One might think, what’s the use of an SEO audit. Well, it turns out to be an extremely critical element of your overall SEO strategy, as it can help identify any hindrance to the page ranks and alert us if the organic traffic is plummeting.
Getting a professional website audit helps you develop a strong marketing strategy. And if your marketing already involves SEO investments, then this is the first step. Revealing current website weaknesses and issues, conversion rates, competitors’ performance – these are some of the benefits of conducting an online SEO audit.
Well, there are many, but today we shall talk about some of the most burning issues that a full-proof SEO audit could solve.
Defining an SEO Audit and its Importance on a Website
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the vital component for our marketing cogwheel, helping us focus on improving our search engine presence. And SEO audit is nothing but a thorough review, or evaluation of your website, as to how optimized it is to be featured on search engines. Usually, this is the first step that several marketers venture upon before conducting an SEO campaign.
But many a time, this evaluation is ignored as well. Whereas an audit should be mandatorily done periodically depending on your goals and because Google’s SEO updates always change. A thorough evaluation necessarily focuses on the primary factors regarding how perfectly your website is performing, Google Analytics and AdWords configuration, content-related issues, keyword analysis and density, and so on.
Simply put, an SEO audit is the identification of the strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your website, a true SWOT analysis!
What does an SEO Auditor do?
With the fast and ever-changing SEO landscape, improving SEO has been the top priority for 61% of marketers. And why? Because user experience is the fundamental element for a website to thrive online. And interestingly, user experience is directly related to the SEO quotient of a website.
If your website offers a lousy experience to your users by taking time to open up or showing up at the bottom of the SERPs, you create a bad impression on your prospects. Here come the major roles of SEO auditors. Given that every website is different, they must cater to every webmaster and create a tailored solution for each of them.
Usually, they have a checklist to follow that provides the basic structure of the audit. This sure-fire SEO audit checklist makes sure that all the technical areas are covered in the site evaluation.
Initially, they will check your brand’s SMART goals – the specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals.
And then evaluate the keywords you use and how relevant they are for your SEO purpose. Followed by a detailed assessment of your competitors’ sites, analyzing the kind of content they have and the kind of responses they get.
Then comes a technical analysis, evaluating the mobile compatibility of your website, speed and page optimization, etc.
And finally, a review on the relevance and authenticity of your site content. So you see, these are the kinds of assessments one can expect from a bona-fide SEO audit and improve their inbound marketing. At the end of all the steps, you shall receive consolidated SEO reports to help you to make the necessary tweaks.
Let’s delve deep into the many ways SEO audits improve our sales and lead metrics. In this Blog, we shall cover those core areas and the significance they have for your online growth.
1. Augments the Overall Site Performance
A thorough SEO audit involves many changes from the server perspective, which can eventually improve your site performance. And once your site performance gets an impetus, your user experience quotient and rankings will automatically spike.
Because it is an open secret that Google loves a website that has a healthy dose of everything. Quality content, optimum page and site speed, proper image and title alt tags, meta descriptions – all these are instrumental in making the search spiders crawl your site. Conducting an SEO audit will raise a red flag for even the slightest issue in any of these said criteria.
What is more, any security breaches could be detected with a professional site audit. However, sometimes it takes Google more than a week to detect any significant changes done, but don’t lose hope! With periodic audits, you can compel Google to take notice of your website.
2. Boosts Conversion to a Great Extent
A well-formatted site checking will definitely add value to your online business by visibly increasing your lead conversions; because the areas these evaluations mainly cover are dedicated to augmenting UX.
The more unique experience you give to your prospects, the higher is the chance of them getting converted. For any online business, maximizing the conversion rates is of paramount importance, And audits are made for that.
Though it is easier said than done and takes quite a long time, with a proper strategy, analysis and implementation, one can certainly generate greater conversions.
3. Enhances Keyword Distribution throughout the Website Content
Keyword stuffing was a common maneuver for businesses to appease Google. But since the rollout of the Penguin 4.0 update, this trick has long gone. The significant 2016 Google update reduced all duplicate content and kept a check on spamming in the SERPs.
And thus, it has driven the need for strategical usage and distribution of keywords throughout a content or a webpage. This natural way of using keywords has been the best way for websites to rank up on Google organically, instead of getting penalized that brings down the DA (Domain Authority). An audit done on your current website will ensure that no such keyword stuffings are done, and if there’s any such occurrence, the audit will raise the flag.
You will be further notified to target the low-volume keywords for a greater sales outcome.
4. Identifies any Obsolete SEO Practices that might Penalize you
As it is known, the SEO landscape is a dynamic realm that is constantly going through several changes and updates. Hence, the old tricks don’t work now. And just in case your site still has any such historic SEO practices, that are detrimental towards your website growth, a site audit will certainly identify the same.
For e.g., although link building does have some SEO value to a website, more often, wrong backlinks do more harm to a website than good. And being an online marketer, you cannot afford to make such mistakes that can damage your website’s overall SEO quotient.
5. Fixes the Technical Aspects of a Website
Along with the other SEO strategies, like keywords, high quality content, building backlinks, technical SEO is equally important for your website to thrive and sustain. It mainly focuses on your site architecture and ensures that the crawlers duly crawl your site, catapulting your site rank.
Simply put, to ensure the health of your website remains first-rate, you need to perform a technical SEO audit for sure. That’s the only way to determine what fixes your site needs to give your target audience a unique user experience.
6. Identifies Major Traffic Trends
Site audits also take care of SEO meta information like Page Titles, meta descriptions heading tags, meta keywords and identify any problem related to these. These on-page factors impact the SEO and traffic of a website, negligence of which can cost you dearly.
Extensive site evaluations from these SEO perspectives generate immediate insights and which factors are actually driving the traffic, also how can you improve it. And not just this, you can also gain a better understanding of your user behavior based on the kind of keywords that are most searched, and thus can take a strategical decision on content, email marketing, customer relationship, and future marketing strategies.
7. Analyzes the Current Market and the Competition
One of the biggest advantages SEO audit has is identifying what the competitors are doing, especially SEO-wise. If you have one competitor who tends to beat you in rankings, then you would need to find ways to grasp what exactly they are doing to lag you behind. Running an SEO website is no easy task if you are not aware of your competitors’ doings. An extensive audit will allow you to analyze your competition and get a clear understanding of what to do for your own SEO tactics.
Competitive SWOT analysis is an amazing advantage that is not limited just to your site, but also helps discover your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. And when you are aware of your competition, it is a matter of time to improve your on-page SEO techniques.
8. Administers a Brand New SEO Approach
Once you are done with your audit, by now, you are already in a much stronger place to implement a robust SEO strategy with a clear focus. You can sequentially identify what’s next and maintain a fitting SEO score.
This usually includes writing keywords in HTML instead of Javascript or making sure each of your blog posts has fitting meta descriptions and meta tags, and many other similar on-page technical SEO factors. That way, you can focus on the areas that actually need your attention and spend the rest of your time in business development.
Truly, site audit is rewarding and beneficial for every webmaster in fine-tuning their website.
9. Discovers Prospective Sources of Revenue within your Existing Business Structure
Site audit helps you to address your SEO factors. And when you improve the errored areas, you optimize your site more for Google or any other search engine you are using. More optimization means higher ranking in the SERPs, which ultimately culminates in more traffic for your website and, finally, more revenue for your business.
So you see, that is a chain of events, a butterfly effect that happens from one small initiative. In short, site audit is the starting point for all these growth drivers. And this doesn’t stop here. With an extensive audit, you can even find other potential avenues to increase your revenue.
Such as, a competitive keyword analysis gives you a glimpse of the kind of keywords used by your competitors and the other big players in the eCommerce landscape. Referring to this insight, you may incorporate such SEO-rich keywords into your website, opening a door for collaboration and link building. These are some of the lucrative opportunities that an audit opens up for your website.
10. Upgrades your Information Structure
Most of your audience is trying to find a solution to their problems or any particular information related to their requirement, when visiting your website. That’s the first thing they need, information.
Based on the kind of information they receive and how fast they receive it, make up the immediate buying decision for 80% of prospects. The faster your website gives them the things they have come looking for, the better is your chance to impress them and convert them into paying customers.
Site audits usually improve the information structure and how it is laid out. If the structure lacks coherence, you will get to know that once the audit is done. And with the best SEO audit tool, you can present your information to your audience in a way that makes sense and adds relevance.
Over to you now!
It goes without saying that having a thorough site audit is a great idea. It is an incredible way to find out how exactly your website is performing on the SERPs. Even when things are going perfect, this pro-activeness pays off. Because you never know when things go south, given the constant changes and updates in Google’s algorithm.
With a clear idea about your website, you can build organic traffic, increase site/page visibility, and create a buzz within your niche instead of lagging behind your competitors.
Hope this Blog helped you identify the major benefits of a site audit and inspire you to get your own. You may start with the free online SEO checker tools; but with time and as your business grows, you must think of getting some professional help. If you are searching for good SEO firms that can help you improve your website’s performance with an in-depth audit, we have got you covered. Let us make your business skyrocket with more traffic, increased sales, and better search ranking.
