Having a website can increase your company’s earning potential. It can bring in more revenue if it ranks high in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

But how can you know if your website is doing what it’s supposed to – attract leads, visitors and revenue? How do you find out how it is fairing compared to the sites of your competitors?

The answer: do an SEO audit of your website.

An SEO audit is a thorough evaluation of your website, primarily its ability to perform on organic search results.

Benefits of Doing an SEO Audit

The audit’s purpose is to determine if your site is search engine friendly. It is meant to identify issues that are preventing the site from ranking high on search engine results pages (SERPs).

This in-depth evaluation helps you uncover the weaknesses of your site. It also gives you an idea of your site’s SEO efficiency.

Moreover, the audit lets you know how your site is performing compared to your competitors. It provides insights about what they are doing – their optimisation strategy, what keywords they are using, what content they are providing, etc.

The information gathered during the audit serves as a guide in crafting website changes and strategies which can catapult your pages at the top of search results.

Simply put, an SEO audit is an integral part of website optimisation. You need it to develop an actionable plan that can make your website profitable.

When Should You Conduct an SEO Audit?

Ideally, audits should be conducted regularly to ensure that any issue on your site is addressed immediately. Remember, a single problem on your website can have an enormous impact on your SEO rankings.

Let’s take the case of dead links. The presence of dead links on your website can cause inconvenience and frustration amongst your users. Unable to view or access pages they need or want, these potential clients may end up leaving your site.

Furthermore, dead links can prevent search engine spiders from crawling your site. When your pages aren’t crawled, they won’t be indexed. This can negatively impact your rankings on SERPs.

How often you should do an audit depends on various factors such as the size of the website and business, the number of visitors and the amount of new content you have per month, to name but a few.

The recommendation is to do an evaluation bi-annually or quarterly. Doing an audit should also be done when launching a new project or campaign and when the site experiences drastic changes, i.e., a significant drop in traffic or ranking.

How to Conduct an SEO Audit of Your Website

An SEO audit is a complex process. In this task, numerous aspects of your website are checked. Some of the critical components evaluated in this kind of audit are page speed, crawlability, accessibility, keyword analysis and research, mobile-friendliness, content and user experience.

Basically, this task can be broken down into four parts: technical analysis, on-page analysis, off-page analysis and keyword research and analysis.

Suffice to say, auditing your site’s SEO readiness or friendliness isn’t easy. It requires know-how and sophisticated tools. It also entails a clear strategy to meet goals as well as to save time and effort.

So, it is best to let an expert evaluate your website to guarantee that the task is done properly and quickly. Just make sure you pick a reputable professional – one who is known for delivering top-notch service.

How does your website stack up against your business needs – take our free, no commitment SEO Health Check and we can start you on the right path – If you are looking for a detailed Audit, maybe to share with your board, financers or other interested stakeholders – book our Professional SEO Audit.