Any doctor will tell you that you should get regular checkups to see if there’s anything wrong with you. The same holds for your website and its SEO strategy.
Even if you have a great strategy and are following it to the tee, search engine algorithms are one of these mysterious parts of the digital world that can (and likely will) change what works upside down over time.
SEO is critical to increasing your website’s visibility by improving its ranking in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), driving more organic traffic. Through keyword analysis, you can improve your content by using the most relevant and searched-for keywords, and by optimising your page for search engine crawlers and gaining backlinks, you can increase your ranking, so the benefits of an SEO audit are plenty.
An SEO audit will look at every bit and piece of your website and SEO strategy to ensure that you’re either still on the right track or identify where you have the potential for improvement.
So, what is the importance of an SEO audit for your website? Let’s find out!
What is an SEO Audit?
Definition and Explanation of an SEO Audit
While the word audit may give some business owners a nervous twitch, an SEO audit will give your website a complete physical and then some. Overall, Google has over 200 ranking signals that it considers when determining your website’s rank.
Imagine an SEO specialist taking out their clipboard with an extensive checklist and looking in, behind and under everything on your website to examine every aspect for its efficiency.
Key Objectives and Goals of an SEO Audit
The main objective of an SEO audit is to identify any potential weaknesses of your website, its content and even external factors such as backlinks. With the search engine algorithms being complex and sometimes a bit odd, things may change that need some tweaking. Even if your SEO strategy is bearing fruit, it is still essential to perform regular audits, even if it’s just to ensure that you’re still on the right path or make minor adjustments instead of having to re-work the whole thing.
An SEO audit will identify weaknesses in your SEO profile, improve your website’s performance, measure the impact of improvements, reanalyse your keywords, improve your link structure, audit your competition, and we will use all of this to create a plan for the future.
Components and Elements of an SEO Audit
As mentioned above, Google tracks over 200 signals to compile your ranking, so an SEO audit consists of many different components and elements to cover all bases. And with all the talk about Google, yes, Google Search Console can be part of an SEO audit, but should not be your sole approach.
Technical SEO Analysis
One of the most significant parts of an SEO audit is the technical side of everything that may impact the search engine performance. This covers a wide range of elements, including:
- website speed
- mobile-friendliness
- responsive design
- XML sitemaps
- robots.txt file
- canonical tags
- structured data markup
- URL redirects
All of these elements are crucial for your website to be optimised for SEO and the user experience.
On-Page SEO Assessment
The second significant element is the on-page SEO assessment. This encompasses everything related to the content of your website. This includes the analysis of title tags, meta descriptions, headings, content relevance, keyword usage, image alt tags, and overall keyword targeting strategy.
Off-Page SEO Evaluation
Off-page SEO refers to everything taking place outside of the comfort of your website. This includes link building, content marketing, social media, podcasts, reviews and more.
Competitor Analysis
An integral part of any SEO audit is a comprehensive analysis of your competitors. To outrank your competition, you have to know what your competition is doing. This means analysing your top competitors’ strategies, keywords, backlinks, and content to identify opportunities for improvement and gain a competitive advantage.
Keyword Research and Analysis
Even if you’ve done keyword research and analysis before, doing a complete analysis is crucial as part of an SEO audit. Keywords can change over time, whether through new products, processes, or customer behaviour.
What once was an obscure keyword could suddenly have gained popularity, or a new set of questions may have emerged that customers seek the answer for. This can influence the relevance of keywords and phrases or how high the competition is.
Also Read: 10 Common SEO Myths That Can Jeopardize Rankings
Importance Of an SEO Audit For Your Website
An SEO audit can benefit your website by allowing you to target specific areas to improve on and gain an advantage over your competition.
Improved Search Engine Rankings
The likely most significant benefit from an SEO audit is that your website’s ranking in search engine results pages will improve. The goal is to get your page onto page 1 of the search engine result pages and drive organic traffic.
Enhanced User Experience
Optimising your page for SEO also has the very convenient side effect of your users benefiting from a much-enhanced user experience. Whether it is page speed, an optimised mobile experience or outstanding navigation, your users will thank you for making your website easy and efficient to navigate.
Increased Organic Traffic and Website Visibility
Ranking high in the SERPs is not just a nice look but also can work wonders on website visibility and drive more organic traffic to your website. Most users rarely venture further than the second page of the search engine results, so rising rankings can put your website in the spotlight for prospective customers and clients to see it and click on the link.
Identification and Resolution of Technical Issues
An SEO audit is an excellent opportunity to identify and fix any technical issues of your website, including:
- broken links, redirects, or images;
- optimising titles, meta tags, or headers;
- compressing loading pages or images;
- testing mobile-friendly or responsive design;
- securing protocols or plugins;
- creating sitemap or robots.txt files;
- implementing structured data or schema markup; and
- standardising canonicalisation or URL structure.
Discovery of New Keyword Opportunities
The relevance and competition of keywords evolve with time, whether due to new research, new and updated products or processes, or customer behaviour.
These factors can influence if a formerly successful keyword has lost its impact or a previously obscure phrase suddenly has gained popularity.
Depending on the depth of your competitors’ SEO campaign, discovering these new opportunities before they become common knowledge can give your website a leg up on the competition.
Evaluation of Website’s Overall SEO Health
SEO is a process with many moving parts, which, looked at individually, may perform well, but an SEO audit will allow you to look at the overall SEO health of your website and see how well it is performing as a whole. This overall look can give valuable insight into where there’s potential to improve things and create synergies.
Competitive Advantage in the Digital Landscape
In the competitive digital age we’re living in, it is more crucial than ever to keep ahead of the curve and continuously evaluate and adjust your SEO strategies. This will allow you to measure the impact of your current SEO strategy, fix issues before they spiral out of control and stay ahead of new developments. All of this will give you a competitive advantage over your competition, especially if they are not “on the ball.”
Conclusion
An SEO audit is an excellent way to evaluate the health of every aspect of your website. From the technical side to on- and off-page optimisation, you can diagnose and fix problems and weaknesses and improve your website’s performance and search engine result rankings.
It will help you stay ahead of the curve and identify issues and new developments before “everybody” jumps on them, giving you a leg up on your competition and keeping you abreast of the others. Like your regular medical checkup or doing an oil change in your car, an SEO audit is not something you should put off because you feel it’s not essential.
The importance of an SEO audit for your website lies in keeping the machine humming and continuing to rank high, driving organic traffic to your website and giving your users a great experience, all in one fell swoop.
Do you want a comprehensive SEO audit? We are no doctors and don’t know much about cars, but SEO is our specialty. Call BTmarketing today at (647) 330-0793 or fill out our convenient online form for a free consultation!
We ❤️ to hear from you.
BTmarketing can help you take your business to the next level and reap the benefits of a site audit!
