So, you saved up for years and finally got that car you’ve always wanted. This car is a result of your endless efforts and it’s a thing of pride for you. Now, would you wait till the car breaks down to take it for maintenance? Surely not!
And the same idea applies to that website you’ve so carefully created. A lack of maintenance for your site means a loss of traffic. That’s where an SEO audit service comes in!
What is an SEO audit service?
An SEO audit is an evaluation of how well your website relates to current search engine algorithms and best practices. As a result, it assesses the ability of your website to rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages).
Before you implement the strategies to make the necessary changes to your website, you need to perform the SEO audit to understand which aspects need fixing. Think of it as a maintenance drive for your website that helps it to rank higher.
And an SEO audit service is the agency that runs the entire process of evaluation. It takes a detailed look at the performance of the site to suggest the improvements required. For instance, you have put up a detailed warehouse worker job description on your website. However, your page is too slow and unresponsive to rank high even for such a well-written description. The auditing agency will detect the issue immediately and take steps to rectify the situation.
What does an SEO audit service look into?
An SEO audit service typically looks into the following aspects that impact a site’s performance:
- On-page issues
- Off-site problems
- User experience issue
- Content gaps
- Competition insight
- Technical SEO issue
- Issues with site structure
Why are SEO audit services important for your business?
In the online world, competition is rising by the day, irrespective of which industry vertical your business belongs to. Thus, think of hiring an SEO audit service as taking the steps to stay ahead of your competitors. Here’s why such a company can be important for your business:
Changes to algorithms –
Search engines change their algorithms almost every week of the month. If you don’t make changes to your site accordingly, you’ll end up with an old and obsolete website that hardly gets any visitors.
Dealing with obsolete content –
Your website needs relevant and fresh content for the search engines to consider giving a higher rank to it. Besides, people will not be visiting your site to read outdated content time and again, right?
Relevant metadata and titles –
Meta descriptions and title tags are two things that capture the visitor’s eyes when your site comes up in the search results. So, if the content does not match the title tags and meta descriptions, you’ll leave the visitors disappointed.
Mending the broken links –
You will end up losing traffic due to broken links and error messages. When an SEO audit reveals such errors, you get a shot at bringing that traffic back.
Compliance with guidelines –
Search engines keep changing the webmaster tools. Thus, your rank slips when you are not compliant.
Can you perform SEO audits yourself?
Of course, you can start doing your own SEO audits. There are several free and paid tools available in the market that will help you run an audit on your websites. However, keep in mind that SEO auditing is something that needs time and effort. There are multiple factors involved in an audit, as mentioned before, which need some time for a comprehensive assessment. Moreover, auditing is not a one-time business that you carry out once and that’s it. You need to set-up a schedule and run audits regularly to maintain a good rank for your site.
That’s not all! There is a learning curve to using the tools you need to run the performance evaluation. The curve is steeper for the paid and more advanced tools than the free ones.
Now, when you take all these factors into account, running an SEO audit yourself doesn’t seem too easy. Firstly, it will take time away from your core business responsibilities. You can always ask your employees to dedicate some of their time in this direction, but that will just end up overburdening them. Moreover, neither you nor your employees are SEO experts with prior experience in running such audits. Thus, you will not have a detailed understanding of the finer aspects of the job.
And even if you manage to complete the audit successfully, what about implementing the changes? Well, that’s a whole different ball game!
Keeping all these factors in perspective, companies usually prefer outsourcing the auditing responsibility to dedicated SEO audit services. The fact that most of these companies don’t just point out the flaws, but also implement the solutions is another major perk.
How to choose the right SEO audit services for your business
If you are planning to hire an SEO audit service and have zeroed in on a few names, the first thing you need to do is to contact them for case studies. Ask them to show you definite examples of successful campaigns they have run before you discuss budget and your business needs. Furthermore, talking to a few agencies will give you an idea about the market price, and you can set your budget accordingly.
Also, it’s better to steer clear of agencies that guarantee results within a week or two. SEO strategies take some time to show their impact, and drastic changes don’t happen overnight.
Which on-page and off-page factors are the most important for an SEO audit?
As outlined before, both on-page and off-page factors work in tandem to ensure better ranks for your site. So, an SEO audit service will consider the following on-page and off-page factors:
On-page factors for SEO audits –
- Keyword research
- Keyword usage
- Sitemaps
- Internal linking
Off-page factors for SEO audits –
- Backlinks
And that’s all! Since you now have a good idea about SEO audit services, it’s time to take the necessary steps to run that performance assessment. Higher ranks on Google are awaiting your site!