If you’ve recently suffered a drastic loss in search traffic, you might want to consider a Forensic SEO Audit. If not,, then conducting a basic SEO audit is the place to start if you want to analyze how well your web stacks up to accepted SEO Best Practices. It is the first step to creating an implementation plan that will have measurable results.
The purpose of the basic SEO audit is to identify as many foundational issues affecting organic search performance as possible. In very broad terms, your SEO audit will reveal:
- Technical SEO issues
- Website structure issues
- On-page SEO issues
- Data Collection Issues
- Crawl Issues
- Potential off-site problems
- Usability (UX) and User Interface (UI) issues
- Content gaps and opportunities
- Competitive marketplace insights
Audits like this should be done on a regular basis, but always, always at the start of a site redesign or site migration. SEO Audits are best done when they’re done on a regular basis – they are essentially a “health check” for your website.
Like any health checkup, your audit should be comprehensive, covering both structural and content components affecting your SEO visibility. The audit should provide a “big picture” view of what is happening in your current state. Any missing pieces – things that have been left our of the audit for the sake ot speed ot keeping costs down – could result in unnecessary or improper recommendations.
Your audit should be easy to understand. As a business owner or the executive in change of the website, you should be able to connect the dots as to how SEO issues are affecting your online priorities, goals, or revenue. Any and all recommendations should clearly ladder up to your over-arching business objectives. So we put the SEO Audit into a PowerPoint deck and deliver it in person to you and your team.
Keep in mind that an SEO audit is never a “one size fits all” solution. While some technical elements are required for all websites, a situational analysis should be performed at the outset of an SEO audit to hone-in on areas of focus for that site.
Your SEO audit will take anywhere between 2 and 4 weeks depending on the size and scope. During this time an SEO specialist is analyzing and uncovering SEO opportunities on your website. However, bi-weekly or weekly check-ins keep you and your team in the loop as to the progress.
In any given website audit, a few low-hanging opportunities will be discovered. When these types of insights are unearthed, our team will pass them along right away. This provides an opportunity to recover visibility while the remainder of the audit is carried out.
After the audit has been completed, your team will be invited to a presentation in which your SEO specialist will talk through the findings and recommendations. The Expert SEO Consulting team will walk you and your team though the entire audit report and our recommendations, along with backup data and answer any questions you have.
There are at least two reasons to do an SEO audit on at least a yearly basis:
- First, your business is often judged by your web presence. That makes it important to perform regular audits to ensure everything is in order. Also, your website is a living digital property, and content is added and/or removed from your site on a regular basis.
- Second, there are parts of SEO which you should pay attention to after your audit to make sure you stay competitive. If you’re moving up on the SERPs, someone else is moving down so it’s important to pay attention to your competition’s SEO activity,
We recommend that websites be audited at a minimum of once per year. That allows your teams to fix critical issues as they arise. Is it time for your website to get an SEO health check? If so, contact our team of SEO experts to get one scheduled or use the form below.
