What is an SEO Audit?

Aug 12, 2019 | Anthony Frasca SEO Audit Harvey Agency Baltimore MD

As a business in the CPG industry, we know you're always looking for new ways to outsmart your competitors.

You're constantly at work developing new products, identifying the next consumer trend, and improving your social media strategy.

Still, you know your company's website is often the first impression that consumers have of your brand as a whole.

That's why you want to conduct an SEO audit and learn how you can make it even better than it already is.

But what is an SEO audit, exactly – and – why is it such a vital part of your overall digital marketing strategy?

We'll tell you what a website audit is, why it matters, and even provide you with a basic website audit checklist so that you know what to look for when you speak to a marketing company about setting one up for your website.

A better performing, higher ranking, and more engaging website is just around the corner.

SEO Audits - The Foundation of an SEO Strategy

If SEO stands for "search engine optimization," then an SEO audit is the process of evaluating a website to identify areas of opportunity that would improve its ranking position on search engines.

Essentially, this is all about making sure that your website has the best possible chance of appearing at the top of search engine results and in front of the people who are the most likely to buy from your brand.

If you're a vegan cosmetics company, for example, you want to make sure that a consumer who types in something like, "best cruelty-free makeup brands" ends up on your website -- and not those of your competitors.

A strong SEO strategy can make that happen.

The goal here is to create an actionable list of improvements you can make to your website to help you get more traffic, increase your conversions, and rise in the search engine rankings.

Since over 70% of consumers never bother to go past the first page of search engine results, an SEO audit helps you learn how to get one of those coveted top spots -- and how to stay there.

What is an SEO Audit?

The Benefits of SEO Audits

So, why is an SEO website audit so valuable?

First of all, it's an excellent way to figure out what's not working when it comes to your company website -- and often, you'll uncover problems you weren't even aware existed in the first place.

An SEO audit can help you to evaluate your website's loading speed, its mobile-friendliness, tip you off to broken links, and can even ensure that your website is able to be properly crawled and indexed by search engines.

Additionally, you will gain a better insight into both your on-page and off-page SEO performance, as well as the overall functionality of your website.

A website audit also lets you know how well you're doing compared to your competitors in the following ways:

A comprehensive SEO audit also helps you to understand your site's overall domain authority. Do you have as much influence in the CPG industry as some of your competitors? How many websites and blogs link back to your own internal pages in their content?

What you discover throughout the SEO audit process will lead to actionable steps that will directly impact the number of website visitors you receive, your conversion ratio, and most importantly, increase sales revenues.

All of these outcomes are possible because of invaluable insight into your own website's health, where you stand in relation to your competitors, and even which of your keywords and content is the most popular among your target market.

A Basic Website Audit Checklist

Now that you have a general understanding of what an SEO audit is, let's go over your basic website audit checklist -- the things you need to ensure that you measure and evaluate when studying your website.

It's always a smart idea to quickly go over your website, company, and marketing objectives before you get started.

After all, even if you have the best keywords and your website is in great technical health; if the content isn't aligned with your objectives, none of that really matters.

Now is also the time to ensure that the visual look of your website and the tone/voice of the web content is consistent with the rest of your branding strategy.

This helps to increase your overall brand recognition.

Once you've completed these preliminary steps, you can get to the more technical part of the SEO audit. These technical components are measured by search engines in order to provide their users with the most relevant, qualitative search results at the top of the results page.

Whether you're doing a basic audit yourself or working with digital marketing professionals on the process, (which we certainly recommend) ensure that your website audit covers the following topics:

Again, this is just a basic list when it comes to your SEO audit process. You should speak with experts and go over your objectives to ensure that you don't miss out on anything.

Next Steps?

Now that you have a general understanding of what an SEO audit is, why it’s important, and a basic technical checklist, it’s time to conduct an SEO audit for your website.

Yes, there are countless SEO audit tools out there designed to help you test the effectiveness of your website. But the truth is that taking the DIY approach can cause you to miss several important factors while dedicating your time, resources, and energy to ones that won't actually do much to improve your ranking factor.

This can result in a number of painful outcomes:

- Not understanding the results of the SEO audit

- Being unsure of how to resolve the issues you uncover

- Making costly mistakes in an attempt to resolve these errors

- Investing a lot of time and money trying to figure everything out

SEO is not a difficult concept to grasp, but chances are, you already have a lot to worry about. Don’t fret – we can help! Reach out to us today to learn how.

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