SEO audit is an integral part of any well-built Internet marketing plan. It refers to a comprehensive evaluation of the health of your entire marketing scheme as well as factors that influence your search engine ranking. The auditing process involves an SEO analyst putting your website through its paces in order to point out any problem areas that you need to improve or fix to build on your online presence. It’s a pretty simple concept.
An SEO audit shows you much more than just how many hits your website had during a certain period of time. It also shows you where each click came from, the percentage of hits on your page that followed through to sales, where the weak spots in your marketing strategy are, what other opportunities are available to jack up your numbers, if there’s competition or other threats that may compromise your marketing abilities and if the marketing you are doing is even reaching the right demographic. This insight definitely beats the “Hey, sales aren’t what I’d like them to be so let’s try this…” method. There’s no hit and miss with an SEO audit. You see exactly what the problems are in your marketing plan, and you can implement changes to correct them almost instantaneously. So, yes, an SEO audit is 100% worth every penny!
Would you build your home on a bad terrain? You wouldn’t, right? Well, the same line of reasoning applies to your website – it shouldn’t have a bad groundwork. An SEO audit starts with a technical analysis of your website that identifies any technical issues that might affect your website performance and ranking. Accessibility and indexability are the cornerstones of technical analysis. These refer to “the search engines’ and the users’ ability to access your website” and “how your website is presented within the search engine after being accessed” respectively. When you think about it, if your content cannot be accessed to your audience then there’s no point of creating a website in the first place, is there?
The key aspects of the website that a technical analysis looks at include:
Once all the technical aspects of the website are dealt with and everything is in working order, content on each page needs to be considered. Logically, every page should have content that makes sense and is fresh. When it comes to their website content, businesses often make the mistakes of a) not caring about what the pages of their website or other marketing tools “say” as long as the keywords are there enough times to make it visible to search engines; and b) ripping off content from other websites.
Search engines don’t like bad content and will devalue your website if your website has any. This is where an on-page analysis comes in. It ensures that all of the content on your website and peripheral marketing pages (such as articles that point to your site from other directories) is valuable, unique, up-to-date and sharable.
The key aspects of the web pages that an on-page analysis looks at include:
Everything that has been done in the first two steps (during technical and on-page analysis) is performed so that your website would be better and more visible to Google. And this is where we come to an off-page analysis. In some respects, off-page ranking factors are the pay-off of all your hard work. They indicate how popular or trustworthy your website is or whether people are linking to it and from which websites, etc. An off-page analysis reviews any backlinks to your site to make sure there are no toxic or broken links on reciprocal sources.
It’s exciting to see that your site is mentioned on other blogs, social media accounts and/or articles, but those links must come from relevant/trusted domains and remain active. Your SEO audit will check if your backlinks are toxic or inactive, so you can find ways to address them.
After dissecting and dealing with internal issues comes keyword planning. Using keyword research tools such as Analytics or Google Keyword Planner, SEO analysts can find and forecast popular keyword phrases in your market niche and check if any of those keywords are good for your campaign. The analyst will list the keywords according to their ranks and why each should or shouldn’t be used to develop your marketing.
Now that you have a detailed report to view, you need to make sense of it. It’s the analyst’s job to throw light on what everything in the report means and how it relates to your website and the effectiveness of your marketing.
An SEO audit can be a real pain – it is time-consuming and the end result contains enough detail to make even the geekiest geek’s head spin. So, if you’re ready to make the most of your online marketing campaigns through an SEO audit, you need to get in touch with a professional. Our team of SEO experts at Seorecyclers provides accurate audits, so when you’re ready, we’re here to help you improve the health of your online business and take your site to the next level.
Let’s work together and come up with a solid plan of action to make your online marketing stronger!
