The Internet has become the go-to place for people for everything they need starting with clothes, and toys, and ending with services. Businesses without an online presence and a well-designed website don’t stand a chance against those who promote themselves in the digital landscape. Companies should incorporate SEO into their overall digital marketing strategy.
Specialized agencies put at their disposal a vast array of services, including SEO audit. Experts in this field can perform different types of audits such as technical SEO audit, content audit, etc.
How Can SEO Audit Impact Websites?
Marketers have made search engine optimization their priority and they focus on getting the websites they optimize to the top of user search. This is a challenging process and it involves numerous aspects such as on-page and off-page optimization, content, etc. A well-thought SEO strategy is necessary to optimize a website properly.
To come up with a customized strategy for a website, SEO experts need to perform an SEO audit first. This is important so that they can see exactly where a website stands, how it performs, how the overall site experience can be improved, and so on.
What Is Technical SEO Audit?
Technical SEO audit plays an important part when it comes to optimizing a website for it makes websites visible to search engines, crawlable, and rankable. Websites that meet webmaster guidelines, which are user-friendly, easy to access, mobile optimized, etc. are rewarded by Google and other search engines with a higher ranking.
According to an interesting article by Neil Patel, “Technical SEO is an area of SEO that covers optimizations that improve search engine ranking by making your site easier for search engines to crawl. For example, improving site load time, checking robot.txt files, and making redirects work properly. ”
Internet users expect to have a first-class experience when they access a website and they do not want to wait for a page to load. They will never revisit websites that have failed to deliver a less-than-perfect experience. Websites that do not function the way they should not be found by search engines and therefore they cannot rank as expected. Some websites can be found but they have user experience issues, page load times, duplicate content, site security, etc. that prevent a website from ranking the way it should.
What Does Technical Audit Include?
Website owners who hesitate when it comes to hiring specialists to perform a technical audit should understand what it involves and what it can do for their online presents. Technical SEO audit involves so much more than crawling and indexing-related issues, and it includes various essential aspects such as mobile optimization, page load speed, link health, duplicate content, schemas, crawl errors, image issues, site security, URL structure, site architecture, etc.
A website that is sound from a technical perspective is quick to load, secure, easy to crawl, and free of duplicate content and unhealthy links. The data of the website should be structured so that search engines can understand the available content. Individuals should have an SEO audit performed to see the current status of their websites on search engines. After the audit is performed, most people tend to overoptimize their website and this is not a good idea. People should have audits performed regularly and they should make the necessary improvements one step at a time. It is impossible to deal with all the errors that are found at the same time.
The good news is that at the end of the audit experts in this field will create an actionable plan for the websites they have audited. As such, they will help their customers identify opportunities, fix problems, and deliver a positive customer experience. It is impossible to have a successful website when visitors are not happy with it.
What Should Technical Audit Include?
Numerous website owners are not happy with their online presence and yet they have never had their website audited. This means that they pay for website improvements but they do not know exactly what their website needs to perform better. This is a huge mistake and it can be avoided with a technical SEO audit which assesses:
- Hosting and indexing related issues
- Content, keywords, and metadata
- Link quality and outside references
SEO experts have to adapt to all the changes made by Google’s algorithms; the good news about technical SEO is that there are fewer changes than in other fields; it is imperative to have pages that load fast, to have a mobile-friendly website, and to avoid duplicate content and poor-quality images. Once the technical aspects are identified and tackled, it is much easier to see what to do next and what to focus on.
Why Should Professional Audits Be Left to Experts?
Basic search engine optimization knowledge is not enough to make SEO improvements that will take a website to the next level. Given the fact that search engine optimization guidelines change frequently, keeping up with them is a challenge, even for professionals in this field.
Partnering with a reliable agency like GAMITSEO and having it perform the SEO audit is the smartest thing website owners can do. This enables them to save precious time and focus on the things that they do best. Also, they can have peace of mind knowing that specialists in this niche will perform the audit from the beginning until the end and let them know what is wrong.
Why Should Audits Be Treated as a Priority?
Google’s ranking algorithms have gotten smarter and smarter over time. This topic is also discussed in an interesting article in Forbes, “Every year, Google’s PageRank algorithm gets a little smarter. No matter how solid your website’s content is, you simply can’t rank anymore unless your website’s technical details are equally flawless. Otherwise, all the content you’ve worked so painstakingly to create will go to waste as PageRank relegates it to the umpteenth search engine results page (SERP).
To avoid this disaster from happening, you need to do a technical search engine optimization (SEO) audit. As important as on-page and off-page SEO elements are for your ranking performance, you’re never going to land a first SERP position unless you do an audit on the technical flaws underlying your content. ”
Websites that are technically sound will see visible improvements in their ranking. The technical audit, as the name suggests, deals with the technical health of the website. Professionals use a variety of tools to perform the audit and to see what is happening. One of the most difficult aspects is improving page speed; this is one of the main technical ranking factors and web pages that need more than three seconds to load should be improved.
How Often Should SEO Audit Be Performed?
Why aren’t websites ranking as expected despite the heavy optimization efforts? What prevents them from appearing at the top of search results? Unfortunately, many website owners have never had their websites audited. This means that those who have been investing in professional SEO for a long time have done so without having a clear idea of what needs to be improved.
Technical issues can hold websites back and impact their ranking, especially when new algorithms are introduced by Google. A website that delivers a poor experience will be penalized by Google and will never have a high ranking. A website that is flawless from a technical point of view is safe, does not have any loading problems, whether it is accessed from a mobile or desktop, its data is well-structured and it does not contain any duplicated elements.
Meeting these criteria is essential to bring more traffic to a website and to avoid being penalized by Google. As far as how often should SEO audits be performed, this depends on the size of the website, the number of pages, its ranking, and its competition. As a rule, it is a good idea to have websites audited at least once a year.
Why Turn to Professionals?
Business managers who are aware of the importance of having a powerful online presence will make the best decisions for their organizations. They understand that professionals can make a huge difference when it comes to optimizing a website. As such, instead of wasting their time and resources on things that they do not know much about, they prefer to leave SEO to a specialized agency.
Outsourcing this process enables them to benefit from a variety of first-class services such as content creation, link building, local SEO, technical SEO audit, etc. They have the expertise and the tools to identify all the issues that impact your website negatively; furthermore, they have in-depth knowledge when it comes to fixing these problems.
To summarize, an SEO audit should be performed by professionals so that it delivers the best results and it has impeccable accuracy. Specialists in this niche know what to look for when conducting an audit and once the process is completed, they will make relevant recommendations.
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