You’ve probably heard about the effectiveness of SEO, but not how to perform an SEO audit. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a powerful digital tool. Even so, statistics show that SEO is 5.66 times more efficacious than paid advertising. Why? Because SEO always improves your ranking on the web.
Did you know that 68% of every online experience starts with a search engine? It shows that people are searching the web. Again, 53.3% of business website traffic is derived from organic search. Yet, just 0.83% of people click on Google’s second page. This means that if you’re not on Google’s SERP first page, you’re low on traffic.
It is undoubtedly obvious why SEO is a marketing focus. Search engines drive traffic 10 times more than social media. Along with higher traffic, it brings higher ROI. However, running SEO effectively isn’t an easy feat. Coupled with the constant SEO audits you have to do. Which could be quarterly, or twice a year.
In this article, we will shed detailed light on how to perform an SEO audit. As well as showing up in search results and getting benefits from SEO.
But first,
An SEO audit is a process used to identify your ranking problems. It is an inspection to find issues or errors that prevent your site from ranking. Not only on Google but also on other internet search engines. An SEO audit is a way of checking a website’s health. Hospitals are to humans as an SEO audit is to websites.
An SEO audit comprises several parts, such as:
Furthermore, the cost of an SEO audit depends on your auditing tool. And also on the size of your website and business.
Below are four strong reasons why an SEO audit is so important:
There are several steps for conducting an SEO audit for optimal optimization. We will look at them in detail.
While gearing up for SEO auditing, begin with site crawling. Essentially, a site crawl helps you to set a standard for your audit. One useful procedure you can practice is doing an automated scan monthly. This helps you track basic elements such as conversions. Along with page views, and bounce rates.
Constant audits like these show your major issues, like duplicate content. Or, as other on-page errors such as broken links, wrong page titles, and poor meta-data. After site crawling, if there is any issue, contact experts for a comprehensive audit. Don’t go too far in your search—we can help you.
Similarly, in-depth yearly crawling should be carried out. With a scan or a total audit, experts evaluate your site to find bugs. Additionally, it provides you with pivotal indicators for SEO optimization and brand awareness
When running a technical SEO audit, here are a few core areas to assess:
An in-depth test will show the relationship between your landing pages and other pages. Furthermore, it will reveal the effectiveness of your ads, banners, buttons, and UI/UX.
Page speed or load time is the next step in an SEO audit. Rapid site speed gives users a positive experience. Whereas a slow site speed leads to high bounce rates. In an age of short attention spans, speed is important. Kissmetrics says that 40% of people abandon websites that take over 3 seconds to load.
A speed test (using SEO) reveals the features on your website that are acting as obstructions. Go ahead and optimize your site once you’ve discovered areas for improvement.
Find the best SEO audit tools below:
After testing your page speed, check your site organization structure. The organization of your site affects user experience. So, the better your site structure, the better your ranking. An accurate sitemap is vital as well as your URL arrangement.
Ensure that the scale of your site adheres to the data analytics naming conventions. Where possible, avoid adding numbers or symbols.
An example of a strong URL structure would be: https://eezadigital.com/services/web-design-and-development/
Another feature of strong site architecture is ensuring all your primary web pages are at the navigation menu at the top. This way, visitors or bots can easily locate anything on your website.
In light of this, including internal links leading visitors or bots from page to page is important. With this simple step, your site structure will be strong and beneficial to your SEO.
Once your site structure has been established, check your website content. A basic on-page SEO element is your content. Your website content plays a crucial role in the effectiveness of your website. When it comes to ranking,
Google is partial to frequently updated content. Content that is not only unique but also useful and relevant to visitors. So, ensure that your website content checks all the boxes to enjoy increased ranking and visibility.
Therefore, add your keywords to your content in a natural, fluid way. Strike a balance—keep it relevant, valuable, and keyword based. You can also use a content calendar to track keywords while monitoring SEO trends.
If your content audit is complete, move on to auditing your website tags. Check if your tag is concise and clear in communicating the purpose of each web page. If your title is extra long, search engines will cut off part of it. Hence, less is more in this case, with relevant keywords.
Your meta-tag is a sort of description of the content on your webpage. When optimized, they prompt searchers to click on your link. Another website tag is the ‘Alt tag’. It is used to describe images on your website. When bots crawl your website, the alt tags are an indispensable feature.
An accurate description of the images on your web pages can boost your SEO. Remember to add your keywords as well. For other essential website tags, add a rel=canonical link/tag in the HTML. This is to stop content duplication problems. Finally, blog post tags aid the organization of website content for bots crawling.
The next thing to audit is your website backlinks. The quality of your website and linked pages is usually determined by search engines. Backlinks are an integral part of SEO success. It shows search engines that your website is relevant to searchers. Each backlink leading to your website should have quality content.
Furthermore, verify the domains your backlinks are coming from. A misleading domain would badly affect your SEO.
SEO audits have different aspects. However, it is vital to drive engagement, generate leads, and increase revenue. It can be overwhelming, to carry out an audit. But that’s where we come in. Start your SEO audit here.