Do you need an SEO Audit? You Probably Do

The answer is a resounding yes but you probably don’t know it yet.

What is a SEO Audit?

A SEO audit is an in depth and authoritative analysis of your company website to see if there are issues which are affecting the ranking and visibility on search engines, Google particularly, and therefore are having a negative effect on any brand awareness initiatives, increasing market share and growth campaigns, and sometimes even the ability to trade profitably.

Specialist SEO auditors have the knowledge and experience in techniques, old, new and outdated, that are used across websites around the world and they appreciate that as a permanently open shop window your website needs to be the best performing, conversion enhancing tool. That’s why a regular SEO audit should not be treated as a luxury. The worlds of SEO and marketing are constantly evolving and the online presence you have is determined by a number of factors and so maintaining the best practices is an essential.

Maybe your website was created just two years ago. You believe that there is nothing that could possibly need reviewing or adjusting. Well, you may be correct or a SEO audit could reveal that there is work to be done to get your site higher up the rankings.

A SEO auditor looks at all the website pages and creates a report with their findings and recommendations. Google has a huge market share and SEO control so it’s essential to keep them in mind with SEO audits and practices.

Page 2 of the search results

Did you know that less than one percent of searchers will click on to page 2 of the results? If you’re at the bottom of page 1, don’t you deserve to be at the top?

Do you realise that there is a preferred length of title that allows Google’s Search Engine Results Page to find you? You need a title that is long enough but not so long that it is cut off, and that is wholly relevant to the search. Meta descriptions that appear with the site title and address inform the searcher about what is on the page and it should be powerful enough to tempt them to click to the website. When meta descriptions are missing or insufficient to convert this is a serious problem. Thankfully one that can be identified and rectified through an SEO audit. 

Headings can play a vital role in how visible your website is on search engines. H1 tags are often used to create traffic but they can be overused or undervalued. There is an easy solution, take the advice of an SEO auditor and ensure that every heading works as hard as you need it to. Quality not quantity.

Relevance of Content

Content on each page must be relevant. For too long there were a number of cheats, of loading keywords into documents or using terms which were often searched but possibly irrelevant to the website page and publishing short articles which were not of valuable content to attain higher rankings. These poor practices are now easily detected and penalised by Google. Only the websites with valid content, in articles of between 600-800 and employing viable SEO techniques reach the top. Variety is a key tool with SEO, not everyone will search with one word, they’ll choose a longer phrase, a longtail keyword, often a location preference. When website’s contain a high keyword density for a narrow field of search terms they won’t get the visibility owners crave or need.

Have you heard of the Flesch reading scale and score? This is a measurement of how easy to read your website content is. No one has the time or patience to wade through long words, convoluted phrases and jargon. A reading score of 0-30 means that college students would understand the content. A page full of in house and industry only jargon won’t reach the top of page 1 on any search engine.

We’re in a trading environment in which every conversion matters. When consumers don’t know that you have the solution to their need or problem because they can’t see you on page 1 at the pinnacle, why should they look further than your page 1, position 1 rival?

Conclusion

A good SEO audit looks to your rivals websites and how they are outperforming you in key areas. You may be confused why consumers click on them and not your services. There’s a science behind it. You have to outplay them at their own game. That’s why the expertise, experience and guidance from an SEO auditor are invaluable.