Search engine optimization (SEO) makes it easier for customers to find your business by understanding and improving your website which is why SEO audits are indispensable for digital marketing. Without them, it’s harder to find out if you’re using tactics that no longer work or discover opportunities that will help your business grow. Learn more about SEO audits to see how they can improve your SEO strategy and benefit your overall digital marketing.
Why is an SEO Audit Important?
Performing an SEO audit is crucial for an effective strategy because it allows you to discover its strengths and weaknesses. You’ll be able to identify and overcome a variety of issues such as:
- Algorithm updates
- Webmaster guideline changes
- Outdated content
- Website errors
- Low-quality links
- Poor user experience
An SEO audit not only helps you find anything that’s negatively affecting your website’s optimization, but also other digital marketing strategies like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, content marketing, and email marketing.
Your website is critical to the success of your digital marketing because if the pages are ineffective with other types of traffic (e.g. paid, direct, referral), then you’re missing out on gaining and retaining more customers.
When Should You Do an SEO Audit?
A general rule of thumb is to do an SEO audit once a year, but some brands do it more often like twice a year or every quarter. A yearly SEO audit is typically enough for most businesses though. Make sure to keep records of everything you do so you can monitor progress year over year and streamline the process. Additionally, having documentation can help you make a stronger case for your company’s leaders to continue or increase investment in SEO.
How Long Do SEO Audits Take?
Depending on the size and number of your web properties, an SEO audit can take a couple of hours or several months. For example, an SEO audit for a small business that has a 10-page website will be a lot quicker than an SEO audit for a corporation that has multiple websites with hundreds of pages. Regardless of how long the audit takes, it should always include a thorough review, analysis, reporting, and strategic recommendations.
What’s in an SEO Audit?
In essence, an SEO audit reveals the website’s strengths and weaknesses and provides actionable recommendations based on real data. The audit begins by defining your strategic objectives, then conducting multiple analyses to get a holistic view of your SEO and create recommendations.
An SEO audit typically includes:
- Keyword analysis
- Competitor analysis
- Technical analysis
- Page-level analysis
- Content analysis
- User experience analysis
- Link analysis
- Citation analysis
Google Analytics and Search Console are invaluable services that can you perform these analyses, however, you may need to invest in paid tools to get deeper insights and save time.
Use SEO Audits to Enhance Digital Marketing
While SEO audits are crucial for improving your website’s rankings in search results, they also can be used to enhance your overall digital marketing. Improving your pages will both boost your rankings and conversions from PPC, email, and content marketing campaigns. In addition to doing regular SEO audits, you should also implement cutting-edge solutions that will make your web ad placements more accurate and protect copyrighted content to increase its ROI.
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