So many of the sites we see in our site speed audits and SEO audits are missing very basic SEO fundamentals, or have very basic issues like site-wide 404 errors that are hurting both speed and SEO in a big way. These are really simple problems to fix, but they often go undetected for years.
Why simple problems go unnoticed
Nobody goes looking for a broken asset that loads on every page, or a missing SEO element that was never set up in the first place. The site looks fine in a browser, so the problem sits there quietly, dragging on load times and giving Google a reason to trust the site a little less every time it crawls. The fix is usually a junior webmaster job once you know the problem exists. Knowing it exists is the hard part.
Site Speed Bot
About five years ago we built Site Speed Bot, our site speed audit tool. The idea was to identify the problems causing site speed issues and provide easy to understand recommendations that could be implemented by a junior webmaster. Since launch it has run site speed tests for 300,000+ sites. If you want to give it a try, enter your URL here. It is free and takes about 90 seconds.
A free SEO audit tool
Site Speed Bot has some SEO recommendations built in, but it is primarily built for site speed analysis, so we built a second tool that is similar but more SEO focused. It is fast and light, again takes about 90 seconds to audit your site, and returns much more SEO focused recommendations. You can run it at https://www.wpspeedfix.com/free-seo-audit/.
Run both tools against your site, fix whatever the basics turn up, then move on to the more tactical SEO work. Fixing the fundamentals first is the cheapest improvement you will make all year.
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