Website Audits and SEO

Whether the website is new to the internet or is that of a large retailer, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is needed to ensure increased traffic to the site. When someone enters the marketing world as a business owner or recent college graduate, they often find themselves overwhelmed by all the new information to optimize their digital presence. Website optimization can be difficult for someone unfamiliar with the software or processes. One might ask where they could even start to check. Fortunately, one can use free checkers online to see where their website stands.

I will be honest, when I first started learning about SEO, I thought, okay, maybe it is just about keywords. However, while Keywords are part of the SEO process and are still extremely important to creating traffic, it is not the only thing needed to optimize website performance.

These checks are called Website Audits. HubSpot.com says, “examining page performance before a large-scale search engine optimization (SEO) or a website redesign. Auditing your website can determine whether or not it’s optimized to achieve your traffic goals and give you a sense of how you can improve it to reach those goals.”      

Identify and Complete An Audit

Businesses’ primary objective is to ensure they have everything set up to reach goals and growth. When a company completes an audit, it can understand where there is room for improvement and where its determined strategies are working. These audits vary slightly depending on the intention to run them in the first place.

Firstly, marketers must identify the kind of audit needed to receive the desired results. There are five possible options that one can look at, and they are:

1. Semrush Site Audit Tool
2. Google Analytics
3. Google Search Console
4. Google Page Speed Insights
5. Google Schema Markup Testing Tool

Each option is slightly different. Semrush Site Audit Tool, for example, is dedicated to overall performance with a breakdown of specific details.

It is common knowledge that Google is not the only search engine out there, but it is one of the most popular available today. Additionally, Marketers see that other search engines function similarly to Google, and therefore, Google’s audits hold weight when completing this kind of analysis. The results impact performance across the board and other search engines. Finally, Google has released different tools so that companies can analyze other aspects of their online presence.

Google Analytics, probably the most popular, dedicates itself to analyzing a website’s presence through the Google search engine and defining its performance.

Google Search Console allows one to view how a website indexes itself. Website indexation is a must-have when running a website. Indexing is a process where crawlers from Google come to the website to identify what type of information the website is providing. This is why markets say to make posts and texts relevant to your business.

Google PageSpeed Insights is self-explanatory as it determines the speed at which pages perform. Furthermore, this works for mobile and desktop platforms, which given how users consume information, is very convenient.

Lastly, Google Schema Markup Testing Tool allows you to test whether the prepared Schema is working correctly without any errors.

Now what?

Once it is determined what audit is needed to proceed, then you must verify your website if you are using any of the Google auditing tools. After that, everything else, for the most part, is step-by-step, and each tool will provide you with an array of information you can use to improve your website’s SEO.

Each time this analysis is run, a few things must be checked, no matter what. SEO Specialists and Analysts much check whether the site requires any manual actions, speed, how friendly it is on a mobile device, whether there are any indexation issues or indexed URLs, and whether the site is using HTTPS. Additionally, the user page experience should be analyzed to optimize it. Once this is done, always benchmark rankings to understand the competition.

If SEO specialists and analysts identify site issues, a new SWOT analysis is created to determine how a competitor is doing comparatively. An SEO specialist will identify what is being done that is working and what can be improved to match their results?

Check Your Links

SEO is identifying keywords that help websites rank higher in the Google algorithm. Checking links are great for website presence and visibility when a user searches by keywords. However, SEO keywords need to be periodically changed and require analysis to confirm that they are still functioning. Remember that the number of keywords is not what matters but the quality of those keywords. For example, Google will label too many keywords as Black Hat practices, which Google diligently searches for and prevents the site from improving in rank.

Additionally, a business would want to check its social media presence and lead conversion optimization to identify what is working and what is not.

Remember

On every single website, there is always room for improvement. This is why it is essential to complete website audits every so often to know where the website is thriving and where it has room to grow. At Diana Alexia Creations, we help businesses create social media posts for platforms across the board. Want to learn more about how we can help? Check out our Social Media Content Creation service.