Introduction
Having an SEO optimized website is a continuous process. It is not something, which you do on a one-time basis and then forget later on. In order to keep yourself ahead of your competitors, you need to keep improving the performance of your website.
One thing that everyone should know is that there is nothing like a perfect website. The room for improvement on a website is always there. This becomes more when the website sees the addition of new or updated content on a regular basis.
In this article, we will look at how regular SEO audits and SEO tools can help you improve your website’s performance. We will also look at some of the basics of SEO audits and how you can do one for yourself in an easy and uncomplicated fashion.
What is an SEO Audit and why is it important?
An SEO audit is a series of evaluations that judge the quality and effectiveness of your website according to a series of markers. While Google’s Quality Guidelines can be taken to be the benchmark when it comes to guidelines, it is necessary to go over and above them.
To this end, several reputed journals and websites often disclose some of the new updates, which are taking place and how you would need to optimize your website according to the updates.
This continuous series of optimizations according to the latest guidelines is what is going to help your website stay ahead of the rest.
Doing periodic SEO audits is important because there are hundreds if not thousands of updates that are coming in every year. Your website might be fulfilling the guidelines of the last update; but what about the new one. This question and its fulfilment is something, which affects rankings, traffic and keywords. Concisely, it is very important.
What are some of the Important Components of an SEO Audit?
In this section, we will briefly discuss an SEO Audit Checklist. We will also look at what are some of the areas you should concentrate on while doing the audit.
- Intimations from Google with regard to penalties- this can be checked from the Google Search Console under the manual actions tab. It is important that you pay close attention to this aspect.
- Metrics from the Search Review Performance section- Check the timeline for every update and see whether there was a drop in your search results on Google. If you see a drop, it means that the update has affected your metrics, rankings and search volumes.
- On-Page SEO Audit- this involves optimizations, which need to be made to your website. Site speed, image optimization, URL arrangement. Meta and title tags, 4040 errors, keyword updated content, etc. are some aspects worth noting.
- Off-Page SEO Audit- Many times, competitors might place your website URL on spurious and illegal websites. It is important to check that the contents of your website and the URL are safe. Link building audits are great ways to check them.
- Technical SEO Audit- Mobile responsiveness, other device and browser optimizations, registering on Google Search Console, requesting Indexing, security issues (HTTPS) and firewalls are important aspects of Technical SEO, which need to be checked.
Experts state that an SEO Audit should be done every six months at the very basic level. Brands and companies, which want to improve performance, do an audit every three months.
Conclusion
If we were to draw an analogy, you can say that an SEO Audit is very similar to a human being’s regular full-body medical check-up. It shows the areas, which need attention and the areas, which are doing well. If you are looking to optimize your website to increase performance you can click here for a free SEO audit report for your website.