Search engine optimization or SEO is probably one of the key determining components of a business’ online success. From on-page factors to off-page elements, optimizing anything and everything that is important for the online success is what determines the overall success in SEO. However, optimizing and following the traditional guidelines is not enough when it comes to SEO. A major part of the SEO success deals with analysis, evaluation, and audit.
An SEO audit is outfitted to improvise and add value to the existing online marketing campaign and work out on the decisions that are taken from the marketing point of view. By analyzing and evaluating the crucial SEO elements, an online business can have the required knowledge to implement the needful strategies for improving their performance on the major search engines. With that being said, here are some of the important factors that you need to evaluate during an SEO audit:
# Identifying Link Building Opportunities
Developing external and internal links is a critical aspect of emanating website credibility. No SEO audit is imaginable without having recommendations for developing website-specific external and internal links.
Building External Links
When it comes to building external links the essence of bolstering domain authority always resurfaces, and that too for pretty obvious reasons. After all, garnering links from various authoritative domains will improve your own domain authority. The best way to build external links is through conducting a deep-rooted research on the already established domains in your niche and getting them to share your content and relevant links to you. Another way to build external links is searching for mentions that are absolutely unlinked, which will end up rendering better results.
Building Internal Links
Internal links deal with transmitting link equity within your own web pages that makes them critically important in creating authoritative hierarchies on your site. Building internal links is mostly all about using the anchor text to link your new content with the old ones, maintaining all sorts of relevancy. However, internal link building requires you to focus on IA or information architecture and user experience on your site. When building internal links, keep in mind the facts that will persuade your target audience to drive to the product-specific landing page and engage them to make a buying decision.
# Focus on Information Architecture Improvements
The way or order through which the information is structured or monitored on your site is termed as information architecture. Furthermore, when it comes to an SEO audit, information architecture deals with broadcasting internal linking configurations on your site to transmit equity to the pages that require it. Information architecture also comes in handy while working with the web designers and developers for forging user-friendly solutions that will help in boosting the page authority without having a negative impact on the user experience. Also, information architecture can be used to organize your content marketing strategies.
# Look at Thin Content
Content is undoubtedly the most vital component that you need to evaluate during an SEO audit. Speaking of which, when conducting an SEO audit with the help of Las Vegas SEO expert it is important to identify thin content that has already failed to stand up to the expectations of the target audience. Not only this marks as a healthy content analysis strategy, but it also helps your site from getting cracked under the latest Google algorithm that is detrimental on websites with thin content. In order to effectively identify thin content on your site, make sure you use reliable SEO software that will crawl the entire content present on the web pages of your site and provide you with a detailed report unfurling the length and quality of the content.
# Scan for Duplicate Content
When identifying and crawling your site for duplicate content, the positive part is that you will be looking at the similar subsets that you came across while identifying the thin content. Scanning for duplicate content is important during an SEO audit, as it goes without saying that Google is smart enough to find if you have shared duplicate content on your site for performing better on the SERPs. Rework on your content management system and make sure that even if there are similar pages in terms of service and products, the content should be unique on all of them.
# Effective Keyword Optimization
If you are wondering why your superbly crafted content is not doing well on the search engines that is because it is not well indexed for keywords. This makes keyword optimization exceptionally important for all the web pages on your website. When auditing your website’s SEO, make sure that you have engineered a refined keyword optimization strategy that will help your website in performing well on the search engines. This will require you to run an effective keyword research keeping your audience and industry in mind.
# Optimizing the Meta Tags
The Meta description and Meta title form the Meta tags which help Google in indexing and crawling the content present on a website. Meta tags are one of the most important determining factors that Google takes into the account when it comes to ranking the pages on the SERPs. Apart from that, with well-optimized Meta tags on your site, the users will be able to easily find your page and content on the search engines. This can also help you in making your content a bit promotional for your brand offerings that will garner more attention over time.
# Switch HTTP to HTTPS
Considering the contemporary digital marketing era, running your website on HTTP seems like an outdated move. The best decision is to switch to HTTPS that is safer, secure, and faster and definitely one of the ranking factors used by Google. While auditing your site, make sure that your website is running on HTTPS.
Conclusion
SEO audit is not a rocket science and there is no prescribed guidebook for a successful SEO audit. However, the aforementioned points are tried and tested methods that have led to a successful SEO audit. Keep them in mind the next time when you decide to run an SEO audit.
