Top 5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs an SEO Audit

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the core foundation of any digital marketing strategy. With over 1.7 billion websites out there on the internet, it takes optimization to ensure your business ranks high in the search engine results pages (SERPs). That’s why an SEO audit is so important for your website.

What is an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is a process of analyzing how well your web presence relates to best practices – it is the first step to creating an implementation plan that will have measurable results.

The purpose of the audit is to identify as many foundational issues affecting organic search performance as possible. The SEO audit will reveal:

• Technical SEO issues
• Website structure issues
• On-page SEO issues
• Potential off-site problems
• User experience issues
• Content gaps and opportunities
• Competitive marketplace insights

An audit is a standard procedure that should occur on a regular basis – It is essentially a “health check” for your website.

There are several reasons why you really need to perform an SEO audit of your website. Here are a few:

1. An SEO Audit Identifies Your Website’s Technical Issues

If you want to do a full redesign of your site, you’ll need to set aside a portion of your budget for the custom web design cost. However, before you take that step, you need to first invest in an SEO audit that’ll save you money in the long run.

An SEO audit can find existing issues with your website that a redesign may not fix. These issues can include things like:

• Broken links
• Page title issues
• Bad keywords
• Unlinked pages
• Duplicate content

2. Identifies Your Website’s On-Page Issues

On-Page SEO refers to any optimizations that you can make to your content “easily.”

An SEO audit will cover these elements:

• Meta Titles & Descriptions: Meta Titles should be anywhere between 35-70 characters and should include the keyword. Meta Descriptions should be under 160 characters, including the keyword, and include a CTA if relevant.

• Headers: I like to describe headers like headlines in the newspaper. The biggest headline tells you the most about the page. The H1 header works the same way. Make sure your H1 header is optimized to include the keyword.

• Content: Content will always be king. As far as SEO goes, make sure that your content is keyword centred. Don’t overstuff your content with keywords – you will be penalized for it. Make sure the keywords are natural and read well.

• Internal Linking: Help your users better navigate your site by inserting internal links.

3. Identifies Competition

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.

In other words, to be successful you need to evaluate your competitors and SEO Audit will help you achieve this.

4. Identifies Your Backlinks

The more reputable links you have to great 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:

• How many backlinks does your website have?

• Does my website have spammy backlinks?

• How many backlinks does my competition have compared to me?

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.

To find out more on the art of backlinks, read our article on Essential Link Building Strategies for SEO

5. Helps You Build a Content Strategy

What do you do after you receive all of the data from previous points? 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, back 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 on your content strategy.

Lastly,

Why It’s Important to Audit Your Website on a Regular Basis:

Your website is the “hub” of your online presence – so, it’s important to have regular checkups to ensure everything is in order. It’s also important to note that your website is a living digital property, it’s typically not stagnant for long periods of time. In any given year, content is added and/or removed from your site. It is for this reason that audits should occur on a regular basis. We recommend that websites be audited at a minimum of once per year. That allows your teams to fix critical issues as they arise.

There are other parts of SEO which you should pay attention to after your audit to make sure you stay competitive. After all, the technical foundation isn’t the end of the road for SEO success. It’s important to pay attention to your competition’s SEO activity, keep an eye on the newest search engine best practices, and maintain local SEO best practices if your business depends on customers visiting a physical address.

All of these are elements of a successful SEO strategy and should be a corollary to your audit and ongoing SEO maintenance.

Is it time for your website to get an SEO health check? If so, contact our team of SEO experts today to get one scheduled.