Why Do an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is a methodical review of your site’s foundation, checking everything from loading speed to meta descriptions in search of problems that are hampering your business’s SEO success. A systematic SEO audit tells you which digital marketing knobs to turn to boost your position in search results. Comprehensive audits look at a few main areas: content, user experience, and technical issues.
Performing an On-Page SEO Audit
Anyone wondering how to do an SEO audit should probably start small. Some aspects of SEO audits require technical knowledge, but others are fairly simple. Even if anything listed below is unfamiliar to you, it’s possible to learn about it all in a relatively short timeframe. Here are some examples:
- Title tags and meta descriptions should be descriptive, accurate and interesting.
- Image alt text should accurately describe and contextualize an image.
- File names must be descriptive and accurate so that search engines can identify what’s in them.
- Internal links keep people on your site longer, so you’ll likely want to add more.
- Page loading speed matters. Bounce rates can rise by more than 30% when loading speed increases from one second to three.
- Mobile friendliness is vital since the majority of web surfers around the world are on mobile devices.
Technical Considerations
Though anyone can learn how to do SEO audits, especially with the help of a website SEO audit checklist, the more technical aspects require expertise. Schema markup, SSL certificates, and site architecture are just a few of the many complex areas explored in a technical SEO audit. Core Web Vitals, crawlability, and indexing issues are a few more. Each has a significant impact on search performance. For these aspects of an SEO audit, expertise alone isn’t always enough—many digital marketing agencies use specialized tools with steep learning curves.
Turning an Audit Into Action
What do you do once you have the results of your audit? Fix everything! Okay, okay—you want details. We recommend that you start by putting out small fires. Easy fixes include adding missing meta descriptions, creating internal links between pages of your site, compressing big images so they’ll load more quickly, and adding eye-catching calls to action. Simple but less obvious fixes include reducing the fields in contact forms to make them less tedious, adding company contact info to every page, and making sure phone numbers are clickable for mobile users. In our convenience-oriented world, something as trivial as having to switch between pages to look at your number and then dial it is enough to scare off some potential customers. Regarding more complicated improvements, it’s wise to create a timeline that balances the complexity of a solution with the impact each solution is likely to have. Of course, SEO audits aren’t permanent. Smart business owners make sure to perform—or have experts perform—SEO audits on a quarterly or, if you’re an easygoing type, biannual basis. Though SEO audits sound intimidating, you’ll be rewarded handsomely for prioritizing them, whether you do it yourself or rely on a top-notch marketing agency.
