Every second, Google experiences nearly 40,000 searches, over 70 percent of which never go past the first page of the search results. These numbers alone are reason enough for you to worry about your SEO metrics. SEO is a major part of any marketing strategy. It also plays a significant role in the overall growth of a business.
An SEO audit is a process of analyzing your website and all the factors that contribute to how well it runs. The question is, how do you know that your website needs an SEO audit checklist? In this guide, we’ll take you through seven of the most relevant signs that your website is begging for an SEO audit so you can finally make effective changes.
One of the most significant roles of SEO is to drive traffic to your website. You research the best keywords and key phrases for your target market, rank high on the SERPs, and you get more traffic. This leads to more potential and loyal customers. However, if you’re currently on the 12th page of Google, you should be worried because that is a cold and lonely place.
If you have little to no traffic, it’s a sign that you need this SEO audit checklist. Even if you do have some traffic, it’s coming from referrals and other channels like social media, but you’re missing out on SEO.
Some of the issues you may be facing include unoptimized content, no focus keywords, slow loading website, spammy backlinks, poor site structure, among others. The only way for you to capitalize on organic search is by getting an SEO audit and having a professional correct all these mistakes.
In organic SEO, you should never take your competitors for granted. If your website ranks lower for your target keywords, it’s because a competitor has beat you to the first spot. Therefore you’ll receive less traffic to your website. Less traffic always means fewer potential customers and lesser conversion.
Even though you need various aspects to rank high, including content and backlinks, your keywords are by far one of the most significant parts of SEO. Your content should not only be relevant, but it should revolve around those keywords so you can beat your competitors.
The buyers’ journey ends up with the customers qualifying as a lead that the sales team can follow up on. They make a query into the search engine, find your website, like what you have to offer, and follow your call-to-action. If you’re not getting quality leads from your website, there’s something wrong with your SEO strategies, and you need this SEO audit checklist.
There are many other ways to get quality leads, such as social media marketing and PPC marketing. However, organic search is better because it’s a long term solution if you use the right strategies.
On-page SEO is highly important because the structure and design of a website play a huge role in the user experience. Delivering excellent user experience and functionality means that your conversion rate will increase exponentially. Well-optimized website pages need to include quality content, quality images, videos, and infographics, internal links, proper navigation, and more.
If your on-page SEO is great, then working on your off-page SEO is easier. Off-page SEO goes beyond your website to aspects like link building. If you feel that your website is not meeting these goals, you need this SEO audit checklist. You also need to have an audit to pinpoint the exact problems and rectify them.
Google is all about user experience, and it only ranks the most useful content at the top of the search results. If you have been posting 300-word articles and blog posts, even for hot keywords, you won’t go very far.
You need longer articles that offer valuable information to your target market for Google to rank you high for your hot keywords. Beyond that, you also need to start using videos, infographics, graphs, and high-quality images as well.
To check your website bounce rate, you can check your page metrics on Google Analytics. If your bounce rate is high, your SEO strategies are subpar. Therefore you need to make improvements. However, it’s advisable to get an SEO audit so you can get a better understanding of the problem, and solve it in its entirety.
A high bounce rate refers to visitors that view just one page of your website and leave. Some of the things that cause a high bounce rate include slow loading pages, misleading title tags and meta descriptions, blank pages, bad links, among others. For this reason, you need to have a full website SEO audit by a professional company like Scottsdale SEO to catch all the issues.
Change is the only constant. If you haven’t been making changes to your SEO strategies for a while, you need an SEO audit. You may have been using a strategy that worked exceptionally well two years ago, but the world has moved on from that.
Google algorithms change by the day, and you need to keep up. Use this SEO audit checklist to ensure that you cover everything you have been missing.
There you have it! Now you know why you need a full SEO audit, and you can use this SEO audit checklist to ensure everything is taken care of. Search engine optimization is broad, and for best results, it's advisable to hire a professional SEO company.
They will not only audit your website but work on it and get it back on track. The process may not be quick, but it’s one of the best marketing strategies, and you’ll be glad you did.
We hope that you found our content useful, and you’ll take the right steps towards rectifying your SEO shortcomings. For more in-depth information about marketing, advertising, health, and wellness, please check out our blog section. We have so much comprehensive content that you may be looking for.
