There are lots of times an internet marketing agency should consider an SEO and technical or analytical site audit for their clients. Firstly, when a new client comes in, an SEO audit is a must to understand the strategic objectives of website design and development before proceeding further. Another time an SEO audit can prove handy is when websites perform poorly. This could be anywhere from a quarterly to a six-monthly check-up, but it needs to be done. That said, let’s delve deeper into how an internet marketing firm can conduct an effective SEO audit.
#1 Check Your Site Has No Duplicate Content or Versions
Check that there is no duplication of content. Internet marketers need to ensure only one version of your site can be browsed. Other versions of the site should be 301 redirects to the canonical version.
#2 Initiate a Website Crawl
Another crucial step for an SEO audit is to run a website crawl in the background, because an SEO crawler will approach and analyse the site the same way as a Googlebot and provide useful information on the structure and SEO set-up. Site audits should also check external links.
#3 Check Google For Indexation Issues
No indexing by Google means no ranking! So, to check if Google is indexing your site, you need to go to the Google search console, access the index status and check how many pages your site has been indexed for. Another effective way is to use a search operator. If you don’t see any results for search, then there can be issues. No pages on your site are indexed, which means zero organic traffic. Redirects to wrong pages, broken links or even no-index links can be the problem.
#4: Ranking for Your Brand Name
Another crucial step an internet marketing agency must take for an SEO audit of a business site is checking if the site ranks for the brand name. Unless the site is very new or the brand name is generic, the site should be the first organic result. If you don’t rank in the first position, but further down the results, chances are Google thinks another site is the better option for your branded term.
Brand building and link building is the key to solve this problem. Work on strong, branded links, running PR campaigns, building citations on business directories, ensuring sites have Google business listings. Search intent drives the result. If indexation problems are ruled out, the next step could be searching for manual penalties or heavy algorithmic penalties in the Google Search Console.
#5 Page Analysis
Your page should have a well-designed clickable title tag. There should be a custom meta description optimised for maximising click-throughs. There should be only one H1 tag well optimised and sub-headers should be correctly used. Metadata must be optimised.
#6 Site Navigation
Another important angle to an SEO audit is a site navigation assessment. Your site architecture should be robust and easily navigable. Otherwise, there is a serious problem in how human users, as well as search engines, perceive your site.
#7 Link & Content Analysis
Last, but never the least is the link and content analysis. The quality of internal and backlinks, the use of correct anchor text for internal links, content analysis to prevent the use of thin or erroneous content – these are some other points an SEO audit must cover. So, these are the steps an internet marketing agency must take to ensure your site is up to the mark and SEO-friendly.