{"id":1917,"date":"2021-09-12T15:38:42","date_gmt":"2021-09-12T13:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/url-monitor.com\/seo-checks\/"},"modified":"2021-09-12T15:38:44","modified_gmt":"2021-09-12T13:38:44","slug":"seo-checks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/url-monitor.com\/en\/seo-checks\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO Checks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you know that?<\/p>\n

Your rankings climb incessantly, you pat yourself on the back.<\/p>\n

And then…<\/p>\n

The damn rankings suddenly DROP.<\/p>\n

You look at the page and after an eternal search you realize that some settings from the staging environment were transferred during a release or that someone played on the metas.<\/p>\n

Pretty annoying!<\/p>\n

And just to make sure that doesn’t happen, top SEOs have some important things monitored on a daily basis. So they are always in the picture and can react before the rankings fall.<\/p>\n

SEO Check 1: robots.txt<\/h2>\n

The horror scenario of every SEO: You build a really cool new site, check everything in the staging environment and look forward to faster loading times, more conversions and higher rankings.<\/p>\n

And then nobody checks the robots .txt after the release.<\/p>\n

Checking means:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Bots have access to the website<\/li>\n
  2. Bots do not have access to specific directories<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \n

    User-agent:*
    \ndisallow:\/category1
    \nallow:\/category1\/product1<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    This special directory protection can be monitored with very few on-page crawlers.<\/p>\n

    In URL-Monitor you simply enter the text of your robots.txt and get an info if there is a change.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Or at least you will receive information if the robots.txt is no longer available or has been moved to another directory via 301:<\/p>\n

    After all, 10 of the 100 most visited websites have done so in the last 30 days:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    A little tip to the agency people:<\/strong> This check alone can bring you umpteen new customers ;)<\/p>\n

    SEO Check 2: Domain Redirects<\/h2>\n

    Refer http to https pages?<\/p>\n

    Refers to www. on non-www?<\/p>\n

    Are pages redirected with a trailing slash?<\/p>\n

    Are case-sensitive pages redirected?<\/p>\n

    A small, unwanted change in the htaccess and the work is done: All URLs can be found twice on the net.<\/p>\n

    Simple remedy: Store URLs in URL Monitor and let them be informed if they no longer redirect.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    SEO Check 3: Meta Robots Tag<\/h2>\n

    As with robots.txt, it must be ensured at all times that bots are allowed to crawl and index the page.<\/p>\n

    Since staging environments are often set to noindex – instead of protecting them from access via htaccess – you have to make sure that the most important pages are indexable at all times.<\/p>\n

    So have them monitored daily and play it safe.<\/p>\n

    SEO Check 4: Canonical Tags<\/h2>\n

    If you have pages that intentionally refer to others via canonical, have them monitored.<\/p>\n

    With all other sites, you simply monitor whether canonicals are set and constantly present.<\/p>\n

    In fahrrad.de, for example, the canonicals regularly disappear to be present again later:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    SEO Check 5: Meta Titles & Descriptions<\/h2>\n

    You are the SEO. You specify what Meta Title and Description should look like.<\/p>\n

    But suddenly there is a new agency or the staff in a department has been replaced.<\/p>\n

    They are used to making changes to the website themselves.<\/p>\n

    Thus, a title of the CTRs of 30% and more becomes a one-word title that no one is interested in.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Sounds impossible to some and yet it happens constantly and with projects of any size.<\/p>\n

    It is also essential that you immediately see major changes. Here, for example, that fahrrad.de on 15.06. has changed all descriptions:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    SEO Check 7: Constant Status Codes<\/h2>\n

    301 redirects and with 410<\/a> deleted pages are cached by Google and some browsers.<\/p>\n

    URLs with this status code will sooner or later fly out of the index and will never be crawled again.<\/p>\n

    If you want to detect these types of errors, you should monitor special URLs daily. Just as we did in the case of emp.de (see screenshot).<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    A few months ago, we had imported all the top rankings of the shop into URL-Monitor. Now we see that a URL with a good ranking should be completely deleted from the index by a 410 status code.<\/p>\n

    After some time, it should then be indexed again and deleted again.<\/p>\n

    As you can see, this change has done lasting damage to the rankings:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    With ikea.com, pages are occasionally redirected by 301 in order to go back online a little later.<\/p>\n

    In this case, https:\/\/www.ikea.com\/us\/en\/cat\/storage-organization-st001\/ was made on 01.06. redirected by 301.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Whether they use URL monitor to see this change :thinking-face:<\/p>\n

    SEO Check 8: Search Pages<\/h2>\n

    If your search pages rank, such as obi.de, it makes sense to check the search URLs regularly.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    If there are changes to the search for an update or if products are removed from the range, a 404 error occurs and potential customers go nowhere. For example, with https:\/\/www.obi.de\/search\/plexiglas\/.<\/p>\n

    SEO Check 8: Rankings<\/h2>\n

    Rankings only check for 8th place?<\/p>\n

    Absolutely!<\/p>\n

    Nothing is worse than having to react to fallen rankings. You carry out all previous checks to ensure that technically everything runs smoothly.<\/p>\n

    This is all the more true since ranking checkers always have a time delay:<\/p>\n