In many cases, a business will put resources towards creating an excellent initial website. But over time, changes to content, glitches, higher traffic, and more similar circumstances can cause that web page to fall apart. How is a business that spends all of its time looking at its website and is perhaps too familiar and accustomed to that website supposed to really experience what a new visitor might be? This may not seem like a big problem, but having a poorly functioning space website means that potential customers will have a poor experience. That poor experience makes them less likely to return. One of the best ways to combat this is to get an SEO audit.
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What Is an SEO Audit Service?
SEO refers to search engine optimization. Search engine optimization basically consists of a multitude of principles and practices that assist in improving rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs). It also focuses on ensuring that a website reaches its target demographics and locations. There are many benefits to SEO in general that will be explored later.
An SEO audit service has a lot in common with marketing audits. Both are attempting to answer the question of how effective someone’s marketing is. Specifically, an SEO audit looks into how a website performs on search engine results pages. SEO audit services will examine how a website performs in search rankings and measure traffic to certain pages in relation to the structure and content of the website themselves. From there, they will make recommendations for improvement.
Depending on the size and changes in a business and its website, SEO audits may be needed more or less frequently. How often your website would benefit is a very unique matter and requires consideration of multiple factors.
What Makes SEO Audit Services Important?
Since an SEO marketing audit focuses on improving overall web visibility and the accuracy with which a website reaches its core market, SEO auditing often involves patching up aspects of web design that hinder lead generation and sales for businesses. A business with remarkable services, innovative products, cheap prices, and anything else desirable to clients will still fail if nobody knows about them and what they offer. In order to drive e-commerce for businesses upwards, marketing and search engine optimization have to align and compound in order to reach the people that are actually interested in what a given business offers.
So, since it is clear that an SEO audit is important, let’s consider 10 more particular and defined benefits.
Easily Quantifiable Improvements
Classic advertising tactics like billboards and flyers may still work, but their impacts can only be measured indirectly. Other aspects of marketing, like evaluating the quality of a design or advertisement, are either largely “subjective” (or simply hard to objectify) or would require studies to be designed or focus groups to be polled. SEO on the other hand can be assessed easily in real-time to see positions on SERPs. Furthermore, increased traffic to your website and time spent on it can be objectively quantified in a very straightforward manner. It is even easy to compare search term spikes with a website’s performance. This allows you to verify that any changes are very likely to relate back to SEO.
Trustworthy, reliable, effective companies working to improve SEO for businesses also have published case studies that exemplify the numbers. For instance, SEO Design Chicago effectively implemented an SEO protocol for a national Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Company, delivering a 243% increase in organic web traffic in the first 6 months.
Improve On-Page SEO
Most people building a website focus on what the website says and looks like. These are, of course, important to any successful website. In fact, any SEO professional would tell you how important keywords, subject matter, image descriptions, and other aspects of on-page SEO are. However, there are more aspects to on-page SEO that can be harder to test for and many might not know about at all. For instance, your loading speeds and your URL rating can both heavily impact on-page SEO! An SEO audit service is the best way to get clued into any areas that your website may be mishandling.
Improve Off-Page SEO
On-page SEO considers content like keywords, yes, but many may be totally unaware that SERPs also calculate using off-page SEO. Off-page SEO helps to validate whether or not a website is an authority. SEO audits evaluate where the credibility of a website stands right now and what could be done to improve it in the future. If your website’s relationship to other pages (or lack thereof!) is hindering it from being found high atop the Google search results, wouldn’t you want to know?
Escape the Consequences of Poor SEO Execution
Important as SEO is, improper execution can actually lead to penalties and create worse outcomes for a website. Certain practices such as keyword stuffing are detected by search engines and filtered. Many of these practices can also create problems for users. One potential issue is creating too many distractions on a page for visitors. Another problem for users is terrible writing. A common rule of SEO copywriting is that you should not be able to tell that it is SEO copywriting. SEO copywriting, if excellent, just looks like regular copywriting without a clue to the world that someone also made sure it was search engine optimized! Obvious signs of trying to appeal to search engines can read poorly and also prioritizes algorithms over people.
Opportunity Awaits in SERP Trends
Some keyword research can be valid over long periods of time. For example, people will continue searching for Cristiano Ronaldo even long after he retires from soccer. However, if yesterday Cristiano Ronaldo was involved in an important news event, search numbers for his name would be peaking relative to the already high standards. Much like Twitter’s “trending” hashtags, audits with intent towards marketing and SEO for your business can assist in capitalizing on seasonal or otherwise timely spikes in searches. Getting a feel for how a market’s interests are changing can help you update your page to remain current.
Improve Loading Time
There are other upsides to marketing audits for your website. Did you know that about half of all users expect a page to load within 2 seconds? Lowering load times can increase lead conversion by almost 80%. Getting a better feel for the health of your website and its performance, uptime, the potential for crashes or glitches in the future, etc, would all help to either address those issues or add peace of mind that things are going well.
Learn About Competitors
SEO auditing delivers information to you about how you compare to any competitors and in what areas you can gain a relative advantage. If you are not trying to efficiently utilize something as key as getting ahead in search engine rankings, you are letting your business rank below other businesses. This indirectly tells clients that they are more trustworthy. Get a leg up on the other guys or they will get up on you!
User Activity on Your Site
Auditing can discover what user activity on your website actually looks like. It may very well be that a certain aspect of your website is harder to get to or interact with. If this is the case, you are missing out on visitors. Worst case scenario, your website’s organization and structure are actually diverting people who make it onto the page from areas you want them to see. It can be hard enough to get the right eyes on your website – you cannot afford to drive them away.
Business Connections
One last benefit you might realize from getting an SEO audit is connections with a company that can help you in other ways. Forging a good relationship with a trustworthy navigator of all things marketing strategy, SEO, web development, online advertising, and more, can only help you to have the right help when you need it, instead of being in the dark. Working with a company like SEO Design Chicago can help you be sure that you have help with this when you need it. Chances are if your website could use an SEO audit, at some point you might benefit from a variety of other game-changing services as well.
Hire an SEO Audit Service
Endless reasons could be given for getting into SEO improvement for your website. At the end of all the lists, it is undeniable that SEO works for powering the results that matter to you. In the simplest terms, SEO helps you to show the world what you want them to see. If you’re interested in getting an SEO audit for your business, SEO Design Chicago would love to help. Get in touch with us to learn more!
FAQ:
- What is an SEO audit?
- Why is an SEO audit important?
- Why is on-page SEO important?
- How quickly do users expect websites to load?
- Why do SERP trends matter?
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