A website audit or SEO audit is very similar to taking your car to get an oil change. You know you need to do it and it will help extend the life of your car. Your mechanic will change the oil, check the fluids, check the air pressure, and more, but sometimes it can be a hassle. After all, taking your car to the shop means being without it for a period of time, and who wants that! But it is a necessary process that has benefits in the end.
Don’t Fall For the Excuses Not to Do an SEO Audit.
There are also lots of excuses for why not doing regular a SEO audit; you need to close that sale you’re working on, training new hires, or staying on top of customer service, whatever the reason, often the website audit gets postponed. Plus, many companies subscribe to the “do it once and forget it” plan, but just like your car an SEO audit is an important part of a long-term success plan.
More Insights : SEO is a Strategy NOT a Tactic: Part 1 in a 3 Part Series
5 Reasons Why a Regular SEO Audit is Important to Your Business
To put it simply an SEO Audit is a check-up for your website. It means going through your current SEO strategies and measuring what has been successful and what has not. Then figuring out what needs to be fixed or improved.
Here are reasons why you need to complete an audit on a regular basis:
- Webmaster Guidelines – These are constantly evolving and you need to make sure you are following their recommendations. If you are using webmaster tools from Bing of Google they will even tell you where there are issues.
- Algorithm Changes – Search engines periodically update their algorithms to provide better search results. The algorithms are how search engines measure where your site will show up in search results, so you need to make sure you keep up with the latest changes to make sure you are ranking well. In fact, Google made at least 8 major updates this past year alone!
- Link Profile – One thing that search engines are still relying on heavily is incoming links to websites. That means other sites that are linking to your site. You need to check this regularly because it can change often and being associated with bad sites can really hurt your ranking.
- Outdated Content and Website Errors – This is one that many people miss. Outdated content can hurt your site not only for ranking, but visitors will see it is outdated and question if your business is up to date. You’d also be surprised at how often links break. Maybe caused by an update to the site or something else. If people are not going to or staying on a page, fix it or remove it!
- Benchmarking – Regular SEO Audits will show you your progress and give you a track record for what works and doesn’t work. Plus, looking at this on a regular basis means it will be easier to go back and undo tactics that didn’t work. Trying to go back several years to when you initially built your website would be much more difficult.
How often is “regularly”?
That depends somewhat on your site. If you have a very active site or you have a lot to fix, a monthly SEO Audit might be necessary. The internet and digital marketing move fast so you should perform an audit at least every 3-6 months.
Further Reading About SEO Audits:
Are H1 Tags Critical for SEO?
Do Blog Tags and Categories Help Your SEO?
3 SEO Image Optimization Best Practices
