranking per keyword monthly, you can easily identify these fluctuations. We recommend using SEO tool Ahrefs. We'll tell you more about this tool in the next step.

On-page SEO

It is also wise to look at your on-page SEO. Does it still contain the right keywords? When answering this question, pay attention to:

• The meta title and meta description
• The URL of the page
• The alt text of the image(s)
• H1 and H2 headings

If you have a WordPress or TYPO3 website, you can easily adjust the above points in the Yoast plugin.

The final step of an SEO health check: Google loves backlinks

Step 4

Yes, you read it right: Googles loves backlinks. So dive into your backlink profile to find out what works and what does not. With SEO tools like SEMrush, Moz Pro or Ahrefs (which we recommend) you can easily check your backlinks. You also have insight into the authority of your domain.

Domain authority logically tells you how much authority your website has. This is determined by a combination of the quantity and quality of backlinks.

Each SEO tool has its own naming convention for this indicator. The 'value' or 'the number' can vary enormously when you compare your website in different tools. Do not be alarmed by this! Determine your 0 measurement and use it as a starting point. Then choose one tool from which to assume the value of your domain authority. This way you know how to compare and can see how you score. Then always report from your chosen tool.

Backlinks

Through such an SEO tool, you have insight into the number of links to your site from other sites. So this is what we call backlinks. When checking the list, the focus is on fixing:

• Links with a 301 redirect chain
• Links with a 404 code (this page no longer exists and can be fixed by setting a redirect)

Broken links

Internal links that give a 404 message are broken links on your own website. You can also find this in your SEO tool.

Spam

In addition, your SEO tool also indicates which backlinks are considered spam. Look at why these links are considered spam and determine if you agree. If you find it is indeed a “bad” backlink, you can use the Google Disavow Tool.

But we recommend that before you use an SEO tool, read Google's information and roadmap first.

Last but not least

Step 5

To take the work off your hands, you can also get better search engine results with our SEO website check.