64: Building Healthy SEO Habits - Part 3: Keeping your Site Healthy

Summary: In this episode, Meredith’s husband explains how to maintain a healthy website by regularly auditing its SEO performance. He highlights the importance of monitoring key factors such as title tags, meta descriptions, and image alt texts. By using tools like SEMrush, website owners can automate regular audits, receive alerts when issues arise, and maintain optimal site health without constant manual checks. This habit helps prevent SEO penalties and improves overall rankings.

Blog Post: Maintaining a Healthy Website with Regular SEO Audits

A healthy website is the backbone of successful SEO. While creating great content and building backlinks are essential, ensuring your website's technical health is equally important. Regularly auditing your site to check for errors or optimization opportunities can prevent issues that negatively affect your rankings. In this post, we’ll discuss how you can establish a simple routine to maintain a healthy website using tools like SEMrush.

What Is a Healthy Website?

A healthy website is one that is optimized for search engines, ensuring that all technical aspects are in order. This includes elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, image alt texts, and sitemaps. When your site is technically sound, search engines like Google can crawl and index it more effectively, which improves your chances of ranking higher.

However, optimizing your website isn’t a one-time task. Over time, as you add new content or make updates, small issues can creep in—such as duplicate meta tags or missing alt texts—that need to be addressed.

Why Regular SEO Audits Matter

You may wonder, “Why can’t I just optimize my site once and forget about it?” The reality is that as your website grows, small technical errors will inevitably appear. If left unchecked, these errors can affect your site’s SEO performance. Regular audits ensure that your site remains optimized over time. Moreover, Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving, and staying ahead of potential penalties is crucial to maintaining and improving your rankings.

Many SEO mistakes happen without intent. For example, certain platforms like WordPress or Squarespace may auto-generate tags or duplicate content by default. While these actions might seem minor, they could send the wrong signals to search engines, indicating over-optimization or attempts to manipulate rankings.

Automating SEO Audits with SEMrush

One of the simplest ways to maintain a healthy website is by automating your SEO audits. Tools like SEMrush make it easy to monitor your site’s technical health without the need for constant manual checks.

Here’s how to set up automated audits in SEMrush:

1. Run an Initial Audit: Once you set up SEMrush, perform an initial audit of your site. This will flag issues like long title tags, duplicated meta descriptions, or missing alt texts.

2. Fix Initial Issues: After reviewing the audit, address the issues identified. Most fixes are straightforward and will instantly improve your site’s SEO health.

3. Set Up Weekly Updates: Before completing the audit setup, check the box that says “Send me weekly updates.” This will automatically email you an updated audit score every week. If your score drops below a certain level (typically below 90), you’ll know it’s time to go in and fix new issues.

By automating this process, you can rest assured that your website stays optimized over time without the need for constant attention.

Key Metrics to Watch

• Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Ensure they are unique and optimized for relevant keywords.

• Image Alt Texts: Every image should have descriptive alt texts to help search engines understand the content.

• Sitemaps and URL Structure: Make sure your sitemap is up-to-date and that your URLs are clean and logical.

Conclusion

Maintaining a healthy website doesn’t have to be a time-consuming process. By setting up automated audits with tools like SEMrush, you can ensure that your site stays optimized while focusing on creating great content and growing your business. Regular SEO checks help prevent minor issues from becoming major problems, keeping your website in top shape for both search engines and users.

Resources

For tutorials on fixing common SEO issues identified by SEMrush, visit the blog mentioned by Meredith’s husband.