SEO audits are one of the best things to happen for your website's health and is a must to be able to create a better website that attracts more organic traffic to generate leads.
In a nutshell, SEO audits help business owners assess how well SEO strategies are working or if they aren't working. Once these issues or gains are identified, an SEO specialist will be able to diagnose the problem and propose a solution. If everything is working well, strategists usually recommend ways or strategies to boost website traffic further.
SEO audits are also used to spot current issues that need urgent fixing. Because an audit is comprehensive, specialists are able to pinpoint what exactly is the problem and find a fix for it whether urgent or more structural.
Let's break it down to understand what audits are, why they're necessary, and how you can successfully use audits to your advantage.
Clear up any confusion and craft amazing strategies with an SEO agency that you trust. Set an appointment with Smarter Media today for more information!
Before answering why SEO audits are necessary, we first need to understand what an SEO audit is.
An SEO audit is a monthly process of analysing how well a particular website is performing based on the SEO strategies implemented and how well the website fared on different fronts. The goal of an audit is to find the issues that are affecting organic search performance and finding fixes to urgent and more complex issues.
Although websites have varied results and needs, here are some things all SEO audited should present:
If these are not being shown at an audit, you should ask your SEO agency or specialist about looking into these factors to enrich the analysis. If your SEO agency says these aren't needed, you might want to consider consulting a specialist for a second opinion.
SEO audits can be compared to getting an oil change for your car.
Cars need to have their oils changed regularly to ensure that the vehicle is running smoothly and more importantly, elongate the lifespan of the vehicle. It's one of the best ways to maintain a vehicle to keep its value high and not have to deal with issues down the road.
As for your website, audits need to be done to improve its lifespan and not encounter website mishaps. It takes a peek at how your website is doing in terms of technical infrastructure, on-page elements, off-page essentials to optimise search engine visibility, including usability and conversion.
In order to become effective, SEO audits need to be regularly done. If not done regularly or incorrectly, your website won't be optimised to be found on search engines, lowering your chances of gaining leads.
Here are specific elements an audit takes a look at to craft an effective strategy:
The goal should be secure, crawlable, have clear navigation systems, and should be quick to load. Through audits, all these are possible.
To properly diagnose if anything is wrong with these components, here are some features that an SEO audit looks at:
SEO agencies and specialists often rave about how audits are the best way to improve organic traffic and boost ratings. But have you ever wondered why they need to be performed on a regular basis? Why can’t they just be done once?
There are several reasons why SEO audits need to be performed regularly. Here are a few of them:
Google constantly shifts and changes the algorithm of the search engine to remain up to date. They also do this to provide better search results to serve users better. Audits are done to accommodate those changes on a regular basis so your website doesn't fall behind.
Webmaster tools that are popular with SEO specialists are constantly updated so websites need to make sure they are compliant with the rules and regulations or risk getting penalised or worse, banned.
It is unavoidable to encounter website errors on a monthly basis. Typical errors such as error messages and broken links along with more serious website problems are exposed by a regular audit. When diagnosed, you can redirect these errors to recover the traffic you lost.
Content is not the only determining factor of a successful blog post. Titles and metadata play a huge role when it comes to showing up high on the search results page. They must be relevant to the website and the search query alike.
Google prefers fresh content, often pushing off old blogs and un-updated websites from the top of the search rankings. But if you keep your content relevant or fresh every 6 months or so, ranking high isn't tough to deal with.
If you've gone to check your website's performance on Google Analytics, you might have noticed that your organic traffic is flat or declining. This makes you worry and you wonder, is there anything wrong with what I’m doing now? What are the issues with the current strategy? How do I fix it?
Before making random changes to your website using trial and error, you should conduct an SEO audit. By viewing how Google sees your website, issues and problem areas will be revealed.
Are you not yet convinced that SEO audits can help boost your website's performance?
Take a look at these five benefits when performing an SEO audit.
This is a given and has been repeated throughout the article: Google loves websites that are healthy. It's actually one of the key factors that Google uses to determine which article goes on top.
Using an audit, you are able to find issues that your website may be experiencing and preventing them from becoming healthy.
Issues identified can either be fixed easily or need a bit more time. Whichever it ends up being, audits can help.
Since Google updates their rules and guidelines frequently, you might not even notice that you’re being penalised for certain strategies that are outdated.
With an audit, you can identify these outdated practices and flush them out of your website.
Audits are another layer of keyword research a website needs to gain an organic following. With it, you can identify what your target customer is looking for.
Since audits are regularly done, they act as a monitoring system that keeps your website on its toes. Besides giving you an idea of how your website is already doing, it also shows you how you can improve and what you can do next.
Audits are a great way to assess the competition and stay ahead. If you have an annoying competitor that keeps beating you in search engine rankings, it's time to bust out the SEO audit and beat them at their own game.
By understanding why SEO audits are important are you then able to capitalise and use them to your advantage.
But all this can be confusing. How can a business owner even begin to understand and strategise using all this information?
This is time to consult your neighbourhood friendly SEO agency or specialist to help with these. They are able to quickly identify and diagnose SEO and website issues and find the best solutions to make the fixes required.
Without an expert to guide you, SEO can be difficult to navigate and decipher.
Are you looking to boost your website’s performance by conducting an audit? Schedule a consultation session with us at Smarter Media for more information about how you can expertly navigate SEO, identify the issue areas, and receive recommendations on how to fix the problem and improve your website's ranking.
Create a better website today!
Smarter Media is a digital growth agency using our Smarter Approach to help your business grow digitally. Working side by side with our clients, we use our 'Smarter Way' Process to create a plan that delivers results and our 'Smarter Promise' to do what we say we will. For a more comprehensive look at SEO, or to find out how you can achieve a better ROI with SEO & Paid Media working side by side, set an appointment with Smarter Media today!
