The Importance Of an SEO Audit With Brian Harnish

Introduction.

While creating and maintaining an SEO strategy is critical. It is also of utmost importance to
maintain an ongoing check and balance in place i.e., doing periodic audits to ensure the SEO is
performing as expected.

SEO audit means reviewing your Website comprehensively. It’s like going for a periodic health check-up to see if there are any issues and taking necessary preventive measures.

An SEO audit can also give you insights just like vital signs reading, and you can take the required steps to improve your Website optimization.

Let’s take a look a few pointers which help us understand the importance of SEO Audit:

1. Identifies On-Page Issues.

On-page SEO is the core and fundamental step to ensure optimization of the Website. Tools like Yoast plugins are beneficial for on-page SEO. Below items should be kept in mind while doing an SEO audit

1. Optimize your Headings and Subheadings.

Having clearly defined headers is part of good content design, and we need to make sure to have the keywords in the headings. Words with similar meanings can also be used in subheadings.

2. Content is King.

Your Content is always the king. While it’s important to use the keywords., however, do not overuse it. Content should have an organic flow.

3. Use of Meta Titles.

Make sure meta title and description are within a specified character limit of 35-70 and below 160, respectively. If possible, include Call to Action (CTA); it should be relevant and not be out of place.

4. Internal Links.

Internal links help a lot in terms of making your content user friendly. It helps in smooth navigation and allows users to jump Content depending on their interests. Defined Table of Content, which is linked to subtopics, is advised for better SEO.

2. Identifies technical issues.

Technical SEO is a foundation on which overall SEO of the website. An SEO audit can help identify any technical glitch which is not visible; however, it might be impacting the optimization.

1. Page Speed.

The most search engine considers page load speed a significant factor in search ranking. It is an important aspect of user experience. If your Website is slow, it affects the bounce rate. If you find the page speed is slow. Make sure to check the size of images, Unnecessary scripts, CSS or codes, and server response time. They all contribute to slowness of page speed.

2. Site Design.

Make sure to use to maintain subfolders for better site architecture. URLs should be short, and long URLs usually don’t rank well. Although URL should make sense, use should be able to know the intent of the page just by looking at URL.

WP users can go to permalink settings under the admin dashboard to change the setting. Good Architecture and URL structure helps search engine crawling.

3. Redirects.

Redirects should not exist if possible. However, if you have no choice, try to keep the 301 and 302 redirects to as minimum as possible.

404 Error is a strict No. You can’t have this roadblock on your Website.  It kills the user experience and seriously hampers the SEO.

3. SEO audit helps in identifying backlinks.

Backlinks remain a key factor in ranking your Website on Google SERP. If your Website has reputable links to a well-known brand, it is considered good and fares well. Hence, you should always be aware of your backlinks.

Following questions should be considered while doing an SEO audit.

• Does the Website contain irrelevant backlinks? Which might be considered spam by Google
  and impact the health of your Website.
• The number of backlinks the Website contains? Where does it stand compared to its
  competitive websites?

Remember, due to the importance of backlinks, many hackers and other webmasters look for the opportunity to access other websites if the security is not up to mark. They might place backlinks
on your Website, and Google might notice it and penalize you.

A proper audit can help you avoid such a scenario and also help you to see where does your Website stand in term of the competition. You can build an entirely new strategy or change existing ways of gaining backlinks.

4. Enhance your content strategy.

Once you are through with looking at the above aspects during your SEO audit like website architecture, URLs, Redirects, Performance in terms of Website upload speed, review backlinks and understand your competition.

You are ready and equipped to enhance your overall content strategy. You would know where you are lacking and how you can ensure better Content for your Website going forward without making the earlier mistakes.

A better content strategy will, in return, help you in even better SEO for your Website. Remember, no matter what happens, Content remains king in the online world.

There are a lot of tools easily available to conduct SEO audits. It is worth investing the time and effort; if you want your Website to remain user friendly and search engine friendly.

For more information contact a reputed SEO company.