Search Engine Optimization (SEO) takes a lot of time, concentration, and dedication. Some tasks demand regular attention, such as backlink analysis, keyword research, conducting site audits, and monitoring your rankings.
Luckily, you don’t have to do these SEO tasks completely manually, thanks to the power of SEO automation.
SEO automation is the process of leveraging tools to assist you with your SEO tasks by automatically handling them for you. All you have to do is regularly review the findings of these SEO tools, and resolve issues as and when they occur.
A whole host of SEO tasks can be automated, including site audits, competitor monitoring, internal link analysis, and even content creation. These tasks can be automated using SEO tools like Semrush, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics 4.
Read on to learn how you can free up time and focus on more essential tasks through the power of SEO automation.
How Automation Can Transform Your SEO
SEO is a long-term endeavor and never a once-off thing.
There are certain aspects of SEO that you need to check daily, weekly, monthly, and annually.
Given how rhythmic these checks can be, you’d be foolish not to introduce some automation into your SEO to-do list.
By using SEO tools to carry out routine tasks, you save yourself (and your company) tons of time, money, and resources. Why should you spend hours checking your website for issues when an SEO tool can do the job for you?
For example, you could use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to crawl your site and find broken internal links.
To do this, click on “Site Audit” in the menu on the left.
Next, on the Overview page, click “View details” under “Internal Linking”:
If there are any broken internal links, you’ll be able to view them under “Internal Link Issues” “Errors”:
Semrush’s Site Audit tool is massively helpful and saves you a ton of time.
Instead of going through your entire domain manually to check for broken links, you can use the tool to do the vast majority of the work for you — i.e., actually finding the issues that you need to fix.
SEO Tasks That Can Be Fully Automated
In this section, I’ll list all of the SEO tasks you can automate and the tools you can use for each of them. I’ll also briefly explain how to use each tool for the required task.
1. Backlink analysis
Let’s start with an SEO task that is universally important: backlinks. Considered to be the currency of SEO, backlinks are important in helping your site grow.
Without quality backlinks pointing toward your site, you’ll struggle to climb the search engine results pages (SERPs) and cement your reputation as a credible source of information.
By “reputation” I mean how trustworthy your site is in the eyes of Google and other search engines.
If your site has a lot of toxic backlinks (i.e., backlinks from questionable or spammy websites) your reputation could be severely hampered.
So, how do you keep on top of your backlinks, both credible and toxic? By performing a backlink audit at least once per month.
However, instead of going through all your backlinks and judging their worth manually, you can use Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool to check up on them for you.
The tool will crawl your website and collect data on all the backlinks pointing to your site.
Once you connect your site to Semrush, you can go into the Backlink Audit tool whenever you want to check in on the overall health of your backlink profile.
Here’s how to use the tool. Click on “Backlink Audit” found under the Link Building section:
Next, type in your domain and hit “Start Backlink Audit”:
On the Overview page, you’ll see the Overall Toxicity Score which will give you a brief glimpse into how your backlink profile is looking:
As you can see, the majority of my links aren’t toxic. If you click on the “toxic” section of the bar:
You’ll be given a list of your most toxic links, ordered by default from highest Toxicity Score (TS) to lowest:
If you’ve got toxic backlinks, I’d recommend visiting the site to see whether or not they’re worth keeping.
If they’re not worth keeping, you can add them to the disavow list by selecting the button on the right:
Once you’ve added the toxic links to the Disavow list you can download the list as a .txt file.
You can find your disavow list by clicking the Disavow tab:
Scroll down, and you’ll find a list of all the links you’ve selected to disavow:
To convert this list to a TXT file, select the “Export to TXT” button at the top right of the table:
This file can then be uploaded to the Disavow Tool in Google Search Console. This will inform Google to ignore these links.
Having taken care of the toxic links through the Disavow list, let’s delve into how you can monitor your backlink profile for changes.
Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool automates the process of managing your backlinks.
It can track:
- New backlinks
- Backlinks you’ve lost
- Your Nofollow and Dofollow links
- Sponsored and UGC links
This automated monitoring ensures that you stay updated without having to manually search for these changes.
Here’s how to use the Backlink Analytics tool to view new backlinks.
Click on “Backlink Analytics” in the main menu:
And then type in your domain:
After you click “Analyze”, you’ll land on the main Backlink Analytics dashboard:
Click on the “Backlinks” tab:
…and you’ll see a list of your backlinks.
To review all the backlinks you’ve recently gained, click on the “New” tab:
You’ll be presented with a list of your newly acquired links. On top of that, you’ll also be able to view which page is earning the backlink, the Page Authority Score of the referring domain, and the anchor text.
If you want to review your Dofollow & Nofollow links, as well as Sponsored or UGC attributes, simply click on any of the filter options:
To further automate your backlink analysis, you can use Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool.
This can be used to find the backlinks your competitors currently have but you don’t.
Instead of manually searching for websites that link to your competitors, the Backlink Gap tool provides you with a list of domains where you could potentially gain backlinks.
Plus, the Backlink Gap tool allows you to analyze several competitors simultaneously.
To use this tool, head over to “Backlink Gap” found under Competitive Research:
Next, add your domain as well as your top competitors and then hit the “Find prospects” button:
You’ll then be shown a list of backlinks that you don’t have, but your competitors do:
You can also view the Authority Score (AS) and monthly visits of each of the referring domains:
If you find backlink opportunities that could be beneficial for your link building campaign, you can utilize this tool to automate an outreach campaign as well.
Simply select the referring domains you’d like to acquire backlinks from and click the “+ Start outreach” button:
You can then choose to “Send prospects” to Semrush’s Link Building tool:
With the Link Building tool, you’ll be able to automate emails to each of these prospects.
Overall, Semrush’s Link Building Suite can help you complete the entire backlink analysis process: from analyzing your own and your competitors’ backlinks, right up to finding new backlink opportunities and reaching out to prospective websites.
Analyze backlinks using Google Search Console
Google Search Console offers a free method for analyzing your backlinks.
The tool will provide you with basic insights into which websites are linking to yours, allowing you to monitor and assess your backlink profile without the need for manual tracking.
To check up on your backlinks, scroll down and click on the “Links” tab:
…on the “Links” page, go to the “External Links” section and click “MORE” at the bottom:
You’ll then be shown a list of the pages on your domain along with the incoming links and referring domains. By default, they’ll be listed in order of the number of backlinks they receive:
If you click on one of these URLs, you can review all the backlinks that the page receives.
For example, when I click on https://backlinko.com, I’m shown a list of all the domains that are currently linking to my homepage, as well as the number of backlinks coming from each domain:
As you can see, the reports aren’t as comprehensive as what you’d obtain through Semrush.
You can’t determine any toxic links you might have, nor can you analyze the anchor text used or the page authority score of the referring domain.
Therefore, I highly recommend investing in Semrush if you want a comprehensive overview of your site’s backlink portfolio. It will provide you with comprehensive data and insights into your backlinks.
2. Tracking page view metrics
After you’ve launched an SEO campaign, measuring its performance is essential.
While checking on SERP positions works as a good performance indicator, reviewing your page view metrics gives you better insight into how your audience engages with your pages.
There are three tools you can use to track page view metrics. These are Google Search Console, Google Analytics 4, and Semrush’s Organic Traffic Insights. I’ll show you how to use all of them.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is used throughout the SEO game.
Once you’ve linked your domain to the platform, GSC can be used to analyze key metrics for your pages. These metrics include:
- Total Clicks — This shows you how many times your web page was clicked on via the SERPs.
- Total Impressions — This metric reflects how many times a page from your site appeared in the SERP for a user’s search query.
- Average CTR — This will give you a percentage of how often web users click on your link on average. The calculation for determining Average CTR (Click-Through-Rate) is: (clicks ÷ impressions) x 100.
- Average Position — This metric will show you what your average SERP positions are for your pages.
To view these metrics, head over to the “Search Results” tab under the Performance section on the left:
Here, you’ll be able to see the metrics mentioned above, as displayed in the main graph:
The metrics can be altered depending on the date parameters you choose, which can be changed by clicking on the “Date:” option located above the metrics:
Next, you can choose to alter the reports to any of the following date parameters or choose a custom date range:
You can even compare one time frame to another by selecting the “Compare” option on the right.
Once you’ve set your date parameters, scroll down and click on “Pages”:
Here are my current top pages, as well as their clicks, impressions, CTR, and average positions:
As you can see, using GSC can save you the trouble of having to figure out the number of clicks and impressions your pages are receiving, as well as the CTR and average positions they are in.
This will give you an idea of which pages are performing better than others.
For example, by looking at the “clicks” metric, you can easily identify the topics that are gaining you the most clicks. With this insight, you’ll have a clear direction on which topics to focus on for creating additional content around.
To export your reports, simply click on the “Export” button at the top right-hand side:
Using Google Analytics 4
Google Search Console may be good for giving you an overview of your clicks, impressions, and so on. However, if you want to view more granular data related to your page view metrics, I’d recommend using Google Analytics 4.
When it comes to tracking page view metrics, there are two sections of Google Analytics 4 that are particularly helpful: ‘Pages and screens” is one of them, “Landing page” is the other.
Let’s start with Pages and screens.
“Pages” refers to all your web pages that your visitors click on during their time on your site. It does not only record the page they land on, but every single page they visit as a whole.
“Screens” is similar to “pages”, but refers to the different sections of your app that users visit.
With GA4’s Pages and screens, you can analyze the following:
- Views — This gives you an understanding of which pages receive the most views.
- Users — This metric shows you the number of unique users that visit your site. Unlike the “views” metric, each visitor is only counted once.
- Views per user — This metric represents the average number of page views generated by website visitors.
- Average engagement time — This gives you an indication of the average amount of time that users spend actively on your web page.
- Event count — This metric represents the amount of events that users have triggered while visiting your web pages. Events can include page clicks, downloads, video views, and custom events that you’ve set in GA4.
- Conversions — With this metric you can see the number of purchasers, mail subscriptions, or other goals that have been completed by your site visitors.
Where can you find these metrics?
Once you’ve set up your GA4 account for your domain, head over to the Pages and Screens report, which is below “Engagement” in the Reports menu:
When you land on the Pages and Screens dashboard, scroll down and you’ll see a list of all your URLs along with their page view metrics.
Overall, the Pages and Screens section is useful for determining which parts of your site users navigate to the most.
You can also use the average engagement time, event count, and conversion metrics to determine whether the pages are performing well, or if adjustments need to be made.
From the menu on the left, you can also reach the Landing page report. You can find this directly below Pages and Screens, as shown here:
As the name implies, the focus of this report is to show you a list of your top-performing landing pages. I.e., the first-page visitors land on when entering your website.
Here, you can review metrics such as:
- Sessions — Reflects the total amount of sessions users spent on each of your pages listed.
- Users — The total number of unique users that have visited each page within the specified time frame.
- New users — Examines only the visitors who have visited each landing page for the first time during the specified time frame.
- Average engagement time per session — How long users spend engaged on your website in sessions initiated from each of the landing pages.
- Conversions — How many desired actions site visitors completed after visiting the landing page.
- Total revenue — The total amount of money made from conversions secured via the landing page.
By reviewing all of this, you can see how well each page is performing. I.e., are these landing pages resulting in conversions?
It also helps you identify pages that aren’t performing well. If you find a landing page that has a low engagement time or drives no conversions, perhaps there is something wrong with it. In that case, you should visit the page and investigate.
Overall, GA4 can be used to automate the process of tracking your page views and the performance of your pages.
Using Semrush’s Organic Traffic Insights
If you’d prefer to analyze your page view metrics all in one place, then you can use Semrush’s Organic Traffic Insights tool.
Not only can you use this tool to draw in data from Google Search Console, but you can use it to gather data from GA4, too.
Here’s how to use the tool. Click “Organic Traffic Insights” found under the Keyword Research section:
Enter your domain and click “Get Insights”:
You’ll then have to connect your Google Search Console and GA4 account to Semrush.
Then select a “Location” and “Device”, and hit “Go to Organic Traffic Insights:
You’ll then be able to analyze data from Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, and Semrush – all in one tool.
As you can see, this report is loaded with insightful metrics which include:
- Users — This refers to the total number of unique users who logged an event.
- Sessions — Sessions measure how many times your users engage with your page during a particular period. Google defines a “session” as being 30 minutes in length. If a user clicks on a new page on your site once this 30 minutes is up, then a second session will be recorded.
- Pages/sessions — The average number of pages visited per session.
- Avg. sessions duration — The average amount of time your site visitors spent on your web pages.
- Bounce rate — The percentage of site visitors who left after only visiting one page.
To view how these metrics change over time, you can also adjust the date range at the top right:
For example, if I wanted to get insights for the last two days, I can select this and hit “Apply”, as shown here:
I can see that my domain gained 4.3k new users and the sessions went up by 71% to 5.5k:
If you need to export your Organic Traffic Insights report, click on the export button at the top right-hand side of the page, and choose which report you want to export:
Overall, Semrush’s Organic Traffic Insights tool streamlines the process of reviewing your page view metrics by seamlessly integrating data from both GSC and GA4. This means you can conveniently access and analyze all your important metrics in one single dashboard.
With these insights, you’ll be able to identify your top-performing pages and areas where improvements need to be made.
3. Page indexing
When you need to check whether Google has indexed your pages, then you can do so easily in GSC. After all, you won’t be able to rank on the SERPs if your pages aren’t indexed.
All you need to do is head over to “Pages”, which you’ll find below the “Indexing” section:
This will then give you an overview of how many pages on your site are currently indexed, as well as the pages that aren’t:
If you click on “View data about indexed pages”…
…and scroll down, you’ll see a list of all your indexed pages, listed in order of when they were last crawled:
This can save you a ton of time from having to manually check for your pages on Google, especially if you have a large website with hundreds of pages.
But what about pages that aren’t indexed?
To see all the pages on your site that aren’t currently indexed, simply return to the Page Indexing dashboard.
Scroll down and you’ll see a table titled “Why pages aren’t indexed”:
Here, you’ll be able to view all the reasons why your pages aren’t indexed. If you click on one of these reasons, you’ll be able to review all the pages that have been affected by that specific problem.
For example, when I click on the “Not found (404)” reason, I can review all the pages that are currently affected:
Determining which of your pages aren’t indexed can be confusing and time-consuming.
With GSC, you have all the data at your fingertips. All you have to do is review the findings and fix the problems.
4. Keyword research and analysis
Another vital component of SEO is keyword research. Without knowing what specific keywords to target, how will you ever attract the right audience?
Keyword research involves analyzing the keywords your target audience uses and narrowing down your findings to a list of target keywords.
From these target keywords, you can create content that directly meets the needs of your audience and allows you to compete with your niche rivals.
When conducting keyword research, you have to go through huge bodies of data to determine which keywords to target.
This can be a time-consuming process, especially when you’re trying to figure out which search terms your competitors are ranking for and you’re not.
To make this task easier for you, you can use Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool to automate the process.
This tool allows you to compare your domain against four of your competitors to identify keyword opportunities you’re missing out on.
To use this tool, click “Keyword Gap”.
Next, paste your domain and your top competitors in and hit “Compare”.
Then, scroll down to the table section. By default, you will be shown all the keywords that you share with your competitors:
While this data is insightful, I generally pay more attention to the “Missing” and “Untapped” tabs.
“Missing” shows you all the keywords your competitors have on their sites, but you don’t have on yours:
While “Untapped” shows you keywords you don’t rank for but at least one competitor does:
Both of these features are helpful because they allow you to identify gaps in your keyword-targeting strategy.
Rather than digging through your competitors’ articles to find keywords you’re missing, you can use the Keyword Gap tool to identify these search terms for you. This will save you a ton of time.
If you come across any keywords that you like, you can store them in the Keyword Manager tool by creating a keyword list.
Simply tick the box on the left-hand side and click “+ Add to list” at the top right-hand side:
Now, let’s talk about how Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool can help you further automate your keyword research.
Let’s say you’ve recently acquired a new website and would like to launch a successful SEO campaign. You’ve got a rough list of seed keywords, but don’t know which other keywords to use in order to get your content ranking.
Instead of manually compiling keyword lists, you can use the Keyword Magic tool to not only provide you with keyword ideas, but also provide you with some automated analysis for each.
For example, let’s say you’re trying to optimize a website about dog breeds, and one of your seed keywords is “dog breeds”.
You can enter this seed keyword into the Keyword Magic Tool, as shown here:
After you hit “Search”, you’ll be presented with a list of keywords:
You can also see the monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, and search intent for each keyword.
“KD %” reflects how difficult it would be to rank for the keyword.
So, ideally, you’d want to target keywords with a high search volume and low KD score.
Intent refers to the user intent associated with a particular keyword. It helps you understand the reason or purpose behind a user’s search when they enter that specific keyword into a search engine.
You can also use the filter options to further refine your list of keywords.
For example, you can use the KD % filter to find keywords that are “Easy” to rank for:
After you click “Apply”, the tool will present you with a refined list of keywords that match your settings:
As default, the keywords above are arranged in order of search volume. So, the two options at the top:
…have a very high search volume of 2.4K each, but a relatively low keyword difficulty score of 27% and 26% respectively.
Given these low scores, it would definitely be worth targeting these keywords.
5. Create keyword clusters
Keyword clustering involves grouping a list of keywords that are related to your main target keywords. These clusters can consist of synonyms as well as semantically related words.
For example, if your primary keyword is “search engine optimization”, some related keywords could include “SEO keywords”, “backlinks”, and “internal links”.
You can use Semrush’s Keyword Manager tool to create keyword clusters related to your seed keyword. The tool will provide you with a list of related terms and synonyms you can use in your content.
Here’s how to use this tool: Head over to Keyword Manager…
…and hit “Create list”:
Then, type in your seed keyword, select a database, and type in your domain:
After you hit “Create list”, Semrush will take a few seconds to generate your keyword clusters:
If you click on one of the clusters, you’ll be able to review an ordered list of related keywords and synonyms.
You can also analyze useful information such as the search intent, keyword difficulty and search volume of the keywords in the cluster.
For example, here’s what I get when I click on the “SEO automation” keyword cluster:
I now have more related keywords and synonyms to use in my article.
You can also expand your keyword clusters by adding related search terms you can find using Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool:
Paste a seed keyword into the Keyword Magic tool search bar, for example, “SEO”:
After you hit the search button, you’ll see a list of keywords on the next page. If you click on “Related”, the tool will automatically generate a list of related keywords that you can add to your cluster:
You can then send these keywords over to the Keyword Manager tool by ticking all the keywords you want and clicking the “+ Add to list” button:
To find semantically related keywords, click on one of the keyword groups listed under “All keywords” on the left-hand side:
For example, if you click on Google, you’ll then be presented with more keywords that are semantically related to your seed keyword.
If you need more suggestions, head over to Semrush’s SEO Content Template tool:
This tool will automate a cluster of semantically related keywords you can add to your article.
To use this tool, type your seed keyword into the search bar and click“ Create content template”:
On the next page you land on, scroll down to the “Key recommendations” section where you’ll find all the semantic keyword suggestions the tool has provided.
If you’ve already written and published your content, you can use Semrush’s On Page SEO Checker to audit your web pages and provide you with semantic keyword suggestions so that you can better optimize your content.
Here’s how to use the tool. Click on “On Page SEO Checker”:
Then, scroll down to the “Top Pages to Optimize” section, and click on one of the “Ideas” buttons next to the URLs:
On the next page, scroll down and you’ll see a list of semantically related keywords your competitors are using in their content, but you aren’t using in yours.
Arranging your keywords into groups manually can prove to be quite time-consuming. Therefore, I highly recommend using Semrush to automate this task. You will save yourself a substantial amount of time.
6. Monitor keyword positions
You need to regularly monitor your keyword rankings on the SERPs to make sure your SEO efforts are actually paying off. The internet is an unpredictable place; you could be ranking highly for a keyword one day and then plummet the next.
Checking how you rank for a keyword manually is relatively straightforward. All you’ve got to do is search for the keyword on Google and see where you lie in the search results.
However, this would take a considerable amount of time and effort if you were to do it for every keyword that you’ve ever targeted on your website.
Instead, you can automate the task using Semrush’s Position Tracking tool to check exactly how well (or how poorly) you’re currently ranking for your main target keywords.
To use the tool, click on “Position Tracking” under the Keyword Research section:
Enter your domain and select “Set up tracking”.
You’ll need to then select a search engine, device, location, and business name:
Next, you have to type in the keywords you want to track your positions for in the box below.
After you’ve typed them in, click “Add keywords to campaign”, and then the “Start Tracking” button:
Semrush will then need time to gather your Position Tracking data (this can take a couple of minutes, depending on how many keywords you entered).
Once it’s ready, you’ll land on the Position Tracking dashboard, which will look like this:
Scroll down, and you’ll see a Position Tracking table.
In this table, you can review where you currently rank (vs. where you ranked at an earlier date), as well as the estimated amount of traffic those keywords are pulling in:
You can also automate alerts that will trigger whenever your keyword positions on the SERPs change.
To do this, click on the settings button on the far right, and select “Triggers”:
Then, click “Add new trigger”:
You can then select how many positions a keyword would need to move up or down in the rankings in order for you to receive an alert:
Once you hit “Add”, the alert will be created.
7. Site Audit
Site audits will help you identify all things that potentially impact your site’s performance levels and rankings. These include:
- Broken internal links
- 404 pages
- Duplicate title tags and meta descriptions
- Duplicate content issues
- Pages that couldn’t be crawled
- Redirect chains and loops
- Slow loading pages
- Non Indexed pages
- Backlinks
If your pages take ages to load or if your internal links are broken, your site visitors will likely get frustrated and leave your site.
This will impact their user experience negatively, which means that your bounce rate increases and visits to your site will decrease. Ultimately, this will lead to a drop in your SERP rankings.
However, it’s not only your site visitors that will be affected by these issues.
For example, issues such as broken links can also impact Googlebot’s ability to crawl your site, which could result in some of your web pages not being crawled and indexed. If your pages aren’t indexed, they can’t rank at all.
These issues may not be immediately obvious to you as the webmaster, so you need to conduct regular site audits to ensure that everything is running smoothly.
You could go through the entirety of your domain and look for errors yourself, but this would be very time-consuming, not to mention unreliable.
Instead, you could use Semrush’s Site Audit tool, which will automatically crawl your website and identify errors.
Here’s how to use the Site Audit tool.
Scroll down till you find Site Audit on the left:
After you click on it, paste your domain in the search bar and click “Start Audit”:
You’ll then need to select a few configurations, before hitting “Start Site Audit”:
Once your site audit is complete, you’ll land on the Site Audit Overview dashboard.
Here, you get a quick snapshot of how your website is performing overall. Most importantly, you should be checking the ”Site Health” and “Errors” graphs:
If you click on the number under “Errors”, you’ll be taken to a list of issues that you need to fix ASAP.
This list will include all your on-page and technical SEO issues.
If you head back to the Site Audit Overview dashboard, you can also review how other specific aspects of your site are performing, such as:
Crawlability
The Crawlability section of Site Audit lets you analyze how easy it is for search engine crawlers to navigate their way around your site.
This section focuses on determining how many of your web pages have been crawled, as well as how many of them haven’t.
It can also provide you with other insights including your page crawl depth, site indexability, crawl budget waste, and sitemap vs. crawled pages report.
If you click on “View details” under “Crawlability”:
You can review the crawlability of your site at the time of the audit (in my case, it’s 99%), as well as other useful data.
For example, on the left-hand side of the crawlability dashboard, you can view your indexable pages vs. non-indexable pages ratio:
One of the best parts of the Crawlability section is that you don’t even need to manually go and figure out why your pages are non-indexable.
Instead, all you have to do is look at the “Crawl Budget Waste” list on the right-hand side:
This explains the reasons why 30 of my pages are non-indexable.
The Page Crawl Depth graph displays how many clicks it takes to reach all of your pages from your homepage:
For navigational reasons, you want to make sure all your important pages have a click depth of 1 or 2 clicks. 3 clicks is the maximum recommended click depth you should have for a page. However, this is only suitable for pages of lesser importance.
If you’re worried about click depth, you can click right onto the part of the chart you’re most concerned about.
For example, if I wanted to check which pages have a click depth of 3, I can click on the orange part of the graph:
I’ll then be presented with a list of all of my pages that currently have a click depth of this level:
Another useful graph in this section is Sitemap vs. Crawled Pages:
This graph represents the number of pages listed in your sitemap compared to how many pages on your site have actually been successfully crawled.
This means that not all the pages you have intended to be crawled have been crawled. This could be because your site’s crawl budget was finished. If this is the case, you should check the Crawl Budget Waste list I mentioned earlier to find out the source of the crawl issues.
Like most aspects of Semrush, if you need to export the data found in this section, simply hit the PDF button at the top right-hand side of the page:
You’ll even be able to automate daily, weekly, and monthly reports.
HTTPS
Google has long been encouraging websites to switch from HTTP to HTTPS as the latter provides better privacy and security for site visitors.
By implementing an SSL certificate on your website, you transition from HTTP to HTTPS. Therefore, you’re providing a more secure browsing experience for your visitors. Plus, Google will view your site as being more trustworthy, which could help to boost your rankings.
So, it’s important to switch from HTTP to HTTPS — it’s also important to monitor your HTTPS implementation.
How do you do that? You can hit the “View details” button in the HTTPS widget on the Site Audit dashboard.
Here, you’ll be given a breakdown of your HTTPS implementation on your site.
For example, I currently have several HTTPs issues under the Website Architecture section:
By clicking on this warning, I can identify the specific URLs that require attention and need to be addressed:
Site Performance
When you click on “View details” in the Site Performance widget…
…you’ll be able to view your page load speeds and examine your website’s CSS and Javascript usage in order to determine your page’s current load speeds.
Your total load speeds are displayed in the Page (HTML) load speed graph:
0-0.5s is considered optimal page speed loading time. As you can see, 199 of my pages are in this range.
In the Performance Issues table on the right, I can review any issues my site is experiencing.
For example, I can identify which of my site’s pages have large HTML page sizes, redirect chains and loops, or slow page (HTML) load speeds:
Internal linking
I’ve already shown you how the Site Audit tool can help you find and fix broken internal links. Now, I’m going to show you the other Errors, Warnings, and Notices you can analyze in the Internal Linking report.
Firstly, click “View details” in the Internal Linking widget:
In the “Warnings” section, you can review errors that may cause issues for your domain at some point down the line. This includes:
- Having too many links on one page — Overstuffing internal links into your content can make it appear spammy and confuse the user. Ideally, you should only have between 5-10 internal links per 2,000 words.
- Nofollow attributes in outgoing internal links — If one of your internal links has the rel = “nofollow” attribute set, then web crawlers will not follow this internal link. This would be bad if you’re trying to get the linked page indexed.
- Having too long link URLs — You need to make sure that your URLs aren’t too long. Real issues occur when your URLs exceed 2,000 characters. They can cause load issues, crawling, and indexing problems, and also make them difficult for web users to read and share.
Below, you’ll also be able to review the “Notices” section:
Notices, like Warnings, aren’t as pressing as your internal link errors, but are still worth adding to your to-do list.
Markup
Schema markup is a microdata language that search engines can interpret. It can be used to create rich snippets in the search results, such as:
If you’ve attempted to implement schema markup on your web pages, you’ll likely want to know if the implementation was successful.
Instead of manually searching for each blog post you’ve added schema markup code to, you could automate your check by going to the Markup section of Semrush’s Site Audit.
On the “Markup” widget, click “View details”:
You can now check which pages have schema markup and which ones don’t:
Click on the “with markup” number:
You’ll be able to review all the pages on your site that feature markup:
Markup issues, if you have any, will be listed in the “Structured Data Items” table, which can be found at the bottom of the main Markup dashboard:
The Warnings report
Another useful feature of Semrush’s Site Audit tool is the “Warnings” tab, which you can find at the top of your Site Audit dashboard: