An SEO audit involves several key steps: examining organic traffic, scanning your website for technical problems, testing page speed, evaluating mobile-friendliness, reviewing on-page SEO factors like meta descriptions and keyword usage, auditing backlinks, spotting duplicate content, assessing site structure, and conducting a competitor analysis to uncover opportunities for improvement.
When you’re running a business, an SEO audit looks like a tall order–but SEO audits should be a priority in a corporation’s budget because they can provide invaluable insights. This is why learning how to choose an SEO audit service is critical. That way, you can find the right SEO audit agency to take your web presence to the next level.
What Is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit involves evaluating your online presence to ensure your site is performing at its best in search rankings. This includes identifying:
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Key strengths to leverage and expand
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Mistakes to correct and easy wins to take advantage of
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Areas that aren’t working and need less attention
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Problems that require improvement
SEO is multifaceted, and the process can quickly feel overwhelming. We’ve broken down the SEO audit into ten main steps in this article, but if your site is large, you might want to organize your audits by category. Keep reading for different types of SEO audits.
Key Steps in an SEO Audit
Here are a few ways you can kick off an effective SEO audit:
Identify Link Building Opportunities
Link building is essential for enhancing your website’s authority, and an SEO audit should always include recommendations for developing both internal and external links specific to your site.
Essentially, link building involves acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to yours, guiding users from one page to another across the web. It also aids search engines in crawling and assessing your site’s value.
A high-quality backlink can significantly elevate your site’s credibility and authority. Additionally, links generate referral traffic, boosting your site’s standing and helping it rank higher in search results, especially on Google.
Spot Site Structure Improvements
‘Information architecture’ (IA) refers to how information is organized and structured within a website or digital platform. When conducting an audit, IA recommendations should be aligned with the objectives of the project stakeholders.
For example, what pages or sections are you aiming to highlight for users? Is the goal to create an intuitive experience or a more immersive one? The design and structure of content should be shaped by both the needs of your target audience and the overarching business goals.
Find and Fix Thin Content
When it comes to content, your pages won’t gain much traction in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) if they’re lacking substance. Google’s 2011 Panda update, which targeted sites with thin content, made that clear.
‘Thin’ content refers to material that doesn’t fulfill the needs of the user. For example, a 300-word blog post trying to explain a complicated topic would be considered thin. However, it’s not practical to expect every page to have 1,000 to 2,000 words. Pages closer to your homepage, for instance, are often focused on design elements like hero images, icons, and CTAs, with more product-focused copy.
You need to identify where your website might be suffering from thin content and either give it a refresh, remove it, or change the content to be more aligned with optimized keywords and substantive information.
Strategic SEO Audits and More
A thorough SEO audit is more complicated than the three factors we mentioned in this article. What’s more–developing a strategy to implement changes based off of an audit is no simple task. If your website isn’t generating the results you want, it’s time to book an SEO audit with the skilled team at High Voltage.
