Originally posted 2018-12-18 15:54:46.
A website SEO audit involves analysing the on page SEO factors affecting the ranking of a website.
On-page SEO is very important as it affects where your website ranks in the search engines like Google. While it is impossible to make any hard promises about where a site will rank as that is solely in the control of companies like Google, it is possible for us to optimize the on page SEO factors on a page/site to increase the probability of it ranking well. It is important to understand there are no 100% guarantees anyone can offer!
It is also important to realise and it is often overlooked that a small business website is a valuable asset particularly if you are thinking about or planning to sell your business at some time in the future. Having a website that generates leads and converts to sales is very valuable.. unless you already have all the business you can handle!
The SEO ‘secrets’ come down to three things. Keywords, Content and Links.
- Keywords
Keywords are the words or phrases someone will type into a search engine to find your business. When you type something into a search engine, say Google, will try and find the highest quality best pages on the internet that best match your search. It is therefore important to optimise your site for the keywords that are most relevant to your business. It is also possibly, by the use of the right keywords, to attract a specific type of customer to your site. If you are trying to get more of a certain kind of client or sell more of a certain higher profit product using the right keywords in the right places will help you do this. - Content
As previously mentioned, Google’s aim is to provide the highest quality most relevant content in answer to search queries people enter in. They will rank the best content first. Genuine, original content answering relevant questions pays dividends. - Links
Specifically backlinks. This is other people recognising you are an authority in a certain area or topic and linking back from their site to yours. Backlinks are less relevant for small business websites but can still provide an SEO boost. Businesses can also use press releases and directory listings and other kinds of promotions as well.
The best part about on-page SEO is it is FREE! While you can pay Google for advertising, (SEM – Search Engine Marketing) SEO is free. The costs of SEM can increase rapidly and can be a good strategy. A lot of people searching on Google ignore the paid advertising and instead follow the non paid links on a web page – that’s certainly what I do when I am searching. Research indicates that organic search results are more trusted than paid links although both can be effective.
SEO Audits
To be able to perform an SEO audit, we need access to Google Analytics for your site. If Google Analytics is not installed, available information is more limited and less reliable.
So when performing an SEO audit, we evaluate the following factors.
Keywords
This involves analysing the current search terms used to find your site. What does Google think your site is all about? What are the top keywords google would rank your site for? Are those keywords (can be a phrase as well) relevant to the business? Are they relevant to the business’ goals? Are they keywords representing your most profitable products or do they attract the right kinds of clients to your business? Do they include keywords people who are looking to buy a product would use? Do they include ‘easy-to-rank-keywords’? Generally easy-to-rank-keywords will be longer phrases.
As part of the SEO audit we will analyse the current situation and recommend actions to improve based on the business’ goals.
Traffic
Analysis of the traffic to the site – is it growing? declining? even? seasonal? How much of the traffic is from organic search?
What percentage of traffic is from organic search? Are the landing pages relevant to your goals? What is the average time spent by visitors on your site? What is the average bounce rate? Are visitors engaging with your site and going deeper or visiting multiple pages?
Content
Firstly, it is important that the content is original. We check for duplicate content on your site.
Is the content engaging and interesting? Bounce rate and time on page helps us measure this.
Is the content comprehensive or ‘thin’? We look at article length and read the content to make a recommendation about this.
Is there duplicate content within the site – or pages with the same or similar content.
Are there duplicate page titles.
Site Structure & Navigation
Check the page URL’s and the permalink settings and structure. Are relevant categories and tags used – do they contain important keywords?
Are there internal links and internal anchor text links?
Is there an About Us page? Contact Us Page? Terms of Service and Privacy policy pages?
Metadata
Check the keywords in the URL’s on the site and pages. Keywords in page titles, not too high a keyword densite – not stuffed, Keywords in headings, first & last paragraphs, meta titles, mets descriptions, alt-image-text, tags. Check as well NAP data is consistent. (Name Address Phone Number)
Links
Check the number of external inbound links, number of referring domains, domain authority & citation flow, page authority & trust flow. Make sure the referrers are relevant, quality sites, diverse and natural. Look for any signs of black-hat SEO.
Also important to check for broken links and 404 errors both internal and external links.
Technical
Check Page speed, mobile friendly, number of pages indexed by Google. Make sure there are no problems with robots.txt. Check 302 redirects and check there is a sitemap. Check also that there are security and caching plug-ins and also that the site is served by Https.
SEO Audits from DEW IT & Web Services
In summary, SEO can provide a great way to ensure your site can be found by potential customers interested in your products or services who are ready to buy. Google wants it’s search engine to return the best most relevant contact to any queries entered by customers. Paying attention to the SEO factors on your site and pages hopefully will attract customers who are ready to buy and will convert to sales for your business.
Contact Us NOW for a special SEO Audit offer for your site.