Why An SEO Audit Is Important

An SEO audit is an essential procedure for every website. It helps to enhance the site’s performance, ranking, and usability. An SEO audit is aimed at altering the core elements of a website such as the indexing, site architecture, backlinking, content enhancement, traffic and conversion rates, and create solutions related to all potential performance issues.

The audit can be performed by the site owner under a guided procedure. However, it is better done by a professional SEO specialist.

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What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit includes checking all the key areas of a website that can affect the search engine result positions for all pages of the website, with the main focus being on the technical SEO elements, the on-page elements and the off-page elements.

The off-page elements are usually the most expensive and/or time consuming parts of a successful SEO audit, but the results can be achieved more efficiently when both the technical and on-page elements are fully optimised beforehand.

Why Is an SEO Audit Important?

There are various reasons to consider a full audit on your website.

1. Check The Website’s Technical Issues

With regards to all the “coding” or “behind the scenes” components of your website that might affect the SEO. These are the components that are not related to the content but are mainly related to the structure of your site. Some of the critical issues include:

Indexing Issues

This is a technical check of your web pages and the indexing tags used. A webpage with a no-index tag simply means it is not visible to web crawlers and therefore will not appear in the Search Engine Results Pages.

Page Loading Speed

This is a check of all factors that affect your web page loading speeds, such as the size of images and mobile friendliness, cache problems and redirects.

Related post: How To Speed Up WordPress Website by 45% With One Simple Change

Server Issues

Your website may be experiencing downtimes due to unreliable hosts or overloaded servers. An audit helps determine your server speeds and reliability. In some cases, you may be forced to change your host, which is not a difficult procedure but we do advise not to do it yourself if you are not an expert.

Robot.txt file Issues

A robot.txt file is just as important as its location. For your site to rank high, create a robot.txt file and place it in the highest order of your directory files. A technical SEO audit will help fix any issues relating to the availability or position of the robot.txt file.

Security Issues

You should have a detailed check of all your site security certificates and their validity. A site without an SSL certificate will adversely affect traffic numbers since Google display a  “not secure” message to any user who visits the website. According to Google data, about 30% of web users do not proceed to sites with security warnings.

Software used on a server

This will help you determine whether it is your site infrastructure that is affecting your site load times or the server infrastructure.

Mobile Friendly

With over 60 percent of web users accessing through mobile devices, it is essential for every site to be optimised for mobile use. Our SEO audit works to ensure that your site is mobile friendly.

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2. On Page Issues

An SEO audit also focuses on your website content and works to streamline all factors in your content that affect your site’s ranking. Such factors include:

Keyword consistency

There is a difference between keyword density and consistency. An SEO audit helps determine how consistent is the use of your keywords. i.e. In meta description, headings, and site pages. This is a key factor for the site ranking.

Page length Issues

The length of your content per page also determines your site ranking. According to Forbes SEO analyst, a page should have a minimum of 300 words. Thin content pages may be considered as “doorway” pages (created only to target specific keywords without offering any value to the user) by google and can be penalised during a manual review. An SEO audit helps check such factors and puts them in perspective.

Heading tags

The use of heading tags helps in making the headings and subheadings standout. The HTML h1, h2, h3 tags make it easier for search engines to index your site. A site audit ensures that all headings are in the right place.

The length of Titles

Search engines, Google included, only display 50-60 characters of your headings. That is why it is recommended that your page titles are within the required length, which is checked and rectified by a full SEO Audit.

Image alt attributes

During an SEO audit it is crucial to check your image optimisation as well. Reviewing the image alt attributes, and adding or fixing it accordingly, will help increase search engine traffic.

Meta descriptions

Keyword meta description optimisation is another critical factor. An SEO audit ensures that meta descriptions are relevant and consistent with the titles and keywords and their lengths do not exceed the suggested range. Well written meta descriptions increase click through rates from the SERPs.

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3. Content Audit

Content relevancy

Content relevance is another key factor that affects your conversion rate and ranking. A content audit helps determine redundant information and enhance content usability and relevance.

Duplicate Content

An SEO audit is paramount to avoid content duplication. Any piece of content must be unique for your site to rank highly.

4. Off Page Issues

Inbound and outbound links

Sites with high-quality backlinks rank higher in search engines. It is vital to ensure that all your outbound links are functional. Broken links may cause frustration among users hence increasing your site’s bounce rate and decrease your rank. An SEO audit works to ensure that all the inbound and outbound links are functional and relevant.

The number of backlinks

How many authority sites link back to your site? The ranking of your site also depends on backlinks. After an SEO analysis, we can plan the perfect ad hoc strategy to get your site enough backlinks from related sites, which will help to increase the position on search engines.

Social Engagement

This entails measuring the effectiveness of  your social media presence and social signals strategy. Having active social media accounts with relevant backlinks to your website is vital. Our SEO Audit helps determine the right social engagement plan for your site and assist in the setup process.

User Interface

Having great content is essential, however, the way it is also presented matters. The user interface aspect needs to be analysed and updated according to the latest trends. We help you find the best UI/Design for your site to improve the user experience.

Domain Authority

This is the search engine ranking power of your domain and is closely linked to your online brand awareness. It determines the strength of your domain in search engines based on age, size, and popularity. We help analyse your domain authority and improve your brand awareness in our SEO audits.

Page Authority

This is also another factor that determines the page ranking on search engines. Just like domain authority, we help your web pages improve their page authority. We use industry accepted metrics from Moz.com to measure your page authority scale.

Social Bookmarking

Adding social bookmarks to your site improve engagements and drives social signals. We ensure that our SEO audit streamlines the importance of your social bookmarks and enhances your ranking in search engines.

5. Analysis of Google Search Console data

An SEO audit will help us determine which are the most important attributes of your site according to Google search console data. We establish the most relevant keywords on your site, the relevant pages as well as redundant pages. This analysis is crucial for planning future strategies regarding content and target keywords.

Related Post: 3 Simple SEO Tweaks To Boost Your Online Traffic (No. 2 Is Our Favourite…)

We also use Google Search Console data as part of the technical SEO audit as it reports on Google web crawler issues.

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Benefits

An SEO audit helps you know your site’s health and how to fix any issues while staying ahead of competitors by ensuring that your website runs smoothly and ranks high.

It will help to increase your visibility on search engines and fix any user experience issues, which leads to improving leads, conversions and profits.

Performing regular audits gives you a better understanding of all the factors that are affecting your search engine rankings, and it offers you a detailed overview of which pages are raking and which ones are not and why.

SEO Audit Steps

1. Get to know your customers

Also called SEO discovery session. This is an in-depth analysis of your potential customers, based on your goals, performance data, and traffic data.

2. Website Audit

A website audit will help you streamline the performance of your site by taking into account all the on-page factors such as topic consolidation, length of content and internal links.

3. Competitors’ analysis

This entails an analysis of your competitors’ sites, their user interface, user experiences, and site SEO. We will help put in place strategies that capitalise on their shortcomings and borrow what is necessary.

4. Keyword analysis and target keywords

This entails a full check of the keywords used, their relevance according to Google console data, and their consistency within the site pages.

5. Backlink analysis vs your competitors

We help you create high profile backlinking to authority sites. We analyse your niche and your competitors in order to build the most relevant backlink profile.

The Importance Of The Right SEO Plan After The Audit

An effective SEO plan depends on many other factors such as:

Keyword analysis

Failure to effectively analyse your keywords, plan their use, consistency, and density will lead to a failed SEO strategy.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing is a very important aspect of increasing your site traffic, improving your conversion rates, improving your domain and page authority and creating social signals.

Effective Email Campaigns

An effective email campaign entails offering gated content to a potential customer by submitting their email address or contact information.Automated email campaigns will then help land direct clients through inbound marketing and improve your site’s return traffic and sales metrics.

Strategic Content Campaigns

This may include marketing the content on social media, blogs, infographic and much more. Use your meta titles and descriptions through social sharing to get more clicks on certain posts and increase your site traffic and email optins.

How To Choose The Right SEO Audit Plan

The process of choosing the right SEO audit plan is not easy. First and foremost, you should be ready to do some research on the necessary tools. While some people prefer doing an SEO edit on their own, there is no doubt that they can just but do very little without expert knowledge. An SEO audit requires resources, tools, connections, and expertise to be able to provide the right results.

Why We Are The Best SEO Auditors

We are here to help you get your site on the map. We have years of experience in turning around non performing websites. We will help you carry out an SEO audit of your site using the latest tools and use best SEO practices along with latest techniques to help you correct all the SEO mistakes made in the past.

Every website is different, and we spend time getting to know what your goals are and planning the best way to achieve the results you want.

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