First, what is an SEO audit? It is the process of determining how effectively your web presence adheres to the best search engine optimization practices. To go a little further, the audit is actually the first step toward developing a measurable digital marketing strategy. Its main objective is to uncover as many root causes of poor organic search performance as possible. In other words, you can call it a “health check” of your website. Here are some of the issues that a typical SEO audit will unveil:

• Technical issues related to the site
• Issues with the website’s structure
• Issues with the site’s on-page SEO
• Off-site issues that could arise
• Concerns about the user experience
• Content inconsistencies and opportunities
• Competitive market intelligence
• Keyword positions and opportunities

Why is an SEO audit important?

Because of the importance of your website to your business or organization, it’s critical to perform frequent audits to ensure everything is in order. Additionally, it’s important to remember that your website is a living digital property; it rarely remains dormant for extended periods of time. Each year, your site’s material gets added and/or removed. This is why audits should be conducted on a regular basis.

Following your audit, there are other components of SEO to which you should pay attention in order to remain competitive. After all, creating a solid technological foundation alone does not guarantee SEO success. If your business relies on people visiting a physical place, it is vital to watch your competitors’ SEO activity, stay current on search engine best practices, and adhere to local SEO best practices. All of these aspects contribute to an SEO plan’s success and should be evaluated alongside your audit and regular SEO maintenance.

Advantages of using a professional SEO audit provider

We’ve seen just how critical conducting an SEO audit can be. In addition to highlighting areas where your site needs improvement, an audit can also provide a valuable roadmap towards recovery. Let’s examine why you need a professional SEO audit provider:

Tools and Software

One of the most important reasons you should engage a professional SEO provider to perform your audit is because they have the pertinent tools and software to do the job. While there are numerous tools out there, and some are even free, a professional SEO specialist is in a better position to evaluate which tools are needed for your particular business or niche. Examples of critical tools include SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz Pro. These tools offer detailed audits or crawls that will allow you to accurately evaluate not only your website’s general search health but also typical inefficiencies that are sabotaging your site’s organic performance. Additional tools include keyword research tools, backlink analysis tools, and others, in addition to Google Analytics and Search Console.

Data Interpretation

Anyone can press a button to trigger an audit. But the most important thing is being able to accurately interpret the data that is generated. Tools such as Google Analytics can generate a tremendous amount of data even for a small website but without professional help, this data can be confusing. A professional SEO specialist can synthesize this data and distill it into easy-to-understand information that a business owner can act upon.

Implementation

As mentioned above, it’s one thing to perform an audit and even acquire the data, but it’s quite another to fix the issues. SEO specialists are better trained and equipped to formulate the strategies needed to respond to the audit’s findings. Below are some of the implementation strategies that a professional SEO audit specialist can create:

Understanding the competition

Whether you’re developing a new site for the first time or doing an audit as part of an ongoing plan, the more you understand about what other players in the same market are doing, the higher your chances of success. You must benchmark your site’s rankings and analyze your performance in comparison to the competition.

Fixing Technical Issues

Imagining taking a look at your site’s statistics and noticing a 12% dip in traffic. Then you discover it’s because your site takes more than 15 seconds to load. Or even worse, you discover that some crucial pages are not indexed by Google. That is just one of the many reasons technical SEO is crucial. Without it, Google and other search engines will not be able to locate, crawl, and index your website.

If search engines are unable to index your site, you will fall into the 90.63 percent of websites that receive no organic search traffic from Google. And even if your site is discovered, user experience concerns such as slow page load times and difficult navigation can have a detrimental effect on SEO. Other factors such as mobile optimization, duplicate content, and site security can all contribute to search engines penalizing your site. A professional SEO specialist is able to formulate a strategy to address these issues.

Monitoring Keyword Performance

A professional SEO audit provider is able to review your website’s keyword performance. This is critical because many business owners do not know what their best keywords are and how their sites are performing in relation to the competition. Using cutting-edge tools, an SEO specialist can uncover these keywords and monitor performance in the SERPs.

Backlink Acquisition

One of the most important pieces of information an SEO audit uncovers is the number and quality of backlinks. Backlinks are a critical part of search engine performance. A professional SEO audit provider can review all your backlinks and determine the following:

• Number of backlinks in total
• Review of good vs bad (toxic) backlinks

A professional SEO specialist can also take steps to improve search engine rankings by disavowing bad backlinks and boosting the number of high-quality ones.

Conclusion

Utilizing the services of a professional SEO audit provider has obvious advantages. Your business will benefit from the use of premium tools and software, accurate data interpretation, and strategies to address the issues highlighted in the audit. To schedule a free consultation, contact us today.