Do you have any idea how well your website is performing? Good SEO skills are becoming increasingly important in the modern world of digital marketing. A reputable digital marketing agency will focus primarily on website optimization and other important tasks when working with companies.
But how can you determine whether a company’s website needs to be optimized? It’s important to decide whether a potential client needs SEO before you even start marketing their services. Otherwise, potential customers won’t see the value you provide.
Every SEO strategy, from keywords to links, depends on data. It all starts with an SEO audit. In this blog we will give you some instructions on how to conduct an SEO audit. Read on for more information.
What is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is a process of analyzing your online resources to ensure your website is performing optimally in search results. It helps protect the website from spam and gives suggestions to improve the website’s ranking. SEO audits are crucial for a variety of reasons. The most important of these is the frequency with which Google updates its algorithm to reflect new technologies and search trends.
Therefore, every SEO expert should first conduct a complete SEO audit. This is because you can evaluate your existing SEO efforts, no matter how many or infrequent they are, and act on those insights immediately.
Also read: Things that can help you overcome search engine algorithms
Steps for an SEO Audit
For maximum optimization, an SEO audit must follow some essential steps. Let’s take a closer look at each of them:
Crawling and site audits
A comprehensive web crawl is the first step of any successful audit. This will help you assess the overall situation and identify possible problems with your website. In short, a crawl will help you create a starting point for the rest of your audit.
An automated scan should be run once a month to track simple metrics like bounce rate, conversions, and page views. This is often enough to uncover serious flaws such as broken links, page titles, metadata, or duplicate content on the page. If you encounter critical issues, you should contact an SEO expert for a thorough review.
Page speed
Page speed is extremely important in an SEO audit, so it is important to evaluate your page load time. Fast website speed promotes a pleasant user experience, whereas painfully slow speed results in higher bounce rates in our world of limited attention spans! This is unacceptable if your website is one of your top conversion channels.
A speed test is crucial because it allows you to identify the components of your website that are hampering search engine optimization. You can optimize your website’s performance if you know the areas that need improvement.
Site architecture
Ensuring your website has a solid structure is another element that improves SEO. Both website users and the bots that crawl them to evaluate their search rankings will have a better experience using a website if the architecture is good. A comprehensive, accurate sitemap uploaded to your Webmaster Tool profiles must represent the clear, logical and orderly structure of your website to be effective.
Accordingly, a proper URL structure is also required. Make sure it fits your site structure and that you use simple, straightforward naming rules and avoid symbols and numbers whenever possible.
Your tags
Short, descriptive title tags that adequately reflect the purpose of the web page in question. Less is more as longer titles are shortened by search engines. If possible, include a relevant keyword. A meta tag describes the information on a web page.
When optimized correctly, it encourages a searcher to visit your website by clicking on your listing in a SERP. In order for bots to properly explore a website, photos must contain alt tags, which are text descriptions of the images. Your SEO and overall digital accessibility will be significantly affected if you incorrectly describe the images on your website.
Your backlinks
Search engines often rely on the quality of the websites linked to it when evaluating your website’s value to users and its perceived quality. In the past, a technique called “link farming” involved exchanging reciprocal links with other websites to improve SEO.
However, SEO techniques have improved over time and algorithms have become more complex. When it comes to backlinks, focus on quality rather than quantity because if a search engine thinks that suspicious websites are linking to you, it can damage your website’s reputation.
About Reach First
Reach First is a certified digital marketing agency in Edmonton. From website development to SEO content marketing, we provide our clients with the best digital marketing services. We are a marketing agency dedicated to helping businesses reach their customer base first. Reach First is a group of dedicated individuals, professionals and visionaries who have come together to help you achieve business success.
Do you need SEO services? Contact us today.