As it is with most other aspects of business, assessing your business model for any potential weak points is a must if you expect to constantly improve and keep up with your competitors. One of the most important areas you will want to focus on annually is your marketing strategy, especially when it comes to SEO.
That said, SEO is highly technical, making it difficult for the everyday user to figure out exactly what they should be looking for when they are trying to improve their current strategy. Do you want to make your website and content work for you? If so, here is how to do an SEO audit to find any areas that need improvement!
What Is An SEO Audit?
When business owners think about the term “SEO”, the next word that often follows it is, “keywords”. Having content that is optimized for search engines is the main focus of those looking to improve their SEO strategy, but it is by far the only aspect of preparing your website to rank.
A full SEO audit looks for various aspects of the website such as usability on both computers and mobile devices, functionality, and quality and relevance, just to name a few. An SEO audit helps to provide you with a comprehensive overview of where your website is underperforming and how you can improve that to improve your rank on search engines. But what should you be looking for when you are looking to perform an audit of your very own?
What to Look Out For in an SEO Audit
An SEO audit is by no means simple as there are many different pieces of the puzzle that you will need to analyze before you can put together an excellent growth strategy. Here are some of the key areas you will be evaluating when you go through the auditing process.
- Conducting an SEO Crawl: Using crawling tools will help you identify problematic areas or features of your website, such as broken links, duplicate content, and page redirects. Fortunately, conducting an SEO crawl takes very little time but provides you with excellent insight into which areas of your website are holding you back from your full potential.
- Reviewing Your Accessibility and Functionality: If users are unable to access your website or discover that is extremely difficult to use and navigate, this is going to heavily impact your performance on search engines. When you analyze your functionality and accessibility, you want to look for features such as your loading speed, your performance on desktop and mobile, and the overall experience provided by your platform. Any issues that arise need to be taken care of immediately.
- Understanding Your Current SEO Efforts: Keywords, backlinks, and title tags are all important players in a great SEO strategy, and you will need to analyze your content in order to better understand what is working for you and what is working against you. If you are putting out content that has poor keyword choices, broken links, or improper formatting, it will prevent you from reaching a higher position.
- Discovering How Well You Perform Compared to Your Competitors: Understanding what your competition is doing right will go a long way in making your strategy better. Take the time to not only evaluate your website’s performance but the performance of your competitors’ websites as well. If you can figure out what makes them successful, you can adjust your course to follow that same path (or avoid failing like other competitors).
SEO audits are necessary if you plan on ranking well and driving traffic to your website. However, following through on the steps above can be difficult to do on your own. If you need to conduct an SEO audit but would prefer help along the way, consider an organic SEO company like Search Atlas who can assist you in building and improving your strategy!
