Pluralsight SEO Audit

Because ScreamingFrog scans the site in the very same fashion as Googlebot, the ScreamingFrog scan is one of the best indications of how Google may currently be seeing your website. By fixing the immediate issues related to the scan, search crawlers will undoubtedly improve the quality score and authority of the site relative to others in the industry, having a potential boon on rankings. Thousands of issues currently exist that should be immediately addressed.

In 2021, site speed will become more of a ranking factor in Google's algorithm. And, since rankings are now based on "mobile first" indexing, site speed for mobile devices is more critical than ever. Reduce the load speed, including the time to first meaningful paint can have a significant impact on both rankings, bounce rates and--most importantly--user experience. For browser caching, each resource should specify an explicit caching policy that answers the following questions: whether the resource can be cached and by whom, for how long, and if applicable, how it can be efficiently revalidated when the caching policy expires. When the server returns a response it must provide the Cache-Control and ETag headers that define how and for how long the response can be cached, and provides a revalidation token that is automatically sent by the browser to check if the resource has changed since the last time it was requested. Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content. The homepage has 1 blocking script resources and 6 blocking CSS resources, which is great to see overall, however, we’ll want to take care of the remaining issues.

This high-level audit does not include a complete audit of all the website's backlinks, including the potential for spammy and toxic backlinks that could weigh-down rankings. In addition, a complete link audit would take into consideration things like the traffic, Trust Flow and Citation flow of all the links pointing to the website and make strategic recommendations in the further acquisition of addition links to strength the site's online presence.

A complete on-site content audit would do more than just look for duplicate content issues, it would expand beyond that to find ways the website is currently cannibalizing itself for competition among the same or similar keywords in online search. It may also glean insights on cleaning-up, combining, deleting or expanding content based on the findings of the report. Both the backlink and content audits will take into account a full Ahrefs scan and views of both Google Analytics & Google Search Console data.

Many website reach large numbers and rapid growth for a reason: they grow faster than they have time to fix real SEO-related issues on their website. Once the content audit is complete, we suggest a strategic plan of building on-site content that is tailored toward the most hard-hitting and meaningful keywords for which the company wishes to rank.

Growth in overall keywords and dominating competitors does not come from luck or chance. It is directly derived from a strategic plan of attack and the team to help implement the plan. The site should be focused on growing and expanding its current backlink profile. Inbound links are by far the strongest ranking factor in Google’s ranking algorithm. They are what drive keyword rankings. An inbound link is like a vote. When an external website site links to yours, search engines consider it as a vote of credibility, relevance, and trust. However, not all “votes” are equal; votes from higher powered websites are worth more than those from lower-powered sites.

Other items should be considered that were not included here, including image alt tags, image descriptions, internal linking, outbound dofollow/nofollow backlinking and exif data which all play a role in the search engine optimization of a website vis-a-vis the competition.