How A Website SEO Audit Can Improve Your Business Website

In the ever-changing world of Search Engine Optimization it is important to have your website up to date with the latest search engine algorithms changes. It is important to update your website accordingly if you want to maintain your position in the search engine results pages. A professional website SEO audit is the best way to find out if there are any changes you should make to your website. It is important to have a full SEO analysis periodically to check how your website performs. Not having your website audited by a professional means you could lose your position to competitors.

A website SEO audit is a complex analysis of the whole website to see how it performs and if it suits the newest search engine algorithm requirements. While the algorithms are very hard to study and understand, there are certain points to be made about them:

• The search algorithms aim to provide the best experience for the users.
• The search algorithms prioritize trustworthy websites over shady websites.
• Content is the number one factor for the algorithms.
• For websites with similar quality content, outside links are important.
• The search algorithms take into account not only how much content a website has, but how often new content is added as well.
• All content is not equal. The search algorithms will judge content by how people interact with it.
• The more time people spend reading content on your website, the better it will be seen by search engines.
• Website structure and speed has to fit the minimum requirements

An SEO analysis not only checks if a website fits the latest SEO trends and requirements but also compares the latest performance data to data from the past to see how the website evolved and what parts of it performed the best. There are several aspects of your website that will be analyzed:

Website Speed Analysis

Speed is a major aspect of Search Engine Optimization. Website loading speed is tied to the user experience. If your website takes a long time to load, users will be more likely to leave the website. They might also not have the patience to wait long when they navigate through pages. Google has launched a tool named PageSpeed Insights to help website owners evaluate their website speed. You can see how fast your website loads on desktop and mobile, and what issues need to be fixed to improve the loading speed.

Even if you had an excellent loading speed six months ago you might find your website having below-average loading speed in the present. That might be due to many causes. If your website is built on WordPress for example, an update to the platform could mean your website content won’t load as fast as it used to be. Outdated plugins and themes can also cause slow loading speed in WordPress. Your hosting can also cause speed issues. If you’re constantly adding new content to your website you might need more hosting space from your provider. An SEO expert will look into every aspect of the website to determine what aspects need to be worked on to have your website loading speed restored  to normal limits.

Website Structure SEO Analysis

Your website’s structure is also important for Search Engine Optimization. Search engines likes websites that are easy to navigate for the same reason they like fast-loading websites. The easier users navigate through your website and find the desired information, the better experience they will have. User experience has been a major target for search engines in the last years, and any website that doesn’t suit their requirements will be penalized. A thorough SEO analysis will inspect your website structure both from a user experience point of view, and from a technical point of view. This will ensure your website is seen good by both users and search engines.

Your website’s user must find information easy when navigating through your website. The menu should contain all important pages of your website. The menu also has to follow a logical pattern to ensure that users can get to what they’re looking for fast. Broken links look bad for both search engines and users. It is important to scan the whole website for broken links and fix them. Adding new content to the website might also cause some code errors in the backend part. The analysis will check for errors as well to make sure that your website is clean from a technical point of view.

Website SEO Audit for Keywords

Every business website has its focus keywords. These keywords are strictly related to the business activity and they represent what the business is all about. You cannot just choose keywords that sound good to you and hope to perform well. It is important to have a website SEO audit before choosing the focus keywords for your website. There are different search volumes for every keyword so it is important to choose only the ones with a high search volume. Using low search volume keywords will bring in little to no traffic.

Another important aspect of keyword research is how fierce the competition for each keyword is. If you want to rank for high-competition keywords more work will be required. Surpassing websites with high authority and a long history in the industry is hard, so it is recommended to start ranking for keywords with low competition and work your way up from there. A website SEO analysis will pinpoint the optimal keywords to implement and start building content upon. It will also provide a long-term keyword plan to make sure your business website gets to the high-competition keywords eventually. Without a proper plan it is impossible to get to the first results on the search page.

An audit will not only help in the initial phase when setting the keywords for your website. Regular audits are required to check on how well the keywords are performing. You can see what keywords have performed well and what keywords need more work. This can help with setting the content strategy. Keyword competition is also variable and regular audits can help you decide which keywords you can focus on.

Analyze Your Content for Better Decisions

Content is one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization. If a website is clean from a technical point of view and has the right keywords set then the content is what will determine how search engines see and rank it. An audit will determine which type of content has the most success. You can use this to your advantage and continue to create similar content to improve your business website’s SEO. The audit will also highlight how users interact with your content.

Adding new content by yourself or by a third-party writer can mean that it is not optimized for search engines. Your SEO expert will analyze the whole content of your website to determine if it fits the industry standards. SEO writing is more technical than artstic so just because it sounds good doesn’t mean it will be good by SEO standards. This is a mistake that many business owners do when creating content for their website. A website SEO audit may suggest that you need to split large text blocks into small paragraphs for a better text understanding. Using the proper headings for each section might also be required if you haven’t already done it. Using numbering or bullet points is also a recommended tip to use.

See What Your Competitors Are Doing

A website SEO audit doesn’t only focus on your website. A full SEO analysis will target your competitors as well. It is very important to know what your competition is doing in order to establish the best strategy for your business. Having your competitors start working on certain new keywords that you already rank for will have consequences for your progress. If they start focusing on keywords you already rank for, you should start doing more content on those keywords as well so you don’t fall behind.

Your competitors might have switched their strategy as well which can leave you with some new keywords to focus on. There is no better way to outrank your competition than by focusing on their weak points in their content strategy. An SEO audit will also highlight what content volume your competition is adding every month so you know how much content you will need to do better than them. It is perfectly acceptable to spy on your competition using SEO audits because chances are they are also doing it to you.

Website SEO audits are the key element to any Search Engine Optimization campaign. At the beginning they provide essential insights about the industry you are part of. These insights can help you determine which strategy you should apply if you want to surpass your competitors. An SEO analysis can also help you pinpoint what your business website lacks in terms of technical SEO. This will help you update your website and clear it from any errors or broken links. If you get your website to fulfill all the search engine technical requirements, the only thing left to focus on are they keywords and content. A proper audit will help you decide which keywords to focus on and what content to build around them.