Owning and running a website can be a challenging task. In any vertical, you’ll have to compete with hundreds of thousands of other websites catering to the same specializations and markets that you serve. Attracting prospective customers to your website can be a challenge, but it’s also a great opportunity. A website that is clear about both what its customers want and what it wants – and meets those needs – can be a wonderful source of revenue.
The first and most important step towards generating income through your website is to run it through an SEO website audit.
Ask any Indian (or Chinese), and they’ll tell you how hard it is to stand out from among one billion. It’s the same with websites. There are almost 1 billion websites in the world (944 million to be precise). To stand out from among them, you’ll first need to know:
a) What is currently holding your website back
b) How to fix it
This, broadly, is what a website audit does for you.
But why should you do a website audit in the first place? Why can’t you get hold of some Google Analytics data and analyze what’s wrong with your website yourself? You can do that, but it’s doubtful you would solve your problem. Worse, you might not even know where the problem is located.
There are three major benefits you get by carrying out a website audit.
A Website Audit Gives You an Overall Picture
One of the most important and primary functions of an SEO website audit is to give you an idea of where your website stands in your chosen vertical. You can’t decide where you want to go if you have no idea where you are.
A good website audit will tell you how best to optimize your website for search engines, and where you might be falling short. Failing to optimize your website for search engines means you’re missing out on a lot of potential traffic and prospective customers.
A website audit will usually give you at least two kinds of assessments of the site:
a) Content assessment
b) Technical assessment
Content assessment will examine whether your website’s content is of a high quality, whether it’s search engine optimized, and if it is optimized for lead generation and conversion.
The technical assessment will examine factors like whether your site is mobile-responsive, whether it has missing, duplicate or optimal title tags and meta descriptions, and whether site and URL errors are present, which limit site performance.
A Website Audit Maps Red Flags
Most often, the reason website owners can’t fix a problem with their site is because there isn’t a problem at all. At least, there isn’t one where they look.
It’s a common assumption that whatever issue that’s ailing a website, can be identified by getting hold of a bunch of Google Analytics data or some other obtuse dossier and poring over it. But website auditing is not about data. It’s about the expertise of the person who is interpreting that data.
Search engine algorithms and webmaster guidelines are constantly being updated to provide a better search experience. Therefore, one needs to adjust website content from time to time. A website audit will alert you to SEO pitfalls (also called ‘red flags’) like invisible keywords, keyword stuffing, repetitive submission, etc. An audit can also alert you to dangers such as search engine penalties and negative SEO. If left unattended, these can grievously hurt your online reputation and by extension, your campaign.
A Website Audit Improves the Effectiveness of the Website
A website audit considerably enhances a site’s ability of lead generation and conversion. An easy-to-use, properly maintained, search engine optimized site with no expired links or other red flags, has a far greater chance of retention and much higher ROI.
A website audit is critical to ensure your website stays lean and mean. Regular audits, done quarterly, half-yearly, or annually, are essential to help keep your website near the top of search engine rankings and will be an invaluable boost to your business.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up for a website audit and see your business prosper!
SEO auditing is one of the most important internet marketing tools that are implemented to provide a website a detailed insight as well as overview on improving their online visibility to the very best.