Businesses today need to have a solid digital footprint in order to succeed, and search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial component of that.
SEO is the process of improving a website’s visibility on search engine results pages, which can drive more traffic to the site and increase sales.
One of the best ways to ensure your SEO strategy is effective is through an SEO audit.
SEO audits are a powerful way to enhance your existing SEO strategies. Bringing in an outside company to perform the audit is one of the best ways to get an unbiased, well-rounded report on your website’s performance.
This helps give you a technical understanding of how your current SEO strategies are working and where they could use some support.
If you’re curious about what should be included in an SEO audit, you’ve come to the right place.
In this post, we’ll examine five essential components of an SEO audit and how they can help improve your website’s optimization.
The Top 5 SEO Best Practices
SEO audits are multi-faceted and take into consideration a wide range of factors to determine the effectiveness of your current SEO strategy.
While there are other aspects that may be considered, the five SEO audit steps that are non-negotiable include:
- Keyword research and analysis
- On-Page optimization
- Technical SEO
- Content optimization
- Backlink profile analysis
1. Keyword Research and Analysis
Keyword research is one of the essential components of SEO.
During this stage, research is done to compile a comprehensive list of the keywords and phrases people would use to discover your business and the services you offer.
Essentially, this allows you to identify high-performing and relevant search terms that your target audience uses to discover businesses like yours and then optimize your site using those keywords.
This aims to make it easier for Google and other search engines to identify your site as a relevant source when users search for those keywords, improving your online visibility and getting you in front of the people who matter most.
2. On-Page Optimization
This step helps to ensure each page on your site has a better chance of being included in search results by improving its overall ranking by optimizing each one with the keywords found in the previous section.
On-page optimization takes into account various aspects, including:
- Titles
- Headings
- Metadata descriptions
- Image alt tags
- URLs
Titles
This is possibly one of the most crucial elements of your web pages.
Search engines place more emphasis on titles than many other aspects of each page because it tells them what that page is about.
This makes it vital to not only ensure your titles include a keyword but are relevant to the content on the page.
Headings
The headings on your site help organize the content and make it easier for search engines to gain a deeper understanding of what’s included on the page.
Headings aren’t only for search engines, however. They also provide the user with a quick way to scan each page and see what information is available at a glance.
Meta Descriptions
Every page on your site needs a short meta description. This is the text that appears below the title when it’s populated in search results.
Your meta description should provide a brief summary of what’s on the page.
Image Alt Tags
These tags are essentially short descriptions attached to each image on your site. This provides a way for search engines to understand the visual content of each image.
URLs
The URL of each page is another powerful way to optimize each page.
Adding relevant keywords in each URL on your website helps search engines quickly learn what’s on the page and identify which searches it should appear in.
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO goes deeper than the on-page optimization explained above while still taking the factors listed above into consideration.
It takes into consideration aspects like your website’s speed, accessibility, and if it’s mobile-friendly.
Essentially, it focuses on the user experience your site provides.
The loading speed of your pages significantly influences how search engines rank your website and plays a crucial role in your site’s performance.
In fact, reports have shown that 53% of people will leave a website if the page doesn’t load within 3 seconds.
Apart from improving traffic, assessing and improving your technical SEO will help search engine bots crawl your page more efficiently, giving them a better understanding of what’s on each page and how well users can navigate your site.
4. Content Optimization
The content on your site plays a crucial role in your SEO strategy and how well your site ranks across search engines.
Things that are considered when it comes to your websites content include:
- Value
- Quality
- Relevance
The content on your site should meet the needs and expectations of your users and be both valuable and informative.
Keywords play an important role in your content rankings. However, it’s important to use them effectively and only where they naturally fit.
If the quality of your content is reduced by the heavy addition of keywords that don’t flow with the content, your rankings will plummet.
Some ways to improve your content SEO is through utilizing the keywords from your research, naturally adding them into your content, and including internal links to lead users (and bots) through your site.
5. Backlink Profile Analysis
Backlinks are a link from one website to another and can be external or internal.
Internal links are ones that connect one page of your website to another, while external links are those that you’ve linked to or who have linked to you.
Therefore, a backlink profile analysis serves to get a deeper understanding of the existing backlinks throughout your site and determine their relevance and quality.
High-quality backlinks have a significant influence over your SEO efforts, so it’s important that every backlink is pointed to a credible source thats relevant to your content.
Boost Your SEO with an SEO Audit From IMP Digital
As you can see, your SEO strategy is vital to your online success.
An SEO audit is a powerful way to ensure your website is performing at its best, increasing your SEO rankings and driving high-quality traffic to your site.
Through keyword research, optimizing on-page and technical elements, and optimizing your content and backlinks, creating a comprehensive SEO strategy can enhance your website’s rankings and help you achieve your business goals.
At IMP Digital, we have over 20 years of experience providing various marketing services, including SEO audits and optimization to help your business grow.
Our team of experts can help improve your SEO strategy, enhance your website design, or elevate your social media presence, making it easy for you to focus on everything else your business needs.
Request an SEO quote, or contact us to explore how our team can help you exceed your business goals.
