Many business owners implement all the SEO strategies they can to increase traffic to their websites. Once they get constant traffic every day, they relax and perhaps build another website. Every website owner’s dream is to have a large number of visitors who buy their products or click on their ads. Many do not take the time to review their websites after achieving their goal. In fact, many are unaware of the importance and benefits of conducting an SEO audit regularly on all websites.
When conducting an SEO audit, you analyze your website comprehensively to identify the effective On-page and off page SEO strategies. You analyze all aspects of your website including the metadata, link structure, content, page speed, and anchor texts among others. A regular SEO audit is important to every business for the following reasons:
1. Changes in Algorithms
Search engines change their algorithms and rules all the time. Your SEO team must track any new changes in algorithms from all major search engines such as Google. An SEO audit will help you determine if your business website is compliant with the new algorithms. Google updated its webmaster guidelines recently and this requires businesses to review their websites for compliance. If your business website does not comply with the new rules, some of its aspects will send red flags to search engines. The search engines penalize non-compliant websites by lowering their rank. All the SEO tactics you have implemented over the years will be useless if your website is pushed down to the fifth or tenth page on Google or any other search engine.
2. Updating Content
One of the major SEO tactics that never goes out of fashion is posting quality content on your website. You may have the best link strategy that pushes your website high on the search engine results pages. However, poor quality content will drive away your visitors to competitors. Many internet users are looking for answers or comprehensive information on their queries. Buyers want accurate and complete information about a product to make an informed decision. Hence, you must have accurate and updated content on your website to engage your visitors. The audit will help you identify content that visitors are no longer interested in or reading. Fresh content improves your website’s ranking on search engines. An SEO audit also helps your business to identify and remove duplicate content from web pages.
3. Reviewing Your Link Structure
When you contact SEO experts, they advise you to link your website to other authority websites in your industry. You also need other businesses to link their websites to yours. You have much control over your outbound links since your team posts the content with the links. You can check the websites first and their rankings before linking any of your pages to them. However, your team can lose track of inbound links after sending multiple requests for such links. Low-quality inbound links will affect your ranking. An external SEO auditor like The HOTH reviews your website for toxic links and removes them from your website. The experts will then replace the poor links with high-powered links to improve your website’s ranking.
4. Identifying Internal Linking Errors
The length of time that visitors spend on your website affects its ranking. Internal linking keeps your visitors engaged on your website. The strategy does not only lead them to your products or services, but also provides them with more information about your business. The visitors will spend more minutes browsing your website for information if you have high-quality updated content. Errors in internal linking are costly. If a URL does lead to the page that the content or anchor text indicates, visitors will leave your site almost immediately. Visitors assume that your website is outdated or inaccurate after encountering one linking error. A comprehensive audit helps in identifying and removing such errors.
5. Speed Analysis
Internet users are quick to move from one website to another when the first has a slow loading speed. Your visitors will leave before signing up for your service or buying your product if your website is slow. When many visitors leave after a few seconds for slow speed, the site sends red flags to search engines. Hence, even with effective SEO tactics, low speed will keep your ranking low. Auditing your business websites gives you an opportunity to check its speed and improve your visitors’ experience. You can make informed decisions to change your hosting service or the nature of the content on each page. You can use Google to conduct a speed analysis. The search engine gives you useful suggestions on how to improve the speed.
Should you hire an external SEO auditor?
After learning the benefits of an SEO audit, your immediate response should be conducting an audit of your business website. Your internal SEO team can run the analysis and correct any errors on your website. However, it is advisable to outsource this function to ensure that the audit is comprehensive. Your team may be overwhelmed with work while trying to keep up with the latest SEO tactics. In addition, an internal audit is limited to your team’s level of expertise. The team may have contributed to the issues on your website because of their lack of skill and expertise in some areas.
An agency like The HOTH reviews all the aspects of your website systematically and comprehensively. You are assured that all errors and potential red flags are removed from your website. Your team can focus on building the website while the external auditor reviews the effectiveness of each SEO strategy. In addition, your business benefits from years of experience in SEO strategies and auditing when working with experts.
Conclusion
Every business needs to review its websites constantly to improve or keep its high ranking on search engines. An SEO audit helps in identifying and correcting errors in the content, link building, and internal linking strategies. A comprehensive audit includes all aspects of the website, including the speed and compliance with search engine algorithms. Businesses can conduct regular audits on their websites internally. However, hiring external experts has multiple benefits including comprehensive audits from SEO experts with many years of experience. If you have never conducted any audit on your business website, you need to conduct one immediately. You can get an audit checklist for your team or hire experts depending on your SEO budget.
