When you run a business, it’s your job to measure and analyze some key performance indicators (KPI). This is important most especially if you’re serious about staying ahead of your competitors. The same goes with SEO. No matter how tedious the process is, there’s no reason to stop even if you’re already ranking comfortably in search engines. You have to scrutinize your SEO efforts and determine areas that need improvement.

In this article, we’ll outline what needs to be done during an SEO audit. You’ll soon see that the whole process is straightforward, but is influential on how your site performs in the long run.

Initial Phase

An SEO audit would give you an idea on how well your SEO efforts are faring. There are a lot of SEO tactics that one can use but they are not guaranteed to work everytime. Bottom line, your SEO techniques should be tailored fit to the needs of your site and business. That way, you’ll know if your SEO efforts are effective or not.

Before you start doing an SEO audit, make sure to get these things done first:

Crawl your own site

Crawling your site would quickly let you know which sections are inaccessible to search engines. It will likewise tell you which pages are indexable or not.
Know what search engines say about your site
Often, crawling a site is not enough to get the data you need. You can’t right away assume that the crawlable sections of your site can be found in the databases of search engines. Using a set of webmaster tools, you’ll know which pages on your site made it in Google or in Bing’s database.

And now, the SEO Audit…

1) Closely examine accessibility and indexability

This step involves:
• Checking if you have accidentally blocked crawlers or incorrectly indexed a section of your site
• Look for some 404 error and bad redirects
• Make sure your XML sitemap is readable, functioning, and up-to-date
• Check your site’s architecture, speed of loading, and use of JavaScript/Flash

2) Analyze your site’s on-page ranking factors

The most basic on-page ranking factors are :
• Site URLs
• Web content
• Outbound links
• Meta tags
• Javascript, Images, etc.

3) Also look closely at your site’s off-page ranking factors

The most basic off-page ranking factors are :
• Number of backlinks
• Quality of backlinks
• Your site’s position on reputable ranking services
• Inclusion of social media

4) See how your site fares in the competition

So what do you think?
An SEO audit can take several days or weeks to complete. No matter how time consuming or costly it might be, it’s always worth it. Take time to perform audits once a month or every after three months. This would not only save yourself from trouble but will likewise give you an edge in site rankings.
An SEO company like Drive Traffic Media can help you do all this. Call us today at (949) 800-6990 and together we’ll make things possible.