One of the most mysterious things in the world of digital marketing is how search engine ranking algorithms work. In the end, there’s a significant probability that you’ll eventually face a dip in ranks no matter how meticulous you are with your content and website construction. That’s because the features of your site that Google praises now may be pointed out and penalized tomorrow.
While it’s almost impossible to prevent all SEO mishaps, an SEO audit could be all that stands between you and a huge setback. Furthermore, by doing regular audits, you can get your website back up and running as soon as possible when any issues arise.
What is an SEO Audit?
A business owner is terrified of the word “audit”. But, the truth is that audits of any sort help you to identify the loopholes in the way of working. An SEO audit is when you hire an expert to go through your website and identify any potential problems that search engines may have with it. Keep in mind that Google takes into account over 200 ranking signals when deciding where your site should rank in response to a particular search.
This often comprises collecting data about your website’s performance, strengths, and potential for improvement from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other more specialized SEO tools. An SEO audit’s purpose is to identify which parts of your site’s optimization may need work and how well they measure up against the known ranking signals.
Why is it necessary to do an SEO audit?
Whether you’re the marketing chief of a multinational corporation or the owner of a small, growing firm, an SEO audit is a crucial part of your strategy. The internet has become the primary resource for meeting people’s basic wants and requirements. In today’s competitive market, having your company’s products and services show up in people’s top search results is a huge boon to your company’s marketing efforts. Search engine optimization (SEO) is necessary for this to occur.
The first stage in your SEO approach is to conduct an SEO audit. It assists you in identifying business-related search phrases that people are looking for and that will help you to rank on them in the future. In addition, it looks at many areas of development that add up to better rankings.
Apart from strong results, it also assists you in following best SEO practices and improving your website’s user experience by concentrating on speed, navigation, site structure, and so on. Passively, it aids in the enhancement of the brand image.
Key Benefits of Performing an SEO Audit:
1. Find Weaknesses in Your SEO profile
Only by reviewing your site can you be sure that you have the appropriate inbound links, meta-descriptions, keywords, and other elements in place to attract the attention of search engines. If you believe your SEO approach is state-of-the-art, chances are it still employs certain obsolete practices that are:
- Ignoring your ranking attempts or
- Pushing your rank in the opposite direction.
Google’s algorithm is continually being improved with new updates. Too many keywords on a landing page, for example, might hurt your SEO performance now. Whereas 10 years ago, the higher you’d rank, the more keywords you could squeeze into a page. An audit can help your business stay ahead of the competition.
2. Improve Site Performance
Google’s goal is to provide users with the greatest possible browsing experience across all devices. That involves giving them what they want, which is useful information from trustworthy places. But it takes more than simply correcting data on your site to succeed. You must also convince Google that your website is trustworthy and simple to navigate on both desktop and mobile devices.
Customers are less inclined to stick around on a website that is slow to load, displays incorrectly, or has broken links. If this happens, the bounce rate is likely to be high. By doing an SEO audit, you can identify potential bottlenecks in the user experience. Problems like slow page loads, broken links, and mobile device support are just a few examples.
Several UX flaws can be fixed quickly and easily. It might take more time to fix other issues on your website. Regular auditing will make it simpler to identify issues as soon as they arise.
3. Measure the Impact of Improvements
An SEO audit is a good starting point for optimizing your website since it provides a baseline against which you can measure the success of your efforts. You will get all the information you want about the condition of your site’s search engine optimization from the first assessment. With this information at hand, you can set priorities for your projects and make data-driven choices for the future.
When you’ve made some adjustments and improved your website a few months later, you can compare the results of the next audit with the prior one to see what you’ve accomplished. On the other hand, it would be difficult to monitor the appropriate metrics and assess the success of the actions you’ve done if you didn’t routinely audit your website while working on it.
4. Understand Your Keywords
Keywords are, without a doubt, the most important part of search engine optimization. The problem is that most CEOs and CTOs are in the dark about which keywords are helping their firm. An SEO audit may tell you where your website ranks highest and for what keywords you should allocate your resources.
An examination of your SEO strategy may indicate that you are targeting keywords that are not relevant to your target audience. Or you could discover that you’re getting clients to your website who you never considered reaching out to previously.
You could even realize that some of your finest content isn’t ranking because it hasn’t been properly optimized. Going through old blogs and other materials and upgrading them with a greater grasp of your keyword strategy might radically rejuvenate your website.
5. Track How Your Keywords Rank in Search Results
Your website’s success may be determined by looking at metrics such as the number of keywords for which it has been indexed and where those keywords fall in the search results. An SEO audit may show you not just where you stand at present, but also what could be causing your performance to be subpar.
Regular SEO audits will allow you to keep tabs on where you are and what keywords are bringing in the most traffic. If you’re able to see a declining trend, you can swiftly fix any pressing concerns with your SEO strategy.
6. Improve Your Site’s Structure
The design of a website involves more than just having pages that load quickly and a simple navigation menu. Google looks for internal links between the different pieces of content on your site to determine how well-informed and authoritative you are across the board.
An SEO audit will require you to re-evaluate the connections between the various pages on your website and go beyond just looking at things like external links to other authoritative websites. For instance, if you run an email marketing business, you could find it useful to divide your blog into several areas dedicated to:
- Email marketing advice
- Email marketing software tutorials
- Lead page-building subjects
This makes it easier for Google to navigate through your website and index the same.
7. Audit Your Competition
Even though it seems counterintuitive, evaluating the websites of your rivals can provide you with a thorough understanding of their SEO strategy and results. You can make your strategy better if you know what they are doing and what they aren’t doing, as well as how their website is doing.
For instance, knowing the keywords they rank for and the kind of content they publish might help you find ways to outperform them in search engine results and increase traffic to your website. It can be a good idea to have a page similar to their popular one on your website if they have a lot of visits. However, if they don’t have a blog section at all or it isn’t working well, that’s a great chance for you to take over.
You can get useful information for organizing your SEO efforts by analyzing their backlink profile. You can target the proper websites with your guest articles by being aware of where most of their connections originate.
8. Create a Plan for the Future
Finally, if you want to get the most out of your SEO strategy, you must be dedicated to constantly refining and upgrading your efforts. An SEO audit will verify that you are not just making modifications to your website based on industry trends or what your rivals are doing. With an audit, you may create a customized success plan.
This can include developing personalized 404 pages, changing your backlinking plan, or developing content pillars that make your data simpler to index. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for ranking well in search engines, and the only way to learn what you need to do to succeed online is to do an extensive audit. It will make you prepare for the future.
Conclusion:
Although it may seem overwhelming to search your site for hundreds of SEO ranking criteria, doing so will pay off in the long run. By doing SEO audits regularly, you can stay ahead of SEO problems and prevent Google penalties from impacting your website. Furthermore, a better grasp of how your organic ranking approach works might mean that you’re better positioned to outperform your competitors on search result pages.
If you want assistance in your existing website optimization, then AppleTech can help you out in this endeavour. With our robust approach to website development with a proven track record of successful delivery of projects, we can make sure that your website is optimized according to accepted SEO standards. Our experienced team of developers can help you in conducting an SEO audit and thereby suggest the changes your website needs. Get in touch and see your website optimized according to globally accepted SEO standards.
