Businesses can’t ignore the fact that 92.96% of global traffic originates from Google search, Google Maps, or Google Images. If your company doesn’t have a strong online presence there, you’re missing out on significant opportunities.
But what if you’re already trying to optimize your website and you’re not sure whether you’re going in the right direction? To determine if your efforts aren’t being wasted, you need to perform a technical SEO audit.
Find out what SEO audits cover and why you need one here, so you can grow your business and outpace your competitors.
What Is a Technical SEO Audit?
Technical SEO audits benefit businesses of all sizes. You gain insights from one whether you understand search engine optimization or you’re completely new to it.
But first, what is a technical SEO audit, and what does it cover?
In short, this evaluation looks at the technical aspects of your website and outlines areas for improvement. It helps to ensure a website is optimized for search engines like Google or Bing.
Website and optimization errors impact indexation and crawlability, which make it hard or nearly impossible to rank highly. A technical audit looks for issues such as:
- Broken links and images
- Duplicate content
- Redirect loops
- Security issues
- Orphaned pages
- Outdated content
An SEO audit includes keyword research, looks into structural aspects of your site, covers market analysis, and much more.
When Should You Perform SEO Audits?
It’s invaluable for any business to regularly conduct an SEO audit once a year or even once per quarter, depending on the size of your company.
Remember, the bigger the website, the longer it takes to perform a full audit. So you may need to perform them more often as you grow, and you’ll also need to set aside enough time for the process.
Additionally, you’ll want to get an SEO audit if you plan to migrate to a different domain, if you recently launched a mobile version of the site, or if you’re seeing a decrease in traffic or low search rankings. It never hurts to get an audit, as you can pinpoint mistakes early on and correct them as soon as possible.
Another important point to keep in mind is that search engine algorithms change often. The best SEO practices will also change, and you need to keep up.
That’s easier said than done in some cases but managed SEO services help keep you on track with on-page optimization, technical SEO, content strategy, and more.
Technical Audits Find Errors and Areas for Improvement
As the name implies, this part of the process looks at all the technical aspects of your website. It can help to catch errors in the code, pinpoint crawlability and indexing issues, and spot broken links and images.
Additionally, a technical SEO audit is crucial for website safety. Your customers and clients expect your website to remain secure, so their data and activity remain guarded. Therefore, an SSL certificate and HTTPS protocol are must-have security measures.
Responsiveness is another factor that you have to consider when developing your SEO strategy, as it impacts the user experience. For instance, websites optimized for mobile are generally ranked higher.
Another part of a technical audit covers page loading speed. If your pages take too long to load, you increase the chances that a user will “bounce” or hit the back button before exploring the rest of your site. That negatively impacts dwell time statistics and can hurt your visibility.
Several factors impact loading speed, such as image issues. A thorough audit will catch problems like this.
Content Auditing Helps You Rank Higher
Your content matters just as much as the more technical aspects of your website. After all, the content tells your brand’s story, covers product descriptions, and provides valuable information for your customers.
Unfortunately, you can make mistakes in this area as well, which affect your placement in the search rankings.
SEO specialists conduct keyword research, find the best keywords for your industry and business, and determine if you’re optimized for those phrases. Content also provides opportunities for more backlinks, so an audit might reveal that you need to work on acquiring more.
Proper URL structures and title tags also help improve your website, making it easy to understand and navigate and improving the user experience overall. Using managed SEO services helps you to create a cleaner, more professional, and perfectly optimized website.
Users will flock to websites like that, and search engines will take notice, which helps you to rank higher.
SEO Audits Improve Website Speed
These days, users expect a website to load in a matter of seconds. If it takes more than 2-3 seconds, they’re far more likely to leave and click on the next result.
Websites with the highest conversion rates tend to have a loading time of 0-2 seconds. That 2-3 second mark should be your goal, as it can mean the difference between a conversion or a lost customer.
Thankfully, SEO audits look for issues that impact your page loading speed and address them. The report will tell you if the server is working fast enough and if there are any issues with content loading.
Images that are too large, inactive code or code “bloat,” and too many ads can all impact speed. Additionally, you may need to move to another website host.
Faster loading speeds mean better user experiences and more return visitors. You can expect more traffic and conversions, which is great news for your business.
Perform a Technical SEO Audit to Grow Your Business
A technical SEO audit has many advantages that you can’t afford to ignore. Perform them at least once a year to catch issues that can cost you traffic and valuable customers.
Are you interested in learning more ways to grow your business and improve your website? Browse some of our other content to find additional valuable tips like these.
