What Benefits Can You Get from Website SEO Audit?

If you compare all online guides on search engine optimization, you’ll see that this is a universal tip:

Analyze the results.

When you implement a new technique, you have to see how it works. If you want to see how effective the entire campaign is, you have to analyze a few parameters.

That’s called SEO audit, and it’s something that every website owner should do.

Let’s talk about it, shall we?

What Is Technical SEO Website Audit?

SEO audit is a complete analysis of several parameters off-page and on-page parameters with the purpose to evaluate the effectiveness of the current SEO campaign.

The audit will help you see if you’re getting enough traffic from guest posts, for example. It shows if you earned high-quality inbound links. It shows how your content performs and what conversions it attracts.

This is what an effective audit process will deliver:

• Evaluation of the uniqueness and relevance of the on-page content
• The level of engagement you got (shares and comments)
• Rating of the site’s loading time and mobile device compatibility
• Check for duplicate content
• Backlink analysis (plus comparison with your competitors)
• Evaluation of the site’s speed
• Keyword relevance review
• Review of the measurable goals you set
• Javascript test

You may need to use various site crawling tools to perform the audit, but Google Analytics will deliver a lot of information, too.

Reliable Soft offers a great checklist that can get you through the process.

But if you’re new to this, you have an important question before you start performing the SEO audit: why do you need it in the first place?

Why Is Technical SEO Audit Useful?

You can take one thing for a fact: an in-depth SEO audit will not harm your site in any way. You don’t have to change anything after you perform it, so you’ll remain on status-quo. But you know what? You’ll probably change something for the better. That’s because, through the audit, you gain valuable insights that can make your SEO strategy perform more effectively.

These are the main reasons why you should consider an SEO audit for your site:

1. The Insights Help You Maintain Better Focus for Your SEO Strategy

Through the audit, you’ll see what aspects of your search engine optimization campaign perform well. For example, maybe you published a few podcasts over the last month or so. According to the information released during the latest Google I/O Conference, podcasts are coming to search. The audit will show how this type of content performs for you. If you notice great results, you’ll focus on launching more podcasts in the future.

You may also notice that the content with updated meta tags performs better. You’ll focus on improving these elements across the entire website.

You get the point, right? The SEO audit helps you identify what works, so you’ll include more of that in your campaign.

2. You’ll See What Works for Your Competitors, Too

The greatest value of the audit is that you can see what your competitors are doing well, too. You can conduct competitive analysis on the audience engagement and content performance.

For example, you may use the free backlink checker by Ahrefs to see what backlinks your competitors get. If you realize that the posts that perform well are getting backlinks from high-authority sites, you can focus on guest posting for those sites.

If you see that infographics get them great results in the search results, you can create few infographics on other topics that they didn’t think of.

3. You’ll See Where Your Campaign Is Thin

When performing an SEO audit, most website owners focus on the things they were doing well. When they notice that a podcast got them great results, they will create more of those in the near future. But what happens with the indicators that show problems?

The SEO audit will also show the flaws in your campaign. Maybe you didn’t include great meta tags for all your posts. Maybe the process of targeting keywords didn’t yield results, so you’ll need to change something there. You’ll probably discover duplicate content, broken links, or harmful inbound links.

When you discover problematic issues that ruin your potential for great rankings, you’ll be able to fix them. That’s what makes the SEO audit really important.

4. The SEO Audit Helps You Identify Potential Conversion Sources

If the analysis discovers your website has been quoted by influencers and popular bloggers, you can include them in your marketing campaign. They are sources of authority, with access to a large audience that could be interested in your products or services. It’s a lucrative opportunity that gets you more exposure in front of the right people.

5. You’ll Develop More Relevant Content

Is video better than written words? Are infographics better than long-form articles?

If you look at the stats, you’ll gain some insights. For example, a survey by OptinMonster will tell you that video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year.

Does this mean that you should invest in video content a lot?

Not necessarily.

The surveys are insightful, but they give you general information. Your website is unique and its audience is unique. The SEO audit tells you what content performs well for this particular project. So, if you see that short blog posts get the most attention, that’s what you’ll keep publishing.

Recommendations for SEO Website Audit: What to Do After?

Once you perform an SEO audit according to a checklist, you’ll have two main steps to cover:

• Identify the strategy of your competitors

The analytics will show you what your fierce competition is up to. Compare their strategies to your own. See what they are doing better, so you can improve those elements of your strategy. However, you’ll also see what makes you stronger, so you’ll reinforce those parts of your campaign, too.

• Improve your SEO Strategy

That’s the purpose of conducting an audit in the first place. You get the data, so what are you going to do about it?

Why Consider Making an SEO Audit?

One of the main reasons why website owners should conduct an SEO audit is that it’s easy.

Google Analytics is a tool you already use, right? Well it gives you a few details that matter:

• Behavior flow
• Site search
• Frequency and recency report
• New vs. returning visitors stats
• Landing page details
• Channels report

Access these reports and you’ll see how your content performs.

If you use the Lighthouse Chrome extension, you’re one step forward: there’s an SEO Audits category in it. You just choose the function, click perform, and you’ll get a report to analyze.

Final Thoughts

If it’s relatively easy and definitely beneficial, why would you avoid it?

The SEO audit helps you see where you stand. With such information, you can take actions that improve your site’s performance and get you more conversions. Who doesn’t want that?