A Search Engine Optimization audit is always the best first step when beginning any SEO project. It gives us a deep understanding of what’s going on with your site. It shows us any technical issues, how your on-page SEO looks, what your competitors are doing, and what your off-page SEO looks like. I like to keep these mini breakouts short so I’m going to go right into the different kinds of SEO audits I perform on each new website I work on.
This is where I always start. I use some specialized software to generate a report on the overall technical health of the website. A technical audit looks at a wide range of possible issues. This will show; if pages are 404s (meaning they were indexed by Google but have since been deleted), if any page URLs were changed without a 301 redirect, if any pages have duplicate content, broken links, or any issues with headers, and also server side issues like not having HTTPS. Technical SEO gives me the most important things to begin with so that once I begin on-page SEO optimizations they are as effective as possible.
I like to run technical audits every few months for my clients to make sure nothing is going on behind the scenes that can negatively affect search rank.
The next step towards evaluating a website is an on-page SEO audit. I feel that on-page SEO is the single most important aspect of SEO. For this audit, I look at a checklist of items and make notes of what needs improvements. On-page SEO encompasses a lot of aspects. These include; the website structure, the content, the URLs, meta titles, meta descriptions, headers, alt text, internal linking, website load speed, and more.
The on-page SEO audit informs me on what needs to be addressed and fixed on the site itself. It’s amazing what some good on-page optimization can do for search rank.
Off-page SEO analyzes everything that happens off the site itself. The major part of this is backlinks and the strength of the brand entity. Backlinks are links to your site from other sites. Many websites have none or very few backlinks. If all Technical SEO is good, and a website has solid on-page SEO optimizations in place creating, backlinks helps to power up the authority of the website.
This also includes creating and optimizing business listings which help strengthen the brand entity. the brand entity is your brand in search. It helps a lot to have a good amount of business listings that reinforce your business name and contact information. A strong brand entity ranks higher.
Lastly, I compare your website to your top-ranking competitors. Sometimes the competitors I discover are different than what you might think. I choose competitors to analyze based on who is ranking for the most lucrative keywords I am going to rank your business for. Then I audit their website’s on-page and off-page SEO and use specialized software to discover any gaps and how we can overtake them in the SERPs. This audit drives a lot of the specifics that I will integrate into your SEO strategy.
WordPress Web Design - Conversion Rate Optimization - UX/UI Design - Copywriting - Search Engine Optimization - PPC
Serving clients in Holyoke, Springfield, Easthampton, Northampton, Worcestor and Boston.
