User:MathiasOllendorff2136

An SEO audit is a vital part of any solid Internet marketing plan. It evaluates the health of your entire marketing scheme, and while it is a simple concept, a good SEO audit is anything but simple. Analyzing your Web site and marketing effectiveness is more than just seeing how many hits your site had during a period of time. It's about seeing where each click came from, the percentage of hits on your page that followed through to sales, where the weak spots in your marketing strategy are, what other opportunities are available to improve your numbers and if there is competition or other threats that may undermine your marketing abilities. Additionally, a good SEO audit will show you if the marketing you are doing is reaching the proper demographic.

The Technical Side

An SEO audit can be a real pain. Doing it the right way is time-consuming, and the end result contains enough detail to make even the geekiest geek's head spin. The good thing about the thoroughness of an SEO audit is that it makes you extremely confident about what you need to change. It definitely beats the "Hey, sales aren't what I'd like them to be so let's try this..." method. There's no hit and miss when you conduct an SEO audit. You see exactly what the problems are in your marketing plan, and you can implement changes to correct them.

What an SEO Audit Report Looks Like

Many reports begin with a general statement of purpose. It should state your company objective simply, in just a few short lines. Next comes the lexicon. This will detail all of the keywords the SEO process generated that relate to your products or services. Each keyword should be listed according to rank and why each should or shouldn't be used to create your marketing. A good auditor will then check the tools you are using to do everyday tracking. Whether you're using Analytics or other SEO tools, the auditor will gather all of the daily traffic information from those tools. Then they'll compare the stats to the keywords and see if your actual marketing is living up to the potential of the keywords and phrases you are using. To complete the SEO audit, your SEO consultant will completely dissect your Web site to see if any of the meta tags, links, references, site maps and cross-linking are broken. They'll also check your competitors to see how your site is performing relative to the competition.

Did you know that the textual content (words) on your Web site make a difference when it comes to ranking? It's not just the keywords and/or phrases that count, it's the content of the text as well. Businesses often make the mistake of not caring about what the pages of their Web site or other marketing tools "say" as long as the keywords are there enough times to make it visible to search engines. Search engines don't like that, and bad content will devalue your Web site. Therefore, an SEO audit will check to be sure all of the content on your Web site and peripheral marketing pages (such as articles that point to your site from other directories) have relevant content.

Finally, an SEO audit will review any backlinks to your site to make sure there are no broken links on outside advertising sources. It's exciting to see that your site is mentioned on other blogs, social media accounts and/or articles, but those links must remain active. Your SEO consultant will make sure your backlinks are active or recommend ways to address the inactive ones.

After an SEO Audit

Now that you have a detailed report to view, you need to make sense of it. The auditor's job is to explain what everything means and how it relates to your site and effectiveness of your marketing. The SEO audit gives you a method to formulate a new plan of action, and the auditor should help you create that plan to make your marketing stronger. Not quite as simple as it seems, is it? No, an SEO audit isn't simple, but it's one of the most important things you can do for the health of your online business.