SEO audit is a process, the outcome of which allows you to know your website better and where it stands in the virtual world. With the help of this audit, you will be able to know the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of your website. Not only that, but you also get to know the existing errors that you must fix for better web traffic.
Let us delve deep into the topic under the two sub-topics given below,
How will you carry out a local SEO?
Carrying out a site audit can be safely regarded as the first step that you must take if you are planning to arrange an SEO campaign. If improving your rankings in the SERPs and driving more organic traffic to your website is what you are looking forward to, an audit is an ultimate solution for improving visibility online.
It may be mentioned here that your main objective must be to improve rankings in local search results. This will allow you to appear in the local listings, which will eventually make your business listings grow. Also, it was observed that the people that conducted local searches on their hand-held devices enquired about the products or services within two business working days and visited the store or ordered online.
Initiating SEO audit- How to go about it?
Prior to starting the process, you must check the name of your business, visibility with regard to phone, address, and number. Aside from that, you must also have thorough knowledge about your business’s geographical location, how well your business is listed locally and also the content of your blog and website.
One of the better things that you can do is performing a competitor analysis, which will help you to enjoy an edge over the others operating in the same niche.
Keyword analysis
The keyword is said to be the building base for any SEO audit and marketing campaign. Incorporating the right set of keywords in your content determines how successful your website will be in terms of digital footfall. As such, keyword analysis is key to initiating an online SEO audit.
As per Google algorithm, although keyword is not the sole parameter for ranking even if you are competitive enough to build inbound links that are authoritative in nature, as far as the decision regarding ranking is concerned, thematic keywords play a crucial role.
Find out where you stand in the listings
Another way to decide what steps you must take for improving your visibility is to type in your business name in Google and other search engines. Also, find whether there is an appropriate alignment between your business name and the SERPs.
Coming to the next part of an SEO audit, are the components of the same.
- What are the essential components of an online SEO audit?
The main objective of SEO audit is to understand the areas that you need to work upon so that your business prospers and performs better. However, for that, you have to know the main components that can help you to achieve your goals. They are as follows-
- Web crawling
Crawling is when Google goes through or reads through your website, which is one of the essential components.
- Indexing
This is whether or not or the position in which your site’s web pages are being included in the search results.
- Easy accessibility
In order that your website ranks well, you must find out whether visitors are having any trouble accessing your website. 404 errors, lengthy server response time, and slow page loading are main factors that hinder the smooth browsing experience for visitors. You must do away with these hindrances.
- Analyzing incoming and outgoing links
Links that you receive or share with third-party websites must be relevant. Many tools can help you to assess whether or not your data is linking to the desired websites and the pages that you must emphasize on.
- Evaluating content
It is always said and perhaps is undeniably correct that “Content is King.” From time to time, you have to update and refresh your content on the website. Not only that you must find out whether or not the present content is helping you adequately to get ranking that you are looking forward to.
You have to know how long your visitors are staying on a particular web page and address to bounce rates if any. Content review does not mean putting up fresh content; it also means adding value to the website and assessing how visitors will benefit by going through your web pages.
- Sitemap and architecture of the website
Your website must have a simple, easy-to-understand sitemap that will help visitors to navigate with ease. The architecture of the website should be as per the theme of your website and most importantly, your target audience.
These days you will find that most of the people browse websites on their hand-held devices, even while they are on the go. So, your website has to be mobile-friendly and indexed first by the search engine major. Even if you already have a desktop version and if you do not have a mobile version as yet, you will lose out on the rat race.
- Compatible with algorithm updates