Conducting SEO Audit: Steps That You Should Follow

Conducting SEO Audit

SEO Audit is responsible for providing a clear understanding of clarity as well as performance for achieving the business objectives. However, it has been observed that most of the business organizations, irrespective of whether they have just started or are established, do not spend time on conducting audits. Most businesses find the process of auditing to be hectic and challenging. However, if you know about the simplified methods of auditing, the process is going to be extremely easy for you. Given below is a list of the steps that you need to follow for conducting SEO audits.

Determine scope

The first thing that you have to understand is what you are going to audit. For Search Engine Optimization, 3 important areas have to be evaluated. These three areas include technical SEO, content, and backlinks.

• Content is responsible for consisting of images, Meta information, and words that are shared with search engines as well as website visitors. Landing pages, title tags of pages and blog posts are responsible for making up most of the content part.

• Backlinks are internal as well as external links that are responsible for directing visitors as well as search engines to several parts within your website. Referring domains, anchor text, and most importantly, the quality of the links are common elements of evaluating backlinks.

• Technical SEO is the optimization of the server and the website, which makes it extremely easy for the search engines to crawl, index, and access information from the website. Several things are involved with technical SEO, however, mobile usability, page speed, indexing, and redirects are the most common elements which pertain to websites.

It is your responsibility to determine what you want to audit. If the audit is annual or quarterly, the audit scope needs to extend to the three areas only. However, if it is only a monthly audit, you can analyze any area.

Set date range

Findings from the audit are going to matter only if they are put into proper context. If you are interested in putting things in a proper context, it is your responsibility to set date ranges for the audit so that you can analyze the right data.

Consider if you are interested in auditing the previous month, quarter, or year. As soon as you set the date range, you have to benchmark and compare data based on various periods. These comparisons are responsible for presenting several percentage changes and can also assist auditors to recognize the important trends. Make sure that you are setting a date range for comparing previous periods with current periods.

Do not forget to identify competitors

Comparing the performance to the competitors is going to provide content on how you are performing. You need to consider how you are going to beat your competitors when you are going to take your business forward. When you analyze competition, you can understand about key strategies, which the competitors are employing. You will also be able to receive a perspective on how the performance of your business is measuring up.

You need to make sure that you are identifying at least three competitors based on internal knowledge as well as organic search results.

Select SEO metrics

The quantitative comparison between your competitors and your organization is responsible for narrating a story. To help narrate that story, several SEO metrics have to be analyzed. These include organic keywords, organic traffic, backlinks, domain authority, and traffic value.

• Organic traffic is the monthly traffic that comes to websites from the search engines. Traffic is responsible for driving sales as well as leads and it is the most important SEO metric that you should audit.

• Organic keywords are responsible for showing the total keywords that the website stands for within the hundred search results. This metric is responsible for showing the keywords that are trending.

• Backlinks are the total number of external links that are present within your website. If high quality and relevant links are pointing to your website, your website should have a high rank within the search engine results.

You need to evaluate the performance of your website against all these metrics by using professional SEO tools. Do not forget to include the competitor performance for adding context.

Deploy tools

Tools are responsible for providing useful reports as well as recommendations for developing several important insights. Several professional SEO tools are available, which are capable of analyzing the following areas:

• Crawling and indexing
• On-page SEO
• Site speed
• Local SEO
• Keyword research
• Links
• Content

Make sure that you are testing your website only with the professional SEO tools and visit https://socialmarketway.com/seo-nyc to know more.

List insights

You need to make sure that you are listing out both the quantitative as well as qualitative insights, which have resulted from your audit. Given below is a list of the examples associated with audit insights.

• The organic search traffic was up by 35% in the last 60 days.
• Increase Domain Authority in the third quarter from 32 to 36.
• Site health was down by 12%.

Make sure that you are developing insights, which will span all the reports as well as research.

Investigate insights

One of the most important parts of auditing is following up, as stated by www.forbes.com. You need to figure out the “why” that will be responsible for unlocking key insights. For example, you need to investigate why the organic traffic has gone up or the site health has gone down. When you explore the answers to the questions, it is going to be easier for you.

Establish a prioritized plan

After everything, you need to make sure that you are prioritizing a plan of action. For doing this, you can make a high priority, medium priority, and low priority column. Make sure that you are going through the insight one after the other and move them in the proper categories.

Conclusion

There is no denying the fact that an audit is extremely challenging, however, it is going to be a useful activity that your company should undertake. Make sure that you are following all the steps that have been mentioned above so that you can conduct an SEO audit easily without any hassle.