Why You Need an SEO Website Audit

website audit

Is an SEO website audit something that is mandated by the online police? Is it like a tax audit?

No, a website audit is more like a smog check for your car. An SEO audit checks to see if your website is search engine friendly and if you can do anything to improve your SEO.

Whether your site has a B2B or B2C focus, here’s why you need a website audit.

There Are Many Ways That Your SEO Can Go Wrong

If your website is struggling to attract traffic from search engines, then the reason may have something to do with your SEO. Yet, there are so many elements to SEO that it is often difficult to figure out what the problem is.

For example, you may be fantastic when it comes to uploading images. Your site has only quick loading JPEGs, they have Alt text, an image title, and they are of high quality. Even so, an SEO audit could point out that some of your images are too large and that you are giving ALT text to decorative images.

In another example, you may think you are doing a darn good job with your tagged keywords (your meta keywords). After all, you’re:

  • keeping them relevant
  • researching what your competitors are using
  • using a mix of long-tailed and shorter keywords and key phrases
  • never adding more than twenty and never adding fewer than eight

Yet your SEO audit may show that you are adding too many of the same keywords across your website so that your focus keywords and tagged keyword are fighting against each other.

An Audit May Highlight Lesser-Known Problems

Some SEO problems are born from using old-fashioned or obsolete SEO tactics.

Some people are still doing things such as listing keywords with the hopes of attracting more traffic. For example, if they operate in a certain city, they will list location keywords and use them in links that all point to the same page. A website SEO audit may help expose this method and encourage the webmaster to remove instances of this tactic.

If your website is rather old, it’s probably time for an audit. There are likely to be old SEO methods that have lingered for years on the web pages. The audit can highlight the most affected pages so that the webmaster can go back and fix them to be more search engine friendly.

What Motivates People and Drives Them to Run an SEO Audit?

Why is SEO so important to some people, and why do they put themselves through an SEO website audit? Part of the reason people yearn for search engine support is that it is the ultimate “work while you sleep” tool.

Most other traffic-getting methods involve direct input from yourself and in most cases, the traffic from those sources stops as soon as you do. However, a search engine friendly website gets traffic for months after somebody stops working on the site. It drives traffic to your website while you sleep, while you are in the bath, and while you are having your days off.

That’s why people are so gung-ho about SEO.

How Far Does a Web Page SEO Audit Go?

The audit goes as far and as deep as you wish if you are the one running the audit yourself. If you are using another company to run your audit or using online tools, then there are many areas that may be explored.

The most basic is an on-page audit where the search engine friendliness of the website is examined. In many cases, the webmaster can change the website right away with better text, linking, etc.

The audit may also examine off-page SEO such as how many backlinks the website has, how present it is on search engines, and how quickly the website loads thanks to the website host. An audit may also examine:

  • Website health
  • User engagement
  • Traffic numbers and weight
  • User experience
  • Website functionality
  • Online performance
  • Website security

Some auditors will run things like a negative SEO audit where you may see the tactics that your competitors are using to intentionally harm your search engine ranking. Then there are competitor website audits where you can see what keywords your competitors are using, where they are getting links from, and how well they are doing on the search engines.

Running a Website Audit Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive

The hardest part about a website audit is the server-side stuff, the technical stuff, and the elements that are out of your hands. Many times, you need online tools to figure out if your website is going slow and why, or to figure out if your website is blocking search engine crawlers, and why it is blocking them.

There are free SEO audit tools you can use, and there is the Google insights tool that tells you how fast your website is loading. Faster loading websites are more search engine friendly.

In many cases, audits are more expensive if you are working in a very competitive industry. If you are competing in areas where there are hundreds of other websites like your own, or where your competitors have a massive marketing budget, then your audits may become more costly. This is because you may need further services like negative SEO audits, duplication-checking, penalty-recovery audits and so forth.

What Should You Do Next?

You can take the time and learn how to do a website audit, you can use online tools to do most of the work for you, or you can hire a company to do a website audit for you. As you’ve read in this article, you probably need a website audit because even if you are diligent about the application of your SEO, there are always things you may have missed.

We have various services to check and improve your website. Look through our tools and services to see which most meets your immediate business needs.