What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit looks at a website and identifies its weaknesses. Now, I’m not talking about just aesthetics, because a website is much more than a beautiful mesh of colors and graphics. An SEO audit takes into account the totality of the website.
Here are the top 5 reasons why your website needs an SEO audit:
A good SEO audit helps identify technical SEO issues. Technical SEO relates to helping search engines better crawl your website. Search Engine Journal describes it as, “If you think of SEO like building a house, then technical SEO is all about building a solid foundation. You can look at it as any work done to a site aside from the content itself.”
Here are a few examples of Technical SEO elements that an audit identifies:
On-Page SEO refers to any optimizations that you can make to your content “easily.” We define easy as low-hanging fruit that is a relatively simple change to improve SEO.
An SEO audit will cover these elements:
Trying to build your online presence without looking at the competition is like trying to build the tallest skyscraper in the world but not knowing how tall the other skyscrapers are. It is essential that you identify your competition, but that’s not enough. You must also identify what your competition is doing. A good SEO audit will identify the competition, identify their strategy, and come up with a plan to build a taller skyscraper.
Backlinks are still a major part of Google’s algorithm in 2017 and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. The trend is typically the more reputable links you have to awesome content, the better your site ranks. If backlinks are so important, how come most people don’t know what domains are pointing back to their webpages? It is absolutely important to know where you stand. A good SEO audit answers these questions:
This being said, you should never pay for backlinks - focus on great content writing that will be resourceful and shareable. The backlinks should come naturally.
What do you do after you receive all of the data from reasons 1-4? Take everything you learned about your site’s technical SEO, On-Page SEO, competition, and backlinks; then use that data to come up with a content strategy.
Are you being out-ranked for your keywords? Take a look at your competition, beef up your content, optimize your meta title and descriptions, and figure out where you can make gains in backlinks. The SEO audit helps you stay focused with your content strategy.
Are you looking for an SEO audit of your website? Start a basic SEO audit now or Contact us for more information on a comprehensive SEO audit.