In the same way that routine medical and dental check-ups are necessary for one’s health, regular search engine optimization audits are crucial for the health of a website. An audit takes into account the website’s technical foundation, on-page content and off-page factors to assess its search engine visibility, content readability and site visitor usability. It determines the site’s issues as well as the recommended fixes for each one.
I suggest conducting regular SEO audits for a number of reasons. First, search engines such as Google constantly update their respective algorithms so websites have to keep up in order to rank well. Second, SEO rules and trends change every year; staying up-to-date potentially lowers a website’s competition for search engine rankings and site visitors alike.
When you run regular SEO audits, you bring in fresh content and design that visitors can enjoy. It also enables webmasters to fix website errors and recover lost traffic. As such, it encourages viewer retention and increases website following.
Another reason to conduct an SEO audit is to clean up a website’s link profile. This enables us to view backlinks and track down which ones are good, bad and toxic. Finally, regular SEO audits keep a website in line by making sure it complies with Google Webmaster Guidelines, which is basically a guide for high-quality, Google-friendly sites.
It doesn’t take a genius to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit, whether it is for a new website or an existing one. But you need to know what to focus on to get a clearer picture of your website’s performance.
Check The URLs, Page Titles And Descriptions
Look at how the website and its pages appear on search engines. Are the URLs consistent? Are the page titles using the right keywords? Are the page descriptions giving sufficient information? If the answers are “yes,” then the website and its respective pages are a step closer to ranking higher on search engines.
Google pays more attention to optimized URLS, which need to be short and readable; they appear more credible. Users have a higher chance of coming across your pages if you appropriately incorporate relevant keywords in URLS, page titles and descriptions.
Evaluate Content Consistency And Quality
After checking the surface, it’s time to dig deeper and make sure that the existing content projects consistency and quality. Web content should be relevant to the industry in general and to the products or services it provides in particular. More importantly, it should be easy to read so that site visitors are compelled to share it.
Quality content is achievable with the inclusion of organic keywords, a clear message and a call to action. The website should also have a reasonable code to text ratio, which search engines and spiders use to determine the relevancy of a page.
Although Google doesn’t count text ratios as a ranking factor, it could point out issues with your website — like speed.
Test The Speed And Functionality Of The Web Pages
Let’s embrace the reality that we have access to every other thing with a mere tap of a finger; site visitors expect the websites and pages they visit to load quickly and properly. Visitors have a threshold for waiting on pages. Online buyers, for instance, will not wait more than five seconds for a page to load. Mobile users are even more impatient, with more than half of visitors leaving a page if it takes more than three seconds to load.
A slow website kills profits, which is particularly worrying if you run an e-commerce business. So test your website for speed and functionality, starting with plugins like PageSpeed.
Review The Site Structure And Navigation
If a page captures my interest, I would be willing to click on the homepage and explore the website further. Many site visitors share the same sentiment, so an SEO audit is necessary to make sure the website has an organized structure and easy navigation to better accommodate and retain visitors.
Give them a seamless user experience with regular and thorough audits.
An SEO audit is not necessarily complicated. Tasks such as checking if the URLS are working, if the content is relevant, and if the pages are loading correctly are easy enough for beginners. The bottom line is doing this consistently to make sure your website remains healthy and so that it ranks well and earns organic traffic.
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