Why SEO Audit is Important in 2024: A Complete Guide
For businesses to thrive in today’s digital landscape, they must have a strong online presence. And although social media plays a big part, having a website that ranks highly in search engine result pages is paramount. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in, a digital marketing strategy used to increase visibility. However, with constantly evolving search engine algorithms, staying ahead can feel impossible. Understanding why an SEO audit is important for your website in 2024 is crucial for growth and staying relevant. SEO audits help identify technical issues that negatively impact a website’s visibility.
Your SEO company should be doing monthly audits to make sure your website has no technical issues that may be holding you back from ranking on Google.
What is an SEO Audit?
Think of an SEO audit as a health check-up for your website; just as our bodies need regular checkups, so do our websites. An SEO audit analyzes your website to find any issues hindering its performance in search engine rankings. It’s like peeking under the hood of your car.
You may not understand all the details, but a mechanic can easily point out what’s running smoothly and what requires attention. This is why an SEO audit is important; it flags opportunities to help improve your search engine rankings. Let’s break down how an SEO audit works and how it benefits your business.
Why Are SEO Audits Important for Businesses in 2024?
An SEO audit identifies and rectifies technical issues, optimizes your content, and keeps you up-to-date with the latest search engine algorithm changes. A properly executed SEO strategy will not only bring more organic traffic but convert that traffic into paying customers.
There are many advantages to incorporating regular SEO audits into your marketing strategy, so let’s break those down in further detail.
Boost Organic Traffic
Organic traffic makes up a significant amount of website visitors. The higher your website ranks in search engine result pages for relevant keywords, the more visible it is to potential customers, increasing the likelihood of more clicks, traffic, leads, and ultimately more customers. Data analysis company, Ahrefs found the top-ranking pages get 49% of all search traffic, proving just how vital it is for businesses to compete for those positions.
Enhanced User Experience
Did you know that, on average, 40% of visitors abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load? Slow loading times create a frustrating user experience, ultimately driving visitors away from your site, causing a higher bounce rate.
But this goes much deeper than just speed; this ties into Google’s Core Web Vitals, an initiative introduced to improve web users’ overall browsing experiences. SEO audits help uncover UX issues affecting things like speed and responsiveness and reveal any crawl errors.
Aligning with the Ever-Changing SEO Landscape
Staying current with SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. The landscape continuously evolves; with each passing year, Google’s algorithms become increasingly sophisticated. As an SEO blogger, I can tell you these algorithm updates affect how websites are crawled, indexed, and ranked, meaning keeping up with them can feel impossible. For example, Google rolled out mobile-first indexing back in 2018 and ever since they’ve heavily prioritized websites optimized for mobile.
SEO audits are important because they flag potential indexing issues brought about by algorithm updates, helping businesses stay current. They can also point out areas for improvement when it comes to your overall SEO strategy.
Content Optimization and Keyword Strategy
Content is king – this is something you often hear touted in the world of digital marketing – and with good reason. An SEO audit gives you valuable insights into your existing content strategy to see what’s performing and what isn’t.
You might think conducting your own keyword research will be enough, but it’s also smart to study your competitor’s keyword strategy. You can do this using keyword research tools like KWFinder or SEMrush. These tools can identify high-value, low-competition keywords and, more importantly, opportunities to outrank your competitors. An SEO audit can also provide detailed analysis of your current keyword strategy.
Gaining a Competitive Edge
Think of your competition as guinea pigs. You can analyze their SEO strategy using SEO tools like SEMrush to reveal your competitor’s backlinks and keyword strategies, uncovering what they’re doing well (or even poorly.), which gives you insight into what you could be doing better.
Imagine this: You’ve been working on your business for two years. You post consistently and although you’ve seen some growth in traffic, you’re nowhere near where you think you should be, especially after finding out 90% of blogs get zero organic traffic.
You conduct a competitor analysis during an audit and realize that most of your competitors link to their service or product pages internally, something you hadn’t considered. You start implementing similar internal linking throughout your content, leading to a 30% boost in organic traffic and more importantly a noticeable uptick in sales after just a few months.
This right here is a real-life scenario of how analyzing your competitors during an audit can greatly affect your overall success. SEO audits help your business discover gaps in content strategy and look for potential backlinks you could leverage.
Technical SEO: The Backbone of Your Website
An SEO audit examines your website from a technical standpoint. Imagine a physical brick-and-mortar store with poor lighting, messy displays, and disorganized shelving; these issues make it less appealing for shoppers to want to spend time (and money) in. It’s no different for your online storefront.
If search engine bots, for example, are having trouble understanding, crawling, and indexing your content due to a lack of structured data or XML sitemaps, it’ll lead to low search engine rankings. A comprehensive audit uncovers these underlying technical factors and gives you an opportunity to improve overall SEO health, performance and ranking. It also gives you a chance to review important on-page elements that may need to be refreshed.
FAQs about Why SEO Audit Is Important
What Does a Technical SEO Audit Entail?
A technical audit dives into your website’s structure and how easy it is to crawl and index. This type of audit is especially important to businesses that have undergone some technical upgrades to their websites. The reports provide crucial data about your website, but more importantly, alert you to technical factors that could be negatively impacting site performance.
This is one of the most common reasons SEO audits are important, especially with today’s complex website structures. Performing audits will also provide detailed information about your domain authority.
Who Can Conduct an SEO Audit for Me?
Conducting a detailed and accurate SEO audit involves understanding complex technical aspects. Although it is possible to run your own DIY audit, bringing in professional help may be beneficial. There are online SEO tools available but it requires the person to interpret and understand often overwhelming information and data. Some popular tools used are Screaming Frog and Google Search Console.
On the other hand, partnering with an SEO consultant or digital marketing agency may be more expensive. However, they are experienced and qualified individuals who understand what they are looking for. They can make recommendations you might not have thought of, and this can be extremely beneficial to your overall digital marketing efforts.
How Often Should I Have My Website Audited?
Website audits aren’t a one-and-done type of deal, similar to servicing your vehicle or getting an annual health check. You should ideally be having audits done quarterly, but some experts recommend once a month if budgets allow. Think of SEO audits as preventative medicine – they highlight issues, big or small – before they have a chance to impact ranking.
Regular check-ups are always a good idea, and SEO audits help you stay on top of outdated content, identify and fix website errors, and help you recover lost traffic.
Conclusion
Understanding why an SEO audit is important can no longer be overstated. It’s the cornerstone of building and maintaining a successful online presence. A well-optimized site, with current and engaging content, ranks well, but more importantly converts those visitors into paying customers.
As you’ve now learned, an SEO audit identifies any potential issues early on to maintain high levels of organic traffic, improving search engine visibility and ultimately sales, making them crucial to consider, not just for 2024, but as an integral part of any sound marketing strategy. SEO audits help maintain visibility and increase profitability.
Your In-depth Guide: How To Check For Technical SEO (and Why it Matters)
So, you’re trying to figure out how to check for technical SEO? This is an absolutely vital part of any successful SEO strategy. It can feel overwhelming if you don’t know where to start. This guide will show you some tools and techniques to assess your website’s technical SEO health and pinpoint areas for improvement. Don’t have the expertise in web development or areas of understanding the technical audit, hire a digital marketing agency like SEO Locale.
What is a Technical SEO Audit?
A technical SEO audit is like giving your website a complete checkup. It examines the technical aspects that affect how search engines understand and rank your site. This includes analyzing factors like your website’s structure, how quickly pages load, mobile responsiveness, and security. If you’re looking for a free website analysis, several online SEO auditing tools are available. Consider exploring options like SEO App, or tools from companies like Screaming Frog, SEMrush, or DeepCrawl.
Key Elements of a Technical SEO Audit
A thorough technical SEO check involves a multi-faceted approach. It goes beyond the surface to examine crucial elements that contribute to a search engine-friendly site.
Crawlability and Indexability
This element checks whether search engines can find and understand your site’s content. Think of it this way: if you invite guests to your house, but they can’t find the front door, they can’t visit. Crawlability refers to a search engine’s ability to access your content. Indexability means search engines can successfully store and categorize your content in their database.
A few things that can hinder crawlability and indexability include broken links and pages with incorrect HTTP response codes. Other issues include poorly structured URLs, an ineffective robots.txt file, and misplaced noindex tags in your code.
Website Structure and Navigation
A well-structured site with logical navigation is important. A confusing layout makes it difficult for search engine spiders to crawl your website. Visitors may also struggle to find what they need. This often leads to frustration, causing them to leave and potentially increasing your bounce rate.
A simple, user-friendly site architecture with organized categories is key. Using clear, concise internal links also creates a better user experience. These best practices help search engines grasp your site’s topic and understand how its content is related.
Mobile Friendliness
These days, having a website that’s easy to use on smartphones is crucial. Mobile devices accounted for over half of all internet traffic in February of 2023. With nearly 60% of global web traffic coming from smartphones and tablets, if your site doesn’t provide a positive mobile experience, it will affect rankings.
Search engines understand this shift in user behavior. Google switched to mobile-first indexing back in 2018, meaning their crawlers primarily look at the mobile version of a page. Websites need to be responsive to adapt to various screen sizes, meaning text must be readable without zooming, and buttons must be easily tappable. If Google deems your site lacking in these factors, your ranking will likely suffer.
Page Speed
Page speed is all about how quickly your website pages load. No one enjoys a slow-loading webpage. It’s like standing in a slow line at a grocery store. What if after 10 minutes of waiting to pay, there was no end in sight? Page speed is about loading content fast to improve user experience.
You can use various free online tools to check for technical SEO issues related to page speed, including PageSpeed Insights. You’ll find recommendations on image optimization, caching, server response time, and more to speed up your site. The tool provides separate data on desktop and mobile. Don’t forget about using Google Search Console for more advanced Core Web Vitals data.
XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap guides search engines to all your pages. Think of it as a roadmap. Submitting an XML sitemap to Google helps ensure that all important pages on your website are properly indexed.
While submitting a sitemap isn’t a guarantee for indexing, it acts as a courtesy notice to search engines. It allows them to see all your pages at once. You should review your XML sitemap regularly to check for crawl errors. Make sure it’s including your most important pages and isn’t including pages you don’t want Google to index. Google Search Console allows you to submit sitemaps and review index coverage.
HTTPS Protocol
That padlock in a website’s address bar signifies a site secured with HTTPS. It’s now more than a security best practice – HTTPS signifies a site using secure communication protocols that encrypt data. This data is transmitted between your server and users’ browsers.
Moving from HTTP to HTTPS requires installing an SSL or TLS security certificate on your site. An SSL certificate ensures your visitor data is encrypted and transmitted securely. This safeguards it from any interception.
Other Factors When Learning how to check for Technical SEO
The elements above create a strong foundation for technical SEO. However, technical SEO goes even further with other essential components to evaluate.
Duplicate Content
You want to make sure all your website pages have unique, original content. Having pages that compete with each other on the same keywords might dilute link equity. It can also diminish each page’s individual authority, ultimately lowering rankings for all competing pages.
Search engines want to showcase original, useful content. When duplicate content is present they struggle to determine which page deserves a better position in the search results.
Broken Links and Redirects
Broken links are dead ends that interrupt the user experience. Imagine enjoying a fascinating article and suddenly, upon clicking a link, you are presented with an error message.
When crawlers find a page that’s unavailable, they receive an error. This is commonly a 404 error. Implementing proper redirects, such as a 301 redirect, helps maintain the flow of link equity and takes users to updated content.
Schema Markup
Schema Markup is a type of structured data. It enhances how search engines read a page’s content, giving crawlers better clarity and context. Have you ever noticed those informative details that sometimes pop up in Google’s search results? This could be product availability, user ratings, or even recipe preparation time. This is schema markup at work.
International SEO
Do you have audiences in different countries who speak different languages? If so, International SEO is crucial. Setting up language tags (Hreflang tags) properly guides Google to show the right language versions of pages to your users. This also prevents search engines from interpreting multilingual content as duplicates. It signals that it is a unique version specific to an audience or region.
Putting It All Together
There are several SEO tools available to help you perform a technical SEO audit. Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights are great free tools to start with. There are also free SEO tools and browser extensions, such as SEO Meta in 1 Click, available to provide more in-depth information while navigating a website. Some SEO software suites also offer free versions you can use.
It’s easy to see how complex technical SEO can get. However, all of these steps, when performed consistently, can drastically improve your website’s technical SEO. Pay special attention to the elements that may be impacting your website the most. This will make sure Google sees you as a reliable resource. It also creates a smooth, enjoyable experience for your visitors.
FAQs About How to Check For Technical SEO
What falls under technical SEO?
Technical SEO involves all aspects of a website that impact how effectively search engines can crawl and index a site’s content. It focuses on crawling, rendering, and indexing your pages and assets. It also includes structural elements like your site navigation and site architecture. Some of the core issues technical SEO addresses are page speed optimization, mobile-friendliness, site security, duplicate content issues, redirects, broken links, XML sitemap setup, use of Schema Markup, and hreflang tags.
How do I run an SEO check?
To run an SEO check, start with Google’s free tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics. The Google Search Console can give you insight into indexing issues, response codes, sitemap errors, and other key metrics. There are also other SEO tools and SEO checkers on the market. For instance, Screaming Frog offers a technical SEO audit tool. Don’t forget to routinely check more obvious things like your website navigation, the readability of your content, and other visible aspects of the site.
What’s included in a technical SEO audit?
A technical SEO audit involves analyzing page speed, crawlability, mobile-friendliness, and security. It also typically includes an analysis of robots.txt files, XML sitemaps, broken links, and canonical tag urls. The audit tool you choose may have other site audit checklist items.
Is technical SEO difficult?
Technical SEO can be challenging for those who are unfamiliar with it. Start with the basics. Focus on using free SEO tools, especially those offered by Google, such as the URL inspection tool. However, diving into more complex areas of technical SEO can feel more complicated. Consider consulting with an SEO expert or web developer for these more advanced technical issues.
Conclusion: Technical SEO is Not Easy
Technical SEO is about creating a website that is easy for search engines to crawl and index. This involves creating a fast, secure, and technically sound website that provides a good user experience. You want a website that runs smoothly, ranks well in search engines, and keeps your visitors happy. Don’t get overwhelmed you can hire a digital marketing agency like us to handle your national SEO or local SEO strategies to help you rank on top of your competition.