People, especially site developers, are aware of the value of search engine optimization practices. It is an important tool and practice that drives their websites to the top of the results pages of search engines and generates their all-important leads which result in profitable customers consequently coming to use. However, just like all the things in life, you should always invest invest money and time so that you can make things better. Through the continuous streamlining and optimizing of your implemented SEO practices, you can make sure that your site is running its full potential, maximizing your opportunities for huge volumes of web traffic which results in a rise in the number of leads and profitable customers that is received by your business.
Introduction to SEO Audits
An SEO Audit examines a website and identifies the weaknesses of a particular site. An SEO audit is not just about the aesthetics since a website is much more than a wonderful combination of graphics and colours. An SEO audit takes the whole of the website into account.
Most SEO Audits look at:
- Overall keyword strategy
- On-site optimisation
- Website user flow
- Content strategy
- Backlink profiles
- Analytics
An SEO Audit offers an overview regarding the health of your website when it comes to SEO. You should also receive various actionable points according to the strategy, which either you or the agency must implement.
An SEO audit can serve as the initial point of call for establishing an SEO strategy (if you do not have one already). However, if you already have an SEO strategy, it will serve as a valuable second opinion that might flag up the critical issues that you have with your existing strategy.
A professional SEO audit will provide you with everything that you must know regarding the current condition of your website and its current ranking on the search engines. This will give you all the information that you need to improve your website to make your site the best that it can be.
Even though an audit is renowned for being a bad thing such as IRS or tax audits, an SEO audit is an important tool that should be used by your business on a regular basis since the results of the audit will benefit your business positively.
Reasons Why Your Website Needs an SEO Audit
Are you still not convinced regarding how an SEO audit will be beneficial for your website? Listed below are some of the top reasons why you would need one.
1. You should invest in the well-being of your website
Availing an SEO audit for your website is a lot like taking your website for a routine check-up at the doctor. The audit will compare the condition of your website to the benchmarks that are established by the online industry including Google. The results of the audit will be able to notify you of the problems that are experienced by your site as well as a detailed analysis of the statistics of your website. The statistics can include data such as your bounce rates; the time that your visitors have spent on the pages of your website and the effectiveness of the referral plans that you are running and managing currently.
This kind of general overview and analysis of your website will be able to examine various areas as well as fundamental SEO aspects such as your links, citations, your sitemap, the data that is provided on your social networking accounts, and how effectively your website is linked internally. An SEO audit will also be able to notify you if ever your website has some ‘red flags’. The ‘red flags’ will include the possible penalties that Google can impose on websites for poor content, therefore causing harm to your website’s overall search engine ranking.
You should also remember that search engines are modifying their requirements and guidelines for good SEO practices constantly. If you are focused on operating and improving your business, you can miss the said updates, or you may simply not have the time to study the current guidelines, which is why it is important that you bring in the services of a professional expert on SEO.
With the information provided by the professionals, it will be easier to identify the weaker areas of your SEO practice, thus allowing you to correct them to introduce improvements to your website.
2. SEO Audits Reveal The Technical Issues of Your Website
An SEO audit helps in identifying some technical SEO issues. Listed below are some of the elements that are identified by an audit:
- Website Speed: This refers to the time that it takes your site to load a page. Google considers the load speed of your website. This is because Google puts UX as its top priority over all other things. Typically, a faster-loading website implies a better user experience. If your website takes a longer time to load, your users are likely to bounce. Your website may have the greatest content on your website, but it will be pointless if the visitors of your site already closed your page at 5 seconds.
- 404 Errors, 301 Redirects, and 302 Redirects: These kinds of redirects should always be minimal, and the 404 errors must not be existing on your website. Redirect can contribute to a slower experience for the users while 404 errors appear to be roadblocks for the users. You must resolve these kinds of issues so that you will be able to present a remarkable experience for your site visitors.
- Site URL Structure & Architecture: Your website should make use of subfolders to establish excellent site architecture. The URLs on your website should also be brief and descriptive.
- Crawlability: This is how a particular search engine will be able to crawl to your website easily. You can be assured of good crawlability by having a dynamic sitemap, correctly making use of robots.txt file and rel=noindex tags.
3. An SEO Audit Identifies the On-Page Issues Issues of Your Website
The changes that you can apply on the content of your website easily are called On-page SEO. These are the simple changes that you can execute to improve your SEO.
The following element will be covered by a good SEO audit:
- Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions: The Meta Titles of your website must be 35-70 characters only. It should incorporate the keywords that are found on your website. On the other hand, Meta Descriptions must always have less than 160 characters. It should include the keyword, and also a CTA, if appropriate.
- Headers: Headers a much like the headlines in a newspaper. The headline that has the biggest font will inform the visitors the most regarding the content of the newspaper.
- Content: The content of your website is always the most important aspect of your page. With regards to SEO, you must make sure that the content of your website is keyword-centred. However, you must remember not to overstuff the content with the keywords as you will be penalised for it.
- Internal Linking: It will help the visitors of your website to navigate your website better if your site has internal links.
4. Competition is Identified by An SEO Audit
Attempting to establish your online presence without studying the websites of your competition is just like aiming to build the world’s tallest skyscraper but not having an idea about the height of the other skyscrapers. Though it is vital that you know your competition, it is still not considered to be enough. You must also know what the competition is doing. An excellent SEO audit will be able to distinguish the competition, know their strategies, and devise a plan to create a taller skyscraper.
5. Your Backlinks are Identified by An SEO Audit
Last year, backlinks continued to be considered as a significant part of the algorithm of Google, and we do not see that it will be changed anytime soon. Typically, the trend is that the rank of your website will be better if you have more notable links to remarkable content. Some of the things that are identified by an excellent SEO audit includes:
- The number of backlinks that are on your website
- Spammy backlinks on your website
- The number of backlinks that are on the website of your competition
One thing that you must remember is that you must never spend on backlinks. You must concentrate on writing great content that is shareable and resourceful. The backlinks must always come naturally.
6. SEO Audits Identifies Your Visitor Count
You may learn that the number of people that are visiting your website is decreasing. This happens because search engines make constant updates to their algorithms to look for new and effective ways to list websites. If you have failed to update your website for quite some time or if you are not making use of effective SEO methods, search engines can kick you down the results page of the search engine proactively.
Lower visitor count is a very obvious sign that your SEO methods are not good enough. SEO audits will be able to identify the errors that are causing the problem, allowing you to correct or improve them.
7. An SEO Audit Will Help You Establish A Content Strategy
After receiving all of the data from the reasons that were enumerated from 1-6, you must utilise the data to establish strategies for your content. You must use these strategies for the development and improvement of your website. If you are being out-ranked because of your keywords, you must examine your competition, improve your content, optimise the meta titles and descriptions of your website, and identify where you will be able to earn some gains in your backlinks. A good SEO audit will help you in staying focus on your content strategy.
Conclusion
If you have been operating your website for years, or have just recently launched your online business, an SEO audit is necessary so that you can improve the online presence of your website. By investing in SEO audits sooner, you can start to address the issues that your website have immediately thus, allowing you to observe more positive results earlier.
