DMV Music SEO Audit : Poor SEO but great ranking?

We conducted a free SEO audit of the DMVlife.com at their request. We used their recommend search phrases of "DMV artists" and "DMV music". In both cases, their website was in the top ten, and for "DMV Artists" they ranked number one! Great job.

Curiously, the SEO audit shows a variety of SEO errors which would generally indicate poor SERP.

Watch SEO Audit of DMV Music site

Of course, the search term used a hyper-local phrase "DMV". That, combined with their domain name "DMVlife" is likely why they rank so well for DMV related keywords. Additionally, they have 590K back links and low back link score from MOZ (They might want to run a link detox to get a 0 score). However, when we broadened our search to more geo specific but generic phrases they had no ranking in the top ten. For example, "DC rap", "Maryland Rap" Virginia Rap" "Maryland music" "Maryland Artists" and "Virginia music". None of the phrase showed DMVlife.com in the top ten of the search results.

So, our general recommendation will be that that correct all the technical SEO errors below, as well as review their keyword targeting, then restructure and optimize accordingly. They should also conduct a site wide SEO audit, back link audit (detox) and competitor analysis.

DMV Music website SEO audit results.

1) Meta Description: They only use 70 characters, but the recommended is 130-300.

2) Header tags: They use some header tags, but there is opportunity to increase usage and add targeted keywords

3) Alt Tags: 19 images are missing ALT tags

4) Text/HTML ratio: They only have a 10.71% text to HTML ration.

5) Micro formats / Schema : They had some validation issues with micro formats and no Schema mark up.

6) Twitter / Facebook : On the home page they have Twitter / Facebook mark up, but it does not validate properly.

7) AMP : There was no Google Amp version of the site detected.

8) Mobile : The site is not mobile friendly.

9) language: They have not specified a language for their site. Presumably it should be set to English - USA.

10) No Favicon: This is more for usability and branding than SEO directly, but then USABILITY and BRANDING are GOOD SEO.

SEO Audit Recap:

1) Fix all technical errors
2) Optimized for more geo specific terms
3) Conduct a back link audit and detox

Disclaimer: 
This report was generated by SEMrush and modified by Serr.biz. Under the fair use doctrine, we have reviewed the website in this report from a technical SEO point of view. All statements and recommendations expressed in this publication are that of Serr.biz LLC and are OPINION and NOT statements of fact.

Credit: Cover image of rapper: https://www.pexels.com/photo/adult-band-cap-close-up-462442/