An in-depth analysis of SEO performance

Search engine optimization (SEO) has become an essential component of any successful business. With countless companies vying for online visibility and attention, having a strong SEO strategy in place is crucial. However, simply implementing basic tactics such as keyword research and on-page optimization may not be enough to keep up with ever-changing search algorithms.

This is where an SEO audit comes into play. An in-depth analysis of your website’s current SEO performance, an audit can reveal areas that need improvement and provide actionable recommendations for enhancing your overall search presence. While investing in an SEO audit may seem daunting at first, the benefits can far outweigh the costs – ultimately resulting in increased traffic, improved rankings, and higher conversions for your business.

What is an SEO audit and why is it important?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a crucial element of any website that aims to rank well and attract organic traffic. An SEO audit is an in-depth analysis of your website’s online presence, covering everything from content quality to technical details, with the goal of identifying areas that need improvement. It involves a comprehensive review of your website’s structure, content, user experience, and other aspects that impact search engine visibility.

An SEO audit can help you get a better understanding of how your site performs in terms of search engine rankings and identify opportunities for improvement. The insights gained from an SEO audit will enable you to optimize your site’s performance by addressing issues such as broken links, duplicate content, and poor user experience. By doing so, you can improve your chances of ranking well on search engines like Google and attract more qualified leads to your business.

A proper SEO audit covers more than just your website. A key area, that is far too often not looked at enough, is gathering all the same details on your competitors website. Your competitors’ websites set the bar for what your website needs to have in order to rank. Without performing an audit on their sites as well, there’s no great way to know where that bar is. Conducting an SEO audit on your competitors websites will indicate things like how many words to use on a page, how many times to use a keyword, number of images to have, and more.

An SEO audit can improve user experience

Investing in an SEO audit can pay off in numerous ways. It can help to pinpoint areas of your website that need improvement, such as broken links or missing meta descriptions. By addressing these issues, you’ll be able to boost your website’s visibility and attract more organic traffic from search engines. While some of the issues found in an SEO audit might be minor, they can, overtime, turn into very big issues that can have significant negative impact on your website’s success.

Additionally, a thorough SEO audit can help you better understand your target audience by analyzing their behavior on your site and identifying areas for improvement. By analyzing which pages or features are most utilized by users, updates and enhancements on other pages and features can be made to boost their effectiveness.

Optimize site content for better search engine ranking.

Optimizing your website’s content for search engines is crucial. Not only does it increase your online visibility, but it can also drive more traffic to your site and ultimately lead to increased sales or conversions. However, achieving a high search engine ranking requires much more than just adding a few keywords to your content.

This is where an SEO audit comes in. Investing in an SEO audit can help you identify any content issues that may be hindering your site’s performance. The SEO audit will also provide insight into how you can improve your content to better align with search engine algorithms. By doing an audit on your competitions websites, you’ll also be able to find any shortcomings there might be in content on your site. For example, if you notice when auditing a competitor’s website that they have 2000 words of text while your site only has 1000, you’ll see that significantly more content is needed.

By auditing your competitors’ websites, we’ll know where the SEO bar is set. Then it is simply a matter of increasing content on your website. And if your website sets the bar for SEO, then you should probably consider adding more content to your site as well since your competitors will be viewing your site as the bar.

A question we get asked a lot at Full Scope Creative by clients is how much content they should have on their site. By doing an SEO audit on their site and their competitors we can find the average for what most sites have. Our general rule of thumb is to double that average. So if the average home page that is being reviewed has 1000 words of text, we’d start with no less than 2000 words.

Stay up-to-date with industry trends.

In the digital environment, businesses are constantly competing to stay ahead of the game. One way to gain a competitive edge is by performing an SEO audit on your website and your competitors. An SEO audit is essentially a comprehensive analysis of your and your competitors website’s search engine optimization (SEO) performance and its ability to rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs).

A thorough SEO audit can provide another way to stay up-to-date with industry trends and best practices. As new technologies become available, you may wonder if it’s something you want to talk about on your site. A competitor’s website might be going into detail on a new technology in your field, it’s a good indicator that it should be talked about on your site as well. A competitor could also pick up on a newer phrasing that is common in the market place and with your consumers.

What is included in an SEO Audit

When we are performing an SEO audit at Full Scope Creative, there is a lengthy list of things we look at. We’ll analyze both the client’s site that we’re working on, as well as 4-5 others in their industry. Of those competitor sites, most of them are often based in the same geographic area as the client that we are working with. Usually, one of those competitor sites is a geographic outlier. If we are working on a client’s site in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the majority of the sites will be in this area. The outlier would come from Chicago, New York, Dallas, or another city in another state.

The data we look at will include home page word count, average word count for interior pages, number of photos on the home page, is there a video on the home page, how many times do they use the main keyword, common home page features, and many more. We even get into some technical coding and check for how many links there are and if the website uses the keyword in the links.

By gathering all of that data, we start to get an idea for what needs to be done on our clients site. Again, our rule of thumb is to double what the average is. If our SEO audits find that the average site has 1000 words of text, we’re going to start with 2000 or more. And if the audit shows that those sites have 10 images, we’re going to include 20 or more.

There is really no limit to what can all be included in an SEO audit. Any sort of statistical data that can be gathered should be looked at and analyzed to help determine what is needed for your site.

A sound investment to improve online presence.

Overall, conducting an SEO audit is a sound investment for any business looking to improve its online presence. It may take some time to gather the sites to analyze and to determine what all should be included in the SEO audit. But once the audit is completed, you will have a very good benchmark of what is needed to meet and exceed your competition and gain the desired results.  Therefore, we recommend conducting regular SEO audits to assess your website’s performance and make data-driven decisions that align with your business goals. Take action today and start optimizing your website for better search engine results!